Active History

Jim Naylor

The militancy, radicalism, and enthusiasm of large numbers of Toronto workers suggested they were on a parallel path to Winnipeggers leading up to that city’s general strike. The final year of the war had seen a new spirit among Toronto’s workers in ways that mirrored Winnipeg’s. For instance, Toronto’s Civic Employees’ Union had grown steadily to perhaps 1,500 members by the summer of 1918 when the Toronto District Labour Council (TDLC) rallied to their support for a substantial increase in wages. In doing so, the TDLC explicitly referred to Winnipeg’s labour council’s threat of a general strike in support of municipal workers in that city. That threat, along with a short strike by Toronto civic workers, resulted in an arbitrated agreement that met most of their demands.

Through the final months of the war and into 1919, the Toronto labour movement grew dramatically—and transformed. Older unions grew in new ways; the machinists organized less-skilled “specialists,” often women. The building trades became increasingly unified. Not only were they willing to call out all 7,400 members of the industry in Toronto in support of the painters, the building trades council established its own strike fund—independent of the international unions—to enable such actions. New unions among teamsters, telephone operators, bank workers, and domestic servants emerged. The Meat Cutters and Butcher Workers’ union grew from 22 members in 1918 to about 4,000 in 1919, making them the largest union local in the city, and with a gender and ethnic diversity that reflected the changing character of the labour movement.

“Striking Workers (ca. 1919),” City of Toronto Archives. Courtesy of Craig Heron.

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Tom Langford

On 24 May 1919, some 7,000 unionized coal miners in Alberta and southeastern British Columbia (BC) went on strike even though their union, District 18 of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), had recently agreed to a short-term contract extension and had not even begun bargaining for a new contract.

This mass strike has perplexed labour historians since the stated goal of the walkout was to reverse a small cut in pay that a handful of surface workers at BC mines faced because of a new 8-hour law in that province. It is noteworthy that the initial call for a strike likewise baffled the miners at Fernie, BC: they went so far as to refuse to hold a strike vote. In response, District 18 President Phillip Christophers journeyed to Fernie to try to convince the miners to get on board with the strike. “According to street talk after the meeting,” reported the general manager of the Crow’s Nest Pass Coal Company, Christophers “had assured the men that ‘a strike would bring the Company to its knees in a few days.’” Yet even with this brazen (and ultimately inaccurate) promise, the District 18 president only managed to get two-thirds of the 572 voters in Fernie to approve strike action.

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Tom Mitchell

The the sympathetic strike in Brandon, Manitoba was the longest and most cohesive of the sympathy strikes that erupted across Canada in support of the Winnipeg General Strike. It began 20 May 1919 and persisted until the end of June. It was preceded in late April by a dramatic and successful civic employees’ strike following the creation of a Brandon local of the Civic Employees Federal Union, and followed, at the end of June, by an ill-conceived and futile call to continue the general strike following its termination in Winnipeg.

The Brandon General Strike was the climatic event in a period of labour militancy dating from the reconstitution of the Brandon Trades and Labour Council in 1917. Brandon’s sympathy strike was rooted in the conviction that labour could achieve its legitimate aspirations for union recognition and improved economic conditions only through solidarity and direct action; it was fueled by economic grievances accumulated during the Great War.

Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, Wheat City Lodge #464. Courtesy of S.J. McKee Archives, Brandon University. Continue reading →

Nolan Reilly

Workers in Amherst, Nova Scotia milled around the gates to the sprawling yards of Canadian Car and Foundry railcar building shops. They were hearing union leaders report on the company’s refusal to give Amherst workers the same contract they had signed with workers in Montreal. There would be no union recognition, no nine-hour day with ten hours pay, no wage increases, no commitment to consult workers before changing work rules.

Calls for action punctuated the air, and workers “formed in a parade, marching through the principal streets of Amherst” to their meeting hall. Joined there by workers from Amherst’s seven other major factories, they cheered the call for a general sympathetic strike. Meet the demands of the railway car builders and negotiate contracts in Amherst’s other factories, the workers demanded. When put to a vote—one member, one vote—the motion to launch a general strike the next morning won strong support.

On the morning of 19 May, Amherst workers—skilled and labourers, women and men, union and non-union—shutdown the town’s industries. Even the mechanics in the local garage went on strike. It was a community strike, just like the one that had started four days earlier in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Library and Archives Canada- machine shop in background. Robb Engineering Works Limited, Amherst, N.S. 1914-1918.

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