Jan 4, 2021
Canada’s Ugliest Strike Changed Political and Cultural Landscapes
Ripples from asbestos miners’ strike lasted more than 20 years
Arguably Canada’s ugliest-ever strike, a five-month labor conflict centered on the small town of Asbestos, Quebec had a profound effect on Canadian society, politics and culture for decades.
If the effects in question were converted to lines of influence and if we were able to see and follow these lines starting in 1949, here are the results:
a. The behavior of the political leaders of the day is believed to have sparked the earliest beginning of what became known as Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” which ultimately grew into separatist terror action and martial law.
b. A second line was reported to have stretched to The Vatican as Catholic leadership in Quebec displayed a reversal of its traditional support of authority.
c. Probably the most remarkable crossing of personalities put three intellectual activists into the arena, a meeting that would generate momentum with the effect of shaking the status quo of the federal Liberal party and election of Pierre Elliot Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister in 1968.
d. Due to that development, we can even argue that Canada’s current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, owes a debt to a strike that took place long before he was born.
Although the toxic hazards of asbestos represent a blatant target issue in the strike, it would be futile to typify any of the actions as noble or socially courageous. It was, in most respects, a dirty strike pock-marked by regular outbreaks of violence.
The 5,000 asbestos miners who walked off their jobs on Feb. 14, 1949, were pitted against Quebec’s iron-fisted Premier, Maurice (le Chef) Duplessis, who marshaled the muscle of Quebec’s provincial police, backing the employers and replacement workers.
Bloody clashes between police and picketers flared up, especially after the largest employer, Johns-Manville, aggressively tried to operate its mines with replacement workers. A railway line leading into the mine was dynamited and the miners overturned a company vehicle, injuring a passenger.
At one point, police attacked a church in which miners were taking refuge. The miners were beaten and their leaders brutally battered. Picket lines were attacked and finally breached when police threatened to open fire.
Traditionally, the Catholic Church tended to support authority. Repelled by the government’s and police actions, however, Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau delivered a fiercely pro-union sermon and directed that parishes throughout the archdiocese generate financial and other support for the strikers.
Duplessis demanded that The Vatican transfer Charbonneau to Vancouver. The demand was denied but the archbishop, citing health reasons, quietly resigned and became the chaplain in a Victoria, BC, hospital.
Meanwhile, Asbestos became the crossroad of a political movement that took twenty years to fully transpire.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau was a lawyer and journalist, publishing Cite Libre, a left-wing magazine. He was on the scene at the same time as Gerard Pelletier, a journalist with Le Devoir (Montreal), and Jean Marchand, a key labor union leader.
It was a politically fortuitous connection.
The trio became known as “the three wise men” when they built a coalition that resulted in Trudeau being elected leader of the Liberal party and prime minister of Canada. Although Trudeau was considered an “outsider” and dark horse candidate within the Canadian political establishment, he rapidly captured the imagination of usually conservative-minded Canadians, a phenomenon dubbed “Trudeaumania”.
The Quebec FLQ crisis
According to the Canadian Encyclopedia:
“The October Crisis refers to a chain of events that took place in Quebec in the fall of 1970. The crisis was the culmination of a long series of terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a militant Quebec independence movement, between 1963 and 1970. On 5 October 1970, the FLQ kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross in Montreal. Within the next two weeks, FLQ members also kidnapped and killed Quebec Minister of Immigration and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte. Quebec premier Robert Bourassa and Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau called for federal help to deal with the crisis. In response, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau deployed the Armed Forces and invoked the War Measures Act — the only time it has been applied during peacetime in Canadian history.”
Andrew McIntosh, The Canadian Encyclopedia, Aug. 13, 2013
As part of a settlement, the terrorists were allowed to leave Canada for Cuba and Algeria. Several returned later to face trial.
Ironically, what was once the turbulent center of events that shaped Canada’s political and cultural landscape is all but gone.
Asbestos, of course, became the evil element of the mining spectrum, along with lead and a few lesser poisons.
Locals will tell you that the bitterness of living with the replacement workers of 1949 never faded; they lived lonely lives and ended with lonely funerals.
