The 1947 Chocolate Bar Strike

Youth Boycott spreads across Canada In 1947, youth in Chemainus and Ladysmith, B.C. led the first ever children’s strike. It was a protest against the rising cost of chocolate. The price of a typical bar had ballooned suddenly from five …

Digging Deeper

Finding South Asian Workers in West Kootenay History Guest post by Greg Nesteroff The BC Labour Heritage Centre’s recent book Union Zindabad! cites a newspaper item revealing South Asian sawmill workers in the Kootenay Lake town of Kaslo “successfully struck …

Vancouver’s 1932 Hunger March

“A Great Tide of Humanity Protesting Against Inhumanity” Researched and written by Donna Sacuta 6,000 March in Vancouver Despite police predictions that it would be a “dismal failure”, 6,000 men, women and children descended on the Powell Street grounds—now Oppenheimer …

Ray Haynes

Ray Haynes was head of the B.C. Federation of Labour from 1966 to 1973 and, arguably, the most influential leader in the long history of the B.C. Fed. Excerpted from a speech by Rod Mickleburgh, November 24, 2022 to the …