March 2009

Red Bait! Struggles of a Mine Mill Local

“Al King was an organizer, Local 480 (Trail, British Columbia) president and eventually western Board member of the International Union of Mine-Mill & Smelterworkers, a trade union that was – depending on your point of view – a Communist hotbed or one of the most progressive unions in North American history.  He tells a fascinating story, unrecorded elsewhere, of the growth and challenges to Mine-Mill from 1937 when he got his first job as a labourer at Consolidated Mining (now Cominco) in British Columbia, to the time when the union voted to merge with the Steelworkers Union and beyond.

“We had known they were planning to do something but this was astounding.  Following the raiding actions, John Gordon…called a big meeting in the Legion Hall to decide what to do.  When I left to go to the meeting Lillian said to me, ‘Please be careful.’  She knew feelings were running high and she was worried about fist fights.

“The usual turnout for a union meeting was twenty or thirty men but that night 600 showed up, many of them young veterans.  There were so many, they couldn’t all fit in the hall.  They filled up the building and overflowed outside, down the steps and into the street.  When we saw those numbers, we knew we had a chance.”

To This Cedar Fountain

Untitled

These trees worked hard to get up here
one ring at a time.  The prize is sky
and the freedom of birds.

Only three have reached the high blue dome
and now careen like honey bees
hover like hummingbirds one minute
soar like eagles the next.

These trees threaten to pull their own tops off
they stretch so hard, risking everything
to touch heaven.

The Fish Come in Dancing: Stories from the West-Coast Fishery

A collection of interviews of eight of British Columbia’s fishermen – including one fisherwoman – who still work in the rapidly disappearing fishing industry off British Columbia’s west coast.

”Meanwhile on the beach, the beach man had tied the net to a tree.  I guess it was a good two-foot around.  Just at the right time, the tide changed.  Old Frankie says, ‘Now you’re gonna catch some fish.’  We’re straining against the tide when all of a sudden the tree the net’s tied to comes out of the ground.  It flies up in the air and comes right down on top of the skiff.  Now, there’s a fifty-foot tree across the skiff and it’s being towed away from shore.  Both the skiff man and beach man are standing on the beach, helpless.

The skipper is embarrassed.  Everybody’s laughing.  All the seiners were blowing their horns.  It looked like an absolute mess, our first set of the year.”

Dave Cochrane, interviewed by Robert Boyd

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