It always makes me tear up about it when I read about this. People love stereotyping coal miners as hypermasculine, unfeeling work machines, but clearly at least some of them loved their bird companions and didn’t want them to die.
My empathy for coal miners holds until they refuse to retrain to get out of their dying industry and support politicians who fight to repeal laws meant to stop us from poisoning the world just so they can keep their admittedly shitty jobs.
Hey somebody revive that damn canary and get back to work
What strikes me is the use of canaries into the 1950’s. Surely we could have had some other means of detecting toxic gasses besides small animals.
It said they were upset about losing their birds when electrical sensors arrived in the 1980s!
I kinda thought that many of the coal mines were closing by then at least in Britain.
