The McLaughlin Legacy and the Struggle for Labour Organization: Community, Class, and Oshawa's UAW Local 222, 1944-49

A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

TRENT UNIVERSITY

Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

© Copyright by Christine McLaughlin 2007

Canadian Studies and Native Studies MA Programme

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While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada ABSTRACT

The McLaughlin Legacy and the Struggle for Labour Organization: Community, Class, and Oshawa's UAW Local 222,1944-1949

Christine McLaughlin

In 1937, working people in Oshawa organized under the banner of the UAW.

Serving as corporate headquarters of General Motors of Canada, Oshawa prior to this had

been a one-industry, company town. While efforts to control the city and its working

population by the ruling elite escalated in the 1940s, such efforts were countered by

organized workers' attempts to engage in collective action so as to improve conditions

for the working classes. This thesis explores community service as it was mediated along

class lines. Colonel R.S. McLaughlin, president and chairman of the board of General

Motors of Canada, is well-known for his numerous charitable contributions. In exploring

the roots of such charitable acts, I argue that they served the ultimate end of exerting

social control over the city's working population. Alternately, through the medium of the

UAW, a large segment of working men and women in the city engaged in collective

service, ultimately transforming themselves from recipients of charity into active agents

who substantially improved their lived existence.

KEYWORDS: Oshawa, United Automobile Workers, Local 222, Ladies' Auxiliary 27, General Motors of Canada, R.S. McLaughlin, community service, social unionism.

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people whose assistance and support made this possible, and for which the depth of my gratitude can never be aptly expressed. First and foremost, I must thank my supervisor, Bryan Palmer, and Joan Sangster, whose assistance, expertise, support, patience and goodwill I have benefited from on many occasions. My only regret is that the world is not filled with more of such people. It has been a privilege to have been graced with the honour of their association, and I can never fully convey the depth of my gratitude. I would also like to thank Dimitry Anastakis, who along with Bryan

Palmer and Joan Sangster, comprised my committee, and my external examiner, Reuben

Roth, of Laurentian University. The helpful commentary and insights I received were to my great benefit. In my time at Trent University, there have been many professors along the way who have offered much-needed and appreciated support. For this, I am very grateful to Robert Wright, Susan Wurtele and Julia Harrison, as well as all the professors at Trent whose tutelage I was able to enjoy. In addition, I would like to thank Winnie

Janzen of the Frost Centre and Loretta Durst, Jane Millar and Kim McCormack from the

Office of Graduate Studies. I would also like to express my appreciation to Donica

Belisle, Ted McCoy and Wade Matthews for the encouragement and aid they offered throughout my time at Trent, and I owe a special thank you to Meaghan Beaton for never failing to provide a sympathetic ear, a good laugh and heightened spirits, encouragement, and for bringing me a piece of home when I was unable to get there myself. For so freely sharing her work with me, I would also like to thank Emily LaBarbera Twarog, a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois.

iii Countless people in Oshawa very kindly went well out of their way to help me throughout this process, and I shall never forget the kindness I was shown again and again. I owe a very fervent thank you to the staff at the McLaughlin Public Library,

Parkwood Estate and Guy House, particularly Jennifer Weymark and Nicole Patterson. I would have liked to thank General Motors of Canada here, however, given that I was denied access to their archives or any other assistance, I am unable to do so. I would be remiss if I did not thank R.S. and Adelaide McLaughlin for the contributions they made to civic life in Oshawa, and without which this end result would not have been possible.

From my first contact with Local 222,1 was immediately made to feel like a part of the family. It is difficult to express the extent of my gratitude for this, and there are many people that I am incredibly thankful to have met. Bernard Heming, secretary- treasurer of the retiree's chapter, first showed me an unbelievable amount of kindness, generosity and trust. Without his willingness to help me, this work would not have materialized. Chris Buckley, president of Local 222, showed me an astonishing amount of trust by making all union records available to me at our first meeting. Jackie Finn, president of Ladies' Auxiliary 27, has been a great blessing to this project, and to her I extend my sincerest appreciation for all that she has done for me. Russ and Lynn Rak were also a great source of assistance to me, and I am very grateful to have made their acquaintance. My thanks are also owed to Joe Sarnovsky, editor of The Oshaworker, who offered critical assistance to me during my research. Joan Harrison, chair of Local

222's 70th Anniversary Committee, was both a fantastic means of support and a wonderful friend. The entire committee showed me a staggering amount of kindness and goodwill, and I will never forget the generosity of spirit they showed; my thanks to Les

iv MacDonald, especially for the doubles, Doug Beers, Steve Bullock, Steve Conway, Phil

Goodwin, George Hewison, who was a particular fountain of knowledge musically, Jim

Kelly, Ted Lawrence, Angela Legere, Lisa Lindsay, Ed Ochej and Doug Wiley, along

with those I have already mentioned. I would also like to thank Bev McCloskey, not only

for being who she is, but also for allowing me the opportunity to engage in some social

activism training. She was absolutely right when she told me that I could never truly

know something until I had done it, and I am incredibly honoured to have met such an

inspiring woman. I would also like to thank the busload of Local 222 members who I

was rather overwhelmed to find myself responsible for on our trek to Ottawa. It was only

by the cooperative spirit of collective management that we were able to remain true to

our guiding pledge: 'Nobody Left Behind.' It was a critical phase of my education.

Although space will not allow me to properly thank the many people I came across at

Local 222 who never failed to offer a kind word or helping hand, please know that you all

hold a special place in my heart.

Among the many people at Local 222 and Family Auxiliary 27 whom I owe many

thanks, an exceptional expression of appreciation is owed to those retired members who

so kindly opened their homes and hearts to me, and who so freely shared their memories.

A common theme in each of my interviews was the protestation that each had nothing

important to say. I begged to differ, and I cannot emphasize enough how much I learnt

from every single one of these people, or how touched I was by the kindness they all

showed. I would especially like to thank Roy Fleming for the wonderful date, the beautiful drives through historic Oshawa, and for teaching me how to shoot properly. My sincerest gratitude is also owed to Anne Black, Stewart and Ruth Clapp, Jiggs and

v Tammy Harlock, Gordon and Agnes Jackson, Betty Love, Myron Mech, George and

Jeannette Nugent, Betty Rutherford and Charles Sleeman. I am incredibly fortunate to have had the privilege of learning from such knowledgeable and kind-hearted people.

Of course, financial support cannot go without consideration, and for this I would like to thank the Frost Centre, Trent University, Bryan Palmer, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for the generous financial assistance I received throughout my period of study.

I must also thank both my extended and immediate family, who, for better or worse, have played a pivotal role in shaping the person I am and all that I do. A special thank you is owed to my parents and Barclay Branch, who never ceased to offer unconditional love and support. Last, but certainly never least, I would like to thank my son, Nicholas, for giving me a reason to get up each morning, shining a perpetual light into my life, and for motivating every single one of my positive actions. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation and dedication to those mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of Oshawa's past who saw a better way, not only for their own children, but for all, and who acted accordingly to the best of their ability. May their legacy always be remembered.

