A Vancouver woman who poisoned trees in Stanley Park to improve her view of English Bay has suffered "coast-to-coast humilation", her lawyer has claimed.

The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias surveys the black-and-white evidence of how many newspapers got the mine story wrong.

Some of the West Virginia coal miners had enough time to write notes to their families saying they weren't suffering, that they were just going to sleep, says one relative.

Way back, long before I was born, my paternal grandfather (my namesake; he died young [roughly as old as I am now], so we never met) worked the coal seams in long-forgotten places like Rocky Mountain Park, located in Alberta's foothills, and the Drumheller badlands.

If you're ever in Alberta and are curious about that life, there are mining museums in Nordegg (the foothills west of Rocky Mountain House) and near Drumheller.

The big one, however, is an interpretive centre in the Crowsnest pass, where the famous 1903 Frank Slide occurred, wiping out the little mining town of Frank in just 90 seconds. There are also some colliery ruins down there and a working mine (for tourists) that can give you an insight into just how tough, dirty and dangerous a job that was (and still is).

One of the worst mine disasters in the Crowsnest -- actually, in Canadian history -- was the Hillcrest mine explosion on Friday, June 19, 1914, which killed 189 miners. The blast was so powerful that some standing at the mine's entrance died.

According to the website When Coal was King, the most tragic story of that tragic day belongs to the Murray family. Miner David Murray survived the blast, but then realized after his escape that his three sons were still down there. He went back in to try and rescue them but instead joined them in death, overcome by the toxic fumes.

The website quotes Mack Stigler, a miner who was there and who said this at his retirement banquet in 1948:

 I started in Hillcrest and was there when that never-to-be-forgotten day, June 19, 1914 passed, taking with it 189 lives of which the big majority were as great and big hearted men as ever wore a boot, and most of them were my good friends. Every year I go to Hillcrest and spend an hour or more walking amongst those graves of my old friends, talking to them. They were my friends and they were murdered.

When he worked down in the Crowsnest in 1987, Calgary-based folk singer James Keelaghan wrote a song called Hillcrest Mine, which I think is one of his best. Here's the lyrics:

Down in the mines of the Crowsnest Pass
It's the men that die in labour
Sweating coal from the womb of the pit
It's the smell of life they savour
And in that mine, young man, you'll find
A wealth of broken dreams --
As long and as dark and as black and as wide
As the coal in the Hillcrest seam.

(Chorus)

And they say you don't go, say you don't go down in the Hillcrest Mine,
And they say you don't go, say you don't go down in the Hillcrest Mine;
'Cause it's one short step, you might leave this world behind,
And they say you don't go, say you don't go down in the Hillcrest Mine.

I've heard it whispered in the light of dawn
That mountain sometimes moves.
That bodes ill for the morning shift
 And you know what you're gonna lose.
Don't go, my son, where the deep coal runs. Turn your back to the mine on the hill
'Cause if the dust and the dark and the gas don't getcha,
Then the goons and the bosses will.

(Chorus)

Well son, I'm gonna open up
I'm gonna have my say
You'll get no peace from the Hillcrest Mine
'Cept the peace of an early grave
Go out and work for the workers' rights
Go work for the workers' needs
Don't stay down here to toil for your buck
To be a tool for the owner's greed

(Chorus)

The song is on Keelaghan's Small Rebellions album, released in 1990. He's recorded an updated version of Hillcrest Mine, which is available on his 2004 CD Then Again. Better record stores should handle his stuff, otherwise, check out Festival Distribution.

Finally, for a dramatic film treatment of a 1920 clash between West Virginia coal miners and their employer, I can highly recommend John Sayles' Matewan.

Exhaustion and miscommunications were the reasons behind the false news about finding 12 trapped coal miners alive, says the company's president.

No beer in the dwelling.

No wine.

Maybe one shot of Jack Daniels left.

A few ounces of Cointreau at best.

Vodka, rum, Grand Marnier - all drained.

If I were just my booze inventory manager, I'd fire me. But hey: I'm family.

So what can you do, right?

Man From Canada Acts Like He's Not Cold

January 4, 2006 | Issue 42•01

BOSTON—While visiting family in Boston, Geoff MacArdle of Ottawa refused to admit that he was cold Monday. "This is nothing—this is like May in Ottawa," insisted MacArdle, wearing a light spring jacket despite 23-degree temperatures. "Where I'm from, we have picnics in this weather." MacArdle then went indoors, saying he had nothing to prove.

(From the Onion)

I offer the following without comment:

Armenia's culture minister attacked and pistol-whipped two local utility workers Wednesday after electricity was cut off to his apartment, police said.