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03:12Iniginous peoples have been a crucial part of this economy
03:14right from the very beginning
03:15when First Nations kept settlers and explorers alive
03:19by showing them how to use the natural resources of the area
03:25A lot of the early structures required indigenous participation
03:29it required indigenous knowledge
03:31it even required indigenous permissions in many cases
03:34so this is a kind of interesting aspect which we don't really see today
03:40In the 1830s and 40s the Hudson's Bay Company
03:43was both the largest commercial enterprise
03:46and essentially the governing power here in British Columbia
03:49and as coal is becoming a huge industry for heating
03:54and for industrial boilers
03:56they start looking for coal
03:57and they are shown coal by indigenous peoples
04:00And who did they hire to mine the coal?
04:04The local First Nations people
04:05and they put it onto boats
04:07because the ships were offshore there
04:09and indigenous women would row the coal out to the boats
04:13and they'd get paid in blankets or whatever they got paid in
04:16but those were the first coal miners
04:20So the surface coal was easy to get at
04:23but the First Nations didn't know anything about underground mining
04:25and that's where the real lucrative coal was
04:28They thought that they could bring in British coal miners
04:32with lots of experience
04:33but hadn't realized that coal miners in Britain had a sense of community
04:38that meant that they did not see themselves as the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company
04:48They arrive at Fort Rupert and they find conditions are not what they thought
04:52Instead of being paid wages per hour
04:55they were paid by the ton
04:57and that often meant to make a decent wage
05:01you had to take shortcuts in safety
05:03And what did they do?
05:05They go on strike
05:08The Hudson's Bay Company presumed that they could tell their workers what to do
05:13and since they were also the government
05:15had the resources to throw them in jail if they disobeyed
05:18Two or three of the ringleaders were thrown in jail
05:21so you had right off the bat the first industrial workforce going on strike
05:26and then being punished by the authorities for going on strike
05:30So that pushed miners to form unions to fight back
05:37Robert Dunsmuir was a Scottish miner
05:40and he had a relative that was going to British Columbia
05:43and basically on a whim he went on that ship
05:51He was a company man
05:53and he was never a fan of the ordinary workers
05:55He believed that he was special
05:58and therefore had earned the right to tell other people what to do
06:03to make them work under terrible conditions
06:08and quickly moved from being a miner
06:11to deserting his comrades and fellow workers
06:15to becoming a coal mine owner and operator himself
06:19and became one of the most notorious of the robber barons in North America
06:26He believed in making his money by of course paying the workers as little as possible
06:32unsafe mines
06:43They went on strike
06:44He would first evict them from their company homes
06:46and say you'll never work in my mines again
06:49When the miners would try to organize a union
06:52he would never ever recognize the union
06:54and he made that clear to them
06:56He was as hard a man as the surface of the coal
07:02And if you think the white miners were exploited
07:04you can imagine what the conditions were like for the Chinese miners
07:08And Dunsmuir was the first to really start hiring a lot of Chinese laborers
07:13and they would often do the really unsafe jobs
07:16The conditions in those mines were just appalling
07:30The coal mining is highly explosive
07:33and there are several devastating explosions in BC history
07:37that killed hundreds of people
07:47The loss of life was unbelievable
07:50And for families in the mining community
07:53it was absolutely devastating
07:56There was one explosion in 1887
08:00150 miners died
08:03It's still the second worst mining disaster in Canadian history
08:07The loss of life compared to the number of workers
08:10was basically the worst in the world
08:15Dunsmuir amassed so much money
08:17and we have streets named after him
08:21But what about the workers that made him rich
08:23that fought against him for decent wages and working conditions
08:26Why aren't they recognized?
08:34But you keep fighting for something
08:35and there's a kind of a recognition
08:37that this is a social issue that should be addressed
08:42And eventually we got workers' compensation in 1902
08:46and the first in the British Commonwealth
08:48and that's a direct result of the ongoing struggle
08:52by the coal miners of Vancouver Island
08:56I don't think people realize how significant the Chinese population was
09:04in a lot of these mining communities
09:09Cumberland was a significant mining community
09:13and it was a multicultural community
09:16Same thing with Nanaimo
09:18There was an active mine
09:20The Chinatown was significant
09:21and on the other side of the road
09:24was the African-Canadian community
09:34Most Canadians recognize that there was an African-Canadian population on the East Coast
09:41but they don't realize that the rest of Canada also had an African-Canadian community
09:48I had no idea that we'd even had one
09:51I didn't really believe it
09:53I remember finding that out and then going to the library
09:56and finding out that James Douglas may have been a quarter Black
10:00and that he was a powerful man who had a lot of influence
10:05For me that was kind of a big moment
10:06because my whole life I had kind of had this feeling like
10:11Black people don't really have history here
10:16So Douglas invited a number of Black people from the States from California
10:22Douglas' promises to those people was opportunity
10:26And opportunity was something that was in really short supply for Black people at that time
10:31particularly in the States
10:33He was certainly aware of the situation in California
10:37with the racial discrimination that Blacks were facing at that time
10:42but also many of them had family members who were still in slavery
10:49The 1840s, 1850s in America is the period leading up to the Civil War
10:54America is in crisis between slave states and free states
10:58and they start to introduce legislation in California
11:01that doesn't allow Black people to buy property
11:04doesn't allow them to testify in court against whites
11:06and then there's a Supreme Court decision
11:08which allowed people to claim a Black person as an escaped slave
11:12and basically take them back to a slave state
11:16The Black folks that came thought this is the land where we will be free
11:21to be ourselves, free from all of the hatred, the violence, the fear
11:27that we live under in the United States
11:30They were satisfied that they would be able to vote
11:33and be protected under British law
11:35Those were things that they had not had in the United States
11:38And so over the next several months
11:40several hundred Black pioneers came and settled here
11:44It's said that they doubled the population when they arrived
11:50Douglas recognized that their motive for being here was to avoid Americans
11:54and he enlisted them to act as police officers, kind of a local militia
11:58to defend the colony against the same people that they're trying to escape
12:02So the first real police force is actually Blacks who had come from California
12:11After they arrived in Victoria, we started seeing advertisements in newspapers for their businesses
12:17They owned saloons, clothing stores, grocery stores
12:21They were barbers, bakers, washermen
12:25One was a lawyer
12:26Mifflin-Gipps was involved in several business enterprises
12:29Was the first Black person to be elected to city council in British Columbia
12:33There were about 150 businesses, shops and services run by Blacks
12:39So that community came there running away from slavery
12:42They moved up here with the sort of promise that the British Empire was different than the States, right?
