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1. Strikes and Labour Disputes 1918-1920
From Canadian History Portal - HCO
| E. Maturing Culture and Identity →→ 1. Strikes and Labour Disputes 1918-1920 → 2. Canada in the Roaring Twenties → 3. The Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties → → 4. Home Made Solutions and Foreign Panaceas →→ A. World War II |
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A Canada Utterly Changed
Canada was now home to over half a million veterans of war, many of whom were crippled or would have to spend the rest of their lives in hospital. Some 619,000 Canadians had served in the Army. As well, 23,000 Canadians served in Britain's Royal Flying Corps (RFC) (which later became the Royal Air Force). Over 1,600 of these fliers died in combat. Ten of the 27 aces in the RFC were Canadian. At sea, 5,500 Canadians served in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), and another 3,000 served in the British Royal Navy.
Fully one-third of those who had served in uniform were killed or wounded during the war. Few had previously been professional soldiers. The Canadian Corps was largely an army of citizen-soldiers, from every corner of Canada and every walk of life. Now they returned to reap the rewards of peace, and were helped by the soldier settlement boards to buy farms or houses, or get further education.
The Global Flu Pandemic of 1918
One final tragedy was inflicted on the people of Canada at the end of the First World War - the Spanish flu (or influenza). This global pandemic, brought to North America by returning soldiers, killed up to 50 million people around the world, more than five times as many that had been killed in all of the war years. More than 50 000 Canadians succumbed to the ravages of the disease, almost as many as were killed in the war.
This strain of influenza originated in the Far East in 1917, and was first officially noticed in Spain in May 1918. But it had already started to hit soldiers in the trenches of Belgium and France that April.
The malady rapidly spread through military hospitals, army camps and crowded barracks. Some thought it was a biological warfare tool of the Germans. Others blamed it on the use of mustard gases or the smoke and fumes of the guns. But the viral cause was virtually unknown, and there were few effective drugs available to treat it.
This particular strain was unusual for influenza, usually a killer of the elderly and young children. Also known as "La Grippe", it was most virulent to young adults aged 20 to 40.
The killer flu struck this country quickly and inexplicably, especially in closed communities. It quickly made its way into even the remotest hamlets of Canada, and struck thousands of people of all ages. Some smaller villages in Quebec were almost wiped out, and one third of the Labrador population died.
One Canadian in five caught the disease. The virus entered the body through the respiratory tract and soon spread to cause symptoms that included fever, chills, headaches, sore throat, muscular pain, loss of appetite and cough. Young mothers and family providers were most at risk. Some people went to bed healthy and never woke up. Some people on their way to work suddenly developed the flu and died within hours.
In many Canadian homes, frightened families lit small incense lamps or burned sulphur candles used to kill wasps, or bought bizarre elixirs and potions. Doctors handed out quinine tablets and rum - prohibition was in force, and alcohol could only be used for medicinal purposes.
Hospitals were already short-staffed and already overtaxed by the war. Now they were swamped trying to control this serious epidemic, and many health care workers and volunteers put themselves at mortal risk. One physician wrote that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate." Another recalled that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth."
Out in the streets, almost everyone wore a gauze face mask, and in Alberta, the Board of Health made it mandatory. On Oct 31, the government prohibited all public meetings of seven persons or more. Edmonton eventually banned all public gatherings and closed all city schools, and churches and theatres.
In some communities across Canada, it was illegal even to shake hands. Mass gatherings at sporting events were curtailed - the Stanley Cup was cancelled after the death of a player. And children skipped rope to a new rhyme:
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.
Spanish Flu was a global disaster, the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. In total, at least 50,000 died in Canada, and 675,000 in the United States. Recent estimates says the flu killed as many as 50 million people around the world.
More people died in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) from 1347 to 1351. La Grippe killed far more soldiers than all the shells and bombs and bullets and gas of World War I. By 1919 the pandemic had burnt itself out, and the returning soldiers found Canada a country utterly changed.
The End of Craft Unions
The first labour unions in Canada were craft unions - of printers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, metalworkers, and so on, descended from the craft guilds of medieval times. Craft workers had to undergo long apprenticeships before becoming qualified professionals. They often came together to fight for better wages and working conditions. Although the Macdonald government allowed strikes in the Trade Union Act in 1872, such forms of protest were not supported by society at large. Still, some of the craft unions succeeded in gaining benefits for sickness, accident and death.
When the industrial revolution reached Canada, machinery threatened job security. The craft unions had to fight for stricter rules and regulations, in exchange for providing qualified workers. They were wary of merging with the industrial unions like the railway workers, and rejected the One Big Union (OBU) idea launched in June of 1919. The OBU was a huge industrial union that grew at its peak to over 50,000 members, and supported the Bolsheviks and other left-wing revolutionaries.
