VANCOUVER'S SVENSKAP
Swedish Immigrants Have Left Mark on Labor
By HAL GRIFFIN
HANGING in the offices of The Fisherman is a tapestry decorated with the names of the strike committee members in the historic Rivers Inlet fishermen's strike of 1936. Embroidered by members of the women's auxiliary to the strike committee at Sointula, it was presented by Swedish bom John Fredrickson. now an honorary member of the UFAWU, who celebrated his 90th birthday at Sointula on September 22.
By a coincidence, the report of John Fredrickson's birthday celebration reached The Fisherman around the same time as a newly published book, Vancouver's Svenskar: A History of the Swedish Community in Vancouver, by Irene Howard, who herself is of Swedish-Norwegian descent.
John Fredrickson is not mentioned in Mrs Howard's work, although he might well have been, for she has drawn on many parts of the province for her material. Neither are other members of the 1936 strike committee whose names. Finnish, Swedish-Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian, read like a cross section of the Scandinavian immigrants drawn to a country so like and yet unlike their own.
This is a pity because Mrs. Howard could have obtained I from their part in the Rivers Inlet strike still another story to add to those she has collected illustrating the substantial contribution to British Columbia's labor movement made by people of Swedish birth and descent
Readers of The Fisherman, nonetheless, will find much to interest them in Vancouver's Svenskar. Mrs. Howard devotes one chapter, "From Lornma to Ladner", to those immigrants from what was then a fishing village in southern Sweden, too
small to be shown on most maps who settled along the lower Fraser River, many of them to become gillnetters and cannerv workers.
In particular, she relates the story of Ben Young, who jumped ship in Oregon, fished out of Astoria and parlaved a home canning operation, into a full salmon cannery there before he arrived in Ladner toward the end of the seventies. Only a decade later the New Westminster Columbian was referrring to him with approval as "the genial salmon kinr ■
In partnership with Gust Holmes, he owned the British American Packing Company operating the British American Cannery at Canoe Pass on the Fraser and the Boston Cannerv at Port Essington on the Skeena from 1882 until thev were sold to Henry 0. Bell-Irving in 1891.
But Ben Young was "business to the backbone." Far more typical of the immigrants from Lomma were Olaf Erickson, who also jumped ship, headed north to the Klondyke and returned to fish the Fraser from his scowhouse at Queensborough, "a humorous old bachelor" who, if his visitors could not decide whether they wanted tea or coffee, "would settle the matter by making both in one pot." Or Peter Paulson, another fisherman and cannery worker, and later an active unionist in New Westminster, who is remembered for his befriending of new immigrants.
One of Mrs. Howard's merits is her ability to maintain in perspective the stories of those who acquired wealth and influence as cannery and logging operators, land speculators and construction contractors, and those who created the wealth but remained in this new land essentially what they had been in the old. workers and farmers.
The skills the Swedish immigrants knew best were those
HARRY RANKIN
What Port of Vancouver Needs
EVERY growing port has its problems but Vancouver has more than its share right now. They stem from two main sources, the indifference of Ottawa and unfair charges and practices of shipping and stevedoring firms.
The port of Vancouver is losing business to the port of Seattle. A considerable amount of cargo destined for Vancouver arrives in Seattle by ship and is then reshipped by rail to Vancouver, an obviously ridiculous practice.
The reasons for our d e t eriorating c o m p e titive position with Seattle appear to be threefold: discriminatory rates imposed by shipping and rail firms
against the port of Vancouver; excessively high wharf rates in Vancouver, and lack of adequate container facilities.
Other problems of the port of Vancouver include lack both of passenger facilities and ship repair facilities for vessels over 15,000 tons.
Ottawa is about to carry through a reorganization of administration of the 500 ports under its jurisdiction. The National Harbors Board, a federal agency which now runs our ports, is to be abolished. It will be replaced by a federally-appointed National Port Authority under the department of transport, assisted by a regionally representative advisory board.
Ottawa also proposes to establish a Vancouver Port Authority to run our harbor. It will have 12to 15 members, one of them to be appointed by Vancouver City Council.
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Local business interests involved in shipping and the
handling of cargo don't like Ottawa's new scheme. They want control of the Vancouver Port Authority in their own hands, free of all public restraint. But to give in to them would only aggravate the problems we already have; private interests cannot be expected to put the interests of Vancouver or the national interest over their own drive for profits.