12:49They wouldn't face the same kind of racisms or barriers to their advancement
12:53And in the beginning in Victoria, some of them became quite successful
12:57But as they became more successful, they began to draw more attention from the larger community
13:03And at that time, that didn't turn out to be a good thing
13:06White people in that community may have been happy having Black people in the community
13:10Had they known their place, but as soon as they became more prominent
13:13They began to be attacked by the white community
13:17And this is a theme that'll come up even when we start looking into the history of Vancouver
13:26Vancouver, like many other urbanizing areas at that time
13:31The late 1800s, early 1900s
13:33Absolutely implemented and upheld racial segregation by land use
13:38In Vancouver, there are restrictive covenants on title to this day
13:43Where people of African descent, people of Chinese descent, Indigenous people
13:47Were prohibited from owning housing
13:50Northeast Falls Creek was considered the racialized part of Vancouver
13:54So, just like the Chinese, Japanese, and people of South Asian descent
13:59Black folks clustered in this area that came to be known as Hogan's Alley
14:09Hogan's Alley means a lot of different things to different people
14:11It was a neighborhood where there was the largest concentration of Black people in the city of Vancouver
14:17But it was very multi-ethnic
14:21It allowed people from that community to have their own safe space
14:25They could develop their own social networks, their economic capital and interdependence
14:30As well as a little bit of political capital
14:32It was a place you could actually go to have a good time in Vancouver
14:36You could get a drink, you could listen to music
14:39Things were more entertainment focused
14:42And during the day, that's when families were present
14:46And they were doing things that families do
14:48It was this tight-knit community
14:52And the church that was formed under the leadership of Nora Hendricks
14:56The Fountain Chapel was the cornerstone of that community
14:59I think moving through Hogan's Alley, particularly for Black people
15:05Would have been that experience of being welcomed
15:08Of feeling belonging in this city
15:11Almost as immediately as this community formed
15:15People in positions of power wanted them gone
15:17And the city of Vancouver took textbook displacement steps
15:22The trash wouldn't be picked up for weeks
15:25The roads and the sidewalks were not kept up
15:28And this was not benign neglect
15:30This was very targeted neglect
15:34Newspapers called it a place of squalor, crime
15:37And a place of blight
15:40Blight is death to a city
15:43And these dwellings are dying board by board
15:48Most of Vancouver is kept strong and healthy
15:51But in areas such as this
15:53Nothing happens except dilapidation and decay
15:57Property values fall
15:59And blight is the result
16:02Blight was the word to use to describe low-income, racialized communities
16:06That had fallen into disrepair
16:08Ignoring the fact that that disrepair was a direct result of systemic neglect
16:13Letting something fall apart
16:15You say, now it's fallen apart, it's a blight
16:17And now we have to clear it out
16:19They also wanted to replace the aging Georgia and Dunsmere viaducts
16:23That was previously in place
16:24And Hogan's Alley was dead smack in the middle of that
16:28And they prioritized putting those viaducts directly over the center of Hogan's Alley
16:34Can you imagine trying to go up to a wealthy white community and say
16:38Move, we're going to build a freeway through your mansion
16:40You know what I mean?