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents vii

Introduction 1

I Constructing Canada's Motor City: The Men, the Myths...and the Motors? 7

II An Auto(crat's) Town: Paying Due Respect to the Founding Fathers 42

III Together We Stand Corrected: It's a Working Class Town 77

TV Unsung Heroines:

Women at Work in Oshawa 114

Conclusion 141

Bibliography 149

Appendix: Short Biographical Sketch of Interview Participants 160

vii Introduction

Much attention has been devoted to the great battle for democracy which

characterized the era of the Second World War. While awareness centres on the wars

fought in other lands, fewer acknowledge the struggles which were taking place in this

era within the Canadian nation. Labour studies tend to position this time period as an

important one, marking as it did the emergence of an industrial union presence in the

country. The rise of large corporations in the early twentieth century, and the changing

nature of work and society for those within the ambit of industrial capitalism, had not

gone unchallenged prior to this. However, it would not be until the postwar era that

significant gains would be made in terms of the extension of labour rights, and more

broadly, a fuller extension of democracy through the medium of the trade union.

The growth of corporate entities facilitated the concentration of power among

fewer individuals. Such concentrations allowed for increasing mechanisms of control to

be exerted over labouring populations. Among some of the larger corporations coming

into being at this time was General Motors. What began as a small grouping of automobile producers was soon transformed into the largest corporation in the world.

Alternately, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) would rise in protest against the untrammelled power the corporation came to exert over the lives of those who worked within its sphere. Although the individual labourer was increasingly powerless in the face of such a large organization, workers soon discovered that through combined action they could present a significant enough force to counter some of the more systemic abuses of the workplace. 2

However, such a great concentration of wealth and resources was not so easily

upset. Corporations boasted a long history of staving off discontent through the provision

of welfare measures, attempting to buy loyalty and subservience while propping up the

inequities of a system that privileged a few at the expense of many. Local studies bring

into focus attempts on the part of large corporations to shape and control its workforce

into a desirable citizenry both within the workplace and community.1 Concentrated

resources and power alongside the production of gross inequalities fostered by the

capitalist state sustain the mutual interests of capital and governance at all levels.

This study seeks to examine the conflicting pressures of labour and capital in

Oshawa between 1944 and 1949, while also providing historical context where necessary.

Home to the corporate headquarters of General Motors of Canada and its largest

production facility, Oshawa is a pivotal and understudied example of how a corporation

can come to assume a hegemonic position within a community. Couched within a theme

of community service, I argue here that the corporation and the community elite who

represent its personified interests attempted to maintain a position of control over the

community and its labouring class by masking their interests in a discourse of

benevolence and familial rhetoric. Alternately, working class collective action and

organized community service, fostered through the medium of social unionism, allowed

for the extension of greater working class autonomy in the realm of community life and

culture, thus spawning a fuller working class citizenship. By offering an opportunity for working class people to become involved in the development of their community and its affairs, unionization thus provided an outlet for the exercise of a greater working class citizenship. 3

Chapter One explores the development of Oshawa and General Motors of Canada,

highlighting how the growth of the latter had a pivotal impact on the broader community,

and spawned the conditions which led to the success of industrial unionism in the city.

By situating corporate, community and union developments within a larger national and

international framework while also drawing on the secondary literature that informs this

study, I aim to develop a sense of the larger issues which influenced local conditions and

actions.

In Chapter Two, the focus shifts to Oshawa and its ruling elite. By attempting to

challenge the prevailing public memory of its most infamous and wealthiest citizen, the

former president of General Motors of Canada, I explore the boundaries between

community service and self-service, arguing that efforts on behalf of the city's ruling elite

to engage in charitable activities often were transformed into attempts to control and

shape the working classes along desirable lines.

Chapter Three explores the efforts of union members to transform themselves

from recipients of charity to agents in shaping their own destinies through collective

action, independently of state or corporate assistance. By working together, the labouring

classes improved their own conditions of life and cultivated a thriving working class

culture in Oshawa which was determined by and for the working classes. Although this

was primarily to the benefit of union members, efforts to extend such gains into the larger

local, provincial and national community are also discussed.

Ladies' Auxiliary 27 is an often overlooked organization, and is the central focus of analysis in Chapter Four. Women faced many disadvantages and prejudices both within the male-dominated UAW and society more generally, particularly in the postwar 4

era when they were pushed back into the home following the cessation of hostilities.

However, for those women who wished to remain politically active, a body did exist for

them to express their voice which functioned independently of the UAW. I argue that the

auxiliary played a crucial role not only in sustaining the union and improving community

life for its working class citizens through community service, but also created for

themselves an organization which provided some protection against both the class and

gender discrimination they faced at the time.

This study is guided by both historical and sociological literature. Much of the

primary research is based along traditionally historical lines, and relies on newspaper

sources, archival material and union records. However, the collection of oral histories

has also assumed a critical role in this research project, and the memories of surviving union members who participated in the 1937 strike in Oshawa assumes a central position.

Over the course of my research, I spoke with fourteen people, mainly from the rank-and- file, who kindly shared their memories of work and life in Oshawa with me (for biographical information, please see Appendix). Although such a qualitative study by no means offers an authoritative account of lived experience in Oshawa, it does make room for a voice from those whose experience has much to offer in the way of conveying the past as it is remembered and told by the working classes, thus filling the void in relation to such perspectives in much scholarship.3 While collecting these memories, I attempted to encourage an atmosphere where those I was speaking with led the interview process so that issues important to them would come to the fore. My interest rests in memory, and so it was important to my study that participants share those things they remembered as being important. As such, I did not prepare a list of interview questions, but rather 5

encouraged participants to guide the conversation in whichever direction they wished.

There were broad categories which I hoped to cover in each discussion; these included

issues surrounding working conditions, the company and the union, financial

management, housing and recreation. I spoke once on a formal basis to each person, in

groups, pairs, or individually. These interviews were recorded, and typically lasted for

approximately two hours. I also spoke informally with each of these people on many

separate occasions, both by telephone and in person. I was also kindly taken on some historical tours of Oshawa, and in combination, these conversations and trips contributed greatly to my own perceptions of Oshawa as it was, in a way that no archival material could illuminate. The inherent power structure in such a process necessarily privileges the person collecting and transmitting such memories; however, I was very much a student in these interviews, and learnt a great deal from the wisdom imparted by those who so freely shared their recollections. Great effort has been made on my part to ensure that the final product of this process aptly relays the cooperative process through which it was completed. I must, however, acknowledge the power I bear through my interpretive authority.4 I hope that I have done some small justice to the wisdom which was so freely passed onto me. Any faults found here are mine alone. 6

Notes:

1 On the importance of community to working class history, see David Brody, "The Old Labour History and the New: In Search of an American Working Class," The Labor History Reader, Daniel J. Leab, ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 1-27. 2 For a historical context of middle and upper class attempts to exert control over the working classes outside of the workplace, see Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers & Leisure In An Industrial City, 1870-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 3 On the importance of qualitative studies and the need to know more about "wof-Labour history...the Liberal, the Conservative, and the plain apathetic working man" and woman, see E.P. Thompson, "History From Below," The Times Literary Supplement (7 April 1966), 281. 4 Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), xx. Chapter I

Constructing Canada's Motor City: The Men, the Myths...and the Motors?

