¢ Wally Dubinsky, lawyer for the union held a cheque from the head office A :
of the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners to pay thefine POlice seized three

for 138 members charged.

History of the I.W.A.

Continued from page fourteen

REESOR SIDING:
THE BLOODIEST MOMENT IN OUR HISTORY.

In December of 1962, loggers for Spruce Falls
Power and Paper Co., members of Lumber &
Saw Local 2995 (Kapuskasing, Ont.), had been
trying for months to get a new agreement.
foun loggers for nearby Abitibi mills had
succeeded in achieving a 10% wage increase
and the forty hour week, the odds were against
a good settlement with Spruce Falls.“

The New York Times, which owned 49% of
the Company,” and ordinarily bought 30% of
its newsprint, was on strike. Worse, about 25%
of the mill’s pulpwood came from small farmers
or “settlers.” To encourage agricultural settle-
ment in the region, the Ontario government
offered farmers low-cost permits to cut up to
100 cords of Crown timber. The individual
farmers generally banded together into small
co-ops to P oduce enough wood to make hauling

ractical. Even sustenance farming in the

‘arsh Northern Ontario climate and soggy clay
soils was virtually impossible, so the income the
farmers received was crucial to their day-to-day
survival.

The union knew from the beginning that sup-
port of the farmers would greatly assist them in
negotiations, and Local President Joseph Laforce
tried hard to achieve that support. He argued
that if union loggers were achieved a good set-
tlement, it would be easier for the farmers to
increase their prices. He promised them gener-
ous support if they would withhold wood during
a strike.

The farmers refused. They wanted nothing to
do with the union. The French Canadian Catholic
Church, a controlling force in the area, was at
that time extremely conservative, hostile to
anything remotely connected to Communism,
and suspicious of any independent unionism.”
In addition, many of the union loggers were
from outside the region, and that always makes
solidarity more difficult to achieve.

The Company, needing less wood because of
the New York Times strike, and assured of a
continuing supply by the farmers, took a tough
line. It proposed no wage increases and
enandal: that the loggers agree to a seven day
operation, if necessary, to deliver the wood
before Spring break-up. On January 14th, with-
out the approval of the union executive, and in
defiance of the then legally required cooling off
period, 500 loggers wildcatted and were joined
in sympathy by 1100 Spruce Falls employees.

1ey were no doubt concerned that if they con-
tinued to work during protracted negotiations,
break-up would find the company with enough
wood in the yard to hold the union off for another

per. eae
The strike hardened the company’s position.
Tt announced that there would be no negotia-
tions until the loggers returned to work and
ceased all efforts to stop independent contrac-
tors from delivering the farmers’ wood. |
The strike wore on for weeks, with increas-
ingly ugly confrontations. When union patrol
cars found loaded contractors’ trucks, they
returned to headquarters and as many as 400
rs were dispatched to stop the delivery and
“unload” the wood. The Ontario Provincial
Police, with only 25 officers in the area, were

often reluctant to
intervene. On Febru-
ary 4th, the Ontario
government appoin-
ted Bora Laska, later
to become Chief Jus-
tice of Canada’s Sup-
reme Court, as medi-
ator. But that move
came too late; he
scheduled his first
hearing on February
10th.

s those hear-
ings began,
the farmers
gathered to

guard 600 cords of
# wood at Reesor Sid-
© ing, between Kapus-
3 kasing and Hearst.
2 Union loggers had
£ previously scattered
3 a total of 1100 cords
there, so the farmers
= decided to arm them-
selves heavily. (Later,

shotguns, nine rifles,
and one revolver.)

Just after midnight on February 11th,
four or five hundred strikers arrived at
Reesor Siding, and immediately crossed
the rope that police had strung up around
the farmers. The farmers began to fire,
and, within seconds, three strikers were
killed and eight were wounded. Dead were
Irenee Fortier, Joseph Fortier and Fer-
nand Drouin. Harry Bernard, Ovila
Bernard, Joseph Boily, Alez Hachey, Albert
Martel, Joseph Martel, Joseph Mercier,
Leo Ouimett and Daniel Trembley were
seriously injured.

Twenty farmers were immediately charged
with “illegal use of firearms with intent to
injure.” Later, the Crown Attorney laid three
charges of “non-capital murder.”

After the blood bath, the Ontario Attorney
General sent in 200 additional police, and
issued warrants against 237 strikers. The
charge, initially “participating in a riot,” was
later reduced to “illegal assembly.” The Union
paid their bail, and they were released.

Labour rallied around the strikers. The
C.L.C., the Ontario New Democrats and Liberal
member Vernon Singer of the Ontario legisla-
ture called for inquiries into the conduct of the
police, and of the Attorney General. Why had
reinforcements not been sent earlier, when it
had been so clear that there were too few police
to handle the explosive situation? When the
police arrived at Reesor Siding, knowing that
the farmers were armed (it was common knowl-
edge in the area), why hadn’t they done some-
thing to prevent the tragedy? When the union
provided the names of ten witnesses to the
slaughter, why did the investigators fail to
interview a single one?