16:50Some folks just decided to cut their losses and move on
16:52And when we think about what we lost as a black community
16:56Businesses that were there for 30 years
16:58We lose all of these community assets
17:01And this community just starts to completely disperse
17:09There was a history of invisibility in the sense that they were largely invisible to the general population
17:15I had never heard of them
17:17Anytime I told my friends living in the suburbs or my parents
17:21They were always quite shocked to hear that a black community had been here
17:27But for the ambitious members of the community, Hogan's Alley was just a starting point
17:33There were some members of the black community that had made contributions in other places
17:37And who had become successful in other areas of the city
17:43One of these black settlers was a young man named John Sullivan Dees
17:46And he was a tinsmith
17:48In 1871, he was commissioned to make the first salmon cans in British Columbia
17:53As a man called Edward Stamp decided to create the first salmon cannery
17:57And then Stamp dies
17:58And Dees acquires the property and becomes a canner in his own right
18:02And in fact was the biggest salmon canner in British Columbia
18:05Until he sells out in 1878
18:15Canneries get started in the 1870s
18:17And they really start to take off as industrial operations in the 1880s
18:23Canning is this marvelous technology that actually allows you to preserve food for an ungodly length of time
18:28Two years, three years, four years
18:30It also allowed for cheap transport
18:32So it went all around the world
18:34Canneries sprung up like mushrooms all up and down the coast
18:38The number of canneries rose and rose and rose
18:41The number of boats rose and rose and rose
18:43And the number of canners actually controlling all of that wealth is relatively small
18:48They could all meet around a boardroom table
18:49And they worked together to fix prices and try to maximize their profits
18:53And on the other end of the scale were Indigenous fishers
18:55Who were working the gill netters and their families working the canneries
18:58For about a hundred years or more
19:01Indigenous communities were the forefront of the commercial fishing industry
19:04Every village had the same boats and gill netters
19:07Indigenous communities get called people to salmon
19:09And that's correct
19:10Indigenous men would use their knowledge of where the fish were
19:14And they would bring the fish back to the canneries
19:16And Indigenous women would gut the salmon and chop it
19:19And put it into the cans
19:21And so you would have these seasonal factories popping up all over the coast
19:25Employing tens of thousands of Indigenous fishers, Indigenous women
19:29If you look at the Canada census in 1881 and 1891
19:32You'll find that Indigenous women were the most numerous among the factory workers
19:36In British Columbia in this era
19:39It's ironic to me that the capitalist economy
19:42Which displaced Indigenous people ultimately relied on Indigenous people to help create that economy
19:51There was a strike in 1900 and 1901
19:56Where the white fishermen, the Aboriginal fishermen and the Japanese fishermen were at loggerheads
20:03The Japanese fishermen were beholden to the canneries
20:08Because they were renting their boats and they were in cannery housing
20:13And so the threat was that if they don't stop the strike
20:18Then all these things will be taken away from them
20:24There's no question that the Japanese fishers were being used by the canners to replace Indigenous fishers
20:30Because the Japanese were more vulnerable to direct exploitation
20:34An Indigenous fisher who didn't like the terms and conditions could pack up, take everybody home and go back to
20:40their community
20:41That was not an option available to a Japanese fisher who just arrived
20:45In 1900 there were 4,000 Japanese fishermen
20:50I'm sure that almost every Japanese Canadian family can identify a grandfather, an uncle or even an aunt
21:01Who was somehow connected to the fishing industry
21:04They formed a majority and they wanted to join the white union but they were not accepted
21:12And as a result, the pay that was necessary to give a Japanese fisher was far less
21:17Once the strike began, the Indigenous fishers had ways and means they could get fish
21:22But the Japanese were caught in their bunkhouses, really the prisoners of the canners
21:25And so they formed their own union and they fought not just for economic gains
21:31But also they fought racism and tried to improve the social and living conditions of the Japanese Canadian people
21:40And they even built a hospital in Steveston, which was confiscated by the government in 1942
21:49But it was the only hospital in Richmond for a long time
21:57In the First World War, the Issei, the first generation of Japanese Canadians wanted to fight for Canada
22:14Some people from the Japanese Canadian community said, we have 200 Japanese Canadians all trained
22:21They want to go to Europe and fight for Canada
22:24And the response was, no thank you
22:28They would simply have been told, no, our white recruits don't want to have anything to do with serving in
22:33the same unit as somebody from Japan
22:36Go away
22:37And the people they were turning away, some of them had 10 years service in the Japanese army
22:42And so they disbanded, but several of them went to Alberta, where they could enlist in the Canadian army
22:51They couldn't in BC, but they could in Alberta
22:55And they fought in many battles in Europe
23:03World War I in many ways shaped the nature of Canada
23:07There was a high level of readiness for war
23:10But the actual events triggering the outbreak of war
23:13The assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo that set the war off came as a complete surprise
23:19When the King declared war, the Empire was at war
23:22And when Britain was at war, Canada was automatically at war
23:25The response was very dramatic and very rapid
23:29Within days, people have signed up
23:32And they're on trains bound across the country where they were trained
23:37And then it was off to England and France and Belgium
23:41And to the horrors of that war
23:48The rate of enlistment early on was incredible
23:52And it was supported by the fact that the economy in this period has gone in a tank
23:57If you're 25 and unemployed sitting in Victoria, getting you to sign up is not much of a recruiting challenge
24:04And consequently, our enlistment rates were the highest per capita in the country
24:10As well, we had Indigenous people enlisting per capita in the same numbers as the white community
24:17They had no rights, but they were still prepared to sign up
24:20The men that enlisted for the war
24:23They were protecting our land
24:25And taking care of everything that belongs to us
24:27And what had happened once they got overseas
24:30They experienced how there was no racism
24:32In the battlegrounds, there was no racism
24:34Everybody was equal
24:43Millions of people were killed, obviously
24:45And every community suffered losses
24:50If you travel around British Columbia, virtually every community has a cenotaph
24:56By the time the war was over, 6,225 British Columbians were killed
25:03And so many more came home maimed
25:07It was cataclysmic, I think, for the province
25:11And as it was for Canada
25:13To have so many people gone
25:15Almost an entire generation of young men
25:20Who could no longer become what their potential was
25:29The telegraph meant that people here through the newspapers
25:32Had up-to-date information on what was happening around the world on a daily basis
25:37And during the war, you got daily reports of casualties
25:41The names of people who were killed in France on Tuesday would be reported on Wednesday or Thursday in Victoria
25:48Today we tend to think we're in an age where there's been very, very rapid technology advancement
25:54It's never been like this before
25:56But if you go back 50 years
25:59And say, what was it like in 1970?