All political rights and liberties which people enjoy today, they do not owe to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.

- Rudolf Rocker1

Where would Oshawa be without General Motors? A statement from a publication commemorating Oshawa's 75 anniversary reflects an often expressed sentiment in the city: "Many people have said that without General Motors there would be no Oshawa. That may be true. What's certainly true is both the company and the city are identified in the public mind as one." The city and corporation certainly have a long and conflicted history. While few would argue that General Motors played a monumental role in shaping the community development of Oshawa, it might be of benefit to examine in more depth exactly what that role was, the effect it had on the majority of the citizens within the community, and how it came to be contested and reshaped by those who lived and worked within the unchecked and all-powerful familial embrace of General Motors of Canada. Within such a context, a much more pertinent question might be posed: where would Oshawa be without Local 222?

The answer to that can be found in the history of the city, assuming one cares to examine it from the vantage point of the majority of its residents rather than from the corporate standpoint which to date has played such a significant role in shaping the narrative of the corporation, and through association, the city. Before the advent of industrial unionism in Canada, which began in Oshawa and soon spread throughout the country, there existed a very different way of life for the many subjects who were 8

expected to dutifully serve the corporate interests of the company, community, and the

nation. Prior to the organization of the working classes of Oshawa into self-governing

and politically mobilized bodies which sought to improve the lot of working class people,

the majority of Canadian 'citizens' enjoyed a very different way of life. The interests of

government and business, often linked, were diametrically opposed to the civic body it

sought to rule, but claimed to serve, prior to the organization of the working classes; it

was only through the sacrifices made and victories gained by the working people of

Oshawa that an alteration to this status quo was brought about, thus spawning many

improvements in the living standards of those who found themselves outside the

privileged inner circle of the professional and industrial elite. To illustrate this, it might

first be useful to examine the shifting economic, political and social landscape of the

Corporation of Oshawa within a system of inherited privilege and unmitigated capital

accumulation on a local, national and international scale.

Contrary to public lore, Oshawa did indeed exist well before the birth of the

behemoth that was to become the General Motors Corporation, albeit in a very different

form. Situated along Lake Ontario, various Indigenous groups had lived off the land for

centuries; following the first European invasion, the French established a fur-trading post

in the mid-eighteenth century. The American Revolution would make its impact felt as

an influx of British loyalists sought refuge, many who were granted land along the shores of Lake Ontario. Originally referred to as Skae's Corner, the settlement had a population of 2,000 by 1850, making it eligible for incorporation as a village. An Indigenous group suggested the name Oshawa, which loosely translated means 'the place where the stream becomes the path' or 'the crossing between the waters'. By 1879, Oshawa's population 9

had doubled to nearly 4,000, thus achieving town status. Perhaps best known for its

many bankruptcies, it was nonetheless one of many similar little towns which were

springing up along the shores of Lake Ontario. Approximately thirty miles east of what

was at that time a hustling little city by the name of Toronto, Oshawa was well-situated to

reap the benefits of a National Policy which would encourage the growth of Central

Canadian manufacturing industries, and the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway

which linked the growing cities of Toronto and Montreal. By 1898, Oshawa was rather

audaciously being advertised as 'The Manchester of Canada,' boasting as it did four large

manufacturing works, one bank, and one loan and savings society. Among the most prominent of its clubs and secret societies was the Thirty Club, "composed of the first

gentlemen of the town, first socially, professionally, and in a business way - gentlemen courteous, friendly and entertaining to a degree."4 The publication goes on to showcase with great flair the opulence and luxury in which the town's first-class citizens lived.

Among the prominent manufacturing works featured in glowing terms is one that receives an especial emphasis, an establishment which would go on to play a particularly significant role in shaping the future course of Oshawa - "The M'Laughlin Carriage

Company."

Among the wave of British immigrants who came to Canada in the early nineteenth century was John McLaughlin, a cobbler from Northern Ireland. The Canada

Company, a creation of British investors, acquired over two million acres of land from the provincial government; 160 acres of land could be acquired for 62 pounds ten shillings, a profitable venture all around for those British citizens who had the means and good fortune to reap the benefits of this early era of rapid accumulation.5 Heather 10

Robertson's Driving Force: The McLaughlin Family and the Age of the Car is the only

critical and expansive work which explores the rise of the McLaughlin family from the

time of their immigration to the creation of the McLaughlin Carriage Company and the

McLaughlin Motor Company, through to the final days of Robert Samuel McLaughlin,

first president of General Motors of Canada. Robertson's account focuses primarily on

the McLaughlin family, but it is an important source. As one of the few people to have

been granted access to the private archives of General Motors of Canada, she offers a

critical perspective on the family, and through association, the company. While the

literature on the American parent corporation abounds, in this regard the Canadian

operation is at least distinct in its paucity. Given that General Motors in its initial years

was characterized by its decentralized production methods, those seeking to develop a better understanding of the specific intricacies of the Canadian operations have little choice but to rely on her findings. Moreover, most alternate sources dealing with this topic have been written or narrated by the McLaughlins, close acquaintances and loyal fans thereof, or by the public relations department of General Motors of Canada, ensuring that such sources are heavily biased and often unsubstantiated. As Robertson aptly illustrates, there is a large discrepancy between the public image that was created by the

McLaughlins as opposed to the more realistic actuality of their business lives and social relations - nowhere more so than in the case of R.S. McLaughlin.

As Robertson demonstrates, John McLaughlin would become a substantial landowner in his own right. By 1865, he had a considerable amount invested in farm mortgages. Among those indebted to him was his eldest son, Robert McLaughlin, to whom he sold fifty acres of forested land in 1864 at double the cost of its purchase price 11

fifteen years earlier.6 Robert married Mary Smith, the daughter of Scottish immigrants,

in 1866. Together they had five children - J.J., George, Mary, Robert Samuel and

Elizabeth.

Robert, however, was a craftsman at heart rather than a farmer. Beginning first

by making axe handles from the wood he cleared, he went on to build his first cutter in

1867, based on a design he had seen in a magazine. The relative success of this

endeavour would lead him to construct others, yet it was not something he could do on

his own. 'The Governor', as he was called by his children, was a man who valued

control. A strict Presbyterian, he insisted that those under his influence follow his

stringent moral guidelines. Yet, as recounted by his son, Samuel, at that time the labour process was quite different: "In those days small carriage and wagon shops were dependent on journeymen artisans - and 'journeymen' they really were - blacksmiths and upholsterers who traveled about the countryside, stopping off to perform their special work on as many vehicles as the shop had ready, then moving on to the next shop."8

Robert's unwillingness to have somebody else set his schedule led him to make an important change in the production process:

It is not difficult to imagine what might have happened if that blacksmith had arrived on time and given my father no cause for worry: the Governor might well have been content to continue the production system then in vogue with the dozens of small carriage shops in Ontario, which used visiting journeymen artisans for important roles in carriage building, with resulting limited production and dependence on the whims of a very independent bunch of men. The lesson the Governor learned from the belated blacksmith led to an important decision: to build his own tiny blacksmith shop in front of the shed at Tyrone.9 12

Robert had hit on an important principle from a manufacturer's standpoint which would

play a significant role in elevating the McLaughlin Carriage Company to the self-

promoted largest carriage works in the British Empire: the dependency of a labourer upon

his employer was the only way in which a workforce could be bended and controlled so

as to suit the needs of a producer.