By the 1920s, most craft unions had disappeared because machines had replaced skilled labour. Only carpentry and the printing press unions remained strong.
Labour in Winnipeg
- The Winnipeg General Strike is immortal. It lives in the memory of those that are still with us and who took such an honourable part in the struggle for the rights of the producers of wealth. It lives in the memory of the sons and daughters of those that participated and to whom this story is being related by their parents during quiet family hours.
- Jacob Penner, strike participant, 1950.
By World War One, Winnipeg had mushroomed into Canada's third largest city. As a railway crossroads, it had enjoyed phenomenal growth as 'the gateway to the west.' At the same time, it had a long history of labour radicalism. However, it was the war and its aftermath that provoked the only general strike in Canadian history (when all the workers in a city go out on strike) in that city.
Conflict between the labour movement and local employers had also been growing in Winnipeg for many years. Union leaders had little trust in government and the courts, and argued that the state came too quickly to the aid of employers in industrial disputes. Indeed, Winnipeg was becoming known as "Injunction City" because of the ease that local employers won injunctions against strikes and picketing.
By 1919, Winnipeg, like every other major Canadian industrial center, had to adjust to the pressures of demobilization and a peacetime economy. Armament factories had to retool and soldiers had to find civilian jobs. Women retaining their jobs coupled with the arrival of immigrants added to the unemployment problem. The war had produced inflation but little in the way of wage increases as working people had agreed to Prime Minister Borden's request for a wartime wage freeze. So now, in the immediate aftermath of the war, there was a deadly combination - a desire to make up for lost wages and a scramble for jobs.
Returning soldiers were angry. They had risked their lives for their country and now were returning to economic chaos. They had great difficulty finding jobs. They sometimes saw them occupied by immigrants. They bristled at annual inflation rates of about forty percent. They heard tales of people who had profited immensely from the war. Meatpacker Joseph Flavelle, responsible for purchasing supplies for the army, was accused of selling substandard meat from his own factory at inflated prices.
The First Winnipeg Walkout
Added to the workers' anger and frustration was a growing sense of empowerment. They looked at what their colleagues in other nations were achieving, most notably the explosive growth of the Labour Party in Britain - which was part of Lloyd George's Wartime Coalition, won 42 seats in 1918 and would form the government in 1924. Some workers were even inspired by the violent worker's revolution that took place in the Soviet Union in 1917.
As early as 1917, there was talk of calling a general strike in Winnipeg against conscription. But that came to naught. The following year, when the Winnipeg City Council outlawed the right to strike for civic employees, municipal workers walked out and were joined in sympathy by several other unions. An important lesson was learned as the city government backed down. Organization, numbers, and radicalism were the route to effect serious change.
Not surprisingly, 1919, the year of the Winnipeg General Strike, was the worst for labour unrest in Canadian history. More working days were lost in that one year than in any other year. Workers were tired and frustrated. The moderate and gradualist tactics of the Trades and Labour Unions were insufficient to meet their demands. Workers were becoming radicalized by soaring inflation, massive unemployment, and social unrest. Many were inspired by the Communist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, or looked to the notion of the One Big Union (OBU) to harness the strength of workers' protest. Union leaders saw the increasing radicalism as a legitimate response to trying times, as a viable way of achieving union recognition and improvement for their membership. Governments, on the other hand, perceived it, in part due to the large immigrant composition of unions, as foreign and even Bolshevik inspired.
The Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council (WTLC)
In Winnipeg, the success of the civic workers in winning the right to strike, a pay increase, and union recognition encouraged other workers' groups. The actual general strike began when the members of the metal and building trades filed grievances over pay and working conditions. They also demanded union recognition. However, rather than dealing with one factory at a time, the workers demanded that the various factory owners negotiate with their union. On May 2, after three months of seeing their demands rejected, and with no resolution at hand, the Building Trades Council union decided to go out on strike on , and asked the bigger Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council (WTLC) for help. On May 6, the WTLC met and decided to poll all of its members on whether or not to launch a city-wide general strike to support the metal and building trades workers. On May 13, the WTLC announced the results: over 11,000 in favour of striking and fewer than 600 opposed.