26:04And today, how much change has taken place?
26:07Well, there's been obvious changes
26:08We've got an iPhone
26:09And I've got an iPad
26:10And the internet
26:11And social media
26:12And so on
26:13You do the same thing for World War I
26:15And you've got the invention of the automobile
26:17The electric light bulb
26:19Motion pictures
26:21All those kind of things get invented in that 50 years leading up to World War I
26:26And really, they're much, much more dramatic than the past 50 years
26:39Due to the fact that Canadians started to get stories of what was going on in the war from Canadian
26:44stories
26:45Canadians, in general, think of themselves much more as Canadians after the war
26:51As an example, the initial reports that come out of the Battle of Piny Ridge
26:55You'd hardly know that Canadians were involved
26:58The British reporting that was going on tended to downplay Canadian involvement
27:03But shortly after that, the story is presented as not only a Canadian victory
27:09But a victory that probably changed the course of the war
27:12And it's a story that people at home want to hear
27:14They want to hear that the loss of their loved ones
27:17The loss of all these soldiers was not in vain
27:25Back home, it was a time of dramatic change for women and their place
27:30Women were taking on new roles
27:33Many of them ended up operating the farm because their husband was away
27:37They also enlisted in other ways
27:40We had nurses who went overseas, close to the front lines
27:45To look after the soldiers who were being maimed
27:49We had ambulance drivers
27:52There is one woman of note, Grace McPherson of Vancouver
27:56Who was one of the first women to learn how to drive
27:59And she had watched her brother go off to war
28:03And she read the telegram that said he had been killed
28:07And she wanted to do something
28:09She got an interview with the head of the militia at the time
28:13And said that she wanted to drive an ambulance in France
28:16And he said, no way, I will not let any woman do that kind of work
28:21But because of so much carnage, they needed more men
28:25So the male ambulance drivers were now needed to be part of the war effort
28:30So this opened the door for Grace to serve
28:33And she was there later in the war when the Germans were becoming more desperate
28:38And they started bombing hospital trains
28:41So she was near the front lines in her ambulance
28:44Driving these wounded soldiers to the hospitals
28:49And this involvement of very large numbers of women
28:53Had a political spin-off
28:55Male politicians looked around them and said
28:58There's a lot of power here, we better sit up and take notice
29:01So it's no surprise that in 1917 women in British Columbia get the vote
29:11Women come out of the war desperately seeking some kind of solution
29:17To what seems to be five years of continued reports of death and injury
29:24And the only way we're going to have world peace
29:26Is to make sure that more women are involved in setting public policy
29:31The assumption is that women are more nurturing, more caring, more loving
29:36And that if we apply those characteristics to public life
29:40That there will be less violence
29:45V.C. enters Confederation in 1871
29:48And elected politicians at the time start to debate the meaning of representative democracy
29:53So this is a question that's on the table
29:55Who gets to vote? Who shouldn't vote? Who should participate in the political questions of the day?
30:01And so there was some debate over whether you could let women in into the political sphere
30:07Most male politicians at the time were worried that women voting would upend the social order
30:14A lot of men believed that women's brains were too small to vote
30:18That they didn't have the intellectual capacity or the emotional capacity
30:24That they were irrational beings
30:25Or they were worried that women would want to run for office
30:28Or take on male jobs like the legal profession, the medical profession
30:34And this was an issue of some concern for many male politicians at the time
30:39But other men believed that women could clean up society
30:43That society was corrupt and that politics was corrupt
30:46And perhaps it was corrupt because women didn't have a voice
30:49So it was William Fraser told me who introduced the first attempt
30:53To allow women to vote in 1875 in the legislature
30:57And he was laughed down by his male colleagues
31:00And so his motion failed
31:04Failing to pass private members' bills in British Columbia
31:08Didn't lead to the failure of continuing to try
31:11Women came very close in 1899
31:13When Ralph Smith introduced a private members' bill
31:16That lost by only one vote
31:19And it turned out the next day that a male MLA
31:23Had accidentally raised his hand and voted against the bill
31:26He'd actually intended to vote yes
31:28He'd just misheard the question
31:30So if that had passed, women would have had the vote in BC in 1899
31:34And that would have been the first province in the country to do so
31:37But it did fail, and all the bills failed until 1917
31:42The federal government introduces the Wartime Elections Act in 1917
31:47Under a great deal of pressure
31:49To be seen to acknowledge women's war effort
31:52And this gives the vote to women relatives
31:56Of men serving in the Canadian Armed Forces
31:59So only British women effectively
32:03That means Chinese, Japanese, South Asian, and First Nations
32:07Men and women are not allowed to vote
32:09In British Columbia until the late 1940s
32:13It still maintained racial restrictions on the right to vote
32:17And I will say that British Columbia
32:19Has some of the longest racial restrictions in the country
32:23After the First World War
32:25People who were veterans are given the vote
32:29And so when Japanese-Canadian soldiers came back
32:33They said, okay, we fought, can we have the vote?