Robert hired his very own, stationary, blacksmith. From then on Robert would set

the rules. The disciplinary function of the paycheque ensured that any who might take

exception to these rules would face immediate dismissal. The rules as set by Robert

required that all those under his employ be cast in his image - employees of the

McLaughlin Carriage Company could not drink, smoke or swear. And they did not

disagree with 'the Governor', as Robert indicates in a letter written in 1885: "As I understand you to say you feel you cannot comply with the rules laid down in the shop the same as my other men do, and if you feel unable to do so, you many consider yourself not in my employment after tonight. I am sorry to be forced to this to me unpleasant alternative but I cannot possibly avoid it especially in a foreman."10 At least he provided written warning; the law did not require him to pay such a respect. Until 1879, the

Master and Servant Act outlawed anyone from encouraging servants or labourers to

"confederate for demanding extravagant or high wages."11

Robert established a small shop in Enniskillen in 1869; the success of this operation, and the growing need for credit and banking services, motivated a move to a larger centre. Banking and religion were closely tied at this time, and Oshawa proved an accommodating locale given the Liberal and Presbyterian roots of its Dominion Bank branch. In 1878, Robert, his family, and his eight employees packed up shop and moved 13

to Oshawa.12 The community was ideal for a man of Robert's strict moral calibre, given

the political and social leanings of its ruling elite. As of 1907, a municipal by-law still in

force stipulated that: "No swearing, obscene or insulting language is allowed on the

street. No person shall be drunk in any public place. No person shall sell or give drink to

minors or servants." Another by-law imposed that: "No person shall beg without a

certificate from a Justice of the Peace showing that he or she is deserving of charity."13

In 1888, a second innovation would secure the dominance of the McLaughlin

Carriage Company on the national scene with the invention of the McLaughlin Patent

Buggy Gear, which was in effect a fifth wheel built into the turning mechanism of the

gear, providing a smoother and safer carriage ride. Robert guarded his ownership rights

zealously and refused to sell the patent. Given the high demand for the product, he did

agree to sell the gear, and the carriage works at this point began mass producing and

selling the gears wholesale. It was a wise move, for it secured a windfall of free

advertising as other carriage makers began publicizing the McLaughlin gear. Robert had

always been skilled in the art of advertising, and regardless of whether or not

manufacturers' claims were rooted in any truth, he successfully fostered a widespread

public image of McLaughlin carriages, sleighs and cutters which equated them as being

synonymous with excellence and superiority. In promoting the use of only the best

materials and emphasizing quality over quantity, McLaughlin products could be sold in

the highest price range. Riding on the motto of 'One Grade Only, And That The Best', the demand for McLaughlin carriages soon grew among the expanding elite of the country.14 The first branch was established in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1896 and soon other branches were established across the country. 14

The prevailing social system of primogeniture and inherited privilege ensured that

the McLaughlin boys would reap the rewards of their father's business acumen. J.J.

McLaughlin, the eldest son, had little interest in the family business. Educated as a

chemist at the University of Toronto, he would benefit from the scientific discourse of the

times which bore a striking resemblance to the dictates of British Protestant middle class

morality. The temperance movement, along with a blending of advertising and scientific

fact, contributed to a vast market for soda water. As one doctor validated, for "the treatment of cholera, I found soda water both grateful and beneficial." The New York

Board of Health regarded "soda water as the only innocent drink of all the mineral waters in use." Capitalizing on this, he established what would become the Canada Dry

Company. Demand soon exceeded supply, and the company grew by leaps and bounds.

Enjoying unprecedented success in the United States, which soon motivated the imposition of a 50 per cent tariff on imported ginger ale, J. J. swam against the predominant tide of industrial expansion at the time, and established a Canadian branch plant in the United States. Upon his death, the successful company in trust of his brothers was sold to an American businessman.15 Fortunately, Robert still had two sons to carry on the business, and both 'Mr. George' and 'Mr. Sam' were apprenticed following the completion of their high school studies.

Sam would go to great lengths to establish his central role in bringing the automobile to Oshawa. His rather unique and individual 'Song of Myself, which would receive a voice in both the local and national press, placed himself front and centre in the creation myth of General Motors of Canada. Upon the completion of his apprenticeship as an upholster in the family business, he set out for New York state in 1890 and spent 15

some time in the employ of various American carriage works. According to Sam, he

wanted to prove himself as being worthy of his new trade, eager to show that he was

more than just the son of the boss. However, the superintendent of the H.H. Babcock

Company was from Brooklin, a small community north of Oshawa, and the McLaughlin

reputation at that time had been well-established. He was given "the run of the plant"

and "absorbed a lot of ideas about plant management, design and quality control."16

Heavy tariffs meant that producers north and south of the border were less concerned

about the theft of knowledge.

After taking two more jobs and absorbing as much information about the

American producers' strategies as possible, he returned to the family business. In 1893,

Sam and George were made partners in the company. A third key figure, Oliver

Hezzelwood, was also incorporated into the family circle. Hezzelwood, a local schoolteacher, had been hired in 1884 as the company bookkeeper. He and Robert would develop a very close relationship, and Hezzelwood would play a significant role in the future growth and development of the operation in Oshawa. At about the same time, a new invention in Germany would soon be the cause of much ado south of the Canadian border throughout the 1890s and beyond, although it would be some time before the new commodity would catch on in Canada.17 In 1885, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler invented the first gasoline-powered 'horseless carriage', a commodity which was about to spark radical changes in the nature of work, life and culture across the world.18

By 1899, the McLaughlin Carriage Company was producing 25,000 cutters and sleighs and an equal number of carriages per year. By that time employing approximately 600 men, the factory was the largest employer in Oshawa. In the same 16

year, Robert McLaughlin, who had always been interested "in efficient and progressive

municipal control," joined the long line of industrialists and professionals who had

headed Oshawa's administrative structure by becoming mayor. During his tenure, on 7

December 1899, a fire at the carriage works resulted in its being burnt to the ground.19

Various financial incentives were received from sixteen cities and towns by those who

hoped to induce the large employer to relocate to their area. Oshawa ratepayers offered

the family a loan of $50,000 so that the company might rebuild, to be reimbursed "as

convenient" and without interest.20 Despite the fact that the company was heavily

insured, the McLaughlin's humbly accepted the offer and set out to rebuild a new factory.

Robert, in a rather awkward position as mayor of the town, had to cut his term short so as

to accept the loan. Given that as mayor he had recently approved a by-law which

exempted the town's large industries from a tax to pay for a waterworks, it must surely

91 have been an occasion of deep regret on a number of levels.

