Today in Labor History June 11, 1925: Drunken company cops attacked mine workers striking against the British Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO) in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. They rode in on horseback, beating anyone in their way. Then they rode through the school yards, knocking down innocent children, cracking jokes that the miners were at home hiding under their beds. The cops killed 1 coal miner and injured many others, causing a riot in which strikers looted and burned the company stores and drove the police out of town. The government then deployed 2,000 soldiers to suppress the strike, the largest peacetime deployment of the Canadian Army for an internal conflict since the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. Members of the union vowed never to work again on June 11, in honor of Bill Davis, the miner who was killed. Davis Day is now celebrated each year in Cape Breton. Since then, Davis Day has become more of a workers’ memorial day, remembering all those who died in Nova Scotia’s mines, like the 75 men killed in the Springhill mine collapse of 1958, and the 26 non-union miners killed in the Westray explosion of 1992.