¢ Local 1-80 Executive Board Member Allan Lundgren has been busy cataloguing, copying and labeling the local

union’s historic photo collection.

1.W.A. faller is a memorabilia collector
with a connection to union’s early history

llan Lundgren is a log-

ger by day and local

union historian by

night. Brother Lund-

gren, an Executive

Board member at large
in I.W.A. CANADA Local 1-80, is
the guy to know if you want to talk
about old labour photos and histori-
cal documents in the Lake Cowichan
region on southern Vancouver
Island.

Four years ago Lundgren took on
a voluntary job of copying, cata-
loging and labeling thousands of
old black and white photos that the
Local union had compiled over the
years.

Prior to that, former Local 1-80
business agent Ken McEwan had
compiled archives on behalf of the
union.

“I couldn’t stand back and think
of all the work that Ken had built
up and slowly, but surely over time,
would get confused and spread
about,” said Lundgren.

The collection includes a series of
some 3000 photos from the
renowned Wilmer (W.H.) Gold Col-
lection, which is the local union’s
pride and joy. It was purchased by
Local 1-80 in 1985 for $14,000.

Today Brother Lundgren is work-
ing on a growing collection of over
6,000 prints which the local union
has acquired or has had donated.

There’s good reason that Lund-
gren has such an interest in local
union and community history. He’s
the son of the late Henry.J.(H.J.)
Lundgren, one of the I.W.A.’s origi-
nal activists during its formative
years. His late mother Ann, was
also a union activist and met H.J.
in Vancouver in the 1930's.

So collecting historical photos
and artifacts and cataloging them
for future generations is a labour of
love for the 53- year-old faller from
‘TimberWest’s Honeymoon Bay Divi-
sion.

“Every picture has a story to tell,”
said Brother Lundgren. “A lot of
(the people in) them help paint a
picture of how life was during a cer-
tain time period.”

The W.H. Gold collection high-
lights life starting in the 1930’s and
has images into the mid-1960’s from
most areas in and around the
Cowichan Valley and also has
images from the northern Vancou-
ver Island region. Not only are there
photos of forest industry workers,

but there are also pictures of com-
munity life. Gold also did anthropo-
logical work by photographing First
Nations peoples.

Brother Lundgren is careful not
to term himself as an archivist.

“T’ve never been trained as an
archivist,” he said. “I would just say
that I am a collector who enjoys
and has an interest in local histo-

a “The history of the I.W.A. is much
more than a cut and dry serious
history,” he said. “It’s a social histo-
ry. Without knowing what happened
in the communities, with the fami-
lies of workers and the social times,
you don’t know what really hap-
pened.”

Lundgren said that, as a kid
growing up in Lake Cowichan (he
was born in Alberta) his father’s
friends were the likes of organizer
Hjalmar Bergren (organizer and
later president of the B.C. Coast
District Council of the 1.W.A.) and
Owen Brown, who eventually
become the second president of the
Duncan local. Brown’s wife, Edna
became the first leader of the I.W.A.
Women’s Auxiliary for District One
of the union.

He said that Lake Cowichan had
a tight-knit group of people which
often visited back and forth.

“In later years I understood what
they had accomplished and it
become very important to me,” he
said.

Allan’s father Henry lead a very
active life. Born in Alberta in 1912,
he moved to B.C. at an early age to
work in logging camps up and down
the coast.

At age 15 he was a timber faller.
Then he went to hewing ties and
working as a mechanic prior to
working as a union organizer at a
smelter in the B.C. interior commu-
nity of Trail.

As a member of the Communist
Party of Canada, H.J. organized for
the I.W.A. In 1938, he became the
Business Manager of The B.C. Lum-
ber Worker, then the official organ
of the B.C. Coast District Council of
the International Woodworkers of
America.

Al remembers some of the people
who his father knew in the early
days.

“J didn’t know who they were
then, when I was a kid,” he said. “I
just knew they were important to

my Dad.”

H.J. worked as a member of the
Communist Party, as did many
other I.W.A_ers.

“At that time in history the only
opportunity that any worker had to
have any kind of political voice was
the Communist Party,” he said.
“The vast majority of active union-
ists on the B.C. Coast were Reds.”

Following the big split of October
1948, (see history story by Clay Perry
on pages 10-14.) H.J., like other
members of the Communist Party,
was not allowed membership in the
I.W.A. That lasted until the early
1960's.

In 1960 H.J. wrote a letter to
then Local 80 Financial Secretary
Ed Linder requesting re-admit-
tance to the I.W.A. In the letter,
H.J. wrote that some one at the
Regional Council was denying him
membership, even though he had
signed an affidavit denying mem-
bership in the CP in 1948 and hav-
ing the unanimous support of both
the camp committee at Hillcrest

GREETINGS!

By HENRY LUNDGREN
Business Mgr., B.C. Lumber Worker

On behalf of the Press Committee I
wish to extend our most fraternal
greetings on this 7th anniversary of
the B.C. Lumber
Worker to all our
readers and sup-
porters, We es-
pecially wish to
thank our mariy
salesmen for
their tireless ef-
forts in distribut-
ing tho paper in
the camps and
the collecting of
subscriptions, all
without remun-
eration. We also
wish to thank
those advertisers
who have been
with us during
the past year and longer and hope that
their confidence in our paper and for
whom we speak will continue through-
out the coming year.

In conclusion we pledge to carry on-
ward the courageous traditions of the
paper as a fighting weapon in the
hands of all woodworkers, in their
struggles for a fair deal and a fuller
life.

¢ In 1938 Allan’s father, I.W.A.
activist Henry (H. J.) Lundgren,
was the business manager of The
B.C. Lumber Worker.

Logging and the Local 80 union
Executive Board.

“It was quite a time period for
him,” Brother Lundgren said of his
father. “But it never stopped him
from his union beliefs.”

Al himself started logging full-
time at Hillcrest Logging in 1962,
were he was caauetal into a mili-
tantly union camp.

“We (the new employees) were
told, in no uncertain terms, how
things were going to be with the
union,” he recollects.

Al hopes to piece together more
of the labour history in the Cowichan
Valley area.

“T think that it’s something that,
if we could get it down on paper,
would be of real benefit for our
younger members today,” said Allan.
“They would understand what a
special breed the early workers and
their families were.”

In June of this year, Local 1-80
will have published a limited edi-
tion 60th anniversary book detail-
ing the development of the local
unon. It will be illustrated with
many photographs of the many men
and women who built the local.

e Here’s an historic shot of Al, preparing to drop a 12’ western red cedar
in the Bugaboo Creek area in 1987.

18/LUMBERWORKER/JULY 1997