¢ Pictured at their first union convention in 1938 are some of the first I.W.A. members in Edson, Alberta.
Syd Thompson and "Doc Savage" were two of the early union organizers in that province.

History of the I.W.A.

Continued from page twelve

ing to have to call the police I ain’t mov-
ing.

“And, Jesus, that stumped him - and
he got out. He got in his sleigh, he didn’t
have a goddam vehicle. He had to get to
a telephone. He was madder than a bas-
tard. That organized the whole camp.
The secretary was busy all night sign-
ing them up.

“After a while, I laid down on a bunk
to have a rest, and about 11:00 o’clock
the door flew open again. Here he was
with the R.C.M.P. There was a constable
there by the name of Pook. We called him
puke,” and he was monstrous, with his
buffalo robe on, ugly as a bear.

“He said ‘what’s going on here?’ The
secretary was there peeking over his
glasses.

“I jumped out of bed and said ‘We’re
organizing the place!’ He grabbed me by
the scruff of the neck and the ass of my
pants and out the door I flew - out in the
snow bank! I’m standing there waiting
for the secretary to come flying out after
me - but he’d cooled off by then.

“The garage owner who drove us down
was his personal friend - they used to
drink together, and I’ll be a S.O.B. if he
didn’t charge him for providing a taxi
without a licence. That’s how I got start-
ed in that country. The organization fell
apart in the spring because the bush
camps were all temporary - all winter
works.”

Syd joined the Canadian army in June, 1940
- “Not out of patriotism - it was just a place
where I could get three squares a day, and
maybe a little excitement.” Those adventures
belong in another account. Suffice it to say,
here more than one green young lieutenant
learned from Private Syd Thompson that an
officer's commission does not always guaran-
tee control.

After the war, Syd returned to become an
Alberta organizer for the Communist Party,
but the discipline required was begining to
chafe. When the party told him (about 1949)
that he would have to break off with the
woman he loved, because they suspected her
of being an informer, Syd quit, and went to
B.C., where he worked for a while in a mill at
Lumby. “” :

By 1950, he was working for Western Ply-
wood, later to become Weldwood Kent. Not
surprisingly, he was soon appointed as ashop
steward, and then became plant chairman. In

1956 he was elected a vice-president of the
Vancouver Local (1-217, then with about 6000
members the largest in the International
Union), and a member of the political educa-
tion committees of the Vancouver & District
Labour Council and the B.C. Federation of
Labour. %

In 1958, Syd decided to run for President of
the Local Union, against Lloyd Whalen, who
had held the post since late in 1948. It was a

bitter contest. Syd issued pamphlets, and
spoke wherever he could (he was, of course,
denied access to lunch rooms), protesting
against the settlement, which provided no in-
crease in one year and five cents in the next,
and the general lack of progress achieved in
the 1950s.

Whalen and then District President Joe
Morris circulated old Communist Party litera-
ture identifying Syd as the party’s Alberta or-
ganizer, and calling into question whether he
had genuinely quit the party. C.L.C. president
Claude Jodoin warned against “new L.P.P. at-
tempts to seize control of the union.”

This took place only nine years after the di-
visive events of 1948. “Anti-red” hysteria was
still very much in the air. Accusations, sug-
gesting improper handling of union funds in
1948, were recycled. Harold Pritchett entered
the fray to defend the record of the pre-’48

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING LIGHTER

Oscar Ericson, a logger from Jordan River,
who gave his town address as the “New Lions
Hotel,” jumped off the Lion’s Gate Bridge, and
plunged into the swirling waters of the First.
Narrows, some 204 feet below, and finished
up none the worse for the adventure. In an
early display of forest industry solidarity, a
shingle worker named James Morrison leaped
from the stern of a ferry and rescued Ericson.
The latter, confessing that he was perhaps a
little tight, said he did it “just for the devil of
it.”

MORAL: It’s foolish to get blind drunk, and
even more foolish to jump off the Lion’s Gate
bridge. But if you are determined to do the
latter, you had better first do the former.
(from the Lumber Worker, Dec. 20, 1938)

Photo courtesy “Doc” Savage

leadership, vigorously denying any improper
use of funds and criticized the “White Block’s”
record of accomplishments, and denounced
“yed-baiting” as the “last refuge of scoundrals.”

Syd and his group won the election handily,
and he held the presidency without serious
challenge until his retirement in 1980, when
he was “elevated” to “President Emeritus” of
the Vancouver Local. In 1969, he became pres-
ident of the Vancouver & District Labour
Council, and held that post until his retire-
ment.

For the next twenty years or so, Syd was to
be a thorn in the side of district officers, first
Joe Morris and then Jack Munro. By 1968, re-
lations between Thompson had bottomed out,
and Syd ran for the presidency of the “Region-
al Council,” but failed. Relations improved
substantially after 1972, when Jack Munro
succeeded Jack Moore, and for the last few
years of his active life, though his voice still
boomed, Syd became, for the first time in his
life, less rebellious.

As he approached retirement, old foes from
the industry, the press and labour hastened to
make amends. The crowning touch came on
May 17, 1978, when Syd, the old communist
party organizer and trade union hell-raiser,
who had left school after completing grade
seven, who had served time in various jails
across the country, was awarded an Hon-
ourary Doctor of Laws degree from Simon
Fraser University.

Syd died on April 8th, 1992, aged 77. He left
his wife Elaine, son Douglas, daughter
Michelle, and a union that sorely misses him.

ARNE JOHNSON — A GOOD MAN ON AND OFF THE
LINE

Arne Johnson was born in Norway, in a
small mining town. He started to work as a
nine year old, one half the day in school, the
other half in a sawmill. Unions were evidently
an accepted thing there, for he was aston-
ished, on coming to Canada in 1912, to find
such resistance to organization, and especial-
ly surprised and angry that unions for trades-
men were accepted, but any effort to organize
basic industries on an industrial basis was
met with total resistance, not only from the
employers, but from governments and the po-
lice, who harrassed organizers whether there
was any legal basis for doing so or not.

He worked first for prairie farmers, then in
bush camps in northern Saskatchewan,
around Prince George, and at Adams lake,
near Kamloops, B.C. He was a member in the
early twenties of the L.W.I.U., and when “in
town” (Vancouver), would listen to the soap-
box speakers on the corner of Carroll and
Cordova streets.

The L.W.I.U. on the West Coast had com-
pletely died by 1926, the victim of internal
strife and ruthlessly applied black-lists. Ef-
forts to revive it, assisted with organizational
material from Northern Ontario, began in
1928.

Ame takes up the tale: “A meeting was held
in Glen Lamont’s room in a rooming house
across from Woodward's. Those present were
Glen Lamont Jack Gillbanks, Jack Brown,
Andy Hogarth, Frank Stewart, Ed Duban and
myself. Lamont acted as secretary. I helped to
organize a later
meeting in 1929,
went around hand-
ing out leaflets ad-
vertising the meet-
ing...

“At this time the
secretary of the
L.W.LU. was Martin
Palmgren, the
Chairman was Ed
Andrews. Head-
quarters of the log-
gers and the Unem-
ployed Workers’
Association were at
49 Powell St, but it
was crowded, so
we moved to quar-
ters at 61 Cordova
St., the same place that the B.C. Loggers’
Union had used in 1919. It was interesting
times in those days, never a dull moment...I

e Arne Johnson

Continued on next page

LUMBERWORKER/NOVEMBER 1996/13