The labour leaders expected solid support from railway, foundry, and factory workers, but were surprised by the strong backing they received from other unions. The city police voted 149 to 11 for strike action, the fire-fighters 149 to 6, the water works employees 44 to 9, the postal workers 250 to 19, the cooks and waiters 278 to 0, and the tailors 155 to 13. With this overwhelming mandate, the WTLC struck a Central Strike Committee to manage the walkout, and declared a general strike to begin on May 15, at 11:00 a.m
The Six Weeks of the Winnipeg General Strike
Promptly at 11:00 a.m., May 15, 1919, between 25,000 and 30,000 Winnipeg workers walked off the job at the big railway shops and yards. All factory production stopped. Winnipeg had no telephones, no gasoline, no streetcars, no taxi service, There was no delivery of mail, newspapers, telegrams, or milk. Most restaurants, stores, and even barber shops closed. And many were shocked and afraid when the police, fire fighters, and employees of the water works joined the strike. Out of 96 unions in the city, 94 joined the walkout, and thousands of non-unionized workers joined the strikers. More than 30 000 workers, from every sector, stopped working. The entire city of Winnipeg was shut down, paralyzed by striking workers.
The Citizens Committee of 1000
Winnipeg and local government officials wasted little time in answering the challenge. They founded the Citizens' Committee of 1000, a group of Winnipeg manufacturers, lawyers, bankers, and politicians. They ignored the strikers' basic demands for improved wages and union recognition, but mounted a campaign to discredit the strikers as Bolsheviks and "alien scum," declaring the strike a revolutionary conspiracy. The Committee asked Ottawa to send in troops to break up the strike, which in their estimation, was a grave threat to the lawfully elected municipal government.
The Citizens Committee worked closely with the federal authorities, who were fearful of a national strike as workers in other locales declared solidarity. Sympathy strikes were called in Brandon, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, New Westminster, Victoria, and in as many as 20 other towns. Fearing the encroachment of Communism in Canada, governments went on high alert. Arthur Meighen, then Minister of the Interior and acting Minister of Justice, was certain that the general strike was the work of outside communist agitators who wanted a violent revolution similar to the one in Russia just two years earlier.
On May 22, Meighen and the Labour Minister travelled to Winnipeg to meet with the representatives of the Citizens Committee, but the Strike Committee was not invited to join in the talks. On May 30, the police were asked to sign a contract to prevent them from joining unions. They refused, but declared that they would continue to maintain law and order. A few days later, the city fired the entire police force. On June 1st, 10,000 returned soldiers converged on the provincial Legislature and the mayor's office to announce their solidarity with the strike.
The city remained at a standstill as speeches became more radical and positions hardened. Police strikebreakers poured in. The army was put on stand-by. The R.C.M.P was on the ready. A 'special police corps' was deputized. On June 6, the federal government, very hurriedly, passed an amendment to the Immigration Act that empowered it to deport any citizen born outside of Canada - even British-born. (The Citizens Committee had previously called for the mass arrest of union organizers, which Meighen thought was an excellent idea but noted that unfortunately, illegal by the existing law.) On June 17, fearing a Bolshevik-style revolution, government sent agents to arrest and jail 10 leaders of the Central Strike Committee, including J.S. Woodsworth, and 2 propagandists from the newly formed One Big Union, under war emergency sedition laws, which were not repealed until 1936. They leaders were held without bail under the cover of the new immigration amendments.
Bloody Saturday
Matters came to a head on Saturday, June 21, when a large crowd gathered in downtown Winnipeg to protest the arrest of their strike leaders as well as the impasse in negotiations. The strikers became enraged. A streetcar was attacked, its windows smashed, turned over, and set on fire. Mayor Grey called on the North West Mounted Police to disperse the crowds. Mounties, on horseback, waded into the crowd, swinging their sticks.
In hopes of quelling the demonstration, the Mayor read the 'Riot Act' on the steps of City hall, and ordered the crowd to cease and desist, and called out the Army. Some strikers retreated, but many refused to clear the street. Now the police again charged into the crowd, weapons drawn. A Ukrainian immigrant named Mike Sokolowski was shot and killed and another striker later died in hospital of his wounds. At least 30 others were injured. More than eighty rioters were arrested.
As the crowd scattered onto nearby streets it was met by several hundred "special police" deputized by the city. Armed with baseball bats and wagon spokes supplied by local retailers, the "specials" fought the protesters and many were beaten severely. Soon the army was also on the streets, patrolling with machine-guns mounted on their vehicles. On Thursday, June 26, fearing yet more violence, strike leaders declared an end to the strike on June 26 at 11 o'clock .
The Strike Committee told its supporters that the next battle would be waged on a political level, starting with the dispatch of several labour delegations to the city, provincial and federal governments. The strike was now over, but its legacy was not soon forgotten.
