FEATURE REVIEW

Tough Timber: The
Loggers of British
Columbia

by Myrtle Bergren
Progress Books. 1966

THE MEN WHO BUILT the great
IWA, in its early years, had common
characteristics. They were young, they
were poor and they were committed to
staying the course when progress must
have appeared impossible. For former
IWA members, a first-time reading or
re-reading of Myrtle Bergren’s Tough
Timber - The Loggers of British
Columbia, is timely. As our union has
gone into a new phase in merging with
another great industrial union, the
United Steelworkers, it is appropriate
that we look back to honour some of
the men and women who founded the
IWA.

Tough Timber, first published in
1966 by Progress Books, and repub-
lished by Elgin Publications is hard to
find. You might locate it ina used book-
store, in the Library or on the Internet.

The book, based on a series of inter-
views with now late personas including
Ame Johnson, Hjalmar Bergren, John
McCuish, George Grafton and Edna
Brown, focuses on a collection of trade
unionists who took on the millionaire
boss loggers with great will and deter-
mination. Union activity in the woods
Was virtually non-existent in the early
1900's. In 1923 the Wobblies struck in
the Cranbrook area. By 1926 the
Lumber Workers Industrial Union of
Canada was dead in the water due to
intimidation and blacklisting. In the
winter of 1928 a group of loggers,
induding Johnson, Glen Lamont, Jack
Gillbanks, Jack Brown, Andy Hogarth,
Frank Stewart and Ed Duban met in a
Hastings Street rooming house, across
from the Woodwards Department
store in downtown Vancouver, to
restart a Lumber and Agricultural
Workers Industrial Union of Canada.
By the fall of 1929 it had 25 members
to form an executive with Pete Hanson
as its organizer, collecting dues. The
Norwegian born Johnson was the
union’s secretary. A series of individual
strikes including one at Fraser Mills in
1931 and of fallers and buckers at Elk
River Timber and Campbell River
Timber, spurned by union organizers
known as “delegates,” prompted the
‘men to organize for a larger confronta-
tion.

Two weeks prior to Christmas of
1934, the union, by then known as the
LWIU, held a wage scale conference to
demand a better deal for fallers. In late
January of the next year, Bloedel,
Stewart and Welch fired 62 loggers
from its Camp 4 operation when two
union organizers demands
for a wage increase. Two hundred and
fifty men from Camp 4 struck. Some
walked into nearby Camp 3 to contact a
200 man crew which also walked out.
‘The men as a5 cent an hour

COURTESY LOCAL 1-80 WH. GOLD COLLECTION

= Pictured in 1937 are fallers at a Victoria Lumber Manufacturing Company Ltd.

Many would become members of pioneer IWA-CIO Local 80.

camp was set up in Campbell River. The
union had $250 to its name. Large
camps such as Elk River Timber and
Campbell River Timber, both members
of the B.C. Loggers’ Association, went
out. Then Alberni Pacific Lumber Camp

3, anda series of
Teese in tons

Vancouver

10 J 6 i Island Camps,

went down.

TIMBER Even the mayor
“ae r'

of Vancouver,
permitted the
fledgling
LW1U toholda
fundraising tag
day. Bloedel
and company

flew in scabs.
Strikers hiked into the woods and, for 17
days, harassed the scabs who were
guarded by 150 police officers. The cops
had a machine gun on skids to threaten
union members. On April 26 the gov-
emment passed a minimum wage law of
40 cents an hour, which gave the work-
ers the $3.20 minimum that they were
looking for. The strike fizzled but a capa-
ble groups of activists had been formed.

LWIU organizers would continue
their work. Men like Hjalmar Bergren
and George Grafton would hike on rail
grades and in the bush for up to 20 miles
at a time to collect only a few dollars in
voluntary dues in all kinds of inclement
weather.

In late 1935 the LWIU voted to join the
American Federation of Labour affiliate,
the United Brotherhood of Carpenters
and Joiners, as the Lumber and Sawmill
Workers Union. In January of 1936 the
union launched a strike to “Boost Our
Pay a Dollar a Day” They got 50 cents!
The ‘36 strike involved the union’s
Ladies Auxiliary, sawmill workers and
shingle mill workers in a broader effort
Over 2,000 struck on the coast.

Union organizers realized that they
had been trying to organize workers on
grievances issues like wages, working
conditions, health and safety issues, etc.
But with the 1935 birth of the CIO and
industrial unionism, the Carpenters’ and
the AFL lacked a program that made the
woodworkers part of a broader labour
movement for democractic rights. In July
of 1937 the Lumber and Sawmill
Workers voted to join the International
Woodworkers of America at a conven-
tion in Tacoma. B.C.’s Harold Pritchett
became the first International President
of the IWA.