Sam and a group of employees temporarily moved to Gananoque where an

abandoned factory was rented, and by "running two shifts every 24 hours we really rolled

those carriages out, and they were every bit as good as the ones we had been making at a

more leisurely pace in Oshawa; the Governor wouldn't have permitted anything else." • 99 Within six months, they had produced 3000 carnages. The remaining workmen stayed behind and built the modern new plant with fourteen acres of floor space, and complete with its very own private water tank.23 In 1901, the company was incorporated, and the partners became shareholders. The company was capitalized at $400,000; this was divided into 4000 shares, and except for the inclusion of Oliver Hezzelwood, the board was very much a private family affair, with Robert and his children, George, Sam, 17

Elizabeth and Mary Jane, assuming ownership of the remaining shares.24 The sharp

limitations to the corporate-family ideology which would be used to sustain compliance

among the workforce had thus been set, for there was a strict divide between the

corporate/public family and the nuclear family. Within the McLaughlin 'family' vision, not all were created or viewed equally.

The automobile had begun to capture a lot of interest in the United States during the 1890s. Although there were many who experimented with this new contraption and a multitude of small companies were springing up, one innovator at the time who would play an especially significant role in shaping the coming world was Henry Ford. He ran his first car in 1896, and by 1903 had established the Ford Motor Company. In 1904,

Ford would reach into Canada through the Walkerton Wagon Works; the owner, Gordon

McGregor, along with a group of Ontario investors, purchased a 49 per cent interest in the Ford Company of Canada, and Canada's first automobile branch plant came into being. Oliver Hezzelwood purchased a Ford that same year, and brought the first car to

Oshawa. With the help of some employees in the trim shop, they fashioned a cover for the vehicle and made some adjustments; upon closer examination, the potential of the automobile was quickly realized - the differential between the cost of the parts and the selling price generated a great deal of interest. Sam, an extrovert known for his expensive taste and recklessness, was the most likely source of support, and the two embarked on a mission to produce an automobile in Canada.

In the same year that the Ford Motor Company was established, another automobile company which would eventually rise to exert great influence in the industry was also formed. The Buick Motor Company was created by William Crapo Durant in 18

1903. Durant, from a wealthy family in Flint, Michigan, who was related to many of the

state's politicians, was not an inventor, but a speculator. Throughout the following years,

he would buy small companies and bring them under the umbrella of the corporation that

would come to be known as General Motors. Sam and Durant had known one another

for some time, having met at carriage manufacturers' conventions. The two would

eventually come to an agreement to produce Buicks in Oshawa; however, the first

attempts to negotiate a deal were unsuccessful as there appears to have been some

disagreement over who would retain majority ownership of the company. As Robert was

still the president of the McLaughlin Carriage Company, any negotiation would have to

be cleared with him, and Robert was a man who had always understood the importance of

retaining ownership and control over the mode of production.

The McLaughlins contracted an American engineer who had been employed in

automobile manufacture, Arthur Milbraith, in 1907, to build a gasoline car and supervise

the production of 200 'Model A' McLaughlin automobiles. An enormous amount of

capital was required to begin automobile production, and George and Sam borrowed heavily to finance the endeavour. Oliver Hezzelwood was able to secure the assistance of wealthy American relatives, and together they raised the necessary capital. They were already well behind their Canadian competition. Sam claims the engineer became sick although evidence suggests this is unlikely; regardless, Durant visited Oshawa with two of his executives, and an agreement was reached on 22 October 1907, in a contract that was a page and a half long and covered a fifteen year period. The McLaughlins would buy their engines from Buick, were given rights to the Buick design, and were to purchase most of the parts from Buick suppliers. They, in turn, retained a comfortable 19

majority in the McLaughlin Motor Car Company, which was incorporated on 20

November 1907. By shipping the car across the border in pieces and assembling them in

Canada, the 35 per cent tariff that would be levied on a complete automobile would be

reduced. The tariff, it seems, was further reduced by shifting its cost onto the Canadian

consumer; automobile prices in Canada bore a striking similarity to those in the United

States plus the cost of the tariff.26 In 1908, the first 154 McLaughlin-Buicks were

assembled in Canada.27 The plans and capital for the McLaughlin 'Model A' had to be

scrapped, and along with them any hopes for a made-in-Canada car.

The early twentieth century was a watershed in the growth of corporate

hegemony. Tom Traves explores this trend, arguing that the history of Canadian

manufacturing can only be understood within the intricate arrangements which were

organized between businessmen and legislators to promote, protect and regulate

enterprise. Between 1909 and 1913 corporate combinations in Canada resulted in the

consolidation of 221 firms with over $220 million in assets in 97 mergers. In conjunction

these firms produced "15 per cent of the total value of manufactured output in 1901,31

per cent in 1911, and more than 51 per cent in 1921 ,"28 Furthermore, the lenient anti­

trust laws in Canada were laxly policed, so that there were few barriers to the great trusts

and informal price agreements which arose in this era. Although Traves might have

devoted more attention to the American influence in Canadian business, his study is

important for understanding how fewer large businesses came to play an increasingly significant role within Canada. His work also explores another significant feature characteristic of the era in which so many monopolies and oligopolies were formed, in that F.W. Taylor's scientific management movement was spreading among the large

corporations, generating significant changes in the structure and nature of work.

David Brody explores the American merger movement which served to generalize

corporate technological processes. Businesses which did not adopt technological

innovations often collapsed. As he convincingly argues, the major success of American

business was not so much its drive to profit as an emphasis on economy, or cheap

production costs. The most successful aspect of American business was its ability to

reduce labour costs. Taylorism involved the careful study of individuals at work so as

to develop more precise procedures in the labour process, thus, it was thought, lowering

cost. Under the system of scientific management, time-and-motion study techniques

sought greater efficiency in production. Its organization of work into hierarchal

arrangements and a fragmentation of the labour process served to dilute skilled labour.

Taylor's published works, Shop Management (1903) and The Principles of Scientific

Management (1911), were widely read, yet evidence suggests they failed to immediately

revolutionize industry; attempts to alter the labour process also met with resistance by both organized and unorganized labour. Oshawa witnessed only one strike in the early twentieth century when employees of the McLaughlin Carriage Company walked off the job in an effort to secure better wages and a shop committee, a comparatively minor expression of discord given the increased agitation expressed by other labourers in

Canada during this period.31 Workers organized into a local of the Carriage and Wagon

Workers of North America, and in February of 1902,263 employees struck. Robert

McLaughlin, who garnered respect by working the same long hours he demanded of his workers, reputedly opened the company books to show the men that they were the 21

highest paid in the town. Enough workers remained loyal to the McLaughlin family and

remained on the job that the strike had little impact and according to Robert not a day of

production was lost.32 Company paternalism, the prestigious position of the business and

its owner within the small community, and the still relatively small scale and independent

nature of production maintained a complacent workforce for the time being. Although

independent acts of resistance on the part of the workers are difficult to locate, Oshawa

would be devoid of any large scale efforts to organize over the next decades.

