A supporter of the progressive movement — including the Tribune and its various predecessors — for most of his --

adult life, Jack Treliving, seen here amidst the outbuildings of his home in Walnut Grove, remembers the day when

he was assigned to the Canadian expeditionary forces slated to go to Siberia in 1918-1919.

Jack Treliving:

—Hal Griffin photo

remembering

the intervention of 1918-19

n a closet of his modest home at Walnut Grove, Langley,
Jack Treveling has an old army greatcoat issued to him
when he enlisted during the First World War and volunteered
for service with the Canadian expeditionary force in Siberia.
It’s his one link with a memorable period of his life.

For those who know the veteran fisherman and logger,
now verging On 82 and retired for the past eight years, it’s
hard to imagine him as a volunteer for the armies of interven-
tion that strove to crush the new Soviet state in the years
1917-20. :

He has been a member of the UFAWU since 1946, a mem-
ber of the Communist party since 1930, and his entire adult
life from his first involvement in an IWW logging camp
strike in 1918 has been devoted to struggle for progressive
causes.

The story, however, is not what it seems.

It was brought to mind by an address given in Vancouver’s
Georgia Hotel ballroom last October at a reception held by
the Canada-USSR Association for a group of Soviet visitors
touring this country.

In that address, Victor Anfilov, dean of international jour-
nalism and professor of history at Moscow University, recall-
ed the historic movement against intervention which forced
withdrawal of the 4,000 Canadian troops sent to Siberia in
1917-19 and thwarted dispatch of others.

**Vancouver was the p!ace where it all started,’’ he declar-
ed, noting that the widespread opposition at home and the
spirit of unrest among Canadian troops communicated itself
to the British and U.S. troops, contributing to collapse of
direct Canadian, British and U.S. intervention.

Few of Treliving’s generation remain to tell of those fate-
ful years when a new social system took shape amid the ruin
and devastation of war, arousing fear and hatred among the
upholders of the old order and offering hope and inspiration
to working people everywhere weary of the insensate
slaughter.

A press grown skilled in the art of inflaming and manipu-
lating public opinion excelled itself in interpreting the Octo-
ber, 1917 revolution for its readers. And the daily succession
of lurid headlines across the country and .the propaganda
they published as fact was recorded for posterity by J. Castell
Hopkins in the volumes of his Canadian Annual Review of
Public Affairs for the years 1917-19.

In the 1918 volume, he accused the Bolsheviks of propa-
gating a ‘‘doctrine of hate’? and then enlarged upon his own
version of that doctrine by charging them with every imagin-
able atrocity, ‘‘Oriental in character, including mutilations
of all kinds, slow starvation, burning alive, piercing with
bayonets. . . Cathedrals were sacked and pillaged, churches
defiled, sanctuaries, profaned, nuns brutally treated and
murdered. .. .”’

Then, having drawn his own caricature of events in Russia,
he turned his attention to the home front where, he claimed,
“there were 21 Soviets established in the country awaiting a
chance for action — as in Winnipeg.”’

“*In Canada,”’ he wrote, ‘‘Bolshevism took various forms. -

It appeared under the guise of social democracy, or labor
rights, or continuous denunciation of capitalists and monied
classes; it had a basis wherever Russians and Jews and other
foreigners gathered together, with special centres in Mont-

This article originally appeared in the Dec. 15, 1978, edition

of the Fisherman and is reprinted here by permission. It has
been slightly abridged. :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 27, 1979—Page 10

real, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver; it
was engineered also by IWW agitators from the States and
operated in the mines of northern Ontario, Alberta and Brit-
ish Columbia.

“‘Non-intervention in Russia or withdrawal of troops from
there was one of the items of propaganda, circulation of se-
ditious, anti-war pamphlets or leaflets was another. .. .”’

This is where Jack Treliving found himself drawn inexor-
ably into a struggle of which he already had been given a
taste.

For four years, starting at the age of 17, he had been work-
ing as a logger in Fraser Valley pole camps.

Across the border in April, 1918, protest against rotten
food, lice-ridden bunkhouses, long hours and hazardous op-
erations that took their toll in killed and maimed, erupted in
concerted job action throughout logging camps in the U.S.
northwest.

Organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, loggers
burned their own blankets on a given day in a determined bid
to win their demands, in many camps with success.

The protest spilled across the border to camps in B.C., and
the crew at Beaver River, near Aldergrove, where Treliving

‘was working as a rigger, seized on it as their own.

““We had a one-day strike,”’ he recalls. ‘‘That was enough.
We got the eight-hour day.’’

But in February he had turned 21 and his exemption from
military service had been cancelled.

In May, anticipating his.call, he enlisted in the artillery; a
course dictated by his desire to avoid combat rather than any
sudden conversion.

By Hal Griffin

‘*A friend of mine in Vancouver had warned me, ‘Don’t
wait to be called. If you do, they’ll put you in the infantry,
send you over and shove you right in the front line. Join the
artillery because that takes about a year’s training.’ And
that,’’ he says, ‘‘is what I did.’’

Within days he was on his way to Petawawa, Ontario, to
start his training. :

He had been there less than three months when the appeal
was made at a special muster parade for volunteers to join
the expeditionary force being formed to go to Siberia. :

“That ‘night, an older man named Gibson I chummed
around with came into the tent when he saw I was alone and
told me he was thinking of volunteering. He wanted'me to go
with him,’’ Treliving relates. ;

‘Later we went down to the canteen to talk it over.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know you hate the army.’ ‘I sure do,’ I
said. ‘1 want to get out. I can’t see anything in all this damn
fighting.’

“* “Well,” he told me, ‘you come with me and when we get
over there we’ll just watch our chance and desert to the other
side.

