December 16, 1963
THE FISHERMAN
Page 5
Protests Force UIC Backdown
Widespread protests which included picketing the Unemployment Insurance offices in Peterborough by members of the United Electrical Workers Union have forced the Commission to withdraw a loaded questionnaire it was using to force workers off UIC rolls.
UE Local 524 president Ray Peters charged that the "trick" questionnaire, introduced only last fall, was so broad that an unemployed worker could be, denied benefits "even if not a single job was available in Peterborough."
UFAWU members in northern BC in particular were being discriminated against as a result of answers to some of the questions honestly and innocently given.
Too high an acceptable minimum wage or a desire to accept work in the applicant's home area might be excuses for disqualification, according to experience in some areas.
Following are some of the questions put to applicants on the form which has now been withdrawn.
• To be eligible for UIC benefits you must be ready, able and willing to accept suitable employment immediately. Do you meet these requirements?
• Have you any restrictions regarding the locality in which you are prepared to work?
• Are there any reasons to prevent you from taking suitable work immediately? (Such as lack of transportation, home responsibilities, illness, pregnancy, personal business, or health.*
• Are you carrying on any activity such as attending a school, a training course, etc.?
• Have you any children under school age? If "yes" what arrangements are made for their care during your presence at work?
• Are the available transportation facilities sufficient for you to attend regularly without restriction?
Claimants were also asked when they would be available and willing to work, acceptable type of work, and an acceptable minimum wage.
UE president C. S. Jackson said withdrawal of the questionnaire was a victory resulting largely from "protests by UE and other labor groups."
He praised the action of the Peterborough Local in picketing UIC offices as an example of "hard hitting legislative action which in this instance got almost immediate results."
"He's practising his bankrupt expression for the whaling contract negotiations."
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
FISH and SHIPS
shortly before the strike last summer and flew down from West-view to enter Shaughnessy Hospital where he has been confined most of the time since. Archie, a veteran of the industry, has undergone two or three operations but he has high hopes of getting out by Christmas. He is definitely on the mend but in the meantime, he'd sure appreciate some visitors. Tom Campbell, a friend and also a gillnet member of the Local, was in seeing Archie and reports a lot of improvement plus a big drop in Archie's weight. We hope he's back on the drift next season.
•*• * * Roger Hager, president and general manager of Canadian Fishing Company, has been appointed a director of Park Royal Shopping Centre Ltd. and British Pacific Properties Limited. Hager is also first vice president and a director of Western Mines Ltd., director of Dominion Tar and Chemical, and of Crown Zeller-bach Canada Ltd.
★ ★ ★
We recently reported the death of William (Bill) Christiansen who drowned in Prince Rupert harbor in September. We had no picture and were unable to get one. But we have had a request for a picture of Bill and we ask any reader who might have such a photo to lend it to us. We will return it, of course. Our address is The Fisherman, 138 East Cordova Street, Vancouver 4, BC.
★ ★ *
Jack Reid or Sidney has reminded us that the machinery-was taken out of Goose Bay this past season, "closing another era in our plundered fishing industry." The cannery, owned by Canadian Fishing Company,
ceased operations several years ago. Possibly some of the old timers can give us a little background on this last of the canneries in the Rivers-Smith inlets area. Its passing does, indeed, mark the end of a period in the history of the industry which has seen centralisation and automation take firm hold of the industry. Monopoly has cut the number of canneries sharply over the years and is steadily proceeding to eliminate scores of jobs with the introduction of new machinery. It's industrial progress with the canning monopoly reaping its fruit.
★ * *
Walter Mulroy, BC Ice and Cold Storage employee, won't be back on the job until March after being set upon by two men on the evening of November 23. His right ankle joint was fractured in the scuffle.
★ * -*-
Bert Rogers, who slipped coming down a ladder on September 29, is still off work and uncertain when he will be back. Ellen God-maire, employed at BC Packers' Imperial plant, won't be back until early in the New Year, following an illness tha: dates back to September 24. Sandor Fuzi, employed in Canfisco's Gulf of Georgia reduction plant, was stricken with pneumonia November 6 and hospitalised. And Mary Gomez, assistant to the forewoman at Nelson Bros. Port Edward plant, cut her thumb on November 3 when she was opening a jar. At last word, she hadn't been able to return to work.