At the farmers’ trial, the jury found insuffi-
cient evidence to support a verdict of non-capi-
tal murder, so they recommended release. The
judge found three of them guilty of “possession
of dangerous firearms,” and fined them one
hundred and fifty dollars each.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour took over the
negotiations. It “recommended” that the strik-
ers return to work on the terms of the 1962
agreement, and that two separate Arbitration
Boards, (one for Spruce Falls and one for Kim-
berly-Clark) be formed to establish the new con-
tracts. The government made it clear that if the
union did not accept these terms, it would legis-
late the loggers back to work under even less
favorable circumstances. The union which had
to deal with the tragedy, accepted.

Martin Champoux, upon whom I have relied
entirely, believes that in the aftermath of the
strike, the community came together, evidently
determined to avoid any recurrence of the
bloody events of February 11th. Over time, the
role of the farmers in supplying the mill dimin-
ished. Many of the loggers that had resided
elsewhere moved their families to the area,
increasing community solidarity, especially
between bush and mill workers.

Today, the Spruce Falls Mill is operated by
Tembec, following a rescue package worked out
by Bob Rae, then Premier of Ontario.

On epul 25th, 1996, 33 years after the bloody
event, the Ontario Heritage Foundation raised
a plaque commemorating those killed and
injured. Attending on behalf of the Union were
then National President Gerry Stoney, Local 1-
2995 President Norman Rivard, Local 2693
President Wilf McIntyre, and Ontario Federa-
tion of Labour Vice-President Ken Signoretti,
who had worked long and hard with Local Offi-

cers to achieve the belated recognition. The
I.W.A. National Executive Board was also pre-
sent to mark the even.

POSTSCRIPT

The strikes in Newfoundland and Northern
Ontario reveal a theme that underlies so much
of the tension and violence in the labour history
of Canada’s forest industry. Government and
business interests determine that an area has
to be “developed.” Large corporations with suffi-
cient capital to build large mills are induced to
do so in part by the assurance of a bush labour
force that will do the work for far less than pre-
vailing wages, and under miserable conditions.
These conditions become accepted as the norm
in the communities concerned, often seen even
by millworkers (as in both Newfoundland and
Northern Ontario) as necessary, if regrettable,
to continuing “prosperity.” Under these circum-
stances, when a union is formed to confront the
exploitation, tensions rise, and violence often
follows. Then the governments and business

groups that designed the process denounce the
violence and the union.

NEXT ARTICLE: The 1967 B.C. Interior
Strike, the late 70’s Ontario strike against Boise
Cascade and the campaign of the right wing to
weaken labour and destroy the Social Safety Net.

FOOTNOTES

(1) Labour rights and the “social safety net,”

implemented during and just after World
War Two, were generally accepted by the
right wing at that time, so long as “man-
agement rights” were recognized by the
work force.
We save for a later issue an account of
how these important reforms became
acceptable during the war, then, begin-
ning in the late sixties, a serious threat
to the system.

(2) Manuscript of the speech of H. Landon
Ladd at Memorial University, St. John’s,
Newfoundland, on April 6th, 1983. I.W.A.
Canada Archives. It was printed in
Kealey, G.S. and Cherwinski, W.J.C.,
“Lectures in Canadian Working Class
History.” St. John’s Committee on Cana-
dian Labour History, 1985 pp 140-164.
See also a pamphlet “The Case for Sud-
bury,” published by the “Elect Carlin
Committee of Sudbury Riding.” Circa
1950. I.W.A. Archives.

(3) Report of the (1959) Commission on the
Logging Industry. Cited in Gillespie, Bill:
“A Class Act; An Illustrated History of
the Labour Movement in Newfoundland
and Labrador.” St. John’s. Published by
the Newfoundland and Labrador Federa-
tion of Labour, 1986. p. 107. I rely heay-
ily on Gillespie’s account of the strike,
and especially of earlier Newfoundland
forest industry labour history.

(4) Gillespie, op. cit.

(5) Gillespie. op. cit. p.109.

(6) Seymour, op cit, p. 66.

(7) Gillespie. op. cit. pp.112, 113.

(8) Toronto Star, March 11, 1959. Cited in
Gillespie, op. cit. p. 115.

(9) Seymour. “Illustrated History,” pp 56 -
65.

(10) This Account relies almost entirely on
Champoux, Martin: “Reesor Siding; a
Labour Dispute in Northern Ontario. A
manuscript translated from French by
Norm Rivard, President of Local 2995,
I.W.A. CANADA. See also “I.W.A.
CANADA Lumberworker” of June, 1996,
stories on Reesor Siding by Editor Norm
Garcia, pp 13 and 15.

(11) Kimberly-Clark owned the other 51%.

(12) The author can attest to the influence of
the Church on rural labour conditions at
that time. I worked on northern Quebec
construction projects in 1960, relying on
the tender mercies of the “Catholic Work-
ers’ Association.” Neither low wages, a
fifty-four hour week or bad food pro-
voked any discernible activity of that
organization. Of course, workers in that
part of Canada are now represented by
strong, effective and independent unions.

LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1998/15

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