Labour strife across the continent continued over the 'thrust for efficiency' that

was coming to characterize American industry, spawning adjustments to Taylor's system

of scientific management. The science of industrial psychology had a great impact on the

image of the industrial worker, perpetuating the idea that it was the flaws of working men

rather than the industry that was responsible for their failure to work, save or educate

themselves.33 In the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, a managerial view of

workers as lazy and in need of fine-tuning like any machine enjoyed ideological

supremacy; however, by about 1916, a shift to more paternalistic means of securing

worker complicity arose to achieve greater managerial hegemony over the work process

and quell worker discontent. While the ultimate goal of achieving greater output and

profits remained the same, the stick came to be replaced by the carrot as a means of

procuring employee cooperation with shifting labour practices.34

Another major development which came to radically alter the nature of work was

Fordism. While this system of production began with the automobile, it soon spread to

many other industries. It involved two major characteristics: moving the work to the worker, and having the worker perform a single, repetitive operation throughout the day so that little skill was required to perform tasks. In other words, it was the birth of the assembly line. Stephen Meyer examines the impact of this process at the Ford Motor

Company. Although Fordism was advantageous from a corporate perspective - Ford's share of the automobile market had risen from 9.4 per cent in 1908 to 48 per cent by 1914

- from the vantage point of the factory worker, an entirely different story emerges.

Meyer aims to relocate Ford within the evolution of the American social and economic system. While studies suggest that the structure of work relationships in the carriage works and small automobile factories still required skilled workers with a relative degree of independence, the new work regimen of the assembly line led to alienation and discontent among the ranks of deskilled labourers. Attempts to quell labour discontent through the extension of welfare programmes proved unsuccessful, leading to the 1914 announcement of the 'Five Dollar Day' ($4 in Canada), triggering the 'high' wages - relative to the very low wages standard at the time in all industries - which were paid by the large automobile producers as a means of compensating for the spiritually defeating nature of the work. The invasive arm of the corporation extended well beyond the workplace, and the programmes established by the Ford Motor Company sought to fit working class culture to the requirements of the modern factory system. When faced with an independent culture of working-class resistance, Ford's paternalism swung to more authoritarian forms of control. Meyer focuses specifically on Ford's Highland Park operation. However, throughout the 1920s Fordism in slightly varied forms spread from industry to industry throughout Detroit, the United States, and eventually much of the world. 23

General Motors quickly followed Ford's lead. The development of the corporation mirrored in many ways the larger merger trend of the era; at the helm of the growing combination of automobile firms and suppliers was Billy Durant. The General

Motors Company was incorporated in 1908; by trading shares in General Motors for shares in the company he was buying, Durant was able to inexpensively assume ownership. By purchasing false fronts, inflating values, and stock-watering, Durant raised the parent company's capital from a modest $2000 to $60 million within the first year.36 Over the next years, acquisitions of other parts and auto companies continued, including Cadillac, Oldsmobile, and Oakland (later Pontiac), although for the time being

Buick remained its main base. By 1910, the decentralized and disorganized superstructure collapsed. A group of bankers offered to loan the $15 million required to keep the company afloat on the condition that Durant resign as president, but he was permitted to maintain his position on the board of directors.

Undaunted, Durant actively began developing competitors, among which was a car that had been designed by Louis Chevrolet. In 1915 Durant bought the Dominion

Carriage Company in Toronto where he planned to manufacture Chevrolets. When he began organizing an attempt to take over General Motors in 1915, he encouraged his

Chevrolet investors, which included George and Sam McLaughlin, to purchase General

Motors stock. At the same time another investor was building a substantial interest,

Pierre S. du Pont. Together, du Pont and Durant controlled General Motors, and Durant was soon to be reinstated as president. In appreciation for his support, Sam was awarded the rights to Chevrolet production in Canada, although Durant retained majority ownership in this interest. In 1918 General Motors was reorganized as General Motors

Corporation (GM).

The little Chevrolet proved to be very profitable for the McLaughlins. In 1915,

1,012 McLaughlin-Buicks were produced compared to 347 Chevrolets. The next year,

2,859 McLaughlin-Buicks were produced, but Chevrolet output soared to 7,796 and would nearly double by 1918 to 13, 843.38 Although Ford's Model T still enjoyed a position of market supremacy, its fortunes would soon be surpassed by GM. The

McLaughlins stopped producing carriages, but the McLaughlin Carriage Company continued as a holding company for the McLaughlin Motor Company. Sam was president of the McLaughlin Motor Company, but ultimate power still rested with Robert

- although Sam claimed to have secretly purchased a controlling interest, and so was well positioned to overthrow his father if need be.39 In 1915, Oliver Hezzelwood, reputedly horrified by the carnage of the First World War, sold all of his General Motors shares to

Sam McLaughlin and donated the money to charity.40 One year later, Sam began construction on what was at the time the most expensive house to have ever been built in

Canada.

In 1918, General Motors bought the Canadian assembly plant. Beyond the advantage of escaping the 35 per cent tariff, Canada offered the added stimulus of being a member of the British Empire and thus enjoyed preferential access to those markets.

General Motors owned all of its operations; the McLaughlin Motor Company had been an exception to this general rule. According to Sam, the reason for the sale was due to the fact that he had no sons - General Motors of Canada would not have its first female president until 1994 - George was eager to retire and had no sons who were interested in 25 the company, and the favourable Buick contract which would expire in a few years was unlikely to be renewed on similar terms.41 The deal that was made would eventually become evidence in an American antitrust suit launched against the E.I. du Pont de

Nemours and Company in what was an attempt to break up the largest single concentration of economic power in the United States. The du Pont company purchased the McLaughlin's 50,000 shares for $6.5 million. The McLaughlins retained 6,000 shares in General Motors.42 Sam McLaughlin became president of General Motors of

Canada and was appointed to the board of directors of General Motors; George

McLaughlin was appointed vice-president. The antitrust suit, which gained much public attention in the early 1950s, revealed that General Motors of Canada had been favouring suppliers that were du Pont subsidiaries. The Supreme Court eventually found the E.I. du

Pont de Nemours and Company and General Motors guilty of activities which were likely to result in the restraint of trade.43

When Durant's risky speculations again threatened the business organization with collapse in 1920 - GM stock fell from $420 in March to $13 in November - du Pont temporarily assumed the presidency of General Motors and was succeeded by Alfred P.

Sloan, who went on to completely reorganize the corporation. Central agencies were created for areas relating to policy and finance, such as research, advertising and product planning, each of which assumed an advisory role with the individual companies.

General Motors of Canada maintained its own sales staff and dealers, advertising, engineers, and production managers, but the treasurer remained in New York, with control over direction and policy. By the 1930s, Sloan had converted the relatively autonomous companies into an "orderly, well-oiled machine.' American executives

came to occupy key positions in the Canadian operations.

