(Excerpt from On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement, by Rod Mickleburgh [2018]) The thousands of Chinese immigrants who endured so much helping to unite Canada by rail left little record of their ordeal. But we do have one personal account written by former railway 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…
In the summer of 1954, racist signs on the women’s washrooms at the Namu fish cannery divided the facilities between “Whites” and “Natives”. They had been there for years, but despite demands from both the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union (UFAWU) and the Native Brotherhood of BC (NBBC) they Read more…
(Photo: Four members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Canadian Pacific Railroad Division, posed standing: Frank Collins, Joe(?) Hudson, L.M. Alexander, and Sam Lewis, ca. 1943. Frank Collins became President of the Vancouver Division of the Union, as well as the BC branch of the Canadian League for the Read more…