This story 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 to have the opportunity to share Aime’s union organizing experience Read more…
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 Vancouver in the late 1890s. Here we see a forty-foot Read more…
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 also participated in other industries such as mining. 2. Helena Read more…
(Photo credit: Boarded-up businesses after race riots in Chinatown at northwest corner of Carrall Street at Pender, 1907: Vancouver Public Library #940) In recognition of Asian Heritage Month, we remember a painful part of British Columbia’s labour history: The Asiatic Exclusion League. With high unemployment and a recession in full Read more…
(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…