Brian Charlton Interview: Postal Worker & Labour Activist

Interview: Brian Charlton (BC)

Interviewer: Rod Mickleburgh (RM)

Date: July 6, 2025

Location: Courtenay, B.C.

Transcription: Natasha Fairweather

[00:00:05.13] – RM

Brian Charlton. Welcome, brother.

 

[00:00:08.05] – BC

Thanks.

 

[00:00:10.17] – RM

So, as always, we’ll start with your background, where you grew up and what kind of a upbringing you had and what influenced you in those early days.

 

[00:00:21.16] – BC

Well, I was born ’52, 1952 and was an army brat, so mainly moved around the prairies like Edmonton, Calgary, and ended up in Shilo [CFB Shilo]. I think it was instructive growing up on army camps because it was very stratified and hierarchical. So, it’s like there was officers, headquarters or quarters. There was then the NCOs [non-commissioned officers] and then everybody else, and we were everybody else. So, you got a real sense of sort of class right off the bat growing up. And also, the whole thing of yes sir, no sir, 24 hours a day, because in seven days a week it was like there was no—it wasn’t like a punch in, punch out kind of thing. So, anything we did, my father, (stepdad) heard about it, right? So.

 

[00:01:23.11] – RM

What did your dad do?

 

[00:01:25.20] – BC

He was in the, originally in the Princess Patricia [Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry] and then went into stores later on. Yeah, so you know, and they also, army camps had (I would say) a drinking problem. So, it affected a lot of people. Yeah. And it’s sort of macho, you know, attitude. So, I think those things may have—all those things may have pushed me a different way than I would have normally grown up.

 

[00:01:56.25] – RM

You wouldn’t have got any of that from your parents. This is just you figuring things out.

 

[00:02:01.07] – BC

Yeah. For some reason, they were from sort of a rural background, so they didn’t have any idea of unions. Politically, they’re pretty conservative. And so, I don’t know where I got it. I think may have been reading a lot when I was a kid. And for some reason the American civil rights movement really moved me. For some reason that—

 

[00:02:32.21] – RM

Well, for good reasons.

 

[00:02:34.23] – BC

Yes, but I mean, it’s but—they were sort of like far away. I mean, I saw a lot of the racism on the prairies towards Indigenous people. I mean, grew up with that. But the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King sort of really inspired me to be more open. So, like when I came to—grew up more and moved to Vancouver, I was ready. Got involved in all at that time.

 

[00:03:06.07] – RM

When did you come to Vancouver?

 

[00:03:07.19] – BC

Well, the, first time I came in ’69, around 17, and then went back again to Shilo to finish my grade 12 and then came back in ’71 to Vancouver. So, there was lots of political—

 

[00:03:21.23] – RM

There was?

 

[00:03:22.17] – BC

All kinds of stuff. It was really, you know—and for somebody from the prairies it was a real eye opener too. Right? But you know, so I think that certainly shaped me from an early age.

 

[00:03:38.20] – RM

Were there any particular figures that had an influence on you in Vancouver in those days?

 

[00:03:45.07] – BC

Well, there was some of the people that worked at the Georgia Straight, I sort of had some admiration for. And that’s about it. I mean, I got a job in the post office.

 

[00:04:05.10] – RM

What did you do at the Georgia Straight?

 

[00:04:07.29] – BC

Oh, I didn’t. I just consumed it. But when, when the Georgia Grape came in, I tried to get involved with them a little bit and wrote a couple little small things but for the most part that. And then they went down.

 

[00:04:23.10] – RM

Well, they lasted for a while.

 

[00:04:24.28] – BC

Yeah, well, maybe a few months I think.

 

[00:04:26.28] – RM

I knew some of the people that were involved in the Grape. Peter Burton I think was one of them.

 

[00:04:30.21] – BC

Yes. Yeah, I knew him. Yeah.

 

[00:04:32.26] – RM

So, then you went to work at the post office?

 

[00:04:35.25] – BC

Yeah, after a few sort of jobs like busboy and stuff like that, because I didn’t have any skills, you know, came to Vancouver, did grade 12, that was it. And so I got a job at Christmas time working in the post office. And then February 8th, I guess I got on hired on part time. So four hours a day, right? For five days a week. But it was weird because I’d had long hair, you know, hippie kind of thing. And I figured for the interview I went and got my hair cut short, right? And did the interview and got hired and then walked in the post office and all these long hairs were walking around.

 

[00:05:24.02] – RM

Well, it was said, and I’m sure you heard this, the post office would hire anybody.

 

[00:05:28.02] – BC

Well, they hired me. Yeah, I know.

 

[00:05:31.14] – RM

That’s where so many people got work with the post office.

 

[00:05:34.21] – BC

And it was an interesting time in the post office because you had a real mix. You had, the management was a lot of ex-military that had been hired into the post office. Then you had, because the predecessor to CUPW, Canadian Postal Workers had a so-called illegal strike in 1965. So when I came in in ’71 there was still some of those people left, like Bob Bruce and who did have an effect and who was the old guard, right? And had fought that stuff. But along with me there was this whole influx of young men and women who weren’t going to abide by this military code of yes sir, no sir, like I said earlier and that you don’t question things, right? You just do it. So there was a real clash and we formed the alliances with the old guard that was there before. And I think that if you look at the history of the Canadian Postal Workers and in that whole period from ’65 onward, they were sort of at the—I mean it was small union. It was only I think 28,000 postal workers across the country. But for the size of the union it had I think a really big effect because it was, it was, you know, there’s business unions and then there’s social unions, right?

 

[00:07:02.10] – BC

And CUPW was definitely on not just bread and butter kind of union issues and bargaining issues, but they felt that union members were part of society and that the decisions, especially as sort of semi-government workers, as government workers were affected by political decisions of the government. So we had to get in there before and get involved in politics.

 

[00:07:31.03] – RM

CUPW was known as maybe Canada’s most radical union in those days, wasn’t it?

 

[00:07:36.24] – BC

Yeah, except for maybe some of the ones that were the Canadian national unions, like CAIMAW [Canadian Association of Industrial, Mechanical, and Allied Workers] stuff like Mine-Mill, stuff like that. And there’s a real mix of political streams in the, in our union too, especially in Vancouver, right? Like there was old Revolutionary Workers League, some of the Trotskyists, some of the CPs [Communist Party], Anarchists—

 

[00:07:59.29] – RM

CPCML [Communist Party of Canada Marxist-Leninist].