Within this centralized structure, labour relations came to be an increasing matter

of concern. Although bargaining on a company-to-company basis would be an important

early method employed by the company through which to discourage unionization, a

centralized structure for dealing with labour issues allowed for a unified approach in

staving off working-class discontent with the new labour processes. Another important feature of Sloan's ascension to power was the yearly model change. While Fordism had been based on the production of the same 'Model T year after year, General Motors would offer a different model each year, thus providing variety to the consumer and eventually causing the corporation to overtake Ford's stranglehold on the market in the

1920s. This would also mean lengthy lay-off periods each year as the plant closed for model changeovers.

General Motors had thrived on the principle that a group of small companies, relatively powerless individually within the greater market structure, might reverse and improve their lot through cooperation. Indeed, such a philosophy certainly improved the lived existence of those who were reaping huge profits from the differential between prices and labour costs. However, the idea that a similar philosophy might be adopted by labourers so that they might improve their own conditions of life was anathema to both business and government. While the Canadian government was lax in policing the huge corporations which were coming to assume an increasingly dominant role in national life, controlling prices and setting labour costs to their own advantage, such was not the case when the working classes set out to secure their fair share in the new era of hegemonic 27 corporate capitalism, Fordism and scientific management. The combined power of business and government were channelled to prevent the organization of labourers who sought to improve their lived existence through the best means available to them, industrial unionism.

Labour organizations were hardly a new concept. Conservative craft unions, structured along skilled trades, had a long history by the 1920s.4 Although there were early attempts to resist changes to the labour processes, these ultimately proved unsuccessful. As skilled trades were increasingly eroded, some looked toward a different form of unionism, which was to be organized along industrial rather than craft lines. The automobile companies, among the first to adopt mass production techniques, would prove to be fertile ground for this movement. James Pendergest explores the political mobilization of autoworkers in Oshawa, highlighting how the ultimate victory of the

United Automobile Workers (UAW) in that vicinity, the main production centre of

General Motors of Canada, secured a more democratic society for the city's working classes.46 His prime focus is political, so he does not devote a great deal of attention to the work or community environment, and the forms of social control in the form of welfare capitalism which came to assume an increasingly dominant and invasive influence over the lives of working people. He does provide a critical examination of the political structures which flourished in the city as a culture of resistance arose and ultimately succeeded in gaining a voice for labourers within the community and workplace.

Pendergest examines the first unsuccessful attempt to organize autoworkers along craft lines in 1928 and outlines the growing dissent within the city following the stock market crash of 1929. By 1928, the assembly plant in Oshawa was producing one car a minute. Group piecework rates meant workers were paid according to the amount of work completed, and thus bore the financial burden of lost time due to malfunctioning machinery and a shortage of supplies. This system also placed workers in direct competition as they drove one another in an attempt to meet production quotas. In March of 1928, the pace of the assembly line in Oshawa was increased as piecework rates were slashed by 45 per cent. Workers struck in reaction and the city was soon paralyzed as a result.47 Action on the part of workers was ultimately unsuccessful for a number of reasons. Efforts to organize the workforce along craft lines created divisions, the local treasurer deserted with the union funds, and the company combated union support with kindness.

Following the lead of many other large producers, General Motors of Canada offered an intricate welfare programme through its Industrial Relations Department to propagate the "family spirit" of General Motors. The company envisioned itself as "a sort of practical Utopia that answers Sir Thomas More's dream of a state furnishing common tables with group insurance serving 99 percent of the plant's over 4,500 permanent employees." The welfare scheme also included an Employees Savings and

Investment Fund, where employees' savings were "invested for him" in company shares, and "provision...made for transferring savings funds to home owning purposes." An

Association of Employees dealt with "petty grievances" which "turns a Family into everything a family should not be." Members of the association were elected by employees, yet the employer held final authority in determining how petty the grievance.

The company also paid "its Oshawa army of workers neither by cash nor check, but by weekly deposit slips showing that certain amounts have been placed to their credit in either the corporation's bank or in one that the payee may, from time to time, specify."

Through such measures, the corporate parent saved its employees from robbery attempts, but the "real object of deposit slip payment is, however, stimulation of thrift...something which adds to the General Motors' Family pride to say, as they can, that every one of them have savings accounts." The company also funded sports teams, built a convention hall, sponsored orchestras and choirs, picnics, group games, contests, dances, social gatherings, literary and dramatic societies, and offered correspondence courses for educational purposes.48 In conjunction with paying the highest wages in the city and thus ensuring its status as the most benevolent employer in the vicinity, the company was able to stifle discontent temporarily.

As the automobile industry - overwhelmingly the largest source of employment in Oshawa - was decimated by an industry-wide depression and the resultant mass lay­ offs, the consensus which had been reached between General Motors and its employees through its munificent welfare measures collapsed. The 1930s would prove to be a period of particular importance for the extension of democracy for labourers as increasingly radical politics gained greater support. The movement was far from united, however, as internal rifts divided the working classes. The rise of the Canadian

Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the increasing ranks of supporters moving toward the Communist Party of Canada (CPC), particularly among the unemployed, ensured that factionalism would inhibit a united effort to rise against the dominant corporate power structure and so secure a working class citizenship.49 30

John Manley illustrates the importance of Communists in the early organizing

drives within the Canadian automobile industry in his study of the early development of

industrial unionism among autoworkers. By the 1920s, Oshawa had become a single-

industry town. Manley discusses the system of paternalistic reformed capitalism which

was in place to maintain a corporate/community consensus and thus capitalist hegemony.

Manley also briefly explores another key element in Oshawa's political

development in this period, one that Pendergest does not deal with in much detail, the

influence of its growing diverse ethnic communities in shaping a culture of political

resistance.50 Oshawa's population was overwhelmingly British. Over 80 per cent of its

citizens claimed a British heritage, 65 per cent of whom were English.51 Those

Protestants who emigrated from the British Isles enjoyed a privileged status in Oshawa.

The north end of the city housed both its middle classes as well as some among the

British working classes. Alternately, within the south end various ethnic communities

sprang up, including a significant number of Polish, Ukrainian, and Irish Catholic

peoples, along with smaller numbers of other ethnic groupings. Barred from employment

for many years from the city's higher paying jobs and confined to lower-paying and less

desirable employment such as work in the foundries, such communities often experienced

dire economic need and harsh working conditions on the basis of ethnic and religious

discrimination. General Motors employed 'good' British citizens, whether Canadian

born British Protestants or emigrants from the British Isles, throughout its early history.

In a 1928 interview in News & Views, an industry-wide General Motors publication, 'Mr.

Sam' hailed this hiring policy: "And - please mark this - over 98 per cent of our men are

British."52 31

Although various ethnic communities formed organizations of support as a means

of dealing with economic hardship, discrimination was still a prominent feature of life for

those with an alternate heritage from the British Protestant majority. The company

slowly began hiring Catholics and emigrants from Eastern Europe, but prejudice

prevailed for those who were branded as a 'foreign' element - Eastern Europeans born in

Canada would often still be marked with such a characterization. Radical politics were

often criticized as being foreign to Canadian ways, and Eastern Europeans were

frequently cited as the cause of such threats to the nation.53 One must be wary of

following the trend of the time which painted all members of an ethnic community with

the same political brush. However, it is important to note that such communities, along

with the increasing numbers of British arrivals who were dismayed by the abysmal labour

conditions in Canada compared to those which had been secured in Britain, formed an

important nucleus from which later labour victories would owe a debt of gratitude.