The union formulated its program for
woodworkers. It was based on reforming
the Trade Union Act, the right to orga-
nize, unemployment insurance, the
right to negotiate union agreements, and
legal recognition of the union.

Nineteen-thirty eight was the IWA’s
toughest year as it almost died on the
vine. It fought a brutal battle at a mine in
Blubber Bay against the Pacific Lime
company. IWA Local 163 member Bob
Gardner died as a result of injuries from
the provincial police. The union was
broke and lost the strike, but the Liberal
government did make minor changes to
labour law. In 1939 the union hit a low of
226 members.

Life was breathed into the organiza-
tion as the union purchased the “Laur-
Wayne” boat to organize on Vancouver
Island, the central and northem coasts
and the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Brothers Johnson, McCuish and many
others did their duties on the vessel
which plied the dangerous coastal
waters. By the end of ‘39 the union built
itself up to some 1,800 members, as the
Cowichan Valley and the QCI became
strongholds for the union.

By 1941 IWA Local 80 members at
Lake Logging achieved the first camp
agreements, as their employer, not a
member of the BC Loggers Association,
sought labour peace. Employers in the
QCI needed to seek labour peace to keep
workers in such isolated conditions.
Significant gains were made in 1943. The
first-ever union agreement was reached
in 1943 at BATCO logging in Iron River.
Ittook IWA organizers more than 5 years
to organize the 400 man VLM
Chemainus sawmill in 1941. It was the
first time that workers came to the union
and joined as a block. That event sent out
a huge signal to forest industry workers
as mill after mill joined the IWA, which
assured its cooperation for the war effort.

Tough Timber concludes with the
1946 province-wide strike and some
information on the formation of the
Woodworkers Industrial Union of
Canada in 1948 and the end of the com-
munistled leadership which founded
our union.

In addition to mapping out many of
the union’s early gains and defeats,
Tough Timber is full of anecdotes about
the characters who built our union, the
women who supported them through
activities of the Ladies Auxiliaries and
community life in those formative years.

MUSIC REVIEW

Deja Vu All Over Again

by John Fogerty
Geffen Records 2004

IT’S A GOOD ENOUGH CD that many
of us throwbacks are fumbling for our
old CCR 8 Tracks. A thorough dose of
John Fogerty is good for the soul,
now and again, and his newest
release is no disappointment. The
Army veteran and composer of anti-
Vietnam War anthem Fortunate Son
has, at age 59, released a gem of a
title track drawing a parallel between
America’s ghastly misadventure in
southeast Asia and George Bush and
Donald Rumsfeld's illegal invasion
and occupation of Iraq. The title song,
Deja Vu All Over Again, could become
a modern-day anthem even before
the draft begins: “Day by day | hear
the voices rising/Started with a whis-
per like it did before/Day by Day we
count the dead and dying/Ship the
bodies home while the networks keep
the score.” Aside from the lead song,
which, musically-speaking, would fit
on an album like the classic 1970's
Cosmo’s Factory, most of the other
nine tracks are treats in themselves,
with a mixture of styles not normally
combined on other Fogerty or
Creedance Water Revival records.
Included are the pop ditty Sugar-
Sugar, punk-rocker tune She’s Got
Baggage, and reggae-beat Radar.
Special mention has to go to Honey
Do, which is an accoustically-driven
rockabilly lament for the working man
- those who just can’t get time to
relax on their time off in the present
or the hereafter. On Nobody’s Here
Anymore Fogerty plays a flowing
Mark Knopfler-like lead guitar with the
British virtuoso himself in the back-
ground. The song's lyrics point to our
disconnect in the age of hi-tech: “He’s
got the latest software/He’s got the
latest hardware too/He’s got the latest
gizmo in his room/He’s feeling so con-
nected/But he don’t talk to a soul...”
For die-hard CCR fans, Wicked Old
Witch, comes up with some good
sswamp-rock formula licks and lyrics.
It's been seven years since Fogerty
released his last studio album, so
you'd think he’d come out with more
than 10 cuts. One complaint this
reviewer has is there ain’t enough
tunes on the new record. So if you
are heading out to your local gravel
pit party, make sure you grab some
of those CCR classics like Born on the
Bayou, Suzie-Q, Green River, Run
Through the Jungle, Heard it Through
the Grapevine and Up Around the
Bend. John Fogerty may be close to
being a fogie, but his singing and
playing still pack a punch.

- reviews this page by Norman Garcia

DECEMBER 2004 THE ALLIED WORKER L 23.

eVWA RIGBIIIN

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