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Ken Johnstone made a point of attending the annual Ironworkers Bridge Memorial on each anniversary of its deadly collapse. He was a humble man who would stand quietly at the back. Like many in Vancouver, Johnstone couldn’t forget June 17,...Article
The fight against apartheid in South Africa was long, arduous and often violent, costing many lives. Starting in 1976, until the first free election in 1994, B.C. union members worked tirelessly in support of those fighting to end South Africa’s...Article
BC labour led a four-year boycott of non-union American grapes between 1966 and 1970. The United Farm Workers’ (UFW) strike began in 1965 near Delano, California but soon spread. The strike became a struggle for justice and human rights that...Article
400 miners, 100 police, two navy ships and a machine gun Anyox was a small, isolated company-owned coastal community in northwestern B.C. without road or rail access. It was mined between 1914-1935 for its copper and other precious metals by...Article
Before British Columbia had modern labour laws, government and the courts frequently used their powers to keep unions under their thumbs, and out of their workplaces. One of their favourite tactics was the use of court injunctions. A steady stream...Article
As early as 1989 the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) had successfully negotiated medical benefits for same-sex partners into collective agreements. Without legal protection, however, recognition of these relationships was up to each employer or benefits provider. A 1991 legal victory...Article
On February 18, 1918, two hundred oil refinery workers at Ioco, BC — 30 kilometres east of Vancouver — walked off the job. Provincial constables were immediately dispatched to Ioco for special duty, even though newspapers noted that no disorder...Article
How a childhood union button collection played a part in an epic Supreme Court of Canada decision. David Yorke began collecting union buttons at the age of 11, when his mother brought home membership pins from her work at the...Article
The Postman is a 16-foot tall carved granite bas relief by Vancouver sculptor Paul Huba and installed in 1956. An anti-Nazi deserter from the Hungarian army, Huba came to Canada in 1954. His wife and two sons joined him shortly...Article
The early 1900s was a time of rapid industrialization in Canada and around the world. Clothing production became mechanized, and garment workers, largely women, often immigrants from Europe, were subjected to inhumane conditions in assembly-line factories. The 1911 fire at...Article
The first edition of The Labor Statesman hit the streets in Vancouver, BC on April 25, 1924. It would publish continuously for 45 years, ceasing publication in 1969. Initially published by the Vancouver, New Westminster and District Trades and Labor...Article
Miners’ Union Hospitals were a radical response to the critical need for inclusive health care in B.C.’s mining communities more than 100 years ago. At least six local unions of the Western Federation of Miners established their own hospitals in...Article
Frances Foxcroft probably saved the life of Vancouver Trades and Labor Council Secretary Victor Midgely on the afternoon of August 2, 1918. Despite her heroism, Foxcroft has received little historical attention. A rampaging mob of angry ex-soldiers had descended on...Article
On August 26, 1936 the Sheet Metal Workers International Union Local 280, won grand prize in the “Parade of Progress” marking the 75th anniversary of the Canadian Pacific Exhibition and the Golden Jubilee of the City of Vancouver. Their parade...Article
A hand-painted union flag fashioned from a bed sheet became a symbol of solidarity and determination during the 1983 Tranquille Institution occupation in Kamloops, BC.Article
Charles S. Sager called out racism in an open letter to Prince George city council in 1921. "We are forced to bear the full responsibility of our race, forced into the lowest of menial occupations and then despised for doing...Article
A strike at the Prince George Canadian Tire store by the Retail Clerks’ Union Local 1518 lasted from December 1983 until May 1986 (27 months). The central issue was union recognition. The store opened in 1982, and the union was...Article
The weather forecast for Thursday, July 7, 1983 in Prince George, BC was for heavy thunderstorms in the evening. No one expected a political tornado would be unleashed earlier that day when the newly re-elected Social Credit (Socred) government introduced...Article
With a population of 2,479 in 1931, the city of Prince George, BC had hundreds of unemployed. That year, a branch of the communist-led National Unemployed Workers Association (NUWA) was established in the Prince George District. Under the watchful eye...Article
In 1947, youth in Chemainus and Ladysmith, BC 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 cents to eight cents.Article
