Henry here- I’m back in the Archive, woo! It’s been a while since I contributed anything to the I.W.A. Archive blog. However, upon returning, I found these freshly archived letters so interesting that I had to write about them. This blog post builds on John Mountain’s December 2019 “Digging into History”, which provided background on the I.W.A.’s industry-wide strike in 1986. It explores the personal impact of the strike on I.W.A. Western Canadian Regional Council #1 President Jack Munro, using a collection of letters sent to the labour leader at the height of the dispute. Jack Munro, L-180-3 ..read more

Hello readers! It’s been a quiet last couple of months on the blog, however, this doesn’t reflect the great deal of work that has gone on around here. Since my last post in January, I have spent the following few months away from the archive to focus on university, but Henry has been here alone since then working hard at archiving the vast amount of materials that we still have to work through, and has had little extra time to work on blog posts. Now that I’m back for the summer and the work is more spread out for the time being, I figure it’s as good a time as any to make my presence known ag ..read more

Since this is my first post on the blog, I think it is fitting that I should use this opportunity to briefly introduce myself and outline my personal connections to logging and the I.W.A. I am currently in my fourth year of the Bachelor of Arts Program at Vancouver Island University, of which I am a History Major. I spent the first 19 years of my life living in Lake Cowichan. Although I have since moved to Nanaimo to be closer to V.I.U., I still find myself in Lake Cowichan very often visiting family, and more recently, working at the I.W.A. Annex at the Kaatza Station Museum. I have long been ..read more

Union Certification Challenged From Within Revisited – For this month’s deep dig, I’m again delving into that situation that happened sixty years ago when some IWA members – powerhouse workers – thought they would explore a relationship with another union – the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) In my November 2020 deep dig, I noted that the powerhouse crew at BCFP Youbou later chose to leave the IUOE Local 882 and join the IWA Local 1-80 but didn’t provide any details of that turbulent time. So in order to set the record straight, what follows is a thorough account of what happ ..read more

In this month’s deep dig, I’m burrowing into a situation that happened sixty years ago when some IWA members – powerhouse workers – thought they could get a better deal for themselves if they explored a relationship with another union. As an IWA rank and file member at the sawmill level and then as an IWA national staffer, I know that the union has always made its own policy. From election of officers to major policy decisions, most members knew that policy is made by membership decision, either in convention, regional conferences, or by referendum ballot. This was the union’s strong suit and ..read more

Two weeks ago, under the direction of the all-knowing Al Lundgren, I stumbled across some historical gold. Rooting through the back-room storage space of the Kaatza Station Museum and Archives, we rediscovered a box that had been left gathering dust untouched for years. This box contains the records of legendary women’s labour organizer Edna Brown. These records are currently being archivally arranged as part of a larger collection of records belonging to the I.W.A. Local Union 1-80. They will be available for public access following the easement of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. For an overv ..read more

I’m currently nosing around in IWA Past-President Bill Routley’s files which have recently acquired by the Kaatza Museum. The museum has decided to make Bill Routley’s files part of the massive IWA archive collection. And while digging around I discovered a piece about Caycuse and its halcyon days of the 1950s – I think the piece was part of a call for a gala reunion for July 30 1988. I enjoyed reading the piece and it gave me the notion that there was a strong sense of community at Caycuse during those times. I was intrigued and thanks to the BCFP Timberline Newsletter for May 1988, I now kno ..read more

Deep Dig for September 2020 Harold: Founding President of the International Woodworkers of America – This month I have the second part of a two part story that speaks to the origins of the IWA from the mouth of its founding President Harold Pritchett. Harold Pritchett was born on May 9, 1904 in the city of Birmingham, England. At the age of eight, the Pritchett family emigrated from England to Canada and traveled to Port Moody in British Columbia where they settled. Pritchett received his first job at the Thurston-Flavelle sawmill in Port Moody, BC in 1919. He tended conveyors in a planer mil ..read more

This month it’s a story that speaks to the origins of the IWA from the mouth of its founding President Harold Pritchett. In the mid-1930s there had emerged forces and circumstances which were to change the outlook of the North American trade unions and aid in the formation of the IWA. The struggle between the craft unions and industrial unions had reached a showdown when at the 1935 American Federation of Labour (AFL) convention, a number of unions stormed out and established the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) under the leadership of John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers. Subsequ ..read more

Deep Dig for July 2020 IWA Ladies Auxiliary: Women Hone Valuable Leadership Skills – What a super find this month. It’s a couple of items that speak volumes about the important part that loggers and sawmillers wives, their mothers and/or their daughters played in union building and I want to share them with you. First up is a thesis paper called “Be a Union Wife. Build a Better Life: The Women’s Auxiliaries of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) in BC: 1936-1948. It was written by Arley McNeney – a student I suspect – for the history studies class of Associate Professor Dr. Rick Ra ..read more