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 …
“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 …
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 …
1. Indigenous women played a critical role in the development of BC’s fishing industry starting in the 1880s. They worked alongside family members in boats harvesting salmon and provided labour in the canneries that dotted the province’s coast. Indigenous women …
Emmitt Andrew Holmes came to British Columbia in the 1940s from Saskatchewan and was the only black member of the Vancouver Local of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA Local 1-217) when he joined in 1944. Holmes incorporated his trade …