Cont'd from pg. 7
baseball bat in his hand daring all
comers.

At his trial in Vernon in Sep-
tember, 1933, he conducted his own
defence, exposing the lies of the
police witnesses and the frame up
against him. But he was still found
guilty and sentenced to one year in
Oakalla, a term that was later
stretched by the courts to 18
months. While in prison his family
was evicted and his home
repossessed by a Vancouver
alderman because he couldn’t keep
up his mortgage payments.

Early in April, 1935, the single
unemployed in B.C., who had been
herded into relief camps where
they worked for 20 cents a day,
came out ina general strike on the
call of the Relief Camp Workers
Union, an affiliate of the Workers
Unity League.

As the WUL organizer for the
province anda highly skilled strike
leader, Evans played a leading
role in this strike. Many ingenious

forms of struggle were evolved:

including snake parades down
Vancouver’s busiest streets,
protest parades through the big
department stores, and the oc-
cupation of the Vancouver
Museum at the corner of Main and
Hastings. The citizens of Van-
couver gave the single unemployed
their wholehearted support. A tag
day netted over $5,000 while some
public meetings were attended by
as many as 15,000 people.

But after three months it became
clear that the strike could not go on
indefinitely. New forms of struggle
were needed. Out of this need arose
the concept of an On-To-Ottawa
Trek. The trek was conceived,
organized and led by Arthur Evans
—his greatest single achievement.

Few events in Canadian history
have captured the hearts and
minds of Canadians as did the trek
of some 2,000 single unemployed
men from Vancouver, determined
to go to Ottawa and confront prime
minister R. B. “Iron Heel’’ Bennett
with their demand for work and
wages. :

Beginning in Vancouver on June
3, 1935, the trekkers reached
Regina on June 14, travelling by
freight train, or as they called it,
“riding the rods.’’ Enroute they
stopped at selected cities where
they were fed by enthusiastic
citizens. In Regina they were
stopped on orders from Ottawa. At
the same time the RCMP, who
were under contract to the
province of Saskatchewan and
under the control of the province’s
attorney-general, were told to take
their instructions only from Ot-
tawa.

On the invitation of the federal
cabinet, the trekkers sent an eight-
man delegation, headed by Evans,
to Ottawa. But Bennett. used the
interview only as a platform to
taunt and insult the delegates and
to lecture them about the benefits
of the relief camps, all of- which
made good copy for the assembled
reporters. But when the prime
minister called Evans a_ thief
because he had used union money
to feed starving miners in
Drumheller, Evans couldn’t take
any more. ‘“You’re a liar!’ he

While Evans was imprisoned in Oakalla in 1932, scores of friends
rallied in a valiant — if unsuccessful — attempt to prevent foreclosure
against his home and eviction of his family. At top of stairs, placards

retorted to the startled prime
minister, a remark that made the
headlines in papers right across
the country.

The RCMP were given orders to
smash the trek forcibly and arrest
its leaders. On July 1, they at-
tacked a public meeting of strikers
and citizens being held on Regina’s
Market Square, with clubs, tear
gas and guns. A city detective in
plainclothes was killed; trekkers to
this day are convinced he was
mistaken for Evans and clubbed to
death by the police. Scores of
trekkers were wounded or injured
in the three-hour battle on Regina’s
streets and some 119 were
arrested, including Evans. —

Penned in the Exhibition
Grounds and surrounded by
barbed wire, the trekkers kept
their battered ranks united. With
public support, that increased
after the brutal police attack on
July 1, they won the right to return
west as an organized body, this
time in railway passenger cars at
government expense.

A tremendous campaign
developed from Halifax to Van-
couver Island for the release of the
trekkers, abolition of the relief
camps, and repeal of Section 98.
Evans spoke at scores of public
meetings, including one _three-
month public speaking tour where
he spoke almost every night.

In the federal elections in the fall
of 1935, the hated Bennett govern-
ment went down to humiliating
defeat. The citizens of Regina
elected a labor mayor and city
council including a Communist
alderman. The following spring,
Section 98 was repealed and steps
were taken to close down the relief

camps. The charges against Evans
and his fellow trek leaders were
dropped, but many of those

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arrested at the Regina “‘riot”’ were
sent to prison.

When the Spanish democratic
republic, invaded by General
Franco backed by the German and
Italian fascists, sent out a world-
wide call for help, Canadians
responded with funds, medical
supplies and volunteers. Many of
the leaders and members of the
On-To-Ottawa Trek joined the
Mackenzie Papineau Battalion.

The Communist Party threw all
its resources behind the struggle to
help the Spanish people, warning

that if the fascists were successful, .

a world war would be just around
the corner. ‘The fight in Spain is
our fight,’”’ wrote Tim Buck in a
leaflet distributed across the land.
‘Should Franco win . . . Mussolini
and Hitler will march against
France and other Euopean lands.
The USSR will be doubly
threatened by fascist attack.”

How prophetic and how true
those words were!