 

[00:08:01.04] – BC

Yeah, yeah. So it was a real mix. I never belonged to any political party at all. In fact I didn’t join the NDP until Jack Layton ran. But I was involved in, like I said, in anti-war marches and Ban the Bomb marches and the peace marches over the Burrard Street bridge and stuff like that. So I was politically active but I never became— I went to a couple of union meetings and they were talking about ties and stuff like that. So being young and you know, I just, that’s boring. So I didn’t go to any union meetings until— well, I went to some when we did the wildcat strike in ’74. But it wasn’t until 1975, after the 42-day strike there that I became a shop steward.

 

[00:08:54.18] – RM

So a 42-day strike. Talk about that. That’s amazing. And that would be your first experience with a real protracted strike.

 

[00:09:05.10] – BC

For a protracted strike, yeah. It was hard because we had some real issues and we had some good demands and we knew that for instance one of the main issues that strike was the tech change, mechanization basically of the post office, right? That’s what Canada Post wanted to bring in with the postal code and everything else. And now we knew that that was the real issue that was going to affect us for a long time to come. And unless we got on it straight away, it was going to hurt us badly. So that’s why I think everybody, I think was quite willing to stay out that long. We had some internal problems with of some of our own members strikebreaking. And so that caused a lot of tension. And after, you know, 42 days without a paycheck, I mean, there was strike pay, but even that didn’t, you know, wasn’t close to it. But the union local would write letters to people that had mortgages or loans and to the banks and loan companies and say, look, we’re on the strike. And for the most part, I think people got some relief. But there was, like I said, it was a young group and again, that mixture of old and young, so it really did keep us together, bonded.

 

[00:10:32.27] – RM

Was that when Jean Claude Perrault was leading the union?

 

[00:10:36.11] – BC

No, I think it was still Joe Davidson at that point.

 

[00:10:38.12] – RM

To hell was the public.

 

[00:10:40.23] – BC

I got to give them the full quote: ‘If they don’t understand, then to hell with the public.’

 

[00:10:45.10] – RM

But that’s the only part people remember.

 

[00:10:47.05] – BC

Yeah, I know.

 

[00:10:47.24] – RM

What was he like as a leader?

 

[00:10:50.14] – BC

He was that Scottish immigrant guy again, and he was quite colourful. And he gave some good speeches. And I think in some ways we took pride in the fact he was the most hated union leader in the country. And then after that came Jean Claude Perrault. And if you talk about somebody that’s inspiring, I think Jean Claude Perrault certainly is that in our experience in the ’78 strike, because the ’78 strike was the corporation wanted to roll back a lot of the things that they had given up in the ’75 strike, like, especially around tech change. And so, except I think we went out October 13th or 14th and bango, the government brought in that evening back-to-work legislation. And so we defied it. The leadership, Jean Claude Perrault basically said that, no, we’re not going to order people back to work. And one of the proudest moments I ever had as a postal worker and maybe as a Canadian was that we had a meeting at the Condor ballroom. There’s about 700 people there, I mean, out of postal workers. And we had a debate about whether to defy the legislation.

 

[00:12:23.02] – BC

And that’s something that the National didn’t approve of because they were worried if, you know, if it was a split vote or a low vote that could harm the thing, right? Because I was on the, at the time, I was on the executive of the Vancouver local as the education director. And we had faith in the membership that if we went there and explained it. So, Lloyd Ingram was the president at the time, so he conducted the meeting. And it was something I’m really proud of because it was real debate. There was people there that figured, well, we shouldn’t do this, but ended up voting. And it was like 92%. And everybody was jubilant. 600 people poured out of the Commodore, marched down Granville and down Georgia to the post office, went around, and it was a highlight, certainly one of my highlights of my life. And unfortunately, though, that we were still under the Public Service Staff Relations Act. And there was a provision in there about abandonment of duty. So if you abandon, if you don’t go to work for seven days, then they declare your position abandoned and there’s no appeal.

 

[00:13:41.08] – BC

And the same time, there was fines of like $10,000 a day for officers and $1,000 for members who defied the, who didn’t go back to work. So there was a decision made that in order to survive to fight another day, that we would go back to work. But we went back with our heads held high.

 

[00:14:03.06] – RM

Didn’t, did Jean Claude Perrault go to jail for that?

 

[00:14:06.08] – BC

Oh, yeah, because. Not because he said, he said he wouldn’t order us back to work. So that’s what they jailed him on, and he served three months. But I think that he became a hero to a lot of people, especially on the left. Not to Dennis McDermott, though, of course, because he was head of the Canadian Labour Congress and basically he was pissed at us.

 

[00:14:33.00] – RM

He was not a fan of Jean Claude Perrault.

 

[00:14:35.13] – BC

No, no. And basically he said we were leading the labour movement, Canadian labour movement, into road to anarchy and chaos and that we were skunks and basically badmouthing us. And so that was another reason that we went back to work too, right? Because we didn’t, without the support of labour movement, we were going to get slaughtered. So we went back to work. Except we learned lessons from that strike. And one of the lessons we learned is that we had to get the rest of the labour movement and community groups. So the next strike would be 1981. And the big issue in that became maternity leave. Now, I know that AUCE [Association of University and College Employees] and I think the Common Front of Quebec both had achieved maternity leave. Fully paid maternity leave. I think they got the usual unemployment insurance rate of 67% or whatever it was. But we felt that women shouldn’t be penalized for—

 

[00:15:40.17] – RM

Should be topped up.

 

[00:15:41.12] – BC

Yeah, to 100%. And so lessons we learned from ’78 was that we had to get out to the community. So we sent letters and communications to all the women’s groups across the country. A lot of locals had women’s committees.

 

[00:16:01.22] – BC

Vancouver had a women’s committee since 1976. And so we made alliances with a lot of the women’s groups, said this is an issue that we’re going for. It’s important. Did a lot of education with their own membership. I know that the Conservatives at the time were really angry at us for bringing this issue up and saying, why should employers pay for people to have babies? Right? And even some of our own members, I remember talking to these two people— talking to our own members. Some of our own members. And one said, well, they’ll just get pregnant just so they can collect this. And we’re trying to figure you’re going to stick with somebody that for 18 years just to get an extra 70 bucks a month or something. I don’t think so, right? And it only affected I think, I think they did a study and it only affected 300 women a year.

 

[00:17:01.20] – RM

I would talk to other people in other unions around that same time, and the reaction was the same from a lot of men. Well, they’ll just get pregnant all the time. And this is a way to get off work. It seems so ridiculous now, but that actually was an opinion. So, good.

 

[00:17:17.08] – BC

But I think, you know, the vast majority of the membership did support the demand and it ended up being one of the last ones settled. We also got some other stuff out of it, but that was the main issue.

 

[00:17:29.08] – RM

And that was a real breakthrough because you point out you weren’t the first. But AUCE was just a UBC, and then Quebec.

 

[00:17:35.22] – BC

Yeah. We were the first national.

