Beacon Press
264 Pages
On the heels of reading a bunch of books about Love Canal, I ran across The Cancer Factory by Jim Morris while I was wandering the shelves at Barnes & Noble. After reading the cover, I learned that the book was about Niagara Falls, the book came home with me. I was excited to read more local history, especially after learning more and more about the history of Love Canal. This book could very well be quite an addendum to all that reading. The book sat on the pile, mocking me until I had the time to sit down and give it a good reading.
The first thing I did before starting the book was to go through the index and the author’s notes. Immediately, it was obvious that I was not going to give this book high marks. Despite this book focusing on an industry in Niagara County, there was no indication that he utilized the archives for either the Niagara County Historians Office or the Niagara County Historical Society. That alone dropped my impression of the book a few notches. How can you write a history and not use two of the main repositories in the county? I can assure you that the author did not reach out to the Historians Office at any point over the last eighteen years. I went through all the emails that came to me and came to the general mailbox. There was nothing, not even from a research assistant.
The story behind The Cancer Factory is the Dunlop Tire plant in Niagara Falls and the rising cases of cancer and other maladies among the workers there over the years. The book details the struggles these families went through as the latent poisons reared their ugly heads. But barely. At 264 pages, this book isn’t overly long to begin with. Add to that the fact that Morris loses his audience in endless minutiae about precedent cases and you have a recipe for disaster. What is left is very little local story and a whole lot of stuff that has a tenuous connection to the story. Morris is so intent on showing us how much history he knows outside this particular set of incidents that he basically forgets to tell the story of what was happening in Niagara Falls. What he does get to is so basic and thin. It does a disservice to the people whose stories he’s trying to tell. His focus gets lost.
Additionally, the writing is tedious. This book is filled with dry recitations of old cases. He doesn’t make us feel the pain and hopes of the people of Niagara Falls. Keith O’Brien, in Paradise Falls about Love Canal, was able to deliver the raw emotions of the families affected by the toxic dump in their backyards. Jim Morris does not accomplish this same feat. He telling is too clinical, depriving the reader of the empathy that the people who suffered so rightly deserve. Instead, Morris makes sure his political proclivities are front and center. It ended up being a disappointing piece of local history.
When I first saw this book and bought it, I was unaware of the problems that were plaguing the Dunlop employees and their families. I did take a look through the files at work and found some information on. Frankly, I learned more just browsing the articles we have archived than I did reading this book. I’m sure the historical society down the street has information as well. If only the author had followed up before sending his manuscript to the printer, he might have had a fuller story. As it was, the local part of the 264 pages was probably in the range of one-third of that total. It is a poor attempt at capturing our local history. I would not recommend The Cancer Factory by Jim Morris to anyone who wanted to know the fuller story. It simply does not deliver.
Craig Bacon was looking forward to this book, which makes its poor performance all that more sad. Hopefully, this subject can be revisited by someone who is ready to tell the human side of the story.