1919: The end of the Great War…return home… and then …?

Edmonton Workshop 1907: What visual details help us determine what the working conditions were like?

A wartime factory: Contrast the working conditions with the previous workshop.

Another Stark Contrast: Rich and Poor

Worker housing

Terms! Collective bargaining Union Strike Lock out General Strike

Strike! May 1st, 1919: building and metal trades workers go on strike for better wages Two weeks later, the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council appealed for a general strike in support of the metal workers. The response was overwhelming. The first to walk out were the "Hello Girls," Winnipeg’s telephone operators. By 11 a.m., 30,000 union and non-union workers had walked off the job. The almost unanimous response by working men and women closed the city's factories, crippled its retail trade and stopped the trains. Public-sector employees such as policemen, firemen, postal workers, telephone operators and employees of waterworks and other utilities joined the workers of private industry in an impressive display of working-class solidarity. The strike was co-ordinated by the Central Strike Committee. The committee bargained with employers on behalf of the workers and co-ordinated the provision of essential services. (Canadian Encyclopoedia)

A strike committee was formed and for six weeks, it virtually ran Winnipeg. Elevators shut down, trams stopped, postal and telephone communications came to a halt, and nothing moved without approval from the strike committee. Sympathy strikes were breaking out across the country.

OPPOSITION TO THE STRIKE WAS ORGANIZED BY THE CITIZENS' COMMITTEE OF 1000, CREATED SHORTLY AFTER THE STRIKE BEGAN BY WINNIPEG'S MOST INFLUENTIAL MANUFACTURERS, BANKERS AND POLITICIANS. RATHER THAN GIVING THE STRIKERS' DEMANDS ANY SERIOUS CONSIDERATION, THE CITIZENS' COMMITTEE, WITH THE SUPPORT OF WINNIPEG'S LEADING NEWSPAPERS, DECLARED THE STRIKE A REVOLUTIONARY CONSPIRACY LED BY A SMALL GROUP OF "ALIEN SCUM." THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE FAILED TO SUPPORT ITS CHARGES THAT THE STRIKE WAS INITIATED BY EUROPEAN WORKERS AND BOLSHEVIKS, BUT THE CITIZENS' COMMITTEE USED THESE UNSUBSTANTIATED CHARGES TO BLOCK ANY CONCILIATION EFFORTS BY THE WORKERS. (Canadian Encyclopedia)

It had been only 18 months since the Czar of Russia was overthrown, following a general strike in Petrograd and now the Canadian government feared a revolution at home. "The leaders of the general strike are all revolutionists of varying degrees and types, from crazy idealists to ordinary thieves," said Arthur Meighen, Canada's Solicitor General.

James Shaver Woodsworth was a Protestant minister and social activist who joined the strike. He disagreed with Meighen: "This strike is not engineered from Russia ... In reality the strike has nothing to do with revolution. It is an attempt to meet a very pressing and immediate need. The organized workers like everyone else are faced with the high cost of living. Like most people they imagine that is if they can get higher wages they can buy more food ... "

Federal Government Reaction: - Immigration act - “Specials” - Royal Northwest Mounted Police

After six weeks! Specials tried to break up a crowd listening to a speech Northwest Mounted Police ordered to put down demonstrations with ‘necessary force’ 10 leaders of the Central Strike Committee and 2 propagandists from the newly formed One Big Union.

War Veterans organized a parade to protest government restrictions – 6000 attend

Strikebreakers arrive by streetcar to break up the parade.

Veterans overturn a streetcar and set it on fire!

Here we go!

"Then with revolvers drawn," editor of the Western Labour News, Fred Dixon reported, "[the Mounted Police] galloped down Main Street, turned, and charged right into the crowd on William Avenue, firing as they charged.

One man, standing on the sidewalk, thought the Mounties were firing blank cartridges until a spectator standing beside him dropped with a bullet through his breast ... dismounted red coats lined up ... declaring military control."

The Specials

On that Bloody Saturday, two strikers were killed, thirty-four others were wounded, and the police made 94 arrests. Fearing more violence, workers decided to call off the strike On June 25, at exactly 11:00 in the morning, the strikers returned to work. Forty days after it began, the largest social revolt in Canadian history has been crushed.