 

[00:17:37.03] – RM

The first national. And then after that, basically everyone went for it.

 

[00:17:41.22] – BC

Yeah. And I think that’s one of the reasons the government was digging their heels in about it, because they weren’t necessarily worried about us. Like I said, we had 300 women might benefit each year from it, but they’re worried is that the Public Service Alliance, who was at 300,000 members and 75% of them were women— Then we got it. They were going to demand it, right?

 

[00:18:03.08] – RM

And they did.

 

[00:18:04.06] – BC

Yeah.

 

[00:18:05.05] – RM

It took them a bit, but they finally got it, too.

 

[00:18:07.16] – BC

Yep. And it wasn’t the end of the world. I don’t know why. And it benefited a lot of women, right?

 

[00:18:13.17] – RM

You must feel good about that.

 

[00:18:15.00] – BC

Oh, yeah. Like I said, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so proud of the Canadian Postal Workers because they took on a lot of the issues like that, that maybe other unions wouldn’t have.

 

[00:18:25.29] – RM

Let’s go back to the illegal strike in ’78. You mentioned those fines and stuff. And I guess we should point out the union sort of did decide to go back to work. But at the time were you worried about going to jail or anything like that for continuing the illegal strike?

 

[00:18:44.28] – BC

Thinking back there probably was. But I also think that because we were young, right. And full of vinegar, piss and vinegar, that we then— you know, it was like maybe that, well they’re not going to fire all of us. Of course, when then they had Reagan’s PATCO [Professional Air Traffic Controllers’ Organization] example in front of them, right? So but that was ’81, I guess. So that was after.

 

[00:19:13.08] – RM

Was Everett Hoogers involved then?

 

[00:19:15.06] – BC

Oh yeah, there was Everett Hoogers, Marion Pollock, Lloyd Ingram. We had actually a pretty good group of shop stewards and executive members on our Vancouver local. It was, yeah, it was a good, great local to be part of.

 

[00:19:36.29] – RM

And you mentioned that you sort of slipped it in. You became education director. Tell me about that. How did you take that job?

 

[00:19:43.26] – BC

Well, like I said, I became a shop steward in ’75 because I had realized while we’re out on strike that like I said, I was political person. But that strike made me realize that the power relationships between us and the employer was— became a lot crystallized, clear. And I saw that needed to be involved, right? And also it’s, all due respect, like you would be part of an event or something that happened one day and the next day you look in the newspaper and it was like about the same event and it was like were they there? What, are they just making this up?

 

[00:20:33.24] – RM

Not my story.

 

[00:20:36.23] – BC

So anyway, so I thought that, that I’m going to become involved and I’ve always been sort of—like teaching, I mean never did any real teaching but interested in education. So I stepped forward to be the Education—and we were super democratic so we had elections every year, right? And so I became the—and it was a good time to become Education, I remember—

 

[00:21:06.07] – RM

Was that a full-time job?

 

[00:21:07.18] – BC

No, no, there was, I think we had three, two full-time position. The president, secretary-treasurer at the time.

 

[00:21:15.29] – RM

That’s right, you weren’t a big local.

 

[00:21:17.27] – BC

No. Yeah, 1,800 members I think. And because we weren’t merged yet with the letter carriers.

 

[00:21:24.14] – RM

I’m gonna stop you there. What, by the way, what did you do at the post office? What was your job?

 

[00:21:28.12] – BC

Oh, I was a clerk in Forward Section.

 

[00:21:31.18] – RM

What section?

 

[00:21:34.15] – BC

The post office was—for the clerks was, either you worked in the city which delivered mail to Vancouver, Burnaby, et cetera. So you. And the other one was delivered to the rest of Canada or the rest of B.C. So it was, the two streams were segregated on each floor, right? And I’m just really happy I got Forward because I’m terrible with numbers. Remembering numbers and that’s. You have to do in city. You have to know all the streets. So anyway, and it was, you know, at the time before mechanization, when I started, you actually had to know all these places, right? Memorize them. You took tests to keep up the memory and stuff. You had to pass tests to keep going. So. Yeah. So where were we?

 

[00:22:26.09] – RM

Well, I just. And I’m gonna (because it’s all about me)—there was a guy I remember who was always at the Vancouver District Labour Council in those days from the postal workers. Did you ever hear about Bill a guy called Bill Giesbrecht.

 

[00:22:38.20] – BC

Oh, of course, yeah.

 

[00:22:40.02] – RM

They did a story on him in the newspaper because he had this mind that he remembered every—he could do all these things, that he could sort faster than anybody else. And before postal codes and this, you know, he was so proud of this and he was basically the best at it that, you know, you’d mention some obscure address, he’d know exactly where that letter should go and which route it would belong to and stuff like that. And he was, well you remember him, he was this funny guy with bald, you know, Bill Giesbrecht. I always remember that. And I remember that feature on him. It might have been in reference to the postal code coming in because then all that knowledge that he had in speed, and you had the same knowledge but maybe not as fast—

 

[00:23:24.04] – BC

No.

 

[00:23:24.18] – RM

—was, you know, became irrelevant after that. So it made the job more boring, maybe, or maybe better.

 

[00:23:32.02] – BC

Well, no, it was. I mean, it was always going to be a monotonous job standing there for four hours or eight hours, sorting mail, right? But the saving grace of it was you could talk to people next to you when management wasn’t on a crackdown and make sure you don’t talk to each other, right? So, yeah, you got to know all the people that you work with, right? Quite well, because you could, nothing else to do but talk about—you learn some fascinating stuff about people who’ve been to like 120 different countries, that kind of stuff, right?

 

[00:24:04.03] – RM

Well, especially since the post office hired everybody, anybody.

 

[00:24:08.27] – BC

And there was people there, like I said, that had degrees in French literature. I guess there’s not too many calls for French literature. But yeah. So there’s a real mix. And we, and again, it was a transition period. So I remember walking in shortly after I started and there was these two older guys standing there and they were sorting like this [moves side to side]. And I asked somebody what. What’s that about? Are they okay? And he said, no, they’re old railway clerks. So they used to, you know, sort on a rail car and as the train was moving, right? So that’s how come, how they would keep their balance, right?

 

[00:24:48.27] – RM

That’s great. All right. I interrupted you. You’re talking about being Education Director.

 

[00:24:53.10] – BC

Yeah, so I was interested in education. And it was a good time to become involved in the education thing. And the local put some money into it too, right? And there was actually, at the time, there was things like Cap [Capilano] College had a labour studies program, the Vancouver District Labour Council put on trainings quite a bit. And also there was Harrison Winter School. So there was lots of education involved, lots of support. And the main thing I remember about my term was two things. One was, like I said, we’d started a women’s committee in 1976. And so one of the things they pushed for was sexual harassment training. So when I became in, we put on our first as part of the shop steward training sexual harassment session. And it got some feedback from a couple of guys walked out of the shop steward trainings that ‘were having to do with this’, right? But I think it was a good start. And we became part of, a regular part of the shop steward training. That was part of it.

