Blood on the Snow: The Tragedy at Reesor Siding

In February 1963, a months-long strike at the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company in Kapuskasing, Ontario, ended in tragedy and left a small community deeply divided. Just after midnight on February 11, four hundred striking workers from the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union converged at Reesor Siding, where they faced off against twenty farmers who didn't support the strike and had continued to cut and stockpile wood for the mill. Panicked and trying to protect their stockpiles, the farmers opened fire, killing three striking workers and wounding eight in what is the deadliest episode in Canadian union history.





This graphic history traces the origins and repercussions of the shooting, the trial of the 250 union members who were accused of rioting and unlawful assembly, and the preliminary hearing and grand jury of the twenty farmers each accused of three counts of second-degree murder. The bosses, concerned only with shareholders and profit, took a divide and conquer approach to let independent woodcutters and unionized loggers tear each other apart. The dysfunctional political and judicial systems exacerbated the tragedy, which left an indelible scar on communities that had previously stood together. Action-packed and beautifully illustrated, Blood on the Snow uncovers this little-known episode in labour history when workers divided resulted in tragedy.

Jacques Poirier was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario. He currently teaches Franco-Ontarian literature and French grammar at Université de Hearst. Since 2017, he has been researching Reesor Siding and teaching a course on the tragedy with historian Danielle Coulombe. Blood on the Snow is his fifth book.

Christian Quesnel is the author and illustrator of several award-winning comic books, including Cœurs d'Argile, Ludwig, Félix Leclerc: L'alouette en liberté, Vous avez détruit la beauté du monde, and A Train in the Night: The Tragedy of Lac-Mégantic, which won the Grand prix de la ville de Québec and the Eco-fauve Raja at the Festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême in 2022. In fall 2008, he became the first comic strip artist to win the Prix à la création artistique from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) for his body of work.

Sarah Moses is a Canadian writer and literary translator from Spanish and French. Her translations include Agustina Bazterrica's Tender Is the Flesh and Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird, and Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz, which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Premio Valle Inclán, and the Best Translated Book Award. She lives in Buenos Aires and Toronto, where she's from.