by Bob McDonald This article is reprinted from the May 2019 Vancouver Historical Society newsletter. Bob McDonald, one of BC’s leading historians, passed away on June 19, 2019. This image is from a Labour Day parade on Hastings Street in Vancouver in the late 1890s. Here we see a forty-foot Read more…
“A Duty to Organized Labour and Workers Throughout the Whole Dominion” When the Winnipeg General Strike began on May 15, 1919 sympathy strikes in communities across Canada soon broke out. In British Columbia, the heroic Vancouver sympathy strike and Victoria’s four day stoppage are often cited as examples. (see bibliography). Read more…
April 23, 1935 In April 1935 thousands of single unemployed men organized by the Relief Camp Workers’ Union went on strike to demand “Work and Wages” as the Depression wore away at the country. “Hunger marches, demonstrations, tin-canning, large public rallies and boisterous snake dances through downtown streets became as Read more…
(Photo credit: Past Tense Vancouver) Late in the night on April 13, 1903, labour organizer and longshore worker Frank Rogers was walking home from dinner and stopped by the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks at the foot of Abbott Street in Vancouver, BC, to check on the picketers from the United Read more…