The Art Of The Strike

In May 1919, more than 30,000 workers walked off the job and shut down the city of Winnipeg. A hundred years later, the same rights they fought for are under threat

- Tom Jokinen

One of the last standing landmarks of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 is the Ukrainian Labour Temple in the north end of the city, at Pritchard Avenue and Mc-Gregor. The lintel over the front door reads, “Workers of the world unite.” Inside, it looks like a theatre without seats, with a fire curtain hanging over the stage. The temple holds 1,000 people, and during the strike, according to local lore, men and women filled it from floor to balcony. The space was brand new when 35,000 workers halted the city’s factories, trains and streetcars for six weeks, starting in May 1919. The reasons were local and global: disputes over wages and living conditions, of course, but also, as James Naylor at Manitoba’s Brandon University says, there was the “vast unfairness of everything” — a war had just ended, one in which working people were killed in the millions while “a handful of people were becoming fantastically rich, honestly or dishonestly.” People had had enough. Class divisions in Canada had never been sharper.