La Souterraine
Un récit féministe d’une murale sudburoise | A feminist account of a Sudbury mural
Dans ‘l’étrange et curieuse’ ville de Sudbury, l’artiste Jarus peignait autrefois une murale d’une femme dans la pénombre de l’underground, une mineure couronnée d’un casque jaune, une tresse blonde dégringolant de son épaule, le regard voilé par la noirceur qui l’entoure. Elle est anonyme – une allégorie de ces pionnières qui ont osé faire carrière dans les mines de Sudbury. Des femmes comme Lilian Amelia Bellmore.
«Ma nana, universellement adorée, est décédée. Je veux que vous la connaissiez», écrivait récemment la Franco-Ontarienne Julie S. Lalonde de sa grand-mère, Lilian Amelia Bellmore.
«Elle faisait partie de la première douzaine de femmes embauchées comme ouvrières dans les mines d'INCO à Sudbury», raconte Madame Lalonde dans un second texte. «Elle ne mesurait que cinq pieds, mais son souvenir est très présent et est désormais commémorée avec les autres femmes sur une murale géante à Sudbury».
En conversation avec ONFR+, Madame Lalonde, jeune éducatrice et activiste de renom qui mène la lutte pour l’élimination des violences genrées, parle de sa grand-mère, une femme qui a laissé ses traces sur le récit minier de Sudbury ainsi que l’impact sur son cheminement féministe à elle.
La souterraine
A feminist account of a Sudbury mural
In the 'weird and wonderful' city of Sudbury, artist Jarus once painted a mural of a woman in the shadows of the underground, a miner crowned by her yellow helmet, a blonde braid tumbling from her shoulder, her gaze obscured by the darkness around her. She is anonymous – an allegory of those pioneering women who dared to go underground in Sudbury’s mines. Women like Lilian Amelia Bellmore.
"My universally adored nana has died. I want you to know her," recently wrote Franco-Ontarian Julie S. Lalonde of her grandmother, Lilian Amelia Bellmore.
"She was one of the first dozen women hired as laborers at INCO mines in Sudbury,” pursues Lalonde in a second piece devoted to her grandmother. “She was 5 foot nothing but her memory looms large and is now commemorated with the other dozen women on a giant mural in Sudbury.”
In conversation with ONFR+, Lalonde, a young educator and renowned activist working in the elimination of gender-based violence, speaks about her grandmother, a woman who left her mark on Sudbury's mining history and her own feminist journey.
Underground
They talked about them on the radio. About Lilian Amelia Bellmore. About her contemporaries, those other women who worked in the depths of the Nickel City’s mines. A harsh environment, a land of rocks, a land of men.
It was the men, yes," explains Ms. Lalonde, "but it was also the women who denounced the presence of women underground: “You're taking food off my table. You are taking money away from my children. You're taking jobs away from men so that the rest of us will live in poverty.”
But as Ms Lalonde continues, her grandmother had five children. And an abusive spouse – with her, and her children. She lived in poverty, deprived by her husband of the means to feed her children and support her family.
The daughter of a union leader who defended the interests of miners, Ms Bellmore knew the mines well and, without understanding that her action would be profoundly historic, with repercussions for her and for generations to come, she went to work at INCO.
"For her, it was just a good job with a union. It’s really just that," says Lalonde. "She never thought 'I'm doing something historic' or 'I'm blazing a trail for other women'.
On Instagram, Lalonde talks about the sexual harassment and abuse her grandmother faced at INCO. But in our exchange, what Lalonde seemed to condemn most of all were the ways in which the community at the time had (and continues to) ignore the abuse her grandmother and other women like her have faced at the hands of intimate partners. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
"Eventually people accepted her. Her colleagues realized that she wasn't there to take men's jobs. But it says a lot, I think, about sexism in Canada that her experience was very similar to my experiences of harassment in the workplace and also the threats she received outside the workplace.”
Like grandmother, like granddaughter
In 2013, when Lalonde was named the Governor General's Youth Laureate in Commemoration of the Persons Case, she spoke to the CBC in Ottawa, accompanied by her grandmother from Sudbury, when the latter broke her silence to speak about the domestic violence she had faced in her life.
“My grandmother spoke out for the first time about the fact that she was a victim of domestic violence for many years. And my grandfather is still alive,” says Lalonde in a video honoring her receipt of the award. “So to call out your abuser, at 74 years old to say “I don’t want to be invisible anymore and we matter and we’re a part of this community and we need to stop acting like victims and survivors of sexual violence are pariahs who are not part of our community” – I mean, that’s powerful stuff.”
Bellmore had found in her granddaughter a source of strength. Lalonde, who had herself broken the secret of the violence she suffered at the hands of an intimate partner, would trace her story in Resilience Is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde, a work that contrasts her public career as a courageous champion of women with her private experience of intimate partner violence.
"We gave ourselves the courage to speak honestly about our lives," says Lalonde. "My grandmother always told me that I was living the life she wanted to live (...) The fact that I wrote my story, that I spoke out loud about having suffered domestic violence, stalking, all kinds of things - she was proud of that. My grandmother was there the day my book was launched - she was the loudest dancer at my party, she was so happy for me.”
A long line of rebellious women
"I come from a long line of rebellious women and I am eternally grateful," Lalonde writes.
She was to inherit her grandmother's helmet. On the back of the helmet, a label "1-year accident free - 1975" and in front, "Lilian," in a "flourish of femme." A suit of armour for a warrior. A shield for an Amazon. A symbolic legacy to her descendants.
If Lalonde resembles the image of the miner painted by Jarus at the Up Here Festival in 2017, it is entirely coincidental, even if she is indeed the heir to Lilian Amelia Bellmore. She sees the tribute of the Under ground mural, as a powerful metaphor for the lives of the first women miners in Sudbury.
"People are going to know the story of what my grandmother went through - and what other women went through too. She almost didn't survive her experience - and now there is a big, beautiful mural for people to remember her by.”
Thank You for the wonderful story about HUMANITY. Life has been tough on many of us. The beautiful thing is that stories like this one perpetuate changes in society in a positive way.