★ ★ ★
We wish all our readers the very best, and to those who are unwell, we wish you a speedy recovery.
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Sentence Appeal Sought For Killers of Strikers
Ontario Attorney General Acts After Wide Protest
Under pressure from the labor movement, the Ontario attorney general's department is seeking leave to appeal the grand jury finding that freed 20 settlers charged with noncapital murder in the deaths of three striking bush workers near Kapuskasing last February.
Two brothers, Joseph and Irenee Fortier, and Fernand Drouin were killed when unarmed strikers seeking i-a prevent shipment of cord-wood to the US controlled Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company were fired on by settlers at Reesor Siding, 37 miles west of Kapuskasing, on February 11.
Nine other strikers were wounded in the early morning ambush.
Police arrested 20 settlers, seizing 10 rifles, two shotguns and a revolver. The settlers were promptly released on bail of $1,000 each, but in face of the outcry from the labor movement, they were rearrested and charged with non-capital murder.
Police also issued warrants for 242 strikers on charges of unlawful assembly. The strikers, members of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union, surrendered in a body.
Subsequently, 172 of them were fined $200 each, with the alternative of three months in jail, and charges against the other 70 were dropped for lack of evidence. The men's fines, totalling $34,400, were paid by the Union.
FINES CONTRASTED
Of the 20 settlers charged with non-capital murder, 17 were released without penalty when a grand jury ruled there was insufficient evidence to commit them for trial.
Three others were charged with possessing offensive weapons and fined $100 each.
Protests against these legal proceedings as a travesty of justice poured in from unions across the country. Statements made by union leaders contrasted the $200 fines imposed on the men who were fired upon with the $100 fines levied against the men who did the firing.
The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, parent body of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union, called for a full provincial investigation of the shooting.
At the same time, the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union opened a fund — the Fortier-Drouin Fund — for the families and dependants of the slain man.
Labor's demand to have the men responsible for the shooting brought to trial is being met with attempts to portray the accused settlers as " . . not just farmers — but the best of the farmers," men who "... had more at stake that night than 600 cords of pulpwood. They believed they were defending a way of life."
These are the words used in a review of the shooting carried in Weekend Magazine No. 49, syndicated in the Vancouver Sun of December 7.
SETTLERS LAUDED
Description of the settlers as "the best of the farmers," "the cream of the crop," "the very best," recurs through the article. But there are no such references to the strikers, the men who fought a month long battle to win better wages and conditions from a company which knew how to exploit the differences between workers and settlers.
Except for one incidental statement by a Union member, that "the Union has done a lot of good," the review contains no direct accounts of the shooting from Union members.
All the men interviewed are settlers, who are presented as hard working men who conduct their wood cutting operations along cooperative lines.
"We are good people here," the article quotes Joseph Henri Veil-leux, accountant for the Catholic Union of Farmers, as saying. "And those men in Haileybury (where the accused settlers were held pending the hearing). They were the very best."
But for the trade union movement, in Ontario and across the country, the fact remains that three men were killed, shot down
from ambush, and their killers are going free.
NEW VIOLENCE THREATENED
Nine months after the strike, the threat of violence from "the cream of the crop" remains, as indicated by the concluding paragraphs of Weekend Magazine's review, stating:
"As the farmers returned to their wood cutting this fall, it was announced that a monument to commemorate the deaths of the three strikers and the wounding of nine others will be erected by Local 2995 of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union on an acre of land at Reesor Siding, where the shootings occurred.
"Union president J. K. Laforce said it will be called the Fortier-Drouin Monument — in memory of Joseph and Irenee Fortier and Fernand Drouin who were killed there — and consist of a life sized statue of four figures.
"The figures, carved from yellow pine and surmounting a concrete base 22 feet high, will show a bush worker holding his axe, a bush worker's wife holding a baby, and a small child.
"On a large Union crest, made of polished rock, will be retold in French and English the history of what happened at this spot on February 11. The names of the dead and the wounded will be engraved on the stone.
"The entire area will be floodlighted and landscaped.
"There have been rumors that once the monument is erected it will be dynamited. Laforce said that if this happened, the monument — which will be erected at a cost of about $25,000 and unveiled next Labor Day — would be rebuilt."
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