 

[00:26:13.06] – RM

You also believed in sort of telling, at least I’ve read this in an interview you gave that, telling young workers about labour history.

 

[00:26:22.17] – BC

Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s a common thing that especially in larger unionized places that people come into the workplace and have no idea about the history of the place, about the fact they seem to think that the employer gave these benefits, that there wasn’t a struggle to get them. And so we include, started including more labour history in the shop steward program. Came out—shouldn’t criticize people beforehand, but basically. Well, basically before it was about grievance handling and the contract and that was it, right? Like I said, the bread and butter kind of stuff, right? So we started in that time expanding it to like such around sexual harassment, women’s issues, about history, about the economics of society and stuff like that. And because, like I said, the political mix in that local, you got a lot of different viewpoints. So I think it was—we developed a pretty good group of shop stewards at that time. The only other thing I remember about it was, I think the second year I had ran for election for it and for some reason it became broader than just the local because the guy was running against me with a guy named Brian Sproule.

 

[00:28:05.07] – RM

You know, he was—at this very moment, Brian Sproule’s name was running through my head because I was trying to think, who was this Brian guy who was CPCML.

 

[00:28:14.28] – BC

Yep.

 

[00:28:15.26] – RM

But I couldn’t remember his last name. And just before you said that, Brian Sproule, I wasn’t even gonna ask you about it. So talk about Brian Sproule.

 

[00:28:23.22] – BC

Well, so he, he was like a more militant, I guess, tendency than I was. And so he ran saying basically—well, not a sellout, but you know, I was too soft and didn’t have the real political jam to do it. And for some reason that really right-wing columnist in the Vancouver Sun—

 

[00:28:44.24] – RM

Doug Collins.

 

[00:28:45.23] – BC

Yes. Got involved in it and he wrote a column about this, how this crazy communist is running against this nice guy, right? [laughter] I couldn’t believe how we got involved in that stuff, right? And anyway—

 

[00:29:01.21] – RM

Well Collins was a, and people don’t know this because he was so horrible, but like at one point he was a pro-labour guy, you know, he was The Sun’s labour columnist and you know, was kind of quasi-NDP. And then something happened to him. So he did have a background in labour.

 

[00:29:16.25] – BC

Okay.

 

[00:29:17.08] – RM

You know, and anyway, keep going. So how did that affect the election?

 

[00:29:21.11] – BC

Oh, I won easily, but because Brian, to be kind, was a bit—

 

[00:29:27.06] – RM

Nuts.

 

[00:29:27.21] – BC

Okay, yeah, he was nuts. And he had a few friends there were just as crazy. Anyway, and he actually turned out pretty decent after. Later, right? He became a child care worker. Or not a child care, but a home care worker.

 

[00:29:42.11] – RM

Oh, I didn’t know that.

 

[00:29:43.12] – BC

Oh yeah, yeah. So anyway, so I became, ran, became the education director in Vancouver local for three years. And during that time was the ’78 strike. So I was on the executive and we had to meet during the strike, had to meet in the Dufferin Hotel because the workers at BC Tel told us that our phones were tapped. So we had to move any serious discussions out of the union office.

 

[00:30:17.24] – RM

The Duff. Boy, I miss it still.

 

[00:30:22.01] – BC

Yeah, the owner was really nice, gave us the—

 

[00:30:23.24] – RM

Yeah, it was a great, great hotel. So then you had another strike in ’86, I think it was, and then the post office employed strike breakers. Was it ’87?

 

[00:30:36.18] – BC

’87, yeah, ’87.

 

[00:30:37.29] – RM

And so that was, they really tried to organize strike breakers and bus them across the lines and the whole thing. Hired these university students. So what was that like?

 

[00:30:48.29] – BC

Well, that was a bit of a shock because most of the strikes before, like I said, the ’75 one had sort of internal strike breakers, members, but the other ones after that, no scabs. And our membership was tight. So there was, we didn’t worry. It became a lawn chair kind of strike, right? Most of them. But that strike. Yeah. They organized it to bring in scabs and strike breakers. And it was. Got really. I mean, that’s the reason. One of the arguments for anti-scab legislation is that when they start doing that, violence happens. And it did. It broke out to a lot of different places, right? Cross country. And at that time, we’re still two separate bargaining units.

 

[00:31:40.10] – RM

The letter carriers and the postal workers.

 

[00:31:41.11] – BC

Letter carriers and the inside. Yeah. So I think the letter carriers went out. I’m not sure about this. I think the letter carriers went out first and settled and then we came later. And I don’t think they used, maybe used scabs against the letter carriers. But anyway, when it came to us, they thought we’d settle for the same thing as the letter carriers. And we were two different unions, right? And different outlooks. So became quite ugly, the whole situation. And there was a few incidents. I remember.

 

[00:32:24.20] – RM

Were you involved in any?

 

[00:32:28.08] – BC

A couple.

 

[00:32:29.23] – RM

Want to talk about it? That’s long past. Let’s get some of the flavour.

 

[00:32:36.12] – BC

Well, there was. Like I said, the post office had different groups and not necessarily political. Like on the second floor was, it was practically all men. It was the ones that loaded the trucks, unloaded the trucks, drove the forklifts and stuff like that. And they were quite macho. You know, we’re tough. Like maybe some of the ones in the elevator, right? And so they were prepared to do battle, right? And they did. And I think I remember that our strike trailer was just across where the near the Alcazar was.

 

[00:33:26.05] – RM

Ah, the Alcazar. Rest in peace.

 

[00:33:29.04] – BC

That was our drinking hole, right?

 

[00:33:31.14] – RM

Well, it used to be the, you might remember this, the only place where they allowed you to smoke dope. In the Alcazar.

 

[00:33:38.15] – BC

Yep, I remember that.

 

[00:33:39.21] – RM

Yeah, it was famous, the Alcazar.

 

[00:33:42.05] – BC

And they had a nice lounge too. And I think a lot of the art students used to go there too.

 

[00:33:50.02] – RM

That’s right. And then the Cecil. Anyway, keep going.

 

[00:33:54.09] – BC

Yeah, so. So it got quite ugly at times and I think it was. Which strike, was it the ’87 one? Yeah, it must have been. No, because I was president. So it was in ’91 where the incident happened, right? When they—that was the second time they used scabs. ’91 strike.