32:37And they said no
32:39And that meant that you were a second-class citizen
32:43The same with First Nations people
32:45Even though our warriors, you know, went and fought for us
32:48They weren't even regarded as real Canadians
32:50And so a lot of our veterans played a role in fighting for that
32:55So 1960, we were finally able to vote
33:02When the First World War ended
33:04There was so much opposition to the war
33:07To the terrible rate of casualties
33:10To the inflation in the economy
33:13That meant that workers were burning less and less
33:16While working longer and harder
33:17Workers had been told that this war was a war for democracy
33:22And so many of them started to ask
33:24Why don't we have more democracy where we work?
33:27Why do we have immense wealth and immense poverty in this country?
33:32And that's when labour became, for a few years anyway
33:35Became very, very radical
33:38And the shooting of Ginger Goodwin was definitely part of that
33:50Who was Ginger Goodwin?
33:52He was a coal miner from the British Isles
33:55He drifted out to the west coast
33:57And got work in the Cumberland coal mines
34:00He was described as a very class-conscious worker
34:04And he was part of the incredible two-year coal strike on Vancouver Island
34:10The biggest, most violent and hard-fought strike still in BC history
34:18And this was during the First World War
34:20He had been declared unfit for service
34:23Because he had lung problems
34:24He was weak
34:25And he just totally opposed that war
34:27He was an anti-militarist
34:30His line was that war benefited employers
34:34And workers had nothing to gain from it
34:36They had more in common with that German worker
34:39Than they did with their own boss
34:41He ended up in Trail, British Columbia
34:44Where he plunged into union activities there
34:46They led a strike for the eight-hour day
34:48And then after he led that strike
34:51Suspiciously, he was recalled for service
34:55And declared medically fit to fight
34:58And to Ginger Goodwin, this was basically a death sentence
35:01So he took off
35:03And went to Cumberland
35:04Where he hid out in the woods
35:06And the local mining community knew him
35:08And they looked out for him
35:11But the authorities of all the draft dodgers
35:13In all of British Columbia
35:15That's the one they wanted
35:16Because he was a charismatic, well-known labour leader
35:19They regarded him as a threat and a danger
35:22One of the special consuls, a guy named Dan Campbell
35:25Discovered his hiding place in the woods
35:31And he confronted Goodwin
35:34One shot was fired
35:37Only two people know what happened
35:40And one of them was dead
35:44The constable claimed that he told Goodwin to drop his weapon
35:48Goodwin then tried to point the weapon at him
35:50And the special constable fired first
35:53Very few people believed that
35:55The workers, the miners, believed this was cold-blooded murder
36:01What we do know is that the bullet tore through Goodwin's neck
36:04And blew out his spine
36:06And he was killed instantly
36:09The killing of Ginger Goodwin outraged the labour movement
36:13And they were convinced that he was the victim of a plot against him
36:17In Cumberland they had the funeral procession
36:21And there's a dramatic picture of Goodwin's casket
36:24Draped in white with flowers on the top
36:27Led by a brass band
36:28And the line goes on forever
36:31People in their Sunday best marching behind the casket
36:35And went from one end of the town to the other
36:41It wasn't just in Cumberland where there was this reaction
36:44On the day of his funeral
36:45They called a 24-hour general strike in Vancouver
36:50The streetcars stopped
36:52The docks stopped
36:53Businesses stopped
36:54Manufactories closed
36:56And that was the first general strike in Canadian history
37:00Let alone B.C. history
37:01The outcome of this general strike was two-pronged
37:05One effect of it was that local businesses mobilized against the strike
37:11The business community was outraged
37:14Our workers, they're not working, what's going to happen?
