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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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 29, 1977—Page 14

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.

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