'So Help Me, Jesus, This Is Dangerous Work'

• Falsework
• Gary Geddes
• Goose Lane Editions (2007)

"Stay away from archives if you don't like the taste of death," writes Gary Geddes at one point in Falsework, his masterful evocation of the heroism and tragedy surrounding the deadly effort to build the Second Narrows Bridge spanning Vancouver's Burrard Inlet. On June 17, 1958, an engineering miscalculation caused the bridge to collapse during construction, killing 18 workers and a diver sent to salvage their bodies. The finished structure was renamed Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing.

"I had to do some fast talking." Geddes continues, "for access to file CVA #354, containing sensitive material, including the photograph of a dead ironworker on his stomach, a fireman trying to empty his lungs of water. The first items you observe are the fireman's watch and wedding ring as he raises the victim's left shoulder. Another photo shows a group of firemen, one with his face turned away, kneeling and bent over a drowned ironworker. A perfect summer day: sunny, clear sky, no wind. How gently the rescuer places his hand on the dead man's chest."

Geddes, who lives in Sooke on Vancouver Island, is one of Canada's leading poets and recipient of the B.C. Lieutenant Governor's Award for literature. Fifty years ago, he happened to be working on the waterfront the day the bridge crumbled, and recalls, in Falsework's prologue, that "it did not take long for the news to reach me. What I did not know, as I raced to confirm the rumours, was that my father, a former navy diver, had been called to the bridge to search for bodies in the wreckage. Having spent a lifetime with the image of him and others dangling from their umbilical cords of oxygen in that cauldron of swirling water and twisted metal, I feel a kinship with the victims, survivors and their families."

The term "falsework" means scaffolding or other temporary structures used in bridge building. Falsework blends prose fiction and poetry to create, "a polyphonic narrative," by Geddes' own description, "a series of diverse voices reflecting… a tragedy that could have been avoided." As a way to mark Labour Day, we share more of his ode to difficult work, risk and everyday sacrifice.

An Educated Guess

There was this girl on the food-floor
at Woodwards. She was studying Fine Art
at college. I used to take my groceries
to her till and tried to chat her up. Katie,
her name was. I drove her to North Van
one weekend and showed her how work
was coming on the bridge, the two spans
inching closer by the hour. Very dramatic,
she said, removing my hand from beneath
her blouse. She wasn't talking about me.
Then she began to describe a painting
on the ceiling of a building in Rome,
a sort of pointing-match where a whole
lot of energy crosses over between
the outstretched, almost-touching index
fingers of God and Adam. Sounds to me
like the sparks in an arc welder, I ventured.
For that, she replied, you deserve a kiss.
A promising start, I thought, something
to build on. Katie read my mind. It takes
more than the laws of physics, she said.

Ladies & Escorts

I walked off a job in Castlegar
for safety reasons. Dismantling steel
is what we'd been doing, temporary
structures, so late in the day
you couldn't see bugger-all. I wanted
to quit. The foreman, gung-ho,
insisted there was plenty of light
to finish the job. Hundred and eighty feet
to the river. Couldn't swim a stroke.
We kept several bolts in place,
inserted a couple of pins to knock
out as the choker tightened
and the crane took up the weight.
Nobody calculated the wind-factor.
About to pop pins, when the beam
leaned out over the river. A goner,
I thought, drowning in pitchblack
or flattened on rocks.
I screamed at the foreman.
He was running towards the crane
, only the white dot of his hard hat
visible below. Wind and weight
had tilted the rig thirty degrees.
It tottered, trying to make up its mind.
Headlights. Auxilliary crane
barrelled downhill, hooked
onto the other, eased it back
into position. Get up, Doyle,
the foreman shouted the next morning.
Fuck you, I quit. You can't do that,
it's not safe. It was less safe last night
when you almost got me killed. A second
close call in the beer parlour
of the Biltmore Hotel downtown.
I called Jim English something nasty
and his wife Ruby came at me swinging.
I can still feel the wind as her punch
went wide of the mark. Decked me,
she would have. So help me, Jesus,
this is dangerous work.

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