37:17There was this total fear that there was going to be a proletariat revolution
37:22So the business community riled up all these veterans
37:28Who had returned from the First World War
37:30And said, look, this is all on behalf of this draft dodger
37:33Who had fled rather than fight
37:36And a huge mob of veterans gathered outside the Labour Temple
37:41At 411 Dunsmuir, it still exists today
37:43And there's a great picture of this huge mob outside the Labour Temple
37:47The veterans got really fired up
37:50And they rushed into the first floor
37:52They ransacked the place
37:53They broke up furniture, threw papers everywhere
37:56Then they charged up the stairs to the second floor
37:59And there was Victor Midgley
38:02The secretary treasurer of the Labour Council
38:04He was in the forefront of this general strike
38:06The mob tried to throw him out one of the upper floor windows
38:11He went out onto the ledge
38:13And you can see that ledge there today
38:15So they made for Midgley out the window
38:17And somebody blocked their way
38:20One of the women secretaries got in between him and the crowd
38:23Francis Foxcroft of the Telephone Workers Union
38:27Said, you're not going any further boys
38:30And so the veterans allowed Midgley to crawl back in
38:34And they said, if you kneel down and kiss the union jack
38:38We'll let you go
38:40Which he did
38:41And then out they went
38:42So that was Canada's first general strike
38:46The other effect of this however
38:49Was that it showed workers across Canada
38:52That they could engage in a different kind of strike
38:56That they did not have to go on strike
38:59As local 19 of the International Typographical Union
39:03That they could win better conditions for themselves
39:06If they struck as members of a community
39:10And that reflected their motto
39:13An injury to one is an injury to all
39:15The killing of Ginger Goodwin
39:17Was the kind of lighting of the fuse
39:19Because the conditions were right
39:21And it set the scene for general strikes
39:27From 1918 onwards
39:29What we see is a wave of these general strikes
39:32From one end of Canada to the other
39:34And of course the Winnipeg general strike
39:37Was one of the longest
39:38And one of the best known of those strikes
39:45Workers during this strike wave
39:47Start to put forward candidates to legislatures
39:50And to city councils across Canada
39:53They paved the way for series of reforms
39:56The creation of the new political parties
39:58The progressive party
40:00That many of whom then later became part of the CCF
40:03Which is around today as the NDP
40:05And so they changed the political landscape of Canada
40:08As a result of that
40:14In the 1920s and 1930s
40:16Women were allowed short period of independence
40:20We begin to see in films and public entertainments
40:25Women starting to smoke and the use of makeup
40:28And women have a legitimate claim to some kind of wage labor
40:33So for the middle class
40:34It would be professional employments
40:36Nursing, teaching
40:37A few in medicine
40:39You see women who are working in clerical work
40:43In factories
40:44The Camry lines
40:47In the 1920s in Canada
40:50The hot new industries
40:52Were things like mining
40:54The auto industry
40:55Hydroelectric projects
40:58And the logging industry
41:00After several years of investment in these new industries
41:03What became apparent
41:04Was that we had more capacity to produce automobiles
41:08Open paper
41:09Mining
41:10Than we could use or that people could buy
41:13When that starts to happen
41:15The price of goods starts to drop
41:17When prices drop below a profitable level
41:20Businesses shut down
41:22And the economy just went into the tank
41:26When it collapsed
41:27It really collapsed
41:29So when the stock market crashed
41:31Suddenly, almost overnight
41:33There was a million unemployed
41:34They couldn't get work
41:35And it lasted for ten years
41:46The depression was part of the cyclical booms and busts
41:51That we have seen really
41:52Since capitalism got itself started in the 1790s
41:58As economic conditions become more and more desperate
42:01What we see is a great deal of hostility
42:05And efforts to drive women out of the labor market
42:08Because although their wages are lower than men's
42:11And thus they become more attractive to employers
42:14Men are desperately trying to preserve their opportunities in the labor market
42:20There's a fear that women are taking over the labor force
42:23And taking away jobs from men
42:25So there's very little aid given to women
42:28Throughout the 1930s in Canada
42:31The assumption is that women, if they're wives
42:35They should be supported by their husbands
42:37And if they're daughters, they should be supported by their fathers
42:39And that they always have alternatives
42:43Unemployed single women don't get access to any relief at all
42:47They are expected to move back home to their families
42:50Or to survive on charity
42:52Of course this is an unfair policy for many reasons
42:57When men started losing their jobs
42:59They would climb aboard freight trains
43:01To look for work in other towns
43:04Vancouver was a popular spot
43:06Because it was the only city in Canada
43:09Where you would starve to death before you froze to death
43:12And it's the end of the line
43:14And so Vancouver became the unemployed capital of Canada
43:18And these hobo jungles arose in Vancouver
43:21These were small camps of men
43:24Who would organize themselves to create some rudimentary shelter
43:28And to find food
43:30But the government then became nervous
43:32Because there were all these restless, unemployed, single men
43:36All gathered in Vancouver
43:38It was particularly frightening to the government
43:41When it realized that many of the men in these camps
43:44Had been veterans of the First World War
43:47And now found themselves without jobs
43:49Without families
43:50Without hope
43:52Some of these men, of course, had been trained overseas
43:55To use rifles and guns and bayonets
43:58And they're seen to be much more dangerous
44:01And the authorities got nervous
44:02Of all these people being in Vancouver
44:04Thinking there was going to be a revolution
44:06Now there's very little attention
44:08Given to the female unemployed
44:10They're not seen to be violent
44:12In the same way that men are to be violent
44:14So a lot of the public attention
44:16Is very much informed by the notion
44:18That men are more dangerous
44:19If you don't get them employed
44:23So they set up work camps
44:25In the interior of British Columbia
44:28We won't force you into these camps
44:30But the only relief we will offer you
44:32Be a chance to go into camps run by the military
44:36You'll be housed in barracks
44:37Given military food
44:39And you'll be paid about 20 cents a day
44:41On make work projects
44:4320 cents a day
44:46That's what they were given
44:47They were basically slave camps
44:49The idea was not to perform useful service
44:52But to simply keep people occupied
44:54To wear them out
44:56So people would literally be asked to dig holes one day
44:59And fill them in the next
45:03By 1935 they had had enough
45:05And they marched out en masse from many of the camps
45:09And headed to Vancouver
45:11And their leader was this amazing guy named Slim Evans
45:15Brilliant and tough as nails
45:17And he was a really, really good organizer
45:20And so they would form daily marches
45:23And there was incidents with these
45:25Once they went into the Hudson Bay Company
45:27That exists today
45:29And started walking through the store
45:31And somehow some glass cases got broken
45:33And the police were called
45:34And then a real scuffle took place
45:37They came out of the Hudson Bay
45:39And they marched down to Victory Square
45:40Where the Cenotaph is today
45:42And they were ringed by the Mounties on horseback
45:45And there was this tense, uneasy standoff
45:48And the mayor, Jerry McGeer
45:50Emerged from his office
45:51Just a couple of doors down
45:53And read the riot act
45:55Which meant you had to disperse, right?