It makes sense to me that Canadian ports should be under the control of the federal government. But we do need a greater degree of local autonomy to adjust to local circumstances and problems.
Reorganization of port authority by Ottawa will only have positive results if it is accompanied by other essential steps. These should include:
—Action to end discriminatory rates against Vancouver by shipping and railway companies.
—Reduction of excessively high wharf and user rates, with placing of the whole harbor rate structure under public control.
—Return of federally owned docks to Vancouver Port Authority for operation. (They were turned over to private firms in 1968.)
—Plans for building more container facilities now.
—Construction of a floating dry dock capable of handling ships up to 100,000 tons.
—Direction ot any further bulk loading facilities to Roborts Bank, with expansion in the port of Vancouver restricted to container and general cargo facilities.
—Inclusion of labor representatives in Vancouver Port Authority and the National Port Authority.
The objective should be a Regional Port Authority for the whole lower mainland, encompassing the four port authorities we now have, Vancouver, New Westminster, Surrey and Roberts Bank.
demanded by the lumbering, mining and fishing industries in the period of expansion that followed completion of the CPR. They went to work in logging, mining and construction camps and inevitably, as harsh conditions and ruthless exploitation forced them to seek an answer in union and working class political organization, they played a prominent part in the emerging labor movement.
From personal recollections elaborated by research in Swedish language papers and old records, Mrs. Howard has pieced together their storv.
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In the first decade of this century, when the Industrial Workers of the World was organizing in logging and railroad construction camps in this province, a Scandinavian branch of the IWW was active in Vancouver, publishing "at least one pamphlet, Loneslavens organization. En agitatation-skrift for Industrial Workers by S. G. Johnson" and circulating a Skandinavisk IWW Sang Bok which, in addition to translations of Joe Hill's songs, contained workers' songs from Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
In the thirties, as the depression imposed hardship and poverty upon working people across the land, workers of Swedish origin organized the Scandinavian Workers Club in Vancouver which became part of the national Scandinavian Workers and Farmers League in Winnipeg.
There it published its twice monthly paper Frihet to further its objective of working "for the enlightening and cultural advance of Scandinavian workers and farmers, to advance their class interest and for this purpose to gather in organized struggle for that interest, side by side with the rest of the working class in Canada."
When the Lumber Workers Industrial Union, in 1934, conducted the historic strike which forced minimum wage legislation on to the statute books of British Columbia and established the foundation on which the International Woodworkers of America was built, men of Swedish and Norwegian origin were among those who led the struggle.
And the Scandinavian Workers Club supported the stikers to the full, as later it supported the unemployed on the On-To-Ottawa Trek and the volunteers of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, among them a number of Swedish immigrants, who upheld the Canadian democratic tradition in Spain.
While the omission does noi detract from the value of Mrs. Howard's work as it stands, more extensive research into the contribution made by Swedish immigrants to union organization in the metal mining industry would have given her a fuller picture.
For a short time in my early newspaper career I was Canadian correspondent for the Stockhclms Tidningen and later, when I worked on placer creeks in the Atlin district, I found no lack of copy there.
Now little more than a ghost town, Atlin in the early thirties was an active gold mining centre of some 400 workers. The large number of Swedish immigrants among them and the influence over their lives wielded by Louis Schultz, the storekeeper, through his power to give or withhold credit, led to his being known far and wide as "the czar of little Sweden."
Throughout the thirties, while they struggled to establish a union, the miners of Atlin contributed more money to progressive causes, from campaigns to maintain left wing newspapers to aid for Loyalist Spain, than any comparable community in the province.
This aside, in Vancouver's Svenskar Mrs. Howard has written a most readable book of much wider interest than its title would suggest. Published by Vancouver Historical Society as its first major work and priced at $6.50, it is available at the People's Co-op Bookstore, 341 West Pender Street, Vancouver 3, B.C.
• Ninety year old John Fredrickson is shown in the garden of his Sointula home.
VETERAN HONORED
Sointula's John Fredrickson Is 90
STILL vigorous despite his years, John Fredrickson of Sointula can look back over a long and useful working life in which he has never hesitated to assume his responsibilities to his union and his community.