 

[00:34:20.04] – RM

I wasn’t around in ’91. So let’s finish off ’87 because then you, now you can tell. Then you can tell me what ’91, which I don’t really know anything about. So, I mean, but how were people feeling? I mean the polarization and the anger at the company and you know, that was a tough one.

 

[00:34:40.18] – BC

And I think a lot of. We weren’t the most popular politically or around the thing either. So that didn’t help. So I don’t remember, but I don’t think we got too much out of the strike. And. But you know, my memory’s a little hazy. Around the ’87 strike. Was more the ’91 that I remember.

 

[00:35:05.11] – RM

All right, let’s talk about ’91. But that would show you what happened in ’87. The worst of anti-scab law, right?

 

[00:35:13.10] – BC

Oh, God, yes. And also I think that the employer wasn’t really that well organized around the scabs. There was lots of issues around. And again, I’m maybe mixing up ’91 and ’87. But for instance, they tried to set up warehouses where they would have scabs in there sorting the mail, right? But they had no clue.

 

[00:35:42.13] – RM

None of them knew how to do it.

 

[00:35:42.25] – BC

No. And they also tried to, I think that may be more, the government said people that had social assistance checks had to come and pick them up themselves, right? And so like the whole thing got really, really nasty.

 

[00:36:04.16] – RM

Yeah, yeah, you know, I went back and looked at some of those things and it was as if the government really wasn’t serious about scabbing that strike, but they wanted to put pressure on the union and sort of get public support that way and get back to work longer.

 

[00:36:21.28] – BC

But it backfired on them, right?

 

[00:36:23.07] – RM

And it backfired because, you know, the same media you were criticizing, they were doing a lot of stories exposing all that. And then a couple of reporters went underground and applied for jobs, you know, and then talked about their experience in which they went in there and were hardly expect— they hardly did anything. They just sort of wandered around and still got their paycheck. So it wasn’t a serious effort. Okay, tell me about 1991.

 

[00:36:50.20] – BC

Well, I became president of Vancouver Local in ’88. And it was just at the time of the merger, there had been, the Canadian Labour Relations Board had ordered a vote because we had an agreement with the Letter Carrier Union of Canada [LCUC] and they backed out of it. So the Labour Relations Board ordered a vote and we won it. But it was like 51% to 49%. So there was a lot of—it wasn’t exactly decisive, right? There was the leadership, the old leadership of the LCUC set up a thing called, we called it The Power Base. Basically, you know, after the vote, the money should have gone back, should have gone to the CUPW, but they withheld it and used that money to finance their raids. And they did a number of raids on us. I think the last one was in ’95. They did about three, three different raids on us.

 

[00:37:57.17] – RM

I didn’t know any of this. Keep going.

 

[00:37:59.00] – BC

Oh, yeah. And so anyway, so I became president because they felt, people like Marion and that felt I could build some bridges. And I thought we did. There was, like I said, a lot of blood spilt across the country. Except in Vancouver, we did a lot of things to accommodate the letter carriers. We delayed our area council meetings, votes, elections that would come up with demands, right. So that the letter carriers could participate. We added a bunch of positions to the executive. We did all kinds of things and it, I think it lessened the problems here. I think in Vancouver and Edmonton, where actually integration went fairly well. But some of the other ones were— There was some old-guard CUPW traditionalists who felt that the letter carriers would water down our militancy, right. That they came from a different culture and they would—so they wanted to really stamp down on them. So they brought in an oath, a loyalty oath, right?

 

[00:39:20.09] – RM

Oh, my God.

 

[00:39:21.08] – BC

The national did, and we were quite opposed to it. And I think it even ended up with the labour relations, National Labour Relations Board. And that said, because I think a couple of people got expelled. And so the Labour Relations rapped our knuckles and said we couldn’t expel people. You can maybe stop them from running for office or something. So they brought in the loyalty oath and they made anybody who wanted to participate in CUPW’s position either shop steward, even area council had to sign it. And a number of them, of course, refused, right? Naturally, especially when they weren’t involved in the Power Base. They were supposed to sign this thing, right? So I remember at one, first area council meeting after that that a bunch of them showed up and somebody from the region phoned the police on them to get them evicted. It got, like I said, quite nasty.

 

[00:40:30.18] – BC

But anyway, so we had another strike in ’91. And again, this time the employer really spent a lot of money on scabs. They had helicopters flying from the roof of the Vancouver post office to the airport and they had all kinds of warehouses and they hired a bunch of goons. Except we had one thing about us: we learned, right? From our previous strike. So one of the things that, and it came actually from the women’s committee. The women’s committee at our first strike committee meeting—and the strike committee in CUPW is open to everybody, right? Any member that wants to show up. So we had a meeting of about 200 people. And the women’s committee came forward a motion saying that we’re going to commit to non-violence, that we’re not going to react to scabs or (because we knew they were coming, right), not react to scabs. And so we had this great debate and we voted overwhelmingly to do that, right? So the first day of the strike, management starts, tried to bring in scabs, right? And those guys on the second floor that I was talking about, they show up and they’re going to show these scabs, right? And immediately other people started standing in front of them saying, ‘No, remember what we said,’ right. And so it de-escalated really quickly.

 

[00:42:05.25] – BC

And the cops saw that. And we got the cooperation of the police so much during that strike that the plant manager started screaming at them, right? At the police sergeant. He said, ‘Look, our job is to keep the peace, not to escort your scabs across the line.’ And so that made a real difference, I think, to what we were doing. And that was the strike I got hit. We were trying to stop some trucks with mail coming in. So I was shuffled up at the front, right? It was kind of rainy day, and I didn’t realize that the three other people beside me were goons, right. Hired by the post office to escort the truck in. And I looked this way and he gave me a shove. And I gave him a sort of shove back. And then all of a sudden, bang-o. He hit me, right? But it was great because blood was streaming down my face. And there’s all kinds of media there taking pictures. And it’s a goon, right? That had hit me. And so I walked around the post office with their picketers, right? And they could see this. And so everybody got pumped. And then the post office got a black eye, right?

 

[00:43:30.29] – RM

And you got more than a black eye.

 

[00:43:33.19] – BC

Yeah. But it was no big deal.

 

[00:43:36.01] – RM

Any stitches?

 

[00:43:36.11] – BC

No, not. Well, a couple, but it was fine.

 

[00:43:39.07] – RM

Badge of honor.

 

[00:43:40.13] – BC

Yeah. So that whole thing, one of the lessons that came out of that one was about non-violence, right? That we took a pledge to do no violence and they were violent and it backfired on them and put us in a better position.

 

[00:43:58.16] – RM

And did you do okay in the strike?