45:57The thing was basically nobody heard him
45:59And so what happened was
46:01When word finally circulated
46:03Hey, the mayor's reading the riot act
46:05And they said, okay, we'll disperse
46:07And they just formed up orderly
46:09And just marched on
46:12And workers responded to that
46:14By organizing demonstrations the next day
46:17Now protesting the use of the riot act
46:19And they found all kinds of support
46:21One of the most powerful and evocative pictures of this
46:26Is the Mother's Day protest at Stanley Park
46:29Where women form themselves into the shape of a heart
46:32With signs saying, abolish the relief camps
46:37Because when you have something like a third of the working population
46:41Now unemployed
46:42Everyone has a friend, a close relative
46:46Who is affected by this
46:49So as the unemployed and relief camp workers are meeting regularly
46:54The question is, well what do we do next?
46:56How do we continue the pressure here?
47:00Somebody came up with this idea
47:02Let's take this to Ottawa
47:04And the whole crowd just erupted
47:09The idea was to take their complaints right to the Prime Minister
47:13And they would do that by riding the rails
47:19Off they went
47:20A thousand men, late one night
47:23Clambered up all these boxcars
47:25Headed out into the darkness
47:26Having no idea what lay ahead
47:30And of course the authorities didn't mind
47:31Oh my god, they're leaving Vancouver
47:33This is great
47:36By the time they got to Kamloops
47:39Crowds were there waiting for them
47:40Organizers were absolutely surprised
47:43By the time they got to Golden BC
47:46They found people there bringing out bathtubs
47:48And building fires under them
47:50To create massive amounts of stew
47:52To feed these people
47:54They were hungry
47:55They were cold
47:56And here was this hot breakfast
47:59Awaiting them
48:00And people talked afterwards
48:02That that was the best breakfast they ever had
48:07More and more people started joining it
48:09They went into Calgary
48:10And the authorities tried to stop them
48:12From holding a tin can fundraising
48:14They did it anyway
48:15And raised this huge amount of money
48:17The Onto Ottawa track gained momentum
48:20It doubled in size
48:21By the time it got to Regina
48:23It was 2000
48:24The authorities started to get really nervous
48:26Especially the Prime Minister
48:28RB Bennett in Ottawa
48:29Bennett said
48:30It's going no further than Regina
48:33This is where the police decided
48:35They were going to make their move
48:38A number of trucks pulled up around the park
48:41The back doors of the trucks flew open
48:43Someone blew a whistle
48:45And they charged into the crowd
48:47With their clubs and so on
48:49And one of the strikers
48:50Who eventually landed on D-Day
48:52Hot for Canada
48:53He said that still the most terrifying moment of his life
48:56Was hearing that whistle
48:58And then the police just charging in
49:00And it was mayhem
49:02They used tear gas, night sticks
49:05To beat up the protesters
49:07So it was smashed by the forces of the state
49:11It's a terrible, terrible thing that went on in Regina
49:14And there's a picture of them heading back to the trains
49:16Back to Vancouver
49:17And they're all bandaged
49:19And there's a guy though playing the accordion
49:23It wasn't that long afterwards
49:24That many of them signed up to fight for Canada
49:27The same country that had treated them so shabbily
49:30In the 1930s when all they wanted was work
49:38So the depression really ended with the Second World War
49:42Because you can imagine what that did to the economy
49:44I mean they had to produce so much for the war effort
49:47Building planes and ships and the munitions
49:50And just everything
49:52The war had a tremendous impact on the economy in British Columbia
49:56And a lot of it was driven by government military spending
49:59Not only here in Canada but our allies across the world
50:03Were also expanding their militaries
50:05And so the markets for our manufactured goods
50:07Also began to reappear again after years of depression
50:11By the end of 1941 Canada reaches full employment
50:15There's literally a job for every man and woman over the age of 16
50:20And forestry, farming, salmon fishing, mining
50:23All become listed as industrial essential work
50:26And so when conscription is brought in in the summer of 1940
50:30For home defence
50:31You could gain deferment from that service
50:33If you worked in an essential industry
50:35And they were all booming in British Columbia
50:38As a result of the wartime demand
50:41I think one of the most important figures
50:44In British Columbia forestry history
50:46Was H.R. Macmillan
50:47Who had created one of the biggest forest companies in the world
50:51During World War II
50:53He was tasked with finding enough Sitka spruce
50:57To build the fighter aircraft
51:00The Mosquito Bomber
51:01It was a famous bomber in the Second World War
51:03And they called it the Wooden Wonder
51:09It was a wooden framed aircraft
51:11It's only later in the war
51:12That metal skeleton planes begin to be used
51:15But in the early part of the war
51:16They were still wooden framed
51:18And then usually wrapped with lightweight aluminum
51:23And a lot of that Sitka spruce
51:24Was harvested up in the Queen Charlotte's Haida Gwaii region
51:31The wood was strong
51:33It was straight
51:35And one of the fascinating things about it
51:37Was that it wouldn't splinter
51:38When it was struck by a bullet
51:40So you can see why it had an essential role
51:43In keeping our pilots alive
51:46It was an important but little known aspect
51:49Of British Columbia's contribution to the war effort
52:01Who were the first to enlist in the Second World War?
