°tders from the Bennett government, charged into the peaceful meeting.

Stop the further trespass on rail-
Way property.”

The trekkers marched into the
fair grounds in. Regina with
thousands filling the streets on
fither side to see the column

Stretching far back toward the rail
Yard.

Needing time to establish his
Police cordon, Bennett sent R. J.
anion, minister of railways and

Canals, and Robert Weir, minister

of agriculture to Regina to an-
ounce to the assembled men that
© would negotiate with a
delegation in Ottawa. It was a ploy,
very man knew it was a ploy, but
at a time when newspaper reports
of imminent revolution dogged the
tek’s every step, public support
€pended on acceptance of the
offer to negotiate. The decision
Passed through a stormy meeting
and, after assurances from the
S0vernment representatives that

NO strikers would be harassed’

uring the delegation’s absence,
ight men — Art Evans, Pete
€ilson, John Cosgrove, Doc
Savage, Mike McCauley, Paddy

O'Neil, Red Walsh and Ed Martin ,

~ Set out for Ottawa.

Bob “Doc” Savage, one of the
“ight, remembers the going:

“It was quite a delegation —
Packsacks on our backs, no
Mefcases, wearing. coveralls
donated by the Army and Navy
Store. Tidy and clean, but pretty
Tagged — probably the most
Tagged delegation that had ever
Bone to see the prime minister:
: d as we were going, we noticed a
Tainload of R.C.M.P. going in the
°pposite direction. ‘

; “When we got to Port Arthur and

pet have had four or five

Ousand right there. Tiehacks,
ners, lumberworkers, you name
a they were all there cheering us

then’ day after we got to Ottawa,
€y marshalled us in to see R. B.
x Mhett and his cabinet. There

€ren’t many there — two R.C.M.-
us dden behind drapes in the

Ck, some cabinet ministers and
one old senator, I guess he was, Sir
‘forge Perley...”

ee meeting was brief that
rea. Bennett, brushing off the
©mands and grievances of the

ont William, if we could have. io
Pened the doors of the coaches, we:

strikers, left no doubt that genuine
negotiations were never intended.
Beginning with the insinuation that
the delegation was made up of
enemy aliens, that their leader,
Evans, was an embezzler, he
concluded with the familiar charge
of ‘‘Communistic agitation,’’
drawing from Evans the now
famous comment that Bennett was
“not fit to be the premier of a
Hottentot village.”

With Evan’s final statement,
“Our responsibility is to take this
back to the workers and see that
the hunger program of Bennett is
stopped,’’ the delegation was
ushered out.

For the eight men, it was to go to
amass meeting in Ottawa to report
on the meeting. For Bennett, it was
to return to the House on June 24 to
continue his tirade and to announce

Md At UL a aA A A

Ais

Part of the scene in Regina’s Market Square on July 1, 1935 after the RCMP and provincial police, under

his intention to reply with violent
repression.

Regina, meanwhile, was in a
virtual state of siege. R.C.M.P. and
provincial police detachments
surrounded the city.

Returning to Regina, the
delegation reported on their
meeting to the strikers and, noting
the marshalled police, issued a
warning to the -provincial
authorities of the danger of the
federal cabinet usurping the
authority of the province in law
enforcement.

By 5 p.m. on July 1, the trekkers
had made proposals to ‘the federal
government for an organized
return to Vancouver provided their
organization was allowed to
remain intact. Negotiations had
already begun with premier
Gardiner of Saskatchewan for
transportation, and.a mass rally

Their column stretching far back towards the rail yard from which
they have come, the trekkers march into Regina. Even as they entered

had been’ called for 8 p.m. in
Market Square to acquaint the
public with the situation and to
gain support for the demand for
‘relief.

But Bennett had already set the
stage for his savage drama — the
evening of Dominion Day, 1935.
More than 1,500 had gathered in the
square. Evans’ words reached out
over the sympathetic crowd....

And then it broke. ...

‘Suddenly the back doors of the
garages opened across. the
square,’’ Doc Savage remem-
bered, ‘“‘hundreds of men in civic-
dressed police armed with white
batons — they looked like half-
baseball bats — all rushed out like
a stampede. In the meantime, four
long vans pulled up, the back doors
opened and R.C.M.P. charged out.
Their rush coincided with dozens of
police on horses moving in from
the other side. They had it all
worked out — premeditated.

“They fired on us and threw tear
gas everywhere. Red Walsh and a
couple of others tried to rally
everybody back into line to get us
back to the fairgrounds. We partly
lined up when a carload of plain-
clothes police, some of them on the

‘running board, went’ by and emp-
-tied their guns... .”

Faced with an imminent mas-
sacre, the men defended them-
selves in the best way possible,
with rocks and barricades and
fought for an escape.

Already in the first rush of
police, a Regina plainclothes
detective, Charles Millar, was
clubbed to death — R.C.M.P. of-
ficers had mistaken him for Art

Evans who, by that time, had been
arrested. A trekker, W. T. Schaak,
died later.

By the time it was over, 100 had

-their

LAV a

been injured and 113 arrested. A
price was put on the head of
Millar’s attackers as _ the
authorities sought to turn their own
cold-blooded error into a case
against the trekkers. Three hours
later, as the men regrouped in the
fairgrounds, machine guns were
trained on them from the walls
above.

Negotiations with - premier
Gardiner concluded swiftly the 3
following morning and j
arrangements were made for the j
return of the men to Vancouver
aboard two: trains. The cost came
to $31,257, coupled with an in-
determinate amount for the
movement of police — money that
the government could never find
for unemployment insurance or
work and wages.

The men returned to Vancouver, |
organization unbroken.
Bennett had lashed out with his
‘“Sron heel of ruthlessness’’ but the
struggle was unabated. In October,
the Conservatives went down to
humiliating defeat, never to
recover until the Diefenbaker
victory in 1957. The successor,
King, was forced to strike Section
98 off the books. And the relief
camps were closed in July, 1936.

Two years later, many of the
men who had marched in the tight,
disciplined column returning to
Vancouver’ appeared in another
trek, this time thousands of miles
away, rallying to the defence of
Republican Spain as part of the
heroic International Brigades.
What had been perhaps, an
elementary fight for a future and a
decent life.was raised to a new
height — against the fascist in-
vader, for a decent life for all

people.
Many of them never returned.
But the struggles of their

generation had already helped to
shape the future.

i ae
- a

ae:

BwWwoon

ee 2 ee «@ i a
C14 GLASGOW LUMBER ,S

the city, Iron Heel Bennett was marshalling the R.C.M.P. for the
brutal police attack on the meeting in Market Square, July 1.

- PACIFIC TRIBUNE SUPPLEMENT—FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 1975—Page 5