While the history of South Asians at Golden, BC is reasonably well known, little or nothing has been written about their early presence in the West Kootenay. They were employed in sawmills at various places around that time, including Nakusp,...Article
Despite police predictions that it would be a “dismal failure”, 6,000 men, women and children descended on the Powell Street grounds (now Oppenheimer Park) in Vancouver on February 22, 1932 for a “Hunger March”, organized by the Communist Party of...Article
The intense class struggle of the first two decades of the twentieth century in BC included a small but strong group of women. Many showed their mettle during early strikes. An example was the gutsy strike by Vancouver laundry workers...Article
The summer of 1910 was a hot one for labour across North America. In the first couple of weeks of July, more than fifty thousand garment workers went on strike in New York in a dispute that would eventually draw...Article
On Thanksgiving, October 14, 1975, fretting over sky-high inflation and soaring wage increases, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced Canada’s first peacetime wage controls. Although prices were also to be controlled, wages were the chief target. Over the next three years,...Article
Parades – particularly Labour Day parades – were big attractions in the early years of British Columbia. While a venue for unionized workers to assert their place in society these parades excluded large segments of the community. Participants were mainly...Article
During World War II, at the age of 16, Alice West joined tens of thousands of other BC women who went to work, doing industrial jobs that were normally filled by the men fighting overseas. She started work at Vancouver...Article
The 1980s kicked off in British Columbia with an inspiring example of workers using new tactics to cope with an aggressively anti-union employer. The BC Telephone Company was US-owned and had put the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) through a difficult...Article
On August 30, 2021 the provincial government of BC under the New Democratic Party (BC NDP) announced that dietary and housekeeping workers in the healthcare industry would be brought back into the public domain after 20 years of privatization and...Article
Under close police surveillance, the 1936 Vancouver May Day parade announcer mocked passing effigies of local white nationalist Tom MacInnes and Mayor Gerry McGeer. “Volunteers to throw Tom and Gerry into the bay?” the announcer taunted the crowd in his...Article
Tom Berger (1933-2021) is remembered as a legal groundbreaker and social justice advocate for Canada’s Indigenous people. Less well-known is that Berger got his first taste of fighting against injustice as a young Vancouver labour lawyer in a case that...Article
Labour’s May Day (sometimes called International Workers’ Day) on May 1 has been held around the world for over 120 years. In many countries May Day is a statutory holiday that celebrates international solidarity and the long history of labour...Article
The Industrial Workers of the World, otherwise known as the IWW or the Wobblies, were the most radical labour organization North America has ever seen. They weren’t interested in reforming capitalism. They wanted to wipe it out completely, putting an...Article
A fiery Irish-Catholic who lost both parents before he turned 12, Jack Kavanagh came to Vancouver in 1908 after serving in the British Army in South Africa during the Boer War. Upon arriving in BC, Kavanagh took up the tile-laying...Article
Much of the colonial history of BC has centered the perspectives of white male settlers who came in search of gold and glory. While gold miners tended to work on their own claims, some of the earliest labour organizing in...Article
In September 1938, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) brought their theatrical musical hit “Pins and Needles” to Vancouver where it played to glowing reviews. The cast were all ILGWU members from New York garment factories, or as The...Article
Hilda Harvey Kavanagh died in second wave of 1919 Spanish Flu British Columbia experienced three waves of the “Spanish Flu” epidemic in 1918-19. As many as 1,000 people died in Vancouver alone over 15 months of the influenza. Health officials...Article
It Was No Holiday! BC’s only union barber reflects on the COVID shutdown of 2020 In March 2020 all personal service establishments in British Columbia were closed by order of the Provincial Health Officer in response to the COVID-19 pandemic....Article
With the end of the Great Depression, labour’s long hostility towards Asian workers slowly began to change. The International Woodworkers of America led the way by hiring three non-Caucasian organizers to break down the barriers of race and unite workers...Article
On September 2, 1965, 75-year old Abe Mortimer (1889-1969) bellowed “Pl-a-a-y B-a-a-w-w-l” before an audience of more than 2,500 at Capilano Stadium in Vancouver to kick off a two-inning Old-Timers’ baseball game. Abe had broken his leg in three places...Article