Winnipeg Aftermath
The government quickly moved to curb any further such radical outbreaks. On June 26, J.S. Woodsworth was charged with seditious conspiracy for participating in the Winnipeg General Strike; the charges were later dropped. In July, Meighen passed Section 98 of the Criminal Code that entitled the government to arrest and deport anyone that it considered a threat to the peace and security of the country. Anyone who advocated using force to achieve political, economic, or industrial change could be caught under the new legislation. Belonging to any such radical organization carried with it a possible twenty-year prison term.
In the short-run, the Winnipeg General Strike was a failure for the labour movement in Canada. It achieved none of its immediate aims. Many workers were demoralized. Some were prevented from returning to their jobs and those who did found conditions, at best, unchanged. Union membership in the country declined by more than one-third (380 000 in 1919 to 240 000 in 1924) with the combination of a return of prosperity and the government crackdown. In some industries, employers established shop committees, which they controlled carefully, within their factories. In Quebec, the Catholic Church established its own trade union, the Canadian and Catholic Confederation of Trade Unions, founded in 1921. Catholic priests were assigned to oversee union affairs and make sure that radical unionism was kept at bay.
However, in the longer view, the Winnipeg General Strike did much to galvanize the labour movement in Canada - it is the only occurrence of a general strike in Canadian labour history. The Strike did eventually achieve some gains for working people. It forced the movement itself to purify itself of undue radicalism and foreign influence. In the future, organized labour would concentrate on more practical and incremental gains for its membership, and on winning at the ballot box as the Labour Party was doing in Britain. The Strike definitely strained relations between government and labour. However, it served notice that no longer could ruling authorities be indifferent to the calls of labour. Finally, it made martyrs out of some of the jailed strike leaders. People such as the editor of the strike newspaper, R.B. Russell and Trades and Labour official, A.A. Heap, were two of the more prominent individuals.
Woodsworth and Democratic Socialism
- There are dangers: all may become secular; there are wonderful possibilities: all may become sacred. For good or for evil we are out into the new world. Exclusive religion must more and more give way to an all-inclusive religion. Religion in the future will no longer be identified with the Church and Sundays and prayers and priests, it will become the every day life of the common man - that or nothing.
J. S. Woodsworth
Sermons For the Unsatisfied
Grain Growers' Guide, July 7, 1915
The most notable person to emerge from the Winnipeg General Strike was the remarkable J.S. Woodsworth. As a former Methodist minister, he long and tirelessly fought for the rights of the poor in the north end of Winnipeg. He came by his social conscience honestly. While studying in Cambridge, England, he worked helping the poor of east end London. He witnessed first-hand the suffering of factory wage-earners put out of work by economic depression. Returning to Canada, Woodsworth opened a mission in the north end Winnipeg for destitute immigrants. In his 1909, 'Strangers Within Our Gates' he wrote passionately about the desperate poverty and discrimination faced by Canada's recent arrivals.
Before being a minister, he had been a teacher, longshoreman, and social worker. (He became a longshoreman in 1918 in protest of his church's support of the war.) He was a gifted speaker with a strong strain of social humanism. He always championed the cause of the less advantaged. He was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy for his fiery pro-labour editorials during the General Strike. After being released from jail, the voters of north Winnipeg returned him to Parliament every election since 1921. (He would hold the seat of Winnipeg North Centre until his death in 1942.) In the 1920s, working with a number of other social activists, such as Agnes Macphail, he fought for old age pensions and improved working conditions.
In Calgary in 1932, at the height of the economic depression, Woodsworth joined with socialist (especially the 'Ginger Group' - a coalition of independent MPs), farm, and labour groups to form a new federal political party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation - the CCF. He saw the principal cause behind the depression in industrial capitalism itself. It required radical transformations through nationalization, massive assistance for the working person, and social reform. The CCF demanded 'democratic socialism.' Its 1933 Regina Manifesto became the bible and constitution of the new party. Woodsworth became its first leader. In its first election in 1935, the CCF returned seven MPs to Ottawa. In 1961, it merged with the CLC (organized labour) to form the New Democratic Party (NDP) with Tommy Douglas as leader. Rarely a major force in federal politics, until recently, the left wing CCF/NDP has however been a major power at the provincial level.
| Strikes & Labour Disputes - Gallery | Stories & Texts | Web Links | Student Activities | Student Projects |
| E. Maturing Culture and Identity →→ 1. Strikes and Labour Disputes 1918-1920 → 2. Canada in the Roaring Twenties → 3. The Great Depression and the Dirty Thirties → → 4. Home Made Solutions and Foreign Panaceas →→ A. World War II |
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