Unrest and Reform: The Winnipeg General Strike and New Political Movements

1919: a year of anger

The soldiers came home to a country that had changed. Prices had risen sharply during the war while wages lagged behind. War factories were closing. Veterans wanted jobs and respect. Workers had accepted sacrifices during the war, and now they wanted higher wages, shorter hours and the right to bargain collectively. Meanwhile, the Russian Revolution of 1917 had brought the communist Bolsheviks to power, which gave some workers hope and frightened many business owners and politicians. In 1919, strikes broke out across Canada. The biggest was in Winnipeg.

The Winnipeg General Strike, 15 May to 25 June 1919

Building and metal workers in Winnipeg went on strike for better wages and the right to collective bargaining. The Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council called a general strike in support. On 15 May, about 30 000 workers walked off the job, many of them not even union members: factory workers, telephone operators, streetcar drivers, firefighters and postal workers. The city stopped.

• A Strike Committee allowed some essential services, such as milk and bread deliveries, to continue.
• Business owners and professionals formed the Citizens' Committee of One Thousand, which called the strike a Bolshevik plot to overthrow the government.
• Returned soldiers were split: some marched in support of the strike, others joined the anti-strike side.
• The federal government feared revolution. It changed the Immigration Act to allow British-born immigrants to be deported, and police arrested strike leaders on 17 June.
• On 21 June, "Bloody Saturday", a crowd gathered for a protest parade. The Royal North-West Mounted Police charged; two men were killed and many were injured.
• The strike was called off on 25 June.

Sympathy strikes took place in other cities, including Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto.

Consequences

• Short term: workers lost the strike; some leaders were jailed. The government added Section 98 to the Criminal Code, making it easier to prosecute people for belonging to "unlawful associations" (it was repealed in 1936).
• Long term: many workers turned from strikes to politics. Strike supporters were elected to the Manitoba legislature and city council. J. S. Woodsworth, a Methodist minister arrested during the strike (the charges were later dropped), was elected to Parliament in 1921 for the Independent Labour Party. He later helped found the CCF (1932), a forerunner of today's NDP.
• Collective bargaining rights were not guaranteed in Canadian law until the 1940s, but 1919 became a symbol for the labour movement.

Ideologies: from the centre to the extremes (2026 focus)

The 1917 Russian Revolution and the 1919 strikes made Canadians argue about ideologies: big ideas about how society should be run.

• Communism (extreme left): abolish private property and have one party rule in the name of workers. In the Soviet Union this meant a dictatorship that crushed opponents. The Communist Party of Canada was founded secretly in 1921 in a barn near Guelph, Ontario. It was small, but it frightened many Canadians.
• Democratic socialism: public ownership of key industries and better protection for workers, achieved through elections, not revolution (Woodsworth's view).
• Liberalism and conservatism: the main Canadian parties, which accepted private property and parliamentary democracy and disagreed about how much the government should do.
• Fascism (extreme right): in 1922, Benito Mussolini took power in Italy, promising order through one all-powerful leader, extreme nationalism and violence against opponents. It would inspire Hitler in Germany.

Extreme ideologies on both ends reject democracy, the rule of law and individual rights, and they often blame a scapegoated group for society's problems. In the 1920s, the Red Scare led Canadian authorities to treat many union members and immigrants as dangerous radicals. Meanwhile, the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan spread hatred against Catholics, Jewish people, Black people and immigrants (lesson on immigration and discrimination). You will see in the next unit how extreme ideologies grew during the Depression.

Organizing for change (B2.4)

• One Big Union (OBU, 1919): formed by Western labour leaders who wanted to unite all workers, regardless of trade, into one union that could use the general strike. It grew quickly in 1919 and then declined.
• Trades and Labour Congress of Canada: the main national group of craft unions, which preferred bargaining by skilled trades over general strikes.
• United Farmers of Ontario (UFO): angry about conscription of farmers' sons and about tariffs and low crop prices, Ontario farmers won the 1919 provincial election; E. C. Drury became premier (1919–1923). The United Farmers of Alberta won in 1921.
• The Progressive Party: a farmers' party led by Thomas Crerar, which won the second-most seats in the 1921 federal election. It wanted lower tariffs and fairer freight rates. Agnes Macphail, the first woman elected to the House of Commons (1921), was elected as a Progressive.
• Maritime Rights movement: in the 1920s Maritimers protested higher freight rates, declining industries and the loss of people to other regions. In response, a royal commission (1926) recommended lower freight rates, which Parliament approved in 1927. In Cape Breton, coal miners and steelworkers held bitter strikes in the early 1920s.