Born October 29, 1926, in New Westminster, BC, Donald (“Don”) Peter Garcia served multiple terms as the President for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canadian Area and his union local, a career which spanned 45 years.Article
Gordon J Kelly was known as a calm, kind and fair-headed longshore leader. When the Spanish Flu pandemic killed him in 1918, thousands came to his lavish funeral.Article
This article is based upon a conversation between Pam Moodie, a volunteer at the BC Labour Heritage Centre, and Aime Antoshchuk. Pam and Aime met at a Burnaby assisted living facility where the 83-year old Antoshchuk lives. We are fortunate...Article
William Fitzclarence “Fitz” St. John's long, remarkable life began in Barbados, stretched from the age of sail to man walking on the moon, before coming to an end at the ripe old age of 94 in 1970 in North Vancouver....Article
Clarence Clemens moved to British Columbia from Edmonton sometime in 1937. He soon found work on the docks as a longshoreman employed by Empire Stevedoring and settled into the predominantly Black neighbourhood of Strathcona in East Vancouver. The heart of...Article
The Coast Seamen’s Union was established in 1885 in San Francisco; the first Canadian branch was founded in Victoria BC in 1891. The same year, shipowners formed an Employers’ Association and declared open war against the union. Union organizing was...Article
In November 1944 and again in 1945 — as the Second World War neared its end — two art exhibitions celebrating labour took place at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The first exhibition included 150 works; in 1945 there were over...Article
Throughout his 50 years in Prince Rupert, BC George Casey (1876-1962) was a steadfast representative of the working class and its union organizations. Casey headed to the United States as a young man where he spent time as a “hobo”,...Article
Labour Day parades in Vancouver, BC which began in 1890, featured numerous such examples of floats constructed by unionized workers. This article is reprinted from the May 2019 Vancouver Historical Society newsletter. Bob McDonald, one of BC's leading historians, passed...Article
When the Winnipeg General Strike began on May 15, 1919 unions across Canada soon followed Winnipeg’s lead. In British Columbia, the heroic Vancouver sympathy strike and Victoria’s four-day stoppage are often cited as examples, yet lesser known strikes occurred in...Article
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. “Snake parades” through city streets were frequent during the...Article
Explore some of the women in BC’s labour history who created milestones for the movement.Article
Emmitt Holmes (1924-2005) 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...Article
On February 1, 1975 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), at CKLG-AM Radio (known as “LG73”) in Vancouver went on strike for a first contract. The disc jockeys and news staff walked out, locked the doors and...Article
The 1912 recession was difficult for all BC workers, but it was especially hard on women. Suffragist and tailor Helena Gutteridge, head of the Women’s Employment League and executive member of the Vancouver Trades & Labor Council, organized a toy...Article
The On-to-Ottawa Trek in 1935 is a fabled part of Canada’s labour history. Thousands of unemployed men, frustrated with the lack of compassion from government to their plight, hopped atop freight trains in Vancouver with a plan to confront Prime...Article
At 12 o’clock sharp on August 2, 1918, Vancouver transit operators stopped their streetcars in mid-route, drove them to the barns and walked home. The city’s normally bustling waterfront fell silent, as 2,000 burly stevedores and shipyard workers streamed from...Article
The International Longshore Association disappeared from the waterfront in BC following their 1923 strike. The union was broken by employers in the Shipping Federation of BC, and a company union was put in place. Favouritism in hiring was rampant. As...Article
With high unemployment and a recession in full swing, the Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) was formed by the Vancouver Trades and Labor Council in August 1907, with the aim of “keeping Oriental immigrants out of British Columbia”. It is a...Article
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 worker Wong Hau-Hon in 1926. Following are some...Article
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, to check on picketers...Article
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...Article
Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood was a vibrant and diverse community in the 1930s, a mix of Black and Chinese families, businesses and entertainment venues. Opportunities were few for Black workers looking for employment in the city after high school or university,...
