Bushworkers gave lives
in 1929 Ontario strike

Martyrs in CLC’s Hall of Fame

On May 4, 1992 the Canadian
Labour Congress officially recog-
nized the sacrifice of two of our
union Brothers who gave their lives
for the betterment of workers in
northern Ontario in the late 1920's.

The CLC has announced that its
Labour Hall of Fame has inducted
two deceased organizers, Brothers

_ John Voutilainen and Viljo Rosvall,
once members of the now defunct
Lumber Worker’s Industrial Union
of Canada.

In the winter of 1929 Brothers
Voutilainen and Rosvall were orga-
nizing an escalating strike effort
against the American Pidgeon River
Company which had logging camps
at Onion Lake, which is about 20
miles east of Port Arthur (Thunder
Bay).

On November 18, 1929 Rosvall
left Port Arthur to meet Voutilainen
at a small Finnish-Canadian farm-
ing community called Tarmola,
about ten miles north of Port
Arthur. After they met they both
headed east towards Onion Lake to
organize the strike.

week later two Finnish trap-
pee reported to the union office in
ort Arthur, that both men had dis-
appeared and not shown wu
cabin near Onion Lake as ha
arranged.

This sent the union into an emer-
ency meeting after which they
formed a search party to go and

look for the missing Brothers.

The union went into the Pidgeon
Timber Company camps run by an
anti-union contractor named L.
Maki, who said he didn’t known
what happened to the men but that
he had seen them crossing the ice of
Onion Lake in the direction of his
camp.

An investigation by the Ontario
Provincial Police said that the two
men fell through the ice and
drowned.

But the union said it was implau-
sible and that the police investiga-
tion was a white wash. The cops
only questioned Maki himself and
the union wanted a full blown
investigation which included an
interview with trappers and bush
workers.

The men were still missing, so in
late December the union, fearing
that their bodies would be found
and secretly removed, sent out a
search party to camp out near
Onion Lake in a cramped trappers
cabin and waited for the spring
thaw.

The long freezing winter months
of ice and snow storms passed while
the union had the Onion Lake area
staked out.

Then on April 19th as the spring
thaw peperessed the body of John
Voutilainen was found beside a
creek which was about two feet
deep and running into the lake.

our days later the search party
found Rosvall’s body a few hundred
yards away down the stream, com-
pletely on the land.

All along the union suspected foul

. They found it unbelievable
two experienced bush workers,
one of whom was a trapper with a

ata
been

cabin on Onion Lake could possibly

drown or perish near the shallow
water. No one in the union could
believe that they could fall to their
death in different spots. Rosvall’s
right arm was broken, his clothes
were torn and he was struck in the
head with a blunt instrument. In
the ‘funeral parlour, a hole in the
forehead of Voutilainen was covered
up.
Despite all these signs, the
Coroner’s jury found the cause of
death to be drowning. But the bush
workers cried foul, saying that they
were either clubbed or choked to
death by company thugs.

At the largest funeral in Port
Arthur, over 5,000 gathered in a
gloomy procession on April 28,
1920.

Brothers Voutilainen and Rosvall
became martyrs in the bush work-
ers’ fight against the timber bosses
in the north of Ontario.

The funeral procession was lead
by a Finnish-Canadian organiza-
tion’s brass band which solemnly
played “The International.”

As the procession moved through
the streets of Port Arthur, an
eclipse of the sun took place and the
day was darkened.

Union representative, Ulf
Hautamaki delivered a eulogy with
the conclusion that “God himself
has shown us today that he is too
ashamed of this heinous crime,
ashamed that murderers remain
free.”

No one was ever prosecuted for
the murders of John Voutilainen
and Viljo Rosvall. To this day their
killers are unknown.

e Funeral procession in Port
Arthur drew over 5,000 mourners,
on April 28 1930, during an eclipse
of the sun.

¢ Don Hutsel, president of the TBDLC (1.) and Pat Little, president of
Labourer’s International Union of North America Local 607 stand near a
plaque displayed to honour Rosval left, and Voutilainen. The CLC Hall of
Fame collection is housed at the Labourers International Union Hall

Local 183 in Toronto.

Tragedy remembered as part
of community’s past

For union people in Thunder Bay
the admission of Viljo Rosvall and
John Voutilainen into the CLC’s
Hall of Fame brings a great deal of
pride. In the Thunder Bay area (for-
merly Port Arthur) the legends of
these two labour martyrs are well
known and are part of the folklore
of the Finnish community from
where the two men came.

Both were members of the
LWIUC which is the ancestor of
IWA-CANADA in Thunder Bay. In
the mid 30’s the LWIUC became
affiliated with the International
Brotherhood of Carpenters and
Joiners and the Lumber and
Sawmill Workers’ Union. In 1987
the LSWU joined with IWA-CANA-

So the stories of the two labour
martyrs, Voutilainen and Rosvall
have a special significance to IWA-
CANADA members. They best rep-
resent a time of early struggle for
woodworkers when our union fore-
fathers were pitted against interna-
tional lumber and pulp and paper
barons, who had little if no respect
for working people.

Wilf McIntyre, president of IWA-
CANADA Local 1-2693 in Thunder
Bay says: “These two men were on
the frontier of labour when they
gave their lives to organize workers
in one of the most difficult periods
in the history of the union move-
ment.”

Rosvall and Voutilainen were

Continued on page eighteen

‘Photo courtesy Finnish Historical Society - Thunder Bay

LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1992/7