Profile on film series and other activities created through the support of the BC Labour Heritage Centre in British Columbia. Written by Janet Nicole, originally published in Our Times Magazine, a Canadian magazine that focuses on social justice and workers' rights.

1. HE BOWS AND ARROWS UNION OF
Aboriginal workers lasted only a year, but
its members moved cargo on Vancouver’s
waterfront “with efficiency and speed” for
much longer. This lesser-known story is part of
Working People: A History of Labour in British Columbia, a
powerful documentary made up of 30 vignettes,
each story containing photographs, archival film
footage and songs.
The idea of preserving workers’ histories in film
came from the late Jack Munroe, one-time president
of IWA Canada (the International Woodworkers of
America). “If I had to sum up what it is I’ve tried to
accomplish,” Munroe wrote in his 1988 autobiog-
raphy, Union Jack, “it is to make trade unions an
accepted part of society.” Munroe helped to estab-
lish B.C.’s Labour Heritage Centre, the organization
behind Working People and several other projects.
Munroe lived long enough to see the film completed
before he passed away last November.
Working People, previewed on B.C.’s Knowledge
Network TV in March, will be distributed to the
province’s schools, along with a lesson package
developed by active and retired teachers (including
this writer), who are part of the Labour History
Project. The group is chaired by Ken Novakowski,
and works in partnership with the centre and the
BC Teachers’ Federation.
Novakowski believes these stories are essential in
B.C. classrooms. “When I was a teacher, my students
couldn’t see themselves in the history texts,” says the
retired social studies teacher and past president of
the BCTF. “They didn’t relate to politicians and
industrial barons. But they could see their parents
and grandparents in a history of working people.”
Students will find the vignettes interesting, Nova-
kowski predicts. “They are short and most carry a
message about our past,” he says. “The lesson plans
allow students to examine the stories more deeply —
stories that are often left out of the curriculum.”
The documentary also contains a human interest
element, Novakowski says, which will be appealing
36 M A Y / J U L Y 2 0 1 4 OUR TIMES
T
Taken in 1898, this photo shows a fishing fleet at the
mouth of the Fraser River, in B.C., two years before the
BC Fishermen's Union was formed.
WORKING PEOPLE
A History of Labour in British Columbia
PHOTOGRAPH:S.J.THOMPSON/CITYOFVANCOUVERARCHIVES(CVA-OUTP550)
By Janet Nicol

2. OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 M A Y / J U L Y 37
for television viewers. He does think, however, that
the necessity of collective action by workers, as
proven throughout history, could have been more
clearly shown. “Unity and solidarity are key to
making changes. The important thing for anyone
working in today’s workplace is to understand that
the rights they enjoy exist because working people
acted collectively over the past century and more.”
• • • •
First Nations people led Europeans to the gold
and coal seams in the 1800s, viewers learn in the
opening story, “First Economies.” Aboriginal people
were an essential part of the early Canadian
economies — “the foundation of B.C.,” as the story’s
narrator asserts. “Operation Solidarity,” the
concluding vignette, depicts thousands of trade
unionists and members of community groups
coming together in 1983 to protest regressive
provincial legislation. In those remarkable coalition
days, the people felt their collective power. Stories
in-between include the shooting of union organizer
Ginger Goodwin, and the On to Ottawa Trek by
unemployed men in the 1930s, both of which have
already made the history books.
Less has been passed down about the fate of gold
miners in the province’s interior in the mid-1800s;
men who dreamed of getting rich but ended up
being low-paid employees of mining bosses. Flat-
bottom steamboats were crucial in connecting
isolated communities, as one vignette depicts in
another lesser-known story. Anti-Asian attitudes,
within and outside of the labour movement, had
early, ugly roots, as illustrated in the portrait of
Won Alexander Cumyow, a Chinese-Canadian
born during the gold rush. The rights of youth may
have come a long way since the Victorian era, but
as the narrator of “Children at Work” points out,
B.C. is now the most child-labour-friendly jurisdic-
tion in North America.
• • • •
Working People covers a broad range of topics and
“not just the classic stories of loggers and fishers,
although those are included,” says Joey Hartman,
president of the Vancouver & District Labour
Council. She observes that the film is “packed with
content and historic images that are often animated
and given dimension.”
