BC Labour Heritage Centre

Hand holding a cell phone displaying newsletter. Headline reads It's Here.

Read about the Nanaimo airplane crash that killed 23 workers in 1951. The passengers and crew were returning to Vancouver from the ALCAN construction project in Kitimat. The crash will be remembered with a new heritage plaque on August 16. mailchi.mp/labourherita...

Ep 32: Behind the Seams - Garment Workers in BC - On the Line: Stories of BC Workers For most of the 20th century, garment workers—mostly women—sewed, pressed and wove fabric on factory assembly lines throughout the Lower Mainland, before the domestic industry began to decline with gl...

"That was when I first heard the word 'scab'." In 1924 Anne Marshall was a waitress and striking longshoremen sparked her interested in unions. Learn about organizing garment workers in BC. www.buzzsprout.com/1312528/epis...

The Ginger Goodwin General Strike - Working People Built BC by Rod Mickleburgh Originally published in the Mickleblog August 2, 2018 At 12 o’clock sharp on Aug. 2, 1918 – one hundred years ago today –Vancouver transit operators stopped their streetcars in mid-...

This excellent article by Rod Mickleburgh described what happened after the shooting of #GingerGoodwin #FamilyHistory #LocalHistory #VancouverBC

www.labourheritagecentre.ca/the-ginger-g...

@bclhc.bsky.social

Coln talks about that experience in his oral history interview, and he brought in this copy of the B.C. Building Tradesman magazine for us to see.

Colin Snell Feb 18 2025 Interviewed by Rod Mickleburgh Colin was born in northern England in 1940. His working-class consciousness developed at an early age. At 16, he apprenticed as a…

"You go home after the day, hearing the stuff, and you say 'We cannot have this again. It cannot happen again.'"

Colin Snell was on the coroner's inquest jury after the tragedy at the Bentall Tower Centre IV that claimed four lives.

You can see his interview at vimeo.com/bclhc/colins...

Wonderful to see the renovated gravestone of #GingerGoodwin at Cumberland Cemetery on#VancouverIsland and proud to represent the Goodwin family in this process. #FamilyHistory #Mining @familytreeuk.bsky.social

Good to be at the archives in #CumberlandBC again. Lots of #GingerGoodwin memorabilia here. Heartwarming conversations with local people whose ancestors knew him. #FamilyHistory #LocalHistory #Mining

Still stops me in my tracks. Fellow family historians will get it - seeing my Great Great Uncle Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin immortalised on the wall of a supermarket in Cumberland. A bit faded now, but his spirit lives on!

#GingerGoodwin #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #CumberlandBC #LabourLegacy #Mining

So good to see the completed work in person. #GingerGoodwin #FamilyHistory 🌹

The work was approved by the Goodwin family. The Village of Cumberland provided a community grant to the project. Ginger Goodwin was shot by a federal constable on July 27, 1918 in the mountains outside of Cumberland, BC. His name is synonymous with labour history and the long fight for unions.

Three people stand by Ginger Goodwin's headstone. Lest We Forget. Ginger Goodwin Shot July 27th 1918. A Workers Friend.

Ginger Goodwin's headstone at the Cumberland Cemetery has received a facelift. Unauthorized alterations and vandalism have been corrected, as has the date of Goodwin's death. It will be another 6-8 months before the cleaning process is complete.
We expect the sandstone will look like new again. 1/2

The 1919 Prince Rupert General Strike - Working People Built BC “A Duty to Organized Labour and Workers Throughout the Whole Dominion” When the Winnipeg General Strike began on May 15, 1919 sympathy strikes in communities across Canada soon broke out.  In British…

The 1919 Prince Rupert General Strike (June 10 - July 4) marked a milestone on the road to building a strong labour movement in northwest BC. The strike was based entirely on support for workers over a thousand miles away.

July 2025 Newsletter

mailchi.mp/labourherita...

July 2025 Newsletter

"We are not just Japanese or Asians, but workers of the world, and we sincerely hope that you will be able to replace exclusion with fraternity."

Learn about BC's Japanese Camp and Mill Workers' Federal Union, formed in 1920, excluded by labour until 1927, and destroyed by mass internment in 1942.

Seven Japanese men sitting and standing by a pile of lumber.

Four Japanese men sitting beside railway track.

