(The following article is from the June 1-15,  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

   This month will see activities in Vancouver and other cities marking the 75th anniversary of a critical period in the working class movement of Canada. The year 1935 is best remembered for the "On to Ottawa Trek," crushed by the ruling class in Regina to block a radical challenge to the established capitalist order.

     Other important events are also being marked, especially the "Battle of Ballantyne Pier," one of the key episodes in the struggle to organize the docks in Vancouver. Less well known but also important in the shaping of working class militancy was the brutal police attack in April 1935 against striking miners and their wives in Corbin, BC. These three pivotal events erupted in one province, reflecting the particularly bitter class struggle on the west coast for decades leading up to 1935.

     In our next issue, we will look at the story of Corbin and the Battle of Ballantyne Pier. (The latter will be commemorated by the International Longshore Workers Union on Saturday, June 19, starting with a march from the Maritime Labour Centre at 9 am, a rally at New Brighton Park at 12 noon, and an evening dinner and dance. For details call ILWU Canada, 604-254-8141.)

     Maintaining the memory of the Trek has been the aim of the On to Ottawa Historical Society in recent years. (See http://www.ontoottawa.ca.) The Society is holding a public event on Sunday, June 6, from 1 to 3 pm in east Vancouver's Crab Park. That location, at the north foot of Main Street, is where hundreds of Trekkers, led by the Relief Camp Workers Union, boarded CPR freight trains on the morning of June 3, 1935. Their strategy was to take the demand for "work and wages" directly to the Conservative government of R.B. "Iron Heel" Bennett, notorious for opposing unemployment insurance or any other social program to ease the mass suffering of the Great Depression.

     The June 6 event will be linked to the contemporary struggle to force governments to build social and low-income housing to alleviate the crisis of homelessness. Representatives of the homeless and unemployed will be among a delegation heading to Ottawa, with stops along the way. The delegation will support Bill C-304, proposed legislation to implement a national housing program.

      Sadly, the last of the original Trekkers of 1935 has passed away. Many of the survivors of this historic movement were first reunited 25 years ago, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Trek in 1985.

     Veterans of the Trek also went to Ottawa along with labour and unemployed activists. They succeeded in winning a meeting with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, using the opportunity to put forward demands for action to tackle unemployment during the prolonged recession of the early 1980s.

     For modern day readers, the Wikipedia article on the Trek provides a better than average short sketch of this historic struggle. But this article ignores the key role of the Communist Party until the very end, when it states that the Party "was behind the organization of the Trek."

     The Trek was actually organized by the Relief Camp Workers Union, one of the trade unions which emerged during the Depression after the opportunist labour leadership of the time utterly failed to lead struggles to defend jobs, wages and working conditions. Workers turned to unions largely led by Communists, who were not afraid to fight the bosses.

     But the real impetus for the Trek was the situation in the relief camps scattered across western Canada, where the men (only single males were allowed) were paid just twenty cents per day for doing backbreaking labour. Forced together under terrible conditions, the men naturally began to organize into the RCWU. Some were veterans of the First World War, not easily terrified by authority, but with a strong sense of discipline and training.

     After strikes and other actions in the camps achieved little, the RCWU called a meeting in Kamloops in the spring of 1935. That meeting was organized by 20-year-old Maurice Rush, a Young Communist League member who later in life became the BC leader of the Communist Party. The delegates called a walkout and brought about 1600 camp workers to Vancouver for a two-month series of protests in Vancouver. The story of that exciting spring is well told in a book called Fighting Heritage, published in 1985 by the Pacific Tribune, one of the predecessor newspapers prior to People's Voice.

     One of the leading figures in the 1985 effort was Regina's Bill Gilbey, a longtime labour leader in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. During the Dirty Thirties, Gilbey was one of countless young unemployed who criss-crossed the country looking for work until he was compelled to enter the "relief camps." His story refutes the claim that the Communists "used" the unemployed for their own ends.

     Bill Gilbey was assigned by the RCWU to stay behind in Vancouver when the Trekkers hopped the freights. Somebody had to keep the union office running, put out news releases, and raise funds. By that time a Communist, Gilbey knew his task was important, but for fifty years he regretted missing the Trek. He eventually became the president of the Grain Services Union, and served for several tumultuous years during the early 1960s as president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour. When the time came to mark the 50th anniversary, he put countless hours into the celebration and was among those who challenged Brian Mulroney.

     The famous photo of the eight Trekkers who went to Ottawa in mid-June of 1935 for talks with Bennett includes other Communists, notably Arthur "Slim" Evans, a veteran labour organizer, and young Bob ("Doc") Savage. These men and countless others took great risks during a historic period when fascism was on the rise and many revolutionaries paid the price with their lives.

     The Trekkers who came together in 1985, Communists and other progressives, were genuine heroes. None gained riches or high status for their efforts, which led to the defeat of the Bennett government, the disbanding of the slave labour camps, unemployment insurance, and many other victories. Some died fighting fascism in Spain, others in the bitter war against Hitlerism. Some were blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Most remained active in the working class movement in various ways for the rest of their lives.

     The Wikipedia article concludes that the On to Ottawa Trek helped "increase the notoriety" of the Communist Party. It would be correct to say that the Communists became known as the most determined fighters for the working class, willing to make the greatest sacrifices. Such notoriety is a badge of honour which Communists wear proudly to this day.