Annual gathering remembers workers killed or injured on job
200 attend first Day of Mourning event without founder Marentette
The large voice of the late Rolly Marentette, who spoke up for so many workers who have been injured or killed on the job, was silent at Saturday ’s Day of Mourning ceremony for the first time in over three decades.
However, there was more than just his spirit present as about 200 people marched from Windsor’s St. Augustine Church to the riverfront monument to injured and killed workers in Coventry Gardens.
“This day was his baby,” said his wife Sandy Marentette. “He devoted his life to injured workers. He also got that monument put up down there at the river.
“That’s where we scattered his ashes. We waited until the day of the Dragon Boat Races, so that fewer people would be around, and we did it then. Because that’s where he wanted to be.”
Sandy Marentette wasn’t sure she could bear dredging up the memories at this first ceremony without her husband. However, a tribute to Rolly by longtime friend John Arnold, a retired rep for the Workers Health and Safety Centre, drew her back. Marentette died after a short battle with cancer last May.
“Last year he shocked everyone by announcing he was dying at this ceremony,” Marentette said. “He only had three weeks left.
“It’s very hard being here. I’m trying to hold myself together. “However, this was a very important event to Rolly, and I’ll continue to keep coming.”
In doing so, Sandy Marentette will be following in the footsteps of so many in attendance who have lost loved ones to workplace accidents or job-related illnesses.
Lucie Bechard lost her first husband Tom Dunn to asbestos-related cancer on Jan. 3, 1981, and once again shared her painful story. Her husband is one of four close family relations to die as a result of workplace-related illness or an accident.
“It’s sad because it brings back all those emotions,” Bechard said. “At the same time, this day is good because it allows us to support one another.
“Every time I have come here, it helps give you some kind of comfort. It helps me.
“It never takes away the pain or the memories, but at least we can share it together.” Watching Dunn’s battle with two massive tumours in his chest was agonizing for his family. Meanwhile, when Veronica Cardoso lost her husband Claudio to a construction accident on Jan. 21, 2009, it was brutally shocking. Claudio was killed when a 500-kilogram rack fell on him. “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is tell our three-year-old son Mateo that his papa wasn’t coming home from work,” said Veronica Cardoso, who also has a younger son named Maui.
“He’d stopped on his way home from work everyday to get a little treat for him. That didn’t happen that day.”
Cardoso said a family member not coming home from their job is something you rarely think about. It’s the shock of that phone call and the police cruiser sitting outside her home she can’t purge from her memory.
“All those plans for our future, for our sons’ futures, changed in an instant,” Cardoso said.
“I’ll never forget that call. You never think it’s going to happen to you until it happened to us that day.” That workplace fatalities are still happening at the rate they are is unacceptable was the message banged home by speaker after speaker.
Last year there were 54 workplace deaths in Ontario, which has been a typical number since 2008. There were no local deaths in 2017, but 2018 has already claimed the life of Michael Cobb. The 24-year-old was killed recently in an accident at Tecumseh’s Prestressed Systems Inc.
The total number of WSIB claims in the province has also remained relatively unchanged at between 230,000 and 240,000 for a decade. “We’re not making any progress,” said Unifor Local 195’s Michael Gee, chairperson for the local Day of Mourning ceremony. “The numbers aren’t declining. “If you add up all those deaths and injuries each year and just multiply it by the number of immediate family members affected, three or four, you’re looking at an impact on over a million people. “We need to pay more attention to our minimum standards.”