Three men standing. Man in middle is Roy Miyazawa

Printed advertisement for Camp and Mill Workers Federal Union No. 31 - Vancouver and vicinity meets every second Wednesday at 8 p.m. at 544 Powell St. East. President H. Miyazawa; Secretary, K. Tsuyuki.

"The more forcefully you exclude us, the more we are exploited by the capitalists." Japanese Camp and Mill Workers' Union wanted to be included in the labour movement in order to combat Asiatic Exclusion, but were refused. Learn about this story in our July newsletter. mailchi.mp/labourherita...

Special notice to strikers

Western labour revolt 1919 timeline

Mass meeting at the arena this afternoon. Chair to be taken at 2.30. Proceeds to be Used for Necessitous Cases. Everybody attend. Women invited.

Woman telephone operator

June 25, 1919 the Winnipeg General Strike came to an end. Workers in BC who supported the Winnipeg strikers returned to work, with the notable exception of the Vancouver's women telephone operators, who remained out for another 13 days.
Praise came from the labour press. #bclab #bchist #labourhist

Sucha Deepak Dec 2 2024 Interviewed by Dr. George Davison Sucha Singh Deepak was born in 1948 in Punjab, India and immigrated to Canada in 1970, where he worked in lumber mills in Quesnel,…

"Look, it's not the PPWC or the IWA, it's you people. The union is you. It's not anybody else."

Hear Sucha Deepak's union story as a millworker, business agent and troubleshooter. vimeo.com/bclhc/suchad...

#LabourHistory #PrinceGeorge #UnionStrong @uswmetallos.bsky.social

Remember Battle of Ballantyne Pier, Wednesday June 18, 2025, 11 am, New Brighton Park, Vancouver

Four women with signs reading Fight for your Rights, Fight for the right to Organize.

Horses and police with batons chasing men up staircase.

Policeman on horseback strikes man on sidewalk.

2025 is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Ballantyne Pier, a pivotal event in BC longshore history. #bclab #bchist #bcunion

#OtD 14 Jun 1872 unions were legalised in Canada through the Trade Unions Act after a wave of illegal strikes and protests. Still the law didn't compel employers to recognise or bargain with unions, and picketing remained illegal stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8584...

Miners Memorial Weekend with Jane Player, Joey Hartman and Sussanne Skidmore at Ginger Goodwin's grave in Cumberland, BC. #bchist #bcpoli #bclab

Hands holding tablet displaying photograph of women in uniforms. June 2025 Newsletter. Conductorettes, The First Women to Drive Transit.

Listen to three women who were the first to drive transit in Vancouver. Unlike wartime workers in shipyards and factories, these women kept their jobs after World War II, thanks to their union. This, and much more in today's newsletter! #bchist #bcpoli mailchi.mp/labourherita...

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Filmmaker Juan Andrés Bello will be in attendance and joined in conversation afterwards by Sean Griffin of the BC Labour Heritage Centre. Sean has known and interviewed a number of Trekkers and written about the relief camp strike and the Trek. 2/3

Photograph of man sitting on top of train car

HAPPENING TONIGHT IN VANCOUVER. On the 90th Anniversary of the start of the On-To-Ottawa Trek, Juan Bello's documentary featuring hundreds of archival photographs will be shown at the VIFF Centre. 1/3

Though military use left the Blair Rifle Range severely contaminated, read how the property was part of0 the social upheaval of the Great Depression when it was a relief camp for single unemployed men. #bchist #bclab #unions Read the whole story: www.labourheritagecentre.ca/wordpress/wp...

HISTORY BUFF: Unions and organized labour in Nelson Tressa Ford writes about how unions got their start in the West Kootenay

www.nelsonstar.com/opinion/hist...

Congratulations on 10,000 podcast downloads

www.buzzsprout.com/1312528/epis...

A group of women in uniforms pose for photograph.

Three women in transit uniforms pose in front of number 23 Macdonald bus.

A woman driving a transit bus

Two women in transit uniforms leaving a building

When the men were at war fighting fascism in Europe in the 1940s, women were hired to work on Vancouver's streetcars. They joined the union and kept their seniority after the war, some moving on to trolley and diesel buses into the 1970s. Our latest podcast episode features their voices. #bchistory