Remembering the Reesor Siding tragedy, the bloody night in 1963 when striking union workers were shot to death during a confrontation with contract workers at a rail siding near Kapuskasing in
It was one of the biggest labor stories in Northern Ontario and to this day there are people in Kapuskasing who will get cross if somebody says the wrong thing about the bizarre incident at Reesor Siding, just west of town on Highway 11.
I first came across this story by reading the archives of The Daily Press of Timmins that were located in the library of the old Thomson Building in that city in the 1970s. A researcher from Maclean's Magazine was there also, digging up background on the story. In those days a newspaper library was called a morgue, a suitable moniker for this story.
The farmers were aware of these hard feelings. They had organized among themselves to guard the stacked wood piles located on a rail siding about 50 kilometres west of Kap. Private cars soon began arriving at Reesor. Cars were parked alongside the highway. More than 240 strikers had arrived, according to police reports. Some estimates had the number at more than 300.
The story made headlines across the North, as well as being carried on the Canadian Press wire service. There was even a report on Page 2 of the Feb. 12, 1963 edition of the New York Times, which was part owner of the Spruce Falls mill at the time.
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