With a Provincial Police officer at the controls, the bulldozer at left was driven into the line of miners and their wives as they
picketed the narrow roadway leading to the mine. At right, the injured women pose outside their shacks in Corbin. The
photos were printed into postcards by Gushul Studios in nearby Blairmore
ties and elsewhere to raise money for miners’ strike relief.

, Alberta and sold around the mining communi-

Corbin strike ‘ignited spark of anger’

Continued from page I2
ating, even on the curtailed volume of busi-
ness, if some satisfactory arrangement with
the striking miners could be accomplished.”

Bell’s proposal was essentially to allow
the company to re-open the No. 3
mine — the Big Showing — “through the
contractor to whom the present contract
has been let,” and to submit all outstanding
grievances to a conciliation board to be
appointed by the federal department of
labor. Underground operations, he added
would resume “‘as expeditiously as circum-
stances will permit.”

In fact, they were proposals which would
virtually ensure an end to underground
mining — and quite probably the demise
of the union.

The Corbin Miners’ Association, con-
vinced that Bell’s report, if accepted, would
allow the company to cut back permanently
its underground operations, and effectively

blacklist underground miners, rejected it.

The B.C. Workers’ News gave substance to
the fears of government complicity in the
May 17, 1935 edition which noted that Bell,
when he had acted as the conciliator in the
Bridge River gold miners’ strike “had
offered the same terms as the mine owners.”

Actually, Bell’s proposals were virtually —

the terms that Corbin Collieries itself would
have set. In fact, Bell’s entire report for the
labor ministry was a judiciously-worded but
totally one-sided document that presented
the company as the aggrieved party unable
to reach terms with a union dominated by
Tadical leadership.

The attempt to open the big showing with
Strikebreakers was never mentioned, nor
Was the police action that accompanied it.
Bell merely referred to the “serious rot
(which) occured in Corbin. ..”

Instead he laid the blame on “outside
influences which had much to do with pre-
cipitating the crisis.” He quoted at length
from the constitution of the Workers’ Unity

ague with its references to “revolutionary
- Unionism” and noted pointedly that the
League had been ‘“‘declared illegal in a Sas-
Katchewan Court.” But not to appear
biased, he added finally: “The foregoing is

Y no means intended as casting reflection

Or taint upon all the residents of Corbin,

use I honestly believe many of them to

be unfortunate and unwitting victims of

Influence whose true import is not under-
Stood.”

In contrast, the justice of the miners’
cause was echoed wherever the independent
commission — now called the Labor
Investigation Committee — held meetings:
in Vancouver, New Westminster, Duncan,
Ladysmith, Cumberland...

Speaking before a Vancouver audience,
one of the commission members told indig-
nantly of the miners’ housing:

“Hardly one of the shacks was fit for
human habitation. In one case, a worker,

his wife and six children lived in a single
room, nine by 12 feet in size, with cracks in
the walls and ceiling through which rain and
snow entered.” —

But although the reports aroused a wave
of indignation throughout the province’s
labor movement, both the government and
Corbin Collieries were unmoved.

the miners and their wives is still unshaken.”

Accordingly, Pattullo tightened the
screws. In October, Robert Elliot, the
town’s only doctor for 17 years was stripped
of his Justice of the Peace and coroner’s
certificates and within two months he
would also lose the $100 monthly grant
given him as the health officer, thus forcing
him to leave. The week after the police
attack, he had written the government, in
his capacity of Liberal Association secre-
tary, charging that the police seemed bent
on “beating women and men up instead of
using common sense.”

That Corbin Collieries May 7 statement
to close operations was initially intended as
only a threat was revealed in October when
the company’s secretary-treasurer arrived in
Corbin to supervise repair work on mine

ee

Charging that the strike was caused by “Com-
munistic propaganda”, Premier Duff Pattullo —
arrayed the full force of the police against the

miners. Later, faced with their determination, he
would strip Corbin families of relief and force the

town’s only doctor to move.

On May 1, Sherwood Lett, a director of
the company and its legal counsel, wrote
Bell stating, “‘...we have decided that the best
course to pursue is to discontinue opera-
tions, which we are proceeding to do forth-
with.”

Eleven days later, the courts took up the
club wielded by the police on Apr. 17. Eight
Corbin miners were given vindictive senten-
ces, ranging from fines to six months in
prison, with additional prison terms in the
event of default on the fines.

The strike pushed on into September but
now the government added further injury,
declaring that miners and their families
would be denied relief unless they moved
from the town. Despite the blackmail, a
representative from Corbin told the
MWUC convention, “The determination of

machinery. but as the months wore on, the
fact of permanent closure became increas-
ingly evident.

The labor movement, especially the
Workers Unity League which in 1935 had
gained 1,000 new members, continued to
rally for the Corbin strikers. In Blairmore,

the miners each contributed $2 per month .

for strike relief, a contribution that was
maintained well into 1936. And people
throughout the province responded regu-
larly to appeals from Florence Apponen,
secretary of the women’s auxiliary of the
Corbin Miners’ Association for clothing for
the children of the town.

The B.C. Workers’ News had regularly
carried those appeals and also added its
own. A report from Nov. 8, 1935 quoted a
traveller just returned from Corbin who

said, ““The miners’ kiddies are in the most
pitiful state that ever I saw in my life.”

Throughout the spring of 1936, the Can-
adian Labor Defence League, by now.
almost under seige as a result of the arrests
and convictions of longshore, relief camp
and mine strikers, strove to win the release
of the six Corbin strikers held in the jail at
Nelson. The defence effort had cost $4,000,
a huge sum for the time, but the state was
immovable.

In March, one of the jailed strikers,
David Lockhart, died in prison, although
an inquest, predictably, exonerated the pri-
son authorities. But as the B.C. Lumber
Worker reported, Inspector John MacDo-
nald, who had led the attack on the pickets
and now was in charge of the prison, could
not answer when he was asked why two of
the other strikers were still held in close
ocnfinement even though they “have
earned and are entitled to a remission of
their sentences.”

Labor organizations throughout the
country demanded the release of the miners
as did 32 members of the B.C. legislature
— without success.

Finally, the CPR sealed the fate of the
town as it tore up the tracks that had carried
out the coal to fuel the profits of a U.S.
corporation. And the last of the miners was
compelled to leave with them.

Faced with a blacklist in most of the
other mines in the Crows Nest Pass, they
went farther afield, some even to farm in the
Peace River area of Alberta. And Corbin
was abandoned, a gutted monument to
Corbin Collieries’ refusal to recognize the
Miner Workers Union and the rights of its
members to decent working and living con- —
ditions.

But if Corbin was deserted, the struggle
that had been waged there burned like a
flame for generations to come. Under the
leadership of the Mine Workers Union of
Canada, the 300 miners and their wives had
first launched their audacious strike and
then held it despite government-employer
terror arrayed against them. Though they ©
couldn’t win, their strike was part of the
larger struggle which ultimately brought
down Section 98. And when the miners later
voted solidly to adopted the Workers’ Unity
League call for unity and take their organi-
zation into the United Mine Workers, they
took with them a militant tradition that
remained long after the town was gone.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 1, 1985 e 13