Ginger Goodwin, A Workers’ Friend

Read about union organizer Ginger Goodwin who is remembered as BC’s first labour martyr.

Charismatic union activist, socialist and organizer Albert “Ginger” Goodwin was fatally shot on July 27, 1918, by special constable Dan Campbell in the woods overlooking the working-class bastion of Cumberland on Vancouver Island. A vice-president of the BC Federation of Labor, Goodwin had been hiding out to avoid a politically suspicious order that he report for military duty in World War One.

The order, which followed his equally dubious reclassification from unfit to fit for service, took place during a strike he led for an eight-hour day by Trail smelter workers. The Dominion Police had been tracking him for months. Although the precise circumstances of Goodwin’s killing remain inconclusive, there is no doubt he died a martyr to the cause of working-class struggle, pursued solely for his trade union leadership.

Remembered for his role in the 1912–14 coal strike on Vancouver Island, Goodwin was revered by the people of Cumberland, who had helped him survive his clandestine existence. He was mentored by Joe Naylor, who was President of the BC Federation of Labour when Goodwin was Vice President. He was a solid soccer player who espoused socialism and workers’ rights. Already a veteran of nearly nine years in the mines of Yorkshire and Canada, Goodwin had come to Cumberland the year before the strike.

In the months leading up to Goodwin’s death, many workers—particularly in the West—became increasingly militant and radical. The federal government’s promotion and eventual enactment of conscription was a tipping point. At the 1917 convention of the BC Federation of Labor, delegates elected a socialist slate bitterly opposed to conscription, a key rallying point in the growing class war. A resolution to fight conscription with a general strike received overwhelming support from Vancouver trade unions.

On a hiring blacklist after the 1912-1914 strike, Goodwin managed to find work at the smelter in Trail, where he significantly upped his activism. He ran for the Socialist Party in the 1916 BC election, winning 20 percent of the vote. He helped organize and was elected full-time secretary of the local smelter workers’ union. He was also chosen as a vice-president of the BC Federation of Labor. His prowess as a Socialist orator, urging “the wage slaves” to rise up and overthrow “the master class,” led to many speaking engagements. A reporter for the Vancouver Daily World covering a Goodwin speech at the Rex Theatre on August 19, 1917, praised his socialist knowledge and calm delivery. Six months later, he was on the run.

His sombre funeral procession, led by the municipal band, stretched from one end of town to the other. “The casket was packed shoulder-high right through Cumberland,” miner Ben Horbry recalled years later. “When one bunch of men got tired, another bunch took over.” Police were told to make themselves scarce. “The miners were so incensed over it,” Horbry said. “It was a good thing for [Dan] Campbell that he got out and disappeared when he did. He would have been hung or shot.”

In Vancouver, news of the shooting hit like a thunderbolt. At noon on August 2, the day of Goodwin’s funeral in Cumberland, close to six thousand workers walked off the job across the city to mourn Goodwin and protest his fatal shooting. Shipyards and the docks were shut tight. Trolleys were taken off the streets by their drivers. Construction trades, linemen, garment workers and other assorted groups also took part. The shutdown lasted twenty-four hours. It was Canada’s first general strike.

The business community reacted hysterically to the show of union force. Branding strike leaders as both pro-Bolshevik and pro-German, they incited hundreds of ex-soldiers into a frenzy. The vets, some fortified with booze, proceeded to ransack the Labor Temple at Dunsmuir and Homer Streets. They destroyed records, broke up furniture and assaulted several VTLC officers. Secretary Victor Midgley only just avoided being tossed from the building’s second floor when switchboard operator Frances Foxcroft bravely stood in front of the window to protect Midgley as he crouched on the outside ledge.

The mob did not leave until the union men knelt and kissed the Union Jack. The next day, with many workers still off the job, the same veterans tried to invade the Longshoremen’s Hall. This time, union members were ready, beating back all attempts by the soldiers to get inside. The strike was a resounding success, giving unions a strong taste of collective action.

Ginger Goodwin’s gravestone at the Cumberland cemetery was first installed in 1937, and restored in 2025. During the month of June each year, the community lays flowers on his grave as part of the annual Miners’ Memorial Weekend. Ginger Goodwin’s story continues to resonate as a symbol of activism and martyrdom. At Comox Lake, Goodwin was commemorated by the naming of Ginger Goodwin Creek in 1982, and Mount Ginger Goodwin in 1989. A section of the Vancouver Island Highway 19 that passes through Cumberland was named Ginger Goodwin Way in 1996. Although the signs were removed by the province's Liberal government in 2001, the NDP government reinstalled them in 2018. The BC government proclaimed Ginger Goodwin Day on July 27, 2018, to acknowledge the centennial of his death.