** *You were born in Saskatchewan. You know how to
handle yourself in cold country.

** T tell you, that country’s going to go ahead. They’re
fighting for something worthwhile.’

“*He convinced me and I volunteered with him.’’

The ’flu hit the Petawawa base camp in October and the
troops in training were evacuated, those destined for Siberia
being sent to a camp in Queen’s Park New Westminster.

They had their moment of glory in November when, the ©

armistice signed, they paraded through the streets of New

Westminster with their horses and artillery in the victory ce
bration. After that the weeks dragged by while they awaité
the order to embark.

On several occasions they were told to get ready, bi
always the order was cancelled. Rumors went around tk
camp that the longshoremen in Vancouver were deliberate
slowing down the work of installing horse stalls and prepaty _
ing the troop ships because they sympathized with th
Bolsheviks. ;

And indeed, the Longshoremen’s Union, which had pas
ed a resolution of support for the Bolsheviks, was only pé
of a growing protest movement against intervention whic
the Union government of prime minister Sir Robert Borde
strove vainly to suppress by its order-in-council of Septembeé
27, 1918 banning 14 organizations.

In face of the hysteria and violence whipped up by tht
press, police raids and arrests, seizure of literature, labor oF.
ganizations redoubled their clamor for an end to censorship)
exemplified by the threat made by Lt.-Col. E. J. Chambe
chief press censor for Canada, to the B.C. Federation of
bor that he would act against the B.C. Federationist, its of
ficial organ, if it did not moderate its tone.

The B.C. Federationist, edited by the redoubtable E. 7
Kingsley, had been foremost in calling for withdrawal of G
nadian troops from Siberia, reflecting the demands of tf
B.C. Federation of Labor and Vancouver Trades and Labo
Council.

Defying censorship, suppressed labor papers reappealt
under new names. The Western Clarion became the Ré
Flag, proclaiming in its issue of February 15, 1919, ‘*Frof
every part of Canada the cry goes up: ‘Bring the boys bat!
home.’ We join in that cry with all our strength: ‘Bring thet
home from Siberia’... ”’ :

The demand was raised to a peak at the Western Labo!
Conference held\in Calgary, March 13-15, 1919 and attende
by trade union delegates from the four western provinces.

From that.conference, the first to raise the call for the sit
hour day, five-day week, the organizational campaign for tl*
One Big Union was launched. And, expressing the virtual)
unanimous sentiments of its 239 delegates, it endorsed tl
call for a general strike on June | if Canadian troops, bo
those already sent from Europe to fight with British troop
on the Murmansk front and those shipped to Siberia, welt
not withdrawn sooner. :

Three days earlier the strike call had been issued by tht
British Columbia Federation of Labor convention, whit
had been postponed from January to March and its vent!
changed to Calgary to coincide with the larger conference.

The contrast between the Western Labor Conference ant
the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, which tabled
resolution opposing intervention at its Quebec convention
September 16-21, 1918, could not have been sharper.

Capitulation of Germany deprived the Borden governmeél
of its sole pretext for sending Canadian troops to the Soviet
Union. Bs
- Division in the cabinet, in which the Conservatives held 1
portfolios to the Liberals’ 10, was stated most forcefully by -
T. A. Crerar, then minister of agriculture, who informe
Borden flatly that he was opposed to sending any mo
troops.

Crerar, who subsequently became leader of the Progres
sive Party which took 65 seats in the 1920 federal electio
wrote to Borden:

‘‘T cannot agree that the retention of our forces in Siberi
and the securing of further forces there can be justified 0
the grounds of necessity of re-establishing order in Siberi
The matter of how Russia will settle her internal affairs is he
concern — not ours.”’

The Borden government had many reasons for concern Ii
pressing an unpopular policy — discontent and riotin
among Canadian troops in England; restless over the slow
ness of their repatriation to Canada; rising unemploymel!
now that the war was over; the upsurge of labor militancy, !
all of which it saw a ‘Bolshevik’ menace, the better to justi
its repressive measures. ~

Agitated by police reports of the ‘‘great progress’’ beini
made by ‘Bolshevism’ among workers and soldiers in som!
western cities, acting prime minister Sir Thomas White evel
sent a cable to Borden at Paris, where he was attending
Versailles Peace Conference, suggesting that the British go
ernment be asked to transfer a cruiser from the China stati
to Victoria or Vancouver, where it ‘‘would have a steadyi
influence.”’

In June, 1919, the Canadian troops were recalled. Ont
Murmansk front, the Canadian field artillery brigade wi
the British force had fought a five-month rearguard actiol
against advancing Red forces while its White allies went ove!
to the Reds in large numbers. The retreat ended in a desper
ate evacuation by British warships. :

On the Siberian front, Canadian troops were used for gat’
rison duty only.

They did not have to bring Treliving back from Siberia. Ht
never got there.

The long awaited order to embark came in January, 1919.

“‘We left Queen’s Park at 1:30 in the morning,’’ says Tre
living. ‘‘We had to ride the horses at a walk over to Vancou
ver. They had us down on the railway track and we could
hardly hang on to the horses — you know how their feet click
the rails.

“It was raining and miserable and all we had in our pack:
sacks was a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of water.

‘*When we got there we stood around, waiting to put the)
horses on board. |

“The sergeant came along and we asked him, ‘When art
you going to load?’ ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘The boat isn’t
ready.’ We knew the longshoremen were still holding thing’
up.” |

Just around dark they started to load the horses and it was
9:30 p.m. before they were finished. Then they were paraded
to the Carrall Street tram depot where cars were waiting t0
take them to New Westminster.

see JACK TRELIVING pg. 13