Dying for Gold: The True Story of the Giant Mine Murders

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the author of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality.

Deluged with scandal sheets and television’s daily true confessions,
contemporary readers have grown leery of true stories. Notwithstanding
its title, this book is an example of first-class investigative
journalism.

The story is an old one about the consequences of a clash between labor
and capital, but the setting is unfamiliar to most and the events are
dramatic. Bitter animosities aroused by corporate takeovers and Canadian
anti-Americanism were exacerbated in the late 1980s by the intensity of
life in small-town Yellowknife, the hiring of Pinkerton security guards,
and union officials desperate enough to engage in criminal acts. Not
only strike action resulted. In 1992 an explosion in the Giant mine
killed nine men.

Journalists Lee Selleck and Francis Thompson relate the drama in detail
so intimate that the principal characters live on these pages. Not
losing sight of the larger picture, they move on to question the guilt
of the man convicted for the deadly explosion. Dying for Gold is a
remarkable true story that will delight serious readers.