52:04These same unemployed guys that had had their heads beaten by the authorities
52:08And there they are volunteering to fight for Canada
52:11Sons of the Empire have come to Britain to swell our fighting forces
52:15A new division to fight the Nazi tyranny
52:17Welcome Canada
52:18After ten years of aimlessness
52:20Of just eking out an existence
52:22The prospect of three square meals a day
52:24Clothes in their back
52:26A roof over their heads
52:27And, God forbid, a sense of purpose
52:28It looked pretty attractive
52:31Not only that
52:32But the enlistment here in British Columbia was very high
52:35Far greater numbers than in 1914
52:37Well in excess of 90,000 men
52:39And more than 25,000 women
52:41That's almost 15% of British Columbia's population enlisted
52:45Almost 50% higher than the national average
52:49We don't think of British Columbians as military people
52:53They didn't always get the same kind of credit
52:55That I think perhaps the Canadian Corps, for instance
52:58Had achieved during the First World War
53:00But I would argue that their achievements
53:02And their contributions were as or even greater
53:07The Seaforth Highlanders Regiment
53:09Based out of Vancouver
53:10Fought throughout Italy
53:11And their most famous battle
53:13Was probably the Battle of Ortona in 1943
53:16It battled their way through this medieval small city
53:20In central Italy
53:21And it was brutal, difficult urban fighting
53:25The German paratroopers had turned those streets into death zones
53:28With machine guns and mortars
53:30And the Seaforths had tried to work their way through the city
53:33House by house
53:34And then blow their way through into the next
53:37We worked our way down the street
53:39Every single officer became a casualty
53:41During this week-long battle
53:42They did eventually succeed in driving the paratroopers out of that city
53:46And in the process became the kind of acknowledged experts in urban warfare
53:50Amongst the Allied forces in the Italian theatre
53:55So many workers did join the army
53:57And were overseas
53:59That there was a shortage of labour
54:02So, who was available?
54:05Women
54:08And for the first time in significant numbers
54:11Women left their homes and entered the industrial workforce
54:15And for the first time many women are earning salaries
54:19That are much higher than they've ever earned
54:21Because they're doing jobs that were considered male jobs
54:25And they hired lots of women
54:28And the women worked in the yards
54:30They put on the overalls
54:31And they were part of the union
54:33They're learning how to weld
54:35They're learning how to be a machinist in a factory
54:39These were jobs that were largely protected by unions for men
54:43And women take on those jobs
54:45And they show that they're very capable of doing that work
54:49You see women serving in various roles within the Navy and the Air Force
54:56And the military as well as nurses and doctors
55:00And of course the Second World War ended
55:02And Johnny came marching home
55:04And sadly most of the women were laid off just like that
55:08It was the largest mass layoff of women workers in the history of Canada
55:13And it was tough for them
55:14But it changed the nature of the Canadian workforce
55:17And it changed the nature of women workers
55:22Thousands of young men are coming back home
55:27With an expectation that the privations of their wartime experience would be rewarded
55:32That they would begin to have better lives
55:34And it's not just that they've been away at war
55:37We also have to keep in context the ten years of depression before that
55:41If you served in the Second World War you were probably born sometime in the 1920s
55:46Which means you maybe didn't have any memories prior to the depression
55:50You could never remember a time when home was not a place that was threatened in some way
55:56And so that search for suburbia, for home security was part of that drive
56:03New subdivisions sort of sprout like mushrooms
56:05Veterans came home with veterans benefits
56:08And often their spouse who had been working through the war
56:11Had been putting away money
56:12And so they had nest eggs to buy that house in suburbia
56:15To buy that car
56:16People begin to expect to have refrigerators for instance
56:22Or washing machines
56:23People begin to expect to have a car
56:26People's understanding of consumption changes
56:30They expect to be more comfortable now
56:33And I think probably the baby boom children who grew up in the 60s and 70s
56:38Never really understood their parents' love of the gardens
56:41Or the white picket fences that surrounded those little post-war bungalows
56:44But that's because they hadn't gone through those 16 hard years of depression and war
56:49And had a drive to find a safe, secure, normal life
56:57Striving for a safe, normal life isn't something that is limited to the people already here
57:03The dream of a better life possesses a gravity that has drawn people from elsewhere
57:07Making British Columbia one of the most diverse provinces in Canada
57:15Unfortunately, that same diversity has also led to inequality
57:19And conflict between people of different backgrounds
57:23The story of British Columbia continues with the immigrant experience
58:02Detoxians in Canada
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