“Workers’ history is seriously underrepresented
in our schools and workplaces,” Hartman says.
“With the support of lesson plans designed to fit
within B.C. curriculum guides, the vignettes are an
invaluable tool for teachers and their students.”
Hartman, past vice-president of the Pacific Northwest
Labour History Association, has a passion for labour
history. Through the PNLHA and the VDLC, she
has been involved with the Labour Heritage Centre’s
various projects. “There is a wonderful synergy, as
the research and enthusiasm for one activity
inevitably informs and stimulates the others,”
Hartman says.
• • • •
Among the most hard-hitting stories in the docu-
mentary is “Vancouver Island War,” one of four
vignettes about the island’s coal industry. In 1912,
miners took a day’s holiday, laying down their tools
in protest over safety issues — not an unreasonable
action given that 373 men had died over the
previous decades working in the island’s coal mines.
Still, when the men tried to return to work the fol-
lowing day, the employer locked them out. “This
was the start of B.C.’s longest and most violent
strike,” the narrator states.
Sympathy strikes spread among employees at
other island coal mines. Workers were evicted,
starved, arrested and imprisoned. The bitter two-
year confrontation ended with the outbreak of the
First World War.
How the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),
known as the Wobblies, influenced railway workers’
Says Robin Folvik, staff at B.C.’s Labour Heritage Centre: “The
storyboarding part of the Working People project required the
glamorous task of lots of cutting and taping.”
The Labour History Curriculum Working Group has been developing
school lesson plans to accompany Working People. Front row (left
to right): Sarah Purdy, Janet Nicol, Marcia Toms, Ken Novakowski;
Second row (left to right): Wayne Axford, Tony Arruda, Gavin
Hainsworth, Robin Folvik; Back row (left to right): Scott Parker,
Al Cornes, John Decaire.
PHOTOGRAPH:SUSANCROLLPHOTOGRAPH:COURTESYROBINFOLVIK

3. 38 M A Y / J U L Y 2 0 1 4 OUR TIMES
lives is illustrated in “Where the Fraser River Flows.”
Family life in a company mill town (now aban-
doned) is described in “Ocean Falls.” We are
reminded of the dangerous work of ironworkers in
the telling of the Second Narrows bridge collapse
in 1958. The vignette about the struggle of farm
workers to organize in the 1970s underscores the
ongoing need to assert our basic workplace rights.
Vancouver Island sawmill owner Mayo Singh is
profiled, revealing the little-known history of a
particular Sikh community. Wilmer Gold pointed
his camera at early-day log-
gers and fallers at work. Buck
Suzuki, who lived through
the internment of Japanese-
Canadians after the Pearl
Harbour attack, is also featur-
ed. The story of the “Fishers’
Strike of 1900” shows how
the collective force of First
Nations, Japanese-Canadian and white workers
against cannery owners led to the formation of
a union.
• • • •
In the late 1800s, commercial fishing in British Columbia
was hugely profitable. The industry consisted of fishermen
from several different groups: Whites, First Nations and
Japanese. Each group worked independently, often competing
for the same stocks. By exploiting the divisions between the
fishermen, the cannery owners were able to manipulate the
price of fish and pay less than they should. The Japanese
fishermen were especially vulnerable since their homes and
supplies were provided by the cannery owners. But, in 1900,
the BC Fishermen’s Union was formed and it challenged the
dominance of the cannery owners.
— from the vignette “Fishers’ Strike of 1900”
• • • •
Jack Munroe worked with Rudy Buttignol, presi-
dent and CEO of Knowledge Network, to raise the
necessary funds to hire Landrock Entertainment, a
Vancouver-based film company, to produce Working
People. Robin Folvik, the lead film researcher (and
LHC staff member) worked with the team of direc-
tors and writers as they narrowed down a very long
list of possible stories. “Although there were themes
that we felt were important to include,” Folvik says, “a
large part of the criteria was the strength of the
existing visual material, along with a story that trans-
lated well into a three-minute short.”
