Father-son fatality on the canal
“Like his father,” wrote The
Toronto Daily Star on Aug. 2, 1928, James Campbell McArthur “passed through the perils of war only to meet a violent death in peace time.”
If we put aside for a moment the fact that coverage of the family’s tragic double loss tended to exaggerate the facts, the McArthurs did appear to have experienced more than their fair share of tragedy.
Born in Greenock at the mouth of the Clyde estuary in western Scotland in 1892, James Campbell lost his father at about the same age his son would lose him as a father 34 years later. His mother Janet Davidson Campbell remarried in 1895, and with the ironworker James McArthur had four more children. She followed her second husband out to Canada in 1906 and made a new life for the family in Collingwood. Here, the elder James plied his skills as a riveter at the Georgian Bay shipyards, building vessels that served the Great Lakes maritime trade.
His stepson would follow him into this profession within a halfdecade.
The declaration of war in 1914 prompted the family’s two eldest sons to enlist in 1916 with the 177th Battalion in the Simcoe Foresters unit based in Barrie, Ont. After training at Camp Borden, the 24-year-old James sailed to England in 1917 with his barely 16-year-old half-brother David. They served in the 3rd Reserve Battalion.
In spite of the jingoistic hyperbole associated with military service, which was mentioned at the time of his and his stepfather’s death, James did not actually engage in active service in France. Instead, he was invalided out as a result of the exacerbation of symptoms associated with a head injury that he had sustained seven years earlier when hit on the head with a riveters reaming machine. He returned to Canada before the end of the year.
About this time, James’ half-sister Bella tragically died of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a gas stove in her boarding house. She had been working as a stenographer in Toronto.
Reunited in 1918, the family relocated to St Catharines where employment opportunities were plentiful. James worked with his stepfather and youngest halfbrother
Samuel on the Welland Ship Canal, while his two middle half-brothers (David and Archie) worked together at David’s butcher and grocer business in Niagara Falls.
It was high up on the 24.9-metre, 421.8-tonne partially completed Lock 6 gate that James and his stepfather were heating rivets on the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 1, 1928. According to The Toronto Daily Star, the McArthurs were employed as “rivet heaters,” standing on a narrow ledge on the top of the lock gate. From this precarious perch, “Jim McArthur and his son, Jim, stood together with their forge and dropped their hot rivets down through a hole in the frame to riveters far below.” The riveters, reamers and bolters would then work together to place the white-hot rivets into holes that would secure the steel skin-plates of the gate into place.
Of the 40 men working in the immediate proximity of the gate collapse, eight including the two McArthurs were killed immediately. Another two died later in hospital and 22 more were injured. The Star continuedin its Aug. 2 coverage of the events, “(The McArthurs) were swept off their dizzy footing like flies from a wall and the swift, dreadful death they met together is something not to dwell upon. The father’s broken body was found flung up in the steel frame of the opposite gate, 50 feet above the floor.”
Fiercely patriotic, the McArthur clan never forgot its roots. This is seen in various family photos, including ones of “Sunny Jim” (as he was known in the family) proudly wearing his Campbell tartan with sporran and regimental Glengarry bonnet. This connection to the motherland was also seen in the fact that he and his half-brother Samuel married the Glaswegian Speirs sisters: Annie in 1924 and Allison in 1926, respectively.
James’ widow Annie did not remain in Canada after her husband’s death, instead, she returned to Scotland with their young son in 1929.
— This article is part of a series remembering the men whose lives were lost in the construction of the Welland Ship Canal. The Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial Task Force is a volunteer group established to design, finance and build a memorial to recognize workers who were killed during construction of the canal. For more information about the memorial, or to contribute to the project, visit www.stcatharines.