The Making of the East End Community Club

BRANDON, MANITOBA HAD ITS beginnings in 1881 as a divisional point for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The formative years of the city belonged to the land speculators, the contractors, and the other elements of a flourishing petty bourgeoisie, but by the first decade of the present century their dominance was being challenged by an expanding and combative working class. The challenge from labour reached its peak in the years immediately following World War I. On 24 April 1919 Brandon's civic workers left their jobs to back demands for official recognition, the reinstatement of two union officials who had been dismissed by city council, and arbitration of wages by an independent board. The strike ended at midnight on 26 April, when city council capitulated to the demands of the Civic Employee's Union. A month later, on 24 May, Brandon workers started walking off the job in a show of support for striking workers in Winnipeg. Telephone workers, teamsters, power plant firemen, civic employees, city firemen, CPR shopworkers, CNR messengers, and brewery workers participated in this demonstration of solidarity. When the general strike ended in Winnipeg, many Brandon workers were faced with reprisals from employers. The most vindictive employer was city council, which cancelled the wage increases won in April, fired some employees, and stripped all employees of their seniority rights. This touched off a further strike on 27 June, but this time there was little support and it petered out by 1 July. Labour was active in the political sphere as well. The Labour Representation League was formed in 1917 to lead the way in getting pro-labour candidates elected to city council. While the League managed to get one of its candidates elected to city council in 1918, it was never able, even in the aftermath of the 1919 strikes, to generate the working-class support required to make a decisive intervention in local politics. In fact, the major victory for labour in electoral politics came in the 1920 provincial election, when the

Biology · Club · Geography · Canadian Identity and History

• Neighbourhood Community Centres and the Changing Leisure Culture in Brandon

  Open Access•Gordon M Winder•Canadian Geographies /…•1998

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