Folvik considers “First Economies” one of the
most engaging vignettes she worked on. “Every-
thing that appears in subsequent vignettes is the
outgrowth of the history of colonialism, non-
Indigenous settlement, and the introduction of a
capitalist economy to this area,” she says. Capturing
the full complexity of this history was impossible,
Taken around 1887, this photo shows construction being done at a CPR
(Canadian Pacific Railway) crossing.
LABOUR HISTORY
WALKING TOURS
The Labour Heritage Centre’s updated booklet, Vancouver
Working-Class and Labour History Walking Tours,
contains a city map in the centrefold, with 10 or more
landmarks highlighted in each of the featured
communities: downtown, centre and eastside. Prepare
to join a tour and walk in the shoes of past generations
of working people. Alternatively, pay $5 for the booklet
and enjoy a self-guided tour.
One of the many fascinating old buildings still standing
on Dunsmuir Street is the Railway Club, formerly known
as the Railwayman’s Club. An archival photo of the
exterior appears in the booklet and, despite two Model-T
cars parked at the curb, the picture reveals that the
corner building still looks much the same today.
Another photo offers a glimpse of the club’s second-
floor interior, back in the day when thirsty labourers
sat on stools along a wooden bar facing a mirrored
wall. Today, the renovated space is a popular venue for
live music. Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang, Spirit of the West,
and many other musicians got their start here. But, as
the booklet states, the club originally opened on New
Year’s Eve in 1931 as “the new social headquarters for
Vancouver’s railwaymen.”
It’s easy to imagine CPR labourers finishing their shift
by the tracks along Burrard Inlet and walking up the city
streets to the club to socialize and unwind after a long
working day. They had been excluded from the engineers’
club, so, “the first rule of the new bar was that
engineers were not allowed.” The Railwayman’s Club
was “part of the fabric of everyday life for many workers,”
lasting more than 50 years before being sold to private
interests. — J.N.
Men dreamed of
getting rich but
ended up low-paid
employees
PHOTOGRAPH:CITYOFVANCOUVERARCHIVES(CVA-CANP25)

4. OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 M A Y / J U L Y 39
Folvik says, but she hopes the vignettes are a starting
point for conversations.
Digging into B.C.’s past made Folvik, who hails
from Nova Scotia, realize how much more work
needs to be done in labour history, including
unearthing women’s stories. Women, she observes,
are mostly absent in early labour history books.
Even when women are included, Folvik says, deeper
questions need to be asked. “For example, what
were victories for some women, were not victories
for all,” she says. “Women’s increased participation
in the workforce during World War II is often cele-
brated, but how does one reconcile that celebration
with the experiences of Japanese-Canadian women,
removed from their jobs and homes and sent to
internment camps?”
• • • •
The determination of Folvik and others resulted
in several vignettes featuring women’s stories. Mattie
Gunterman is profiled as a spirited frontier woman
who took photographs of people on the job and at
play in the Kootenay region. Helena Gutteridge, a
suffragette and advocate for working women in early
Vancouver, is also featured. Margaret Rutledge was
the first woman west of Toronto to become a pilot.
Less well known is Ethel Johns, who fought the
male-dominated medical establishment to improve
the status of nursing. Also fighting the good fight
was Connie Jervis, who led a legal battle to improve
teachers’ collective rights in 1939. Bea Zucco, no
“ordinary housewife,” crusaded for change in work-
place health and safety in the 1950s, after her
husband died of work-related lung disease.
Three vignettes highlight women’s collective
impact. “Trouble on the Line” looks at the early
activism of female telephone operators. Women are
depicted doing “men’s work” at Burrard Dry Dock
during the Second World War. It took an indepen-
dent, feminist union known as the Service, Office
and Retail Workers of Canada (SORWUC) to make
one of the first bold attempts to organize bank
workers in the 1970s.
• • • •
In the summer of 1976, SORWUC backed a group of
employees in Vancouver who were not being paid overtime.
These employees worked at one of Canada’s chartered banks
— institutions that, nationwide, employed 145,000, three-
quarters of whom were women. SORWUC organized their
first bank, a CIBC branch on Hastings Street in Vancouver.
— from the vignette, “By Women, For Women”
At the height of the Great Depression, thousands of jobless men were sent to federal relief camps in the Canadian wilderness. Here, they are
marching in protest on Hastings Street, in Vancouver.
