(Please note the date and change of location from the President’s Report)

Each year, Labour gathers on the annual Day of Mourning to remember workers killed or injured by their work.

The ceremonies will be held this Friday, April 27th with the downtown Toronto ceremony moved to the Monument to Chinese Railway Workers, just south of Front and Spadina. It will be at 12:00 noon. The York Region event starts at 11:00 am, at the Woodbridge Memorial Arena, Islington + Highway 7.

This year labour is mourning the loss of 338 lives lost to accidents or occupational disease in Ontario in 2011. At the Chinese Railway Workers Monument, special attention will be devoted to three workers killed in the horrific train accident in late February 2012. The victims were two veteran engineers, Ken Simmonds, 56, and Peter Snarr, 52, of Toronto, and a trainee, Patrick Robinson, 40, of Cornwall. Earlier in that month Electrical Workers Local 353 member David Craw, age 40, died after falling on a construction site.

One of the speakers will also be highlighting the deaths of ten migrant farmworkers in a tragic crash in southwest Ontario. It will be an unfortunate, but important link to the thousands of Chinese migrant workers who were brought to Canada to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.