Following an emotional city hall debate, Elliot Lake's policy for determining how the names of injured miners are added to the city's Memorial Wall will get another look.
The step follows impassioned pleas to City Council to do just that from former miner Terry Whitehead and city resident Nicole Cook. Cook and Whitehead told council members Monday night the city needs to re-examine its criteria used to make choices for the names.
The Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board standard for identifying miners designated as disabled or injured due to their service in the Elliot Lake's defunct uranium mines continues as the city's own standard for selecting those who are to be honoured at the Memorial.
Whitehead, a veteran member of the City of Hamilton Council, is an Elliot Lake native and former miner and United Steelworkers official.
He told Elliot Lake councillors and Mayor Dan Marchisella that the WSIB criteria in place since 2015 by the selection committee unfairly excludes the names of many former and deceased miners whose names should be on the Miners Memorial Wall.
As a relative of a former miner, Cook echoed Whitehead's statements during her presentation to council. Councillors Ed Pearce and Sandy Finamore both expressed painful recollections of their own grief stemming from experiences with relatives who suffered health issues following careers as miners.
Finamore's husband served in the mines for many years. Councillor Pearce later apologized to his follow council members after tearing up when he recalled his own grief at a family member's mining related health struggles.
While Council takes another look at its selection process at the committee level, five new names will be added to the Miners Memorial before month's end.
This Saturday morning members of Elliot Lake Council will gather at the Memorial along with miners and their families and the families of deceased miners as they honour the 2018 wall inductees.
The names of Paul-Joseph Drouin, Jean-Marie Marceau, Lucien Simon, Robert Earl McLean and Leo Paul Audette will be recognized and engraved on the wall located on the shore of Horne Lake near Highway 108 and Hillside Drive North.
Council endorsed adding the names last month following a recommendation from the city's Miner’s Memorial committee. The names will be added to the Miners’ Memorial Wall at the Day of Mourning ceremony at the wall set for this Saturday, April 28, at 11 a.m.