“Over the next few months, relief efforts increased dramatically, as did the number of threatened and actual strikes. Workers building the Northwestern Ontario section of the Trans-Canada Highway walked off the job over wages. Unemployment demonstrations also continued unabated. The Workers’ Unity League claimed to be taking a prominent role in each. Authorities clearly believed this to be the case, as surveillance increased and, as was the case in April, the CLDL [Canadian Labor Defence League] offices in Port Arthur and the Ukrainian Labour Temple in Fort William were raided and workers were arrested.
The raids may have prompted the renewed sense of solidarity that began just before May Day in 1933. Wobblies, Communists, and assorted trade unionists joined to form a committee to organize demonstrations in both cities. A reported 2,500 workers attended the parade and accompanying outdoor mass meeting. Cooperation was most apparent, however, in June 1933, when over 1,300 workers in the Thunder Bay and Nipigon districts began a strike under the leadership of a committee composed of both Communists and Wobblies
The LWIUC [Lumber Workers Industrial Union of Canada] would claim that it had organized the joint strike committee. Many signs, however, such as the central role of the Wobbly-controlled Labour Temple and the prominence of key figures, point to its formation through the united efforts of Wobblies, Communists, and even Finnish nationalists. In this instance, as in many others, the IWW and Communists could achieve things together that eluded them separately. Finnish and Ukrainian workers leery of Communists, especially given recent controversies regarding their language federations, could be brought into the struggle through the Wobblies. Thus, seemingly opposed forces – the Port Arthur Trades and Labour Council, the Young Communist League, the Finnish Organization of Canada (FOC), the LWIUC, and the IWW – all contributed to this epochal strike of the 1930s.
It was a large (1,300-strong), dramatic, and violent strike. It brought crowds of people into the streets of Port Arthur, and although it resulted in a disappointing wage settlement, below that demanded by the workers, such concrete achievements as the recognition of camp committees, no-discrimination agreements, and the reform of the truck system in the camps allowed the LWIUC to claim a moral victory. At the same time, the LWIUC blamed the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] for the settlement’s limitations, and emerged from the strike as its clear beneficiary – with a growth in its membership from 500 to 1,300 over the first six months of 1933. Moreover, because the CPC union, unlike the Wobblies, was willing to take part in government-imposed collective bargaining, it was left in a stronger, more permanent position.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1933, the CPC [Communist Party of Canada] continued to experience success in the forests of Northwestern Ontario. “An estimated 25,000 meals,” according to Mary Veltri, “were distributed to the strikers through the seven kitchens which were set up in the Lakehead, Tarmola, Lappi, Nipigon, North Branch, and Long Lac.” Donations and foodstuffs flowed from both the Communist and Wobbly halls in Port Arthur and Fort William. Much of this cooperation resulted from a mass conference held in August 1933. The LWIUC, IWW, unemployed and unorganized workers, and farmers from the region surrounding the Lakehead all participated and agreed on a strategy for the upcoming harvest and lumber season. A uniform piece rate of $2.50 per cord, a minimum monthly wage of $40, and a 75-cent daily charge for board were established. This solidarity ensured that when timber operators increased wages from the previous year, the mass committee rejected the offer.
The strike gained strength despite an attempt by the LWIUC representatives to take control of the joint IWW/CPC strike committee. By the middle of November, over 4,500 lumber workers were participating, most of them in the Thunder Bay District. In response, the police in Fort William and Port Arthur began to arrest strike fundraisers in an attempt to weaken the strike effort. In one incident, forty-seven picketers were arrested and thirty-three of them were sent to jail for two months or more. One outcome of the strikes was a change in tactics by the Canadian Administration of the IWW. The Canadian Executive Branch began to vigorously push forward the changes that its newly elected leader, George MacAdam, thought necessary for the survival of the IWW in Canada. Financially, MacAdam had inherited an administration no better off than that of the Communists. Writing to the other members of the IWW CEB [Canadian Executive Branch], he outlined the board’s priorities as he saw them. Foremost was a commitment to the establishment of the Canadian Defence Organization (CDO). MacAdam viewed the CDO as a necessity because, he argued, “if the IWW functions with success in the economic field, it will incur the hostility of the masters and their tools.”
While rational, the desire for the CDO demonstrates that the IWW was not acting as an innovative and forward-thinking organization. It was also trying to compete with the recent activities of the CPC’s Canadian Labour Defence League, which had failed to address the needs of all workers. MacAdam was concerned that “cases would be thrown upon us by the rival defence organization [the CLDL] and if we do not have a clear cut policy, we could not turn them down without losing prestige.” The CDO was ambitious in design and difficult to implement. A chronic lack of money meant that members were limited to the CEB and the CTKL. The CEB and MacAdam also proposed to model the CDO after the General Defence Committee. Funds would be generated through membership cards and stamps patterned after those currently used by the CTKL and Junior Wobblies Union, but as these were unavailable in 1933 and the cost was prohibitive, it was decided that a 25-cent stamp would be made compulsory for members one year and over and voluntary for those under one year. “Older members,” MacAdam argued, “thoroly [sic] understand the necessity of raising monies.”
Violence broke out again in early December 1933, when, after nearly a month of labour unrest in the bush camps, police attempted to break the ranks of strikers blocking strikebreakers from gaining access to the Pigeon Timber Company’s stables. Over fifty police officers armed with guns and batons attacked the unarmed strikers but were repelled. Undaunted, they next fell on a nearby workers’ hall and, with the assistance of a number of citizens, proceeded to enter and beat the men found asleep inside. Additional officers outside ambushed those who managed to escape. So indiscriminate did the police become that, according to one witness, they “did not distinguish strikers from bystanders and several onlookers and passersby in the vicinity received a cudgeling.” The next day, even the most ardently anti-Communist unions at the Lakehead added their voices to those protesting the city of Port Arthur’s involvement in the violence and demanding that the strike be resolved. Eight days after the police attack, many smaller operations bowed to pressure, reaching a settlement on wages and recognizing the unions involved. The larger companies agreed to align their wage scale with that of the other companies but continued refusing to recognize any unions. The CPC [and less so the IWW, whose funds ran out quickly] won renown in its fight against the timber companies, despite incurring the anti-Communist and anti-foreign wrath of the local media. Up to the end of 1933, the party was prominent in the extraordinary struggles unfolding in Northwestern Ontario."
- Michel S. Beaulieu, Labour at the Lakehead: Ethnicity, Socialism, and Politics, 1900-35. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011. p. 191-193, 196.
