Excerpted: Revolution Songs

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation
Fight for your own emancipation;
Arise, ye slave of every nation.
In One Union grand.
—Joe Hill

“Workers of the World Awaken”
IWW Songs: To Fan the Flames of Discontent (1923)

CHARACTERS

Topias Jalmer’s Family:
Annie “Anu” Jalmer, middle daughter of Topias and Eunice Jalmer
Erik Jalmer, youngest son of Topias and Eunice Jalmer
Eunice Jalmer, Annie’s mother
Helen “Eliina” Jalmer, oldest daughter of Topias and Eunice Jalmer
Topias “Isä” Jalmer, Annie’s Father, son of Finn

Finn Jalmer’s Family:
Erno “Setä” Jalmer Uncle of Annie, Brother of Topias
Finn “Ukki” Jalmer President, Mine Workers’ Union of Canada Local 1
Igor “Setä” Jalmer Uncle of Annie, Brother of Topias
Maria “Mummo” Jalmer Annie’s Grandmother, Mother of Topias
Mary “Täti” Patterson Aunt of Annie, Sister of Topias

Blairmore Community:
Madame Agathe Allard, wife of Mine Manager
Monsieur Jean Allard Greenhill, Mine Manager
Mayor Samuel Booth, Mayor of Blairmore and lawyer
Sarah Booth, wife of Mayor Booth
Leona Cudmore, worker at Blairmore brothel
Mae Cudmore Sister of Leona
Inspector Doolittle, Senior RCMP officer, MacLeod division
Mrs. Fantin, wife of striking miner
Mr. and Mrs. Gushul, owners of photography studio
Elizabeth Kidd, midwife operating the town’s birth house
Bill Knight Miner, Owner of Knight’s Pool Hall
Joe Krkosky, Secretary-Treasurer of Mine Workers’ Union of Canada Local 1
Katerina Liedermen, Mary Patterson’s friend
John James Maloney, Leader of Alberta’s Ku Klux Klan
Patrick Murphy, Communist organizer
Albert Olson, Engineer at Greenhill Mine
Mrs. Sefcik, wife of striking miner
James Vissac, Second-in-command of Greenhill Mine
Sergeant Watson Sergeant, Blairmore APP come RCMP detachment lead
Ed “Bug Eye” Womersley, President of Blairmore Miners’ Association
Emmeline Webb, wife of Blairmore’s Police Chief
James Webb, Blaimore’s Police Chief

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Great Depression made people hungry for new forms of government, and the Russian Revolution offered a tantalizing alternative. As Communism’s influence grew, Western nations tried to stamp out ideas
of a workers’ paradise. Police forces surveilled, harassed, and arrested suspected Reds as officials shipped out political deportees. Despite this, voters in Blairmore, Alberta, Canada elected North America’s first and only Communist town council in February 1933. In the lead up to that election, tensions grew so polarized even the Ku Klux Klan jumped into the fray. Women played a key role in disrupting (and defending) the status quo. This novel is about these women and the conditions that set the stage for an historic election.
Then, as now, theories of economics and politics splinter communities, divide families, and cleave mothers from daughters. But with disruption comes repair.

SPRING 1928

Wednesday, April 24, 1928

Red Brick Tactics

ANNIE JALMER CLIMBED the corner streetlight to better listen for the mine signal. One whistle meant work for her father tomorrow. Two signalled another cancelled shift. Her gut protested at the last two days of
dwindling potatoes as she watched the rest of the kids on her block move along the street. Their discontent seeped out as a fist fight ended a game of jacks, and the losers of a foot race ran away crying.

Atop the utility pole, she had only her own unhappiness to reckon with. To ease her stomach pangs, Annie stretched out carefully and, standing on the repairman’s pegs, cast a view across Blairmore. Below her, the Eastside miners’ shacks stretched in neat rows separated by coal-dusted streets bordered by railway tracks. Main Street ran on the other side, parallel to the rail, and at its centre squatted Blairmore Station beyond which the two-storey mine managers’ homes rose. The windows in the largest one
were lit up in the gathering dusk, and Annie squinted at a faint human shadow in the corner room. The boss and his wife had five bedrooms, a library, ballroom, pool—and not one child! How could two people fill
such a space? A pang different than hunger urged her attention past the mansion and up the path leading to the mine. It edged along a slack heap whose shards of discarded coal coated the ridge. At the top were the mine buildings which resembled crooked, blackened teeth bared at the Rockies south of town. They included a tipple for filtering coal, a washhouse for cleaning men, and a powerhouse that fuelled fans pumping fresh air through the mine. Somewhere there the steam whistle was bolted down against the ever-billowing wind.

Blow, she commanded the whistle in her mind for she had been reading about psychic abilities. Blow already! she commanded again.

Silence. She did not have the gift.

Blinking away tears, she forced her eyes to trace Blairmore’s long valley as far west as she could see until it disappeared into purple-grey peaks. A cough from below brought her attention back to the block, but thank god it was not her mother. Whenever Eunice Jalmer found her daughter on the poles, she would yell, “Do you want to kill me with grief? You want to join your sisters?”

Annie knew she would never fall and felt certain she would not die, at least not in that way. But she always scrambled down with a rushing in her ears, trying to explain the view up there. Her mother never understood her.

Making herself as still as possible, Annie listened. The wind was a devil rattling the scrap metal repair on her grandparents’ sauna and scraping poplar boughs across the fence. But ever so faintly from across the street, she caught the beat of a hoe against the half-frozen earth. No matter that it was almost dark, Mother was always working. Annie could relax. She settled into a crouch and turned her ear to the hum within the wires.

It wavered between an E flat and an E. Why did sound do this? Waver. Did soundwaves experience indecision? Boredom? Was it attempting to balance? Miss Bastille couldn’t explain that, but said the sound was a sign of electricity, the tiniest protons and electrons rushing to help Blairmore’s children finish their homework despite the dark. Whatever it was, as the wind whistled along the wires, the two currents made a beautiful kind of music.

“Annie!” Below, her younger brother smiled and waved.

She prepared to scramble down.

“Is Mother coming?”

“No! Just hi!”

“My god, Erik! I told you. Interrupt me only if you need to warn me.”

Below, Erik’s lip quivered at her scolding. But before she could feel badly, the whistle’s wail filled the valley. The first signal ended, and she held her breath willing there not to be a second. Many more cancelled shifts and they’d have to return to the farm. To the hand-drawn well water, the rock picking, and brush clearing. Her only surviving sister, Helen, was already threatening to take a train to the city; she’d never go back. Annie could not think of that. They needed each other.

When it was obvious no second whistle would follow, the other children ran for home with their good news. Only when the street was completely empty did Annie move from her perch toward their cottage. She moved slowly with her neck craned to follow the silhouette of a raven arcing high above.

Excerpted in part from Revolution Songs by Carissa Halton. Copyright © by Carissa Halton, 2025. Published by NeWest Press Ltd. https://newestpress.com/

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