TEACHING MATERIAL
Vancouver Steam Laundries Strike 1918, Teaching Materials
These teaching materials are designed for Social Studies 10 and Social Justice 12, addressing the essential question of challenges women face in unionizing compared to men and how these circumstances have evolved.
View Steam Laundries Strike Teaching Materials (PDF)
The resource explores local labor history during WWI and the Spanish Flu epidemic, using primary documents like newspapers, a coroner’s report, and oral histories. Students will examine working conditions for women then and now, study trade union organizing, and consider historical prejudices and systemic racism.
The lesson is divided into three parts:
- Part A: Reading and Group Activity Students will read background materials and answer guiding questions on the 1918 Vancouver Laundry Strike, focusing on gender and ethnic issues, and then analyze primary documents in groups.
- Part B: Key Union Definitions and Union Organizing Today Students will learn basic union terminology and explore contemporary unionization efforts, including a 1999 McDonald’s union organizing drive in Squamish, BC.
- Part C: Union Video Stories, Essay Assignment and Extended Activities Students will view videos about working women’s struggles, write an essay comparing workplace issues for women past and present, and engage in further research on strikes and work conditions in early British Columbia.
Materials provided include backgrounders, a timeline, biographies of female strike participants, and primary documents.