(The following article is from the March 16-31, 2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

By Kimball Cariou

A decision to deny commemoration for the labourers who built the Rideau Canal has stirred up controversy in the Ottawa area.

     An application for recognition of the labourers was submitted to the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, which turned down the proposal last December. The Board, which honours Canada's historically significant people, places and events, said it did not dispute the hard work of the canal labourers. However, it claimed, they did not meet the bar of "national historic significance," because their work "represented a typical and common form of labour at the time, and that it was not unusual, nor was it remarkable."

     The request was put forward in 2006 by labour activist Kevin Dooley, a member of the Canal Workers Commemorative Group which succeeded in getting Parks Canada to place interpretive plaques honouring the workers along the Canal.

     About 1,000 manual labourers died between 1827 and 1832, digging the 202-kilometre Canal out of rocks, forests and lakes between Ottawa and Kingston. Many were Irish immigrants or French Canadians, who used picks, shovels, and axes, working under conditions of poverty, disease and danger.

     "Terrible working conditions. Taking your life in your hands every day: rockfalls, drownings, explosions, malaria," Dooley told the Ottawa Citizen. "When you look at building a pioneer country - tens of thousands of destitute people coming from Ireland, building up that infrastructure that would build up that country - it reflects that this country was built on blood, sweat and tears."

     "We do understand the suffering and the loss, but there were a lot of large-scale construction projects going on at the time, and how do we distinguish one from the other?" said Julie Dompierre, executive secretary of the board. "Workers worked in similar conditions across the country. What's the story we're trying to tell here that makes this one nationally historically significant? And they did not see that emerge."

     Many of the labourers were Irish immigrants, bringing little more than the clothes on their backs, forced to build their own shelters in work camps. Their strikes helped set the stage for the rise of unions during the expansion of industry in Canada, as Parks Canada historian William Wylie wrote to the Board.

     Wylie noted the canal was designated as a National Historic Site in 1925 and Colonel By, appointed by Britain to head the construction, was named a National Historic Person in 1954.

     "The present nomination turns this emphasis on its head by highlighting the labour-intensive nature of the project and focusing on the role of the people who did the actual physical work," Wylie wrote. "At great personal cost, they did all the backbreaking and dangerous work. In this respect, the Irish labourers, together with the French Canadians and others, made a significant contribution to Canadian history and one that typifies the contributions of canal construction workers generally in the first half of the 19th century."

     In a Feb. 16 editorial, the Ottawa Citizen criticized the Board's decision, pointing out that the Rideau Canal played a critical role in blocking schemes by the United States to take over Canada from Britain.

     "Building the Rideau Canal today would be a major undertaking, but to have done so in 1827, when Canada was but a collection of rocks, trees and water, was miraculous," continues the editorial. "The historic dimension of this project needs hardly be argued anymore. Indeed, the canal is already a National Historic Site of Canada and, of course, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Even more impressive is that the canal remains a working waterway. How many highways have come and gone and been repaved in the time the Rideau Canal has been operating? How many bridges and overpasses have been rebuilt? Roads are eroded by water but the canal is actually water. Its stonework and walls have withstood the pressures of moisture and freezing decade after decade. The Rideau Canal is a story worth telling, again and again."