PHOTOGRAPH:PACIFICTRIBUNEPHOTOCOLLECTION

5. • • • •
The lessons accompanying each vignette chal-
lenge students to interpret photographs, construct a
timeline, role play, debate, and explore websites.
Teachers can lead students to discuss class inequal-
ities, gender barriers and racial intolerance. Lessons
also include exploring child labour, then and now,
and comparing the treatment of workers in B.C. to
that of workers around the world. Students can
assemble biographies of coal miners and union
organizers. They can simulate a union organizing
drive using actual leaflets and membership cards
and, after small-group debates with a designated
organizer (and a teacher “boss”), the class can hold
a workplace vote. Another ambitious lesson involves
students researching a labour story and then creating
their own vignette.
“The voice of the working class and trade union
movement is more or less absent in our educational
system,” says Gary Teeple, director of Simon Fraser
University’s labour studies program. “Yet, the
perspectives of management, the corporation, and
the investor are there. Courses are even offered on
how to manage or manipulate the labour force,
prevent unionization, or undermine strikes.”
Teeple has been involved as a collaborator on
various projects with the Labour Heritage Centre,
including the expansion of the labour studies
program: SFU currently offers both credit and non-
credit courses in labour studies, and is in the process
of applying to offer a major. Kendra Stauss was
recently hired and is the first tenure-tracked labour
studies professor at SFU. And each year a student
receives a prize of $1,000 from the centre for the
best essay on a labour theme.
40 M A Y / J U L Y 2 0 1 4 OUR TIMES
PHOTOGRAPH:CITYOFVANCOUVERARCHIVES(CVA-1376-459)
Here is a photo of BCTel staff at switchboards, around 1895. Easy to
guess which person was the supervisor!
Workers’ history is seriously
underrepresented in our
schools and workplaces

6. OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 M A Y / J U L Y 41
Teeple commends the Labour Heritage Centre
for bringing together people with an interest in
labour history, and for drawing out “what meaning
it has for the present.”
“More jobs appear as precarious jobs. They are
insecure, poorly paid, non-unionized, and tempo-
rary,” he says. “Unemployment rates among youth
are very high, and have little prospect of declining,
given the continuous introduction of ever more
productive, robotized, labour processes. To confront
these dilemmas in the schools and workplace, we
must be able to understand what is happening.”
You won’t find a grandiose labour hall for
working people at the Labour Heritage Centre’s
office in Burnaby. The founders considered this idea
but, in the end, decided to maintain a small office
while establishing a large network of projects and
partnerships.
The centre’s first project was an impressive series
of educational history panels, which were installed
along the interior and exterior of the Vancouver
Convention Centre in 2010. Another project on the
promotion of worker safety, in partnership with
WorkSafeBC, includes a series of short films avail-
able on YouTube. Recently, author Andrew Neufeld
was commissioned to write a book on B.C.’s labour
history, funded by Vancouver’s Community Savings
Credit Union.
The Labour History Project is also updating and
extending the lessons in Youth, Unions and You, a high
school teachers’ guide to labour studies, jointly
produced in 2001 by the BC Teachers’ Federation
and the BC Federation of Labour, with assistance
from the provincial government. As well, lesson
plans are being developed to accompany These Were
the Reasons, a DVD about the issues leading people
to form unions.
Another major initiative has been the develop-
ment of a unit on labour history/studies for the
provincial Grade 12 social justice course. Sarah
Purdy, a social studies teacher in Burnaby and LHP
participant, has developed the bulk of the curriculum.
Novakowski praises the wide range of materials and
ideas in the package, from labour history to
contemporary topics. “Social justice tends to be
viewed as dealing with issues in poorer countries,”
he observes. “But, in Canada,” he says, “we have our
own history about the struggle for rights, equality,
justice and fair wages.”
Janet Nicol is a Vancouver-based freelance writer, high
school teacher and member of the BC Teachers’ Federation.
She is also a member of the Labour History Project.
To join the LHP’s Labour History Network, send an email
to Ken Novakowski: knova@telus.net. For more information
about B.C.’s Labour Heritage Centre, go to
www.labourheritagecentre.ca. For more information
about Working People: A History of Labour in BC,
visit BC Knowledge Network’s website:
www.knowledge.ca/program.