Here is the Digital Tradition rendition of Ewan MacColl's SPRINGHILL MINE DISASTER, complete with chords and MIDI tune.
I hit Springhill on a rainy midnight in 11/96, and I thought I ought to stop and take a look around. You can see the town from miles away - it's marked by the yellow floodlights of the biggest damn prison I've seen. The prison seems to be the main industry in town now. The mine is a rather homely-looking tourist attraction - I gather they give tours in the daytime. The newspapers spoke of the latest controversy - a proposal to start open-pit mining.
Most of the town is pretty ordinary-looking, almost dismal. There's one street of beautiful, turn-of-the century homes, which I suppose were the homes of the mine owners and managers. The biggest tourist attraction is the Anne Murray Museum, built to honor Springhill's most famous daughter.
Earlier that evening, I had stood on a Halifax pier and imagined myself to be the last of Barrett's Privateers. So, that's what you can do on a rainy night in Nova Scotia.
-Joe Offer-