 

[00:44:00.21] – BC

Yes, because one of the things that, like I said, was there was a division of the Power Base and stuff like that. But once we got on the picket line and it was both group, the letter carriers and us together now, and them using scabs, it sort of united everybody, right? And so the whole local. And because of the work we had done beforehand of, you know, making accommodations and bringing them in, that people came tight again. And it really. So we ended up, I think, winning some good stuff out of that strike and we’re a lot more together, right?

 

[00:44:41.14] – RM

How long were you president?

 

[00:44:43.19] – BC

I was only president from 1988 till 1995.

 

[00:44:52.08] – RM

Well, that’s a long time.

 

[00:44:53.24] – BC

Yeah. So. Except it was rather ignominious how I had to leave. Well, So we were in negotiations. We’d got a tentative agreement. We had a big meeting at the Hotel Vancouver. The executive had met and decided to recommend a no, thing. And so I got up at the thing and said the executive was recommending no, blah, blah, blah. And then I added my own personal thing, why I thought we should vote yes. Oops. And so it was sort of breaking the solidarity of the executive. And so that was a faux pas. But I couldn’t help. I just thought they were so wrong. And it was going to end up, especially after the good things that’d come out of the strike. So anyway, so.

 

[00:46:01.08] – RM

How did the vote go?

 

[00:46:02.26] – BC

Oh, overwhelmingly yes.

 

[00:46:05.03] – RM

Oh, really?

 

[00:46:05.21] – BC

Oh, yeah.

 

[00:46:06.09] – RM

In spite of the executive’s recommendation?

 

[00:46:07.17] – BC

Yeah.

 

[00:46:08.09] – RM

So you were in tune with the membership.

 

[00:46:11.29] – BC

Yeah, I guess so. But I think that also the executive—I’m trying to remember last time we recommended a yes.

 

[00:46:20.07] – RM

Yeah, right. I was thinking that myself.

 

[00:46:23.05] – BC

So we generally sign on this.

 

[00:46:26.23] – RM

So did you resign or did they fire you?

 

[00:46:29.03] – BC

I just didn’t run again.

 

[00:46:30.07] – RM

Yeah, okay, right?

 

[00:46:32.02] – BC

And yeah, they can’t fire me. Yeah, they can unelect me. But anyway, so then the position came—the ’96 convention was coming up and I was interested as it got approached by a few people that I should run for the education and organization position at the Pacific region. And I was at an educational sort of, this decided me. I was at educational and the person who was occupying the position at the time was there. And we were sitting around talking about something. I forget what it was, at the seminar and somebody said something while this person was there about and disagreed with what they said, right? And this person just came like a ton of bricks down on this person, right? And I noticed after she had done that that other people were just like sitting quiet, right? And I thought that’s not education. That’s, you know, intimidation trying to browbeat people into a certain position, right? So I decided that yeah, okay, I am going to run then. And so I ran against her and won so and did that for two terms.

 

[00:48:09.23] – RM

Did you like it?

 

[00:48:10.18] – BC

Oh loved it. I mean I just love education. I love education because, especially in the union sense, because adults are making a conscious decision to I’m going to take this education because I want to learn something. It’s not forced on them, right? And because our union was really committed to education and we had a, we ended up having an education fund. There was a five week course at Port Elgin for the leadership. I started, when I became education that we started attending Harrison again because some of the previous education director felt it was, we shouldn’t mingle with those other unions, we’ll dilute our, get our militancy again.

 

[00:49:05.11] – RM

Really?

 

[00:49:05.26] – BC

Oh yeah. Some people are like weird. And so we started having a leadership course at Harrison and it was great because the Pacific region was Yukon and B.C. and so a lot of people that are in some smaller centers, you know never meet another trade unionist really. And so because there’s post offices just about everywhere, right? And so we started doing a lot of stuff and we became quite involved with other things like globalization. We became involved with the, there was a group called the Trading Strategies Group that met at the Maritime Labour Centre as in 1999, right? And the thing came up with the WTO in Seattle and originally the—

 

[00:50:03.10] – RM

Were you there?

 

[00:50:03.15] – BC

Oh yeah.

 

[00:50:03.29] – RM

So was I. It was something.

 

[00:50:10.14] – BC

Originally I think they were just going to do parallel things in Vancouver, in the Lower Mainland, and not go to the States. And so one of the meeting Trading Strategies we got up and said ‘Look, we’ve got to go down there. This is all this amazing stuff going down there. It’s only three hours away. We can organize it. And do it.’ And so majority then of the Trading Strategy Coalition said ‘Yes, okay we’ll do it.’ And we ended up filling 40 busses to go down to Seattle, right? It was with the, the BCFed helped out I think quite a bit and they also brought in somebody from the AFL-CIO who helped to smooth things over at the border and stuff like that. So. And it was great. I mean I forget the name of the, what was the name of the stadium?

 

[00:51:01.17] – RM

The Battle in Seattle.

 

[00:51:01.27] – BC

Yeah, what was the name of the stadium with, the whole park, the place was just full and—

 

[00:51:07.08] – RM

I never went near there. I was just out in the streets. Oh well there was Safeco Fields. That the one you’re talking about?

 

[00:51:12.18] – BC

No, no, it was—

 

[00:51:14.04] – RM

University of Washington?

 

[00:51:15.22] – BC

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. It was a big stadium and it took us like an hour to get out. And the other thing I should mention is there were all kinds of educationals beforehand. Meetings. And some, you know, like Venanda and Maude Barlow and a whole bunch of other people put it, there was all kinds of, for like three, four months leading up to it. I remember the thing at Evergreen College in Olympia, right. With all these people getting together, and it was a real eye opener and it felt really important, right?

 

[00:51:54.17] – RM

It was a high watermark because after that the authorities said never again.

 

[00:51:58.12] – BC

Yeah. I don’t know why they went to Seattle because that was the wrong city for them to go to.

 

[00:52:02.18] – RM

That was fabulous. So at a certain point, though, you. I guess you, how long were you—two terms? So when did you step down as—

 

[00:52:10.27] – BC

2002.

 

[00:52:11.28] – RM

And then did you go back to work in the post office?

 

[00:52:14.08] – BC

Oh, yeah, except I came here.

 

[00:52:16.10] – RM

So why did you come here?

 

[00:52:18.15] – BC

Because I knew some people here that were really good in the local. Mike Keelan and Steve Harvey and also the Comox Valley had a reputation of activism. I knew that there was lots of activists here who were doing stuff. So I just didn’t want to go out to pasture, right? So I still wanted to be involved in things. So I came here. Luckily, I got my transfer here.

 

[00:52:47.02] – RM

To work in the post office?

 

[00:52:48.11] – BC

Yeah.

 

[00:52:49.08] – RM

What a change from Vancouver.