One of the projects undertaken
by the Communisty Party was the
raising of funds to buy an am-
bulance to send to Dr. Bethune in
Spain. Arthur Evans toured B.C.
for 4 month in the summer of 1937
to raise funds and develop support
for Spain.

The following year, 1938, Evans
undertook his last major
organizing assignment when he
was sent to Trail to organize the
miners and smeltermen into the
International Union of Mine, Mill
and Smelter Workers, an affiliate
of the CIO headed by John L.
Lewis.

Trail was a company town witha
company union. Cominco, a sub-
sidiary of the CPR, controlled
every aspect of life in the, town,
including the church, the stores,
the press and the radio station. To
break into this company setup was
a herculean task but Evans was
equal to the occasion.

Under his leadership many of the
mines in the surrounding area
became unionized. He succeeded in
establishing Local 480 of the Union
in Trail itself. A public meeting
called by the union, the first since
the murder of Ginger Goodwin 20
years before, drew some 1,500
people.

It was not until, 1942 that the
company was compelled to
recognize and negotiate with the
union, but Evans had begun the

proclaim: “Evans is in for us — we’re out for him” and “Picket line on
comrade Evans’ home: Organize and fight.”

organizing that would later be
taken up by local people.

In the early years of World War
II shipbuilding began to boom at
the coast, employing over 30,000
workers. Evans secured a job in
the yards as a shipwright. He
joined the Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters which had a thriving
local in the yards and soon was
elected as a shop steward, using
his organizing talents to help bring
hundreds of new workers into the
union.

His fellow workers urged him to
run for a leading post in the union,
but before action could be taken
tragedy struck. On his way home
from a Saturday night social at the
Fishermen’s Hall on Jan. 22, 1944,
he was struck down by a speeding
car just after he stepped down
from a street car and started to
cross the street. He lay un-
conscious in the hospital for a
month before finally succumbing
to multiple injuries he had
sustained. A public subscription
launched by the beloved labor
journalist, ‘‘Ol’ Bill’’ Bennett,
brought in funds to meet the im-
mediate needs of the Evans family
and to pay off the mortgage on
their home.

Evans was one of those labor and
Communist leaders who, like Tim
Buck, Tom McEwen and Harvey
Murphy, became legends in their
own lifetime.

He was an absolutely fearless
working class leader, an out-
standing and immensely popular
public speaker and an unusually
imaginative organizer imbued
with a healthy class hate for a
cruel and oppressive system that
had already in his lifetime long
outlived its usefulness.

This tall, lean, lanky, rawboned
man had a sardonic sense of
humor, class humor, and he used it
most effectively against the class
enemy.

Even today, 45 years later, those
who knew him during the Prin-
ceton Strike, for example, recall
his sense of humor.

During that strike the Establish-
ment of the day spread the story
that Evans, in leading the strike,
was taking his orders direct from
Moscow. Evans let the story get
around that a secret document
from Moscow had indeed arrived
and that he had hidden it under a

huge coal pilenear the union offic®
Imagine the hilarity of the strike
when they saw the police sweatiné
as they shovelled the coal trying ”
locate the non-existent document
On another occasion during thé
same strike, Evans checked in at®
hotel. Knowing that he would soo?
be visited and searched by thé
police he prepared a_ suitable
welcome. Each hotel had 4
chamber pot which substituted £0!
a toilet. After liberally using th
pot Evans wrote a note and singel
it around the edges before tearint
it up and throwing it into the po
When the police came they made?
thorough search and finally cam
across the scraps of paper in th
chamber pot. Jubilant at thei
discovery they carefully put thé
odorous pieces of paper togethel
The message read: ‘“‘Aren’t tht
cops a nosey bunch of bastards?

Evans joined the Communis!
Party in 1926 in Vancouvel)

although, as he told the Regin!

Riot Inquiry Commission in 1935
“IJ had been a Communist lont
before that in my thinking.”’

During the Thirties he was 4
member of the party’s Provincia
Committee, and exactly 40 yea’
ago he was in charge of the annual
fund drive for the Pacific Tribun@

The story of the life of Arthw
Evans which Jean Sheils, Evans
daughter, and I have written ant
which will soon be published,
more a semi-documentary accoul!
of the life and times of Arthv!
Evans than a biography.

In it we have included detailed
descriptions of the strikes al!
other struggles which he led, i!
cluding excerpts from leaflets
labor publications, letters and thé
daily press. Evans testified befor!
the Regina Riot Inquiry Com
mission in 1935 for almost a we'
and much of the information h*
revealed there about his own lifé
has been included in the book
Another unique feature of the boob

is a day by day description of th®

On-To-Ottawa Trek from the tim?
it left Vancouver on June 3 until thé
men left for their homes on July

Wehope that the book will enablé)
readers to relive those stirriné
times, to learn from labor’
struggles of those years, and to b®
inspired, as we have been, by th®
example of this outstandiné|
Canadian Communist.

Fo Tl ae Fal ap

a a ae ee ae ae ee ae

pa FID glad ay So