He had the opportunity to talk about the old days on September 22 when relatives and friends gathered at his home to honor him on his 90th birthday, an occasion they marked by presenting him with a pipe stand and humidor engraved with his name and the date.
Born in 1880, John Fredrickson was a young man of 23 when he left his birthplace at Haaparanta, a Swedish port at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia across the border from Finland, to seek a new life in the United States.
He worked in mines in Michigan for seven years and then he pulled up stakes again, first to live in Washington state and then to come to British Columbia in 1912.
Much of his working life in this province was spent as a fisherman and then as a net man and camp man for Canadian Fishing Company. He also worked for a number of years as road foreman.
As a staunch union man he served on the strike committee in the Rivers Inlet strike in 1936, entering the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union as a foundation member through membership in unions that preceded it. And he still holds the honorary membership in the UFAWU granted him in 1956.
John Fredrickson's union record is matched by his active participation in community affairs, including membership in the old Sointula Mutual Fire Protection Association and, until recently, in the Sointula Volunteer Fire Brigade.
Among those who attended his 90th birthday celebration were his three daughters, Mrs. Lily Hawley of Sequim, Wash., Mrs. Helmi Eshom of Port Angeles, Wash., and Mrs. Helen Siren of Sointula; and his grandson. Matt Stein.
Friends attending the celebration included Mrs. Lylli Salo, Mr. and Mrs. Lauri Wilman, Mr. and Mrs. Hannes Myntti, Mr. and Mrs. John Maki, Mrs. Aileen Wooldridge, Mr. and Mrs. Erkki Syrjala, Mr. and Mrs. Ero Tarkanen, Ilmar Tarkanen, Mr. and Mrs. John Ylinen, Mrs. Annie Tynjala, Meralda Pink, Mrs. Norman Erickson, Russ Hodgson and Mrs. Ida Ream.
WINJO
Skipper Named the New Baby Zero
THIS is the first year that sockeye fishing has been closed in Rivers Inlet in the 35 years I have been fishing there.
It was in 1935, during my skiff fishing days, that I hitched a ride from Smith's to Rivers. Fishing was poor in Smith Inlet, so I rowed across to the north shore and flagged the first packer that came my way.
The boat was the Gospak, on her way to Rivers Inlet with a woman who was about to have her baby, and the skipper was a man named Charlie — I don't remember his last name.
The woman had her baby as we were passing Zero Rock (better known as Major Brown Rock) and the skipper noted this in his log book, naming the baby Zero.
I see the Gospak now and then and I sometimes wonder whatever became of the woman and her child or if any of her old crew, the skipper, the engineer and his wife, who was the cook, are still around to recall the event.
If they are, I would like to hear from any of them. The name is Joe Yarmish and the address is Steveston.
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Not too long ago, while I was fishing in Johnstone Strait, I hurt my left hand and I had to go to Alert Bay to have it X-rayed for possible broken bones.
While I was waiting to see the doctor, a woman in the waiting room spoke to me and it turned out that I had met her many years ago in Bull Harbor. I was fishing halibut at the time and
she and her husband were gillnetting in Goletas Channel.
One evening when I got back from fishing who should be waiting for me with a lemon meringue pudding but this same woman, Emma Ahola. It was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me while I was fishing and I still have a warm feeling whenever I remember it. * * +
An elderly Vancouver couple, Mr. and Mrs.Olaf Hanson, seem to have been concerned about my health and I want to assure them that I am in good shape, although it certainly isn't due to the amount of fishing I have done since I came down to the Fraser River.
On the Fraser we have had what I will call the "Sheep Line" because the river above this line might be open for 12 or 24 hours and all the boats were ordered to stay above the line.
If you wanted to see humans being treated like a flock of sheep, all you had to do was to drive to the end of No. 3 Road in Richmond, turn right at the dike and pick a vantage point, and you had a dykeside seat at one of the biggest shows in the province — humans packed by the hundreds behind an im aginary line patrolled by other humans, and all paid for by our tax dollars. But despite the complaints, nothing was ever done.
When are we going to be treated like our neighbors across that other line? They didn't seem to be having much trouble in getting fishing time, and with deep nets and long nets. We seem to do all the conserving and they seem to do all the fishing.
There was once a Canada First party. Well, I'm thinking of starting another party, the Canada for Canadians party. Or would that be outlawed?
THE FISHERMAN — OCTOBER 23, 1970