 

[00:52:51.17] – BC

Oh, God. Yes. You realized, well, I guess I knew that when I spoke, when I worked one year near the airport, that how much depends on the superintendent, right? The tone of the place. And when I first got there, it was pretty laid back, right? The superintendent there was pretty good. And then I guess about four years later, another superintendent came in who was really micromanaging and didn’t think we knew what we were doing. And didn’t like the union. And I was a shop steward, so got kind of, you know, every day was a fight. That’s, you know, that’s another thing about the Canada Post management. It’s like, like they’ve got two brands, they’ve got the soft soap. You know, come participate with us. We’ll do this. And of course, when it comes down to it, they don’t really have the power to do that stuff. Then you got the ones with the jackboot guys, right. Like Don Landers, who basically, you know, we ended up with like 186,000 grievances backlogged and again, you have to fight for every single thing, even things that should be normal, you have to fight for it.

 

[00:54:10.03] – BC

So there’s two styles of management. So that on a national level, that played out. And. And also at the Courtenay post office level too.

 

[00:54:20.08] – RM

That’s where you ended your career, in the post office.

 

[00:54:22.09] – BC

Yeah.

 

[00:54:23.02] – RM

All right. Now, we still haven’t talked about, because I love all this stuff, the Miners Memorial weekend. So how did you get involved with that, talk about that?

 

[00:54:33.17] – BC

Well, I got involved in it originally. Came over one time, I guess in ’98, ’97, and participated as somebody just, you know, trade unions coming to Miners Memorial. I thought it was really cool, Right? So I thought we could incorporate it as part of our education because, the thing about Cumberland it’s so unique, right? I’ve, you know, as traveling, you know, visiting all locals in B.C. and the Yukon, you see a lot of different places, right? But except for maybe Cumberland, Wells and Nelson, you know, those places are different, right? Than a lot of other, So I became promoting that we attend Miners Memorial as a union, right? And so, yeah, we subsidized people attending it, to camping out. We even put on an educational one time. Except the problem was Courtenay, at that time didn’t have a lot of hotel space. They had one hotel. One hotel, I think. So that was a bit limiting. And then when I moved here in 2002, then I became a delegate to the Labour Council. At the time, there was a lot closer ties with the Labour Council and the museum. So I was sent from the Labour Council to be a member of the board of the historical Society, Cumberland Historical Society, because we supplied some money for it and stuff like that.

 

[00:56:23.18] – BC

So that’s how I became involved with the Cumberland Museum and Miners Memorial. I was doing basically there for that and the Bean Dinner, right?

 

[00:56:33.27] – RM

What’s the Bean Dinner?

 

[00:56:36.09] – BC

Well, the Bean Dinner is that, during the 1912, 1914 strike, they were out for like two years. I mean, that makes 42 days seem kind of minor in a way. And towards the end of it, they got really, you know, hunger—there was a lot of hunger. And so I don’t know how much is myth and how much is truth, but apparently the government sent up a boxcar of beans to Cumberland. And so so, to relieve some of the hunger. So when they talked about the Bean Dinner, they decided Cumberlands have a strange sense of humor, so they thought they would serve beans for a fundraiser for the museum. And that’s what they did. And the Miners Memorial was at times controversial, I guess.

 

[00:57:36.11] – RM

Controversial in what way?

 

[00:57:37.29] – BC

Well, certain people, like the MLA termed Ginger Goodwin a criminal. And I know that the Fred Bates, who was a mayor of Cumberland for a while, was opposed to the Miners Memorial even though his father was the last miner killed in Cumberland, right?

 

[00:58:00.24] – RM

Wow.

 

[00:58:02.02] – BC

And so anyway, so. I think the Miners Memorial became more than just Cumberland became a, you know, B.C. labour event. So it grew and grew. I remember one year we had. They almost called it the Postal Workers Memorial Weekend because we had so many postal workers here, right? And I think it. One of the things drawing a lot of those people from, you know, Fort St. John and that ended up coming to the Miners Memorial was they realized how important that history was and they weren’t even aware of it. And so. But they realized again how important it was to—because those miners and their families struggled against odds a lot higher than we were facing. And they kept at it. They didn’t get a union until 1936, but they kept at it. They organized and they still went on strike. And so if they could do it, then we can do it. So I think it was an inspiration to our own members.

 

[00:59:18.28] – RM

And how would you say it’s doing now? Flagging?

 

[00:59:24.21] – BC

Oh, I don’t, I don’t think Miners Memorial is. I think that for a while with COVID like a lot of things that was hurt by COVID, right? And we had to reduce. We even, we still held it, but we just did it in a different way. It was safe, public health wise. But I think, yeah, it’s shifting more from the Labour Council to the museum as far as organizing it and running it. But we still have—

 

[00:59:53.12] – RM

Is that a good thing?

 

[00:59:55.27] – BC

Well, I think the Labour Council is struggling a bit because some other things and I’d rather it was more an equal partnership between museum and Labour Council. But it’s still carrying on and the museum is actually very supportive. They’ve done some really good stuff with it. So as long as Miners Memorial keeps going, and they even revised the Bean Dinner, right?

 

[01:00:29.29] – RM

Is it still controversial?

 

[01:00:32.18] – BC

I don’t think so anymore. I think the only thing is that a lot of the people, Cumberland has changed quite a bit. They actually have suburbs now. And a lot of it is, there’s one guy got up at a meeting and said that mountain bicycles, mountain biking built Cumberland, right? [laughter] Yeah, I know. And that upset a few people, right? And so I think all those new people have to learn about their own history and about the history of the miners. I mean, coal is dead, right? It’s gone. And in some ways good riddance, right? But that history is still there and that history illustrates the power dynamics and what needs to be done is still there. So I think that a lot of those people in Cumberland, the newer people, the people who refer to Cumberland as Cumby, they have to learn about that stuff, right? And it’s good. Like the Bean Dinner, it’s taken over by the school now. The school, with the museum, has put on the Bean Dinner and the kids put together the exhibits and they organize the actual food with the help of the teachers, right? Yeah. So those kids may be teaching their parents.

 

[01:02:02.03] – RM

Oh, that’s great. And do you want to just talk about the saga of the signs?

 

[01:02:08.05] – BC

The signs?

 

[01:02:09.02] – RM

The Ginger Goodwin signs.

 

[01:02:10.22] – BC

Oh, okay. Not those signs.

 

[01:02:13.14] – RM

What signs did you think I meant?

