Calgary & Southern Alberta

Men riding the rails in search of work during the Depression
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

Following the end of World War I, veterans returning to Calgary and southern Alberta created competition in the urban labour force and the coal mines. During the war labourers had increasingly come to view unions as the only way to influence their relationship with employers. European revolutions likewise fueled the belief that the working man could effect change. Workers increasingly became dissatisfied with the conservative Trades and Labour Congress that they believed represented only eastern interests. Delegates for western labour met in Calgary in March 1919. At the meeting, representatives of the B. C. Socialist Party of Canada advocated the establishment of One Big Union. The union would represent all wage earners that would participate in a general strike to enforce their demands. Although Albertan labour leaders preferred electoral action, the conference supported the One Big Union. Railway workers and coal miners formed the majority of support. Conditions and the high percentage of immigrants within both industries influenced their support of radical change. Although activism in the mining camps combined British, American, and European labour radicalism, workers divided over the One Big Union. When the Winnipeg Strike began in May 1919 nearly 2,000 workers in Calgary and Edmonton decided to strike to show their support. In the coal mines the federal government, the police, management, and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) sought to dissolve worker unrest. Miners eventually returned to work as members of the UMWA. Although the One Big Union failed in Alberta, labour interests saw success in electoral politics in the 1920s. In 1921 one Labour MP, William Irvine, was elected.

The Depression's ecological devastation
Courtesy of the Glenbow Collection

During the Depression economic conditions and increasing nativism fostered renewed labour unrest. The Communist Party began to make inroads into the urban working-class. Many of the decade’s strikes were organized by the Party’s affiliates: the Farmer’s Unity League (FUL), and the Worker’s Unity League (WUL). Led largely by British men, the FUL and WUL represented mainly eastern and central European labourers. The most dramatic conflicts occurred, however, in the coal fields where layoffs and cutoffs left thousands of men without jobs. Led by the WUL and supported by the Mine Workers Union of Canada, workers initiated a number of violent strikes in the 1930s. In addition, 1,500 relief camp workers entered Calgary in 1935 as part of the On-to-Ottawa Trek.