William Davis (June 3, 1887 — June 11, 1925) was a coal miner from Cape Breton Island. He was born in Gloucestershire, England and killed by a police officer during a union labour action in New Waterford, Nova Scotia. His name is well-remembered in Nova Scotia due to the annual observance of William Davis Miners' Memorial Day in recognition of Davis and also of all miners killed in the province's coal mines.
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Early life
Davis was a coal miner from a young age. His father worked in the mines at Springhill, Nova Scotia, and his older brother, then fourteen years old, was killed in the 1891 explosion there. Davis began working for the Dominion Coal Company Limited (DOMCO) in 1905 at various collieries in the Sydney coalfield in Cape Breton, eventually graduating to become a pumpman and a roadmaker, lastly at the No. 12 Colliery in New Waterford. He married in 1907 and, by 1925, was raising a family of nine children. His wife, Myrtle, was carrying a tenth child due in September.
BESCO and District 26
The DOMCO mines were subsumed by the British Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO) in 1920. BESCO management, under Roy Wolvin, soon began a targeted campaign to break the miners' union, organized under the United Mine Workers of America (UMW), District 26.
There were many small strikes in the Sydney coalfield between 1920 and 1925, but the longest, in 1925, lasted from March to August. When the latest contract expired on January 15, 1925, BESCO refused to deal with the union and on March 2 cut off credit at the company stores. The union went on strike four days later, with 12,000 miners manning the picket lines, leaving a small workforce to maintain the mines and keep them from flooding. Despite the economic hardship which saw families come to the brink of starvation by June, the miners' resolve was strong.