 

[01:02:16.03] – BC

Well, there was some guerrilla activity one time when like, you know, the main street of Cumberland is Dunsmuir, right? And that doesn’t make some people happy. So one, I forget what year it was, there was sort of this action at midnight where people—we had these Ginger Goodwin Way stickers like about this big [gestures]. And we drove around and—did I say we? Oh. Some people. Some people replaced the signs, put the stickers over the Dunsmuir signs, right? So all up and down Dunsmuir was now Ginger Goodwin Way. And Bates was not happy. Yeah, so that’s—and the other one is the highway signs. One of the first things that—I was going to say Socreds—the Liberals did, and they did it on Labour Day was take down the Ginger Goodwin signs.

 

[01:03:23.28] – RM

Which is on the highway.

 

[01:03:25.07] – BC

Yeah. And it wasn’t until the election of the NDP again that the signs were put back up. But one of the things in Cumberland about the Miners Memorial that try to grapple with is one of the criticisms from some of the old guard there was that we talked too much about Ginger Goodwin and that we should be talking about the miners and stuff like that.

 

[01:03:56.22] – BC

And you know, that may be. They may feel that, but what I see is that the miners are the central part of—it’s called Miners Memorial. And Ginger Goodwin is just one focal point of that. He’s not, if you look at the cairns that are put around, one’s to the Chinese community, another one to the Black community and the cemeteries, the Japanese. So I think that we do. It is more than just Ginger Goodwin. It’s not—it’s Miners Memorial.

 

[01:04:31.22] – RM

Have you tried to involve the Chinese and Japanese communities?

 

[01:04:35.22] – BC

Oh, yeah. I think that—

 

[01:04:37.15] – RM

‘Cause I know you make a separate pilgrimage to the Japanese cemetery certainly.

 

[01:04:42.03] – BC

Yeah, and the Chinese. We did the Chinese cemetery this year and we’ve done it in the past. And also we try to coordinate, there’s the descendants of the people in the Cumberland Chinese community have a reunion at Stanley Park.

 

[01:04:59.26] – RM

The legendary reunion. It’s still going on, isn’t it?

 

[01:05:00.08] – BC

Yeah, yeah. Excuse me. And so they were going to do it, I think there was some special anniversary, they were going to do it in Cumberland. And so we involved them in the Miners Memorial. And other ones have come. The guy who wrote Gold Mountain, the Return to Gold Mountain, the graphic novel about the Chinese experience in B.C. and Cumberland [Escape to Gold Mountain, David H.T. Wong]. And so we invited him. He came and talked one time. So, yeah, we’ve reached out. And I think it’s important to remember because that’s another thing that’s unique about Cumberland was the sheer multicultural—you know, it was there that large Japanese and large Chinese communities, along with the Europeans.

 

[01:05:52.15] – RM

Can’t pretend there wasn’t racism against the Chinese and the Japanese—

 

[01:05:57.07] – BC

Well, internment.

 

[01:05:57.29] – RM

By the white miners.

 

[01:05:59.05] – BC

Yeah. That’s one thing that’s sensitive around Cumberland is talking about what happened to the properties of the Japanese that were interned, right? Nobody seems to want to talk about it.

 

[01:06:07.29] – RM

But we all know what happened to their property.

 

[01:06:11.12] – BC

Yeah.

 

[01:06:12.18] – RM

And the Chinese community was just bulldozed.

 

[01:06:15.26] – BC

Yeah. I think they regret that they did that now.

 

[01:06:22.00] – RM

Well, you just fix it up, right? It was falling down, but I mean, oh, my God, what a legacy, you know, that heritage. And one year you had Chileans come up.

 

[01:06:33.21] – BC

Yeah. They came up and they talked about, they actually introduced a new tradition to Miners Memorial, and it was called Presente, right? And so people that have died in the previous year that you read out their names and then people respond by ‘el presente,’ ‘I’m here,’ right? And that became, and they also talked about—I’m not sure if he was Chile or one of the Central American countries, talked about, he gave a speech and he says—he looked around, he says, it’s amazing that you people can gather here in these numbers and not have to worry about the cops or the army coming and shooting you down or sending you to prison for being there. And that, I think, woke a few people’s eyes, woke people up, right? About how privileged we are, in a sense.

 

[01:07:38.17] – RM

Do I have this right? Were some of the Chileans up here? Some of those that were rescued from that mine down there? Or maybe not.

 

[01:07:45.11] – BC

Not sure.

 

[01:07:45.28] – RM

Remember, they were trapped for, like 70 days.

 

[01:07:47.27] – BC

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The ones I do remember was the Mexican mine workers and I forget his name, Garcia something. Who was actually a refugee in Canada because he had been charged.

 

[01:08:08.20] – RM

Yeah, I remember that guy. Steelworkers were really supporting him, I think. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. All right. Did you want to say anything about Joe Naylor? Maybe it’s too much Ginger Goodwin, not enough Joe Naylor.

 

[01:08:21.07] – BC

Well, I think he’s an underrepresented figure because he was president of the BCFed at one time. He took some really good positions. He was anti-racist, which wasn’t a—and he was also a big supporter of One Big Union before the Winnipeg general strike. So he is, I think, an important figure and I think he was a well-loved figure in Cumberland. Like people talk about, you know, delivering papers to him.

 

[01:08:52.05] – RM

Bronco Montcrief.

 

[01:08:53.06] – BC

Yeah. And so we had, with the BC Labour Heritage Center (see, I noticed the BC, right), we had put together a project and in front of the museum we had a plaque with a stone for Joe Naylor, right? Except it was made of brass. And guess what?

 

[01:09:18.23] – RM

It got taken.

 

[01:09:19.20] – BC

It got taken. So we got to find a way of replacing that. But he’s a, you know, I think a really inspirational character, Joe Naylor, and one that should be more well known. Just as well known as Ginger Goodwin.

 

[01:09:36.26] – RM

Well, you can read my story on Joe Naylor in this book about, the Cumberland Museum has published.

 

[01:09:42.18] – BC

I did, yes. Very good.

 

[01:09:44.23] – RM

It’s all about me. So, Brian, this has been great. Is there anything that we missed or that you’d like to expand on or anything like that?

 

[01:09:55.04] – BC

I think we covered main things. I’m interested in history and education and militancy. You know, the only thing is, I guess, is I know this is a historical thing, but that all that stuff that we went through in the last hundred years as trade unions, working people, working class, is that people are realizing things can be rolled back really easily. And with Trump, and we came really close here to Pierre becoming prime minister too, and we would have ended up with some of the same, similar policies. So I think it’s really important that we as citizens and as trade unionists remember to—you know, I think I saw a sign that says, said something to: if you wonder what you would have done during the Holocaust or during slavery or, then just think what you’re doing now, because the same thing is happening as those crisises in our society. So how are you acting now? And so I think that’s important.

 

[01:11:08.02] – RM

It is important. Thank you.