By focusing on the industry as opposed to the community, however, Manley

overlooks another important source of early political mobilization, the growing ranks of

the unemployed. Pendergest deals with this in great depth, drawing attention to the

important role Communists and fellow travellers, a significant number of who were

British, played in establishing an early organizational base within the city. Many of these people would go on to join the Unity caucus within Local 222 following its formation.

The term 'Communist' would come to categorize all those who did not support a one- party state within the labour movement through sole affiliation with the CCF in the

1940s, and the communist role in building the union would eventually be downplayed.54 However, as Manley convincingly argues, while Communists did not build the UAW,

they were responsible for laying many of its foundations.55

Irving Abella presents the fullest analysis of the famous Oshawa strike of 1937 which marked "the birth of industrial unionism in Canada."56 While perhaps downplaying the importance of the long and violent battles which took place in the

United States through 1936 and 1937, leading to the UAW-CIO victory at General

Motors and thus providing a great deal of moral support to their Canadian brothers and sisters, he shows how autoworkers in Oshawa emerged victorious from the two week strike entirely through independent action.57 Although the UAW was not officially recognized in the final settlement, workers successfully won all of their demands. These included a forty-four hour week, wage increases, a seniority system, grievance machinery, and the right to engage in union activity without discrimination. More importantly in the memories of former workers from the time was the protection from arbitrary dismissal that unionism offered; in addition, no longer were they subject to performing favours for foremen, such as shovelling driveways or giving gifts, just to maintain their jobs.

The battle was far from over as the union would continue to struggle for its right to exist throughout the decade, but it was an important gain both locally and nationally as the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) began making footholds in other

Canadian industries. Abella also draws attention to the lengths which the premier of

Ontario, Mitchell Hepburn, went in order to protect capitalist interests. Given his significant stock holdings, particularly in the mining industry, and determined to prevent the entry of the CIO into Canada, he mustered all the resources of the state against the 33 strikers. An unnecessary police presence was placed in Oshawa for the duration of the strike, first the RCMP and then a private force of enlisted University of Toronto students, referred to by the strikers as 'Sons of Mitches' or 'Hepburn's Hussars.' Hepburn also maintained contact with Sam McLaughlin, who was wintering at his estate in Bermuda at the time, and erected many barriers through the negotiation process by refusing to deal with the 'foreign' elements of the CIO. Hepburn thus ensured that the UAW would not be recognized as the official bargaining agent of the workers. The initial contract and the law may not have recognized the newly formed Local 222 as part of the UAW, but the workers did. In the face of that greater will, the law and company would have little choice but to eventually deal with organized labour.

Although still plagued with internal divisions at all levels, the growing numbers of unionized workers would unite locally, provincially and federally so as to present a united front against business and government. In this manner they cooperatively agitated for legislation perceived to improve the conditions of employment and living standards for the working classes as a whole. The Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL), formed in a merger of the nationalistic All-Canadian Congress of Labour (ACCL) and the Canadian locals of the CIO (by this time the Congress of Industrial Organization), confederated in

1940. The conservative and craft-oriented Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) would remain a separate body. Throughout the early 1940s, the ranks of the CCL continued to swell as the number of strikes in these years surpassed all previous records.

The CCL became a more formidable force as even governments could no longer ignore the rising tide of industrial unionism. As labour falls under provincial jurisdiction, the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), formed in 1944 at a CCL convention, also comprised a potent lobbying force. The CCL continued to be divided by internal fractures and internecine conflicts throughout the decade even though it officially embraced the CCF as the political arm of labour; in 1940 it approved a resolution condemning communism and fascism. The CCL passed an inordinate amount of power unto its executive body, and commenced in its battle against communism. The UAW would remain a thorn in its side as the left within its ranks continued to enjoy popular support. The CCL became even more fervently anti-communist following the Second

World War, and by the end of the 1940s, most communists had been purged from the organized labour movement. Thus, many union leaders joined in the chorus of business and government, all of whom sought to protect 'freedom', particularly the freedom of speech, by eliminating this right among those whose speech did not conform to the political and socioeconomic system of the day.

Although a strong lobbying effort on the behalf of organized labour was forged throughout the 1940s, and some gains were made, they were small and met with resistance at every level of governance. Unlike the dominant trend in Europe, collective bargaining in North America has typically been left in the realm of private industry, and negotiations vary from company to company.59 Within Canada, the state did play a distinctive role through compulsory conciliation, although this intervention occurred on an individual corporate level. Paul Craven contends that Mackenzie King is a significant feature of any labour study given his influence on subsequent labour legislation in

Canada. As Minister of Labour, King devised the Industrial Disputes and Investigation

Act (IDIA) which was passed in 1907. With slight modifications, its basic form would determine Canadian state and labour relations throughout the twentieth century. The 35

"common interest in maintaining production" carried with it the "rationale for

compulsion." Under this legislation, strikes and lock-outs were prohibited until a

complete investigation had taken place. In this matter, "the Public has as its agent the

Government."60 This set the stage for the long history of government intervention in

Canadian labour disputes.

However, as both Bob Russell and Peter Mclnnis argue, the interests of

government were often the interests of business. Russell provides a broad overview of

labour and state relations, noting that the Canadian state has gone to great lengths in promoting private capital accumulation; the right to unionize and bargain freely and collectively have been checked by a massive penal and legal structure.61 Although the use of state force to secure early industrial relations gradually shifted to more clandestine modes of accommodation, the boundaries between government and business were often thinly veiled. Mclnnis probes this in his study of the labour movement during and following the Second World War. By tracing the cooperation of big business and government throughout this period, he illustrates how broader working class gains were subverted to the interests of private capital. Similarly, certain union leaders have been criticized for the postwar settlement, an accord which ultimately settled along corporately desirable lines in the development of complex collective bargaining procedures and a spirit of accommodation which in no way threatened capital's essential property rights.62

Sections of the Canadian Region of the UAW, however, would remain a site of relative resistance against the swelling sea of corporatist accommodation that arose in the postwar period within both the CCL and at the international level. While the more radical leftist elements became seriously weakened and much of the leadership had shifted to the right by the late 1940s, many in the Canadian UAW held firm in the face of this rightward swing. Union members would remain split between those who supported

Walter Reuther and those who did not. Following a narrow victory in 1946, Reuther became president of the UAW and soon purged it of Communists. His promotion of greater centralization of the union, advocacy of more affable corporate relations, and staunch anti-Communism did not appeal to all members of the UAW. However, support for his presidency among the Canadian Region of the UAW grew as the 1940s drew to a close.

The Communist Party had seriously weakened its position with its shifting stance during the war. By first decrying the war as an imperialist plot and then becoming one of its most ardent supporters following the Nazi invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941, the party alienated many of its supporters. Banned in 1940, it reorganized as the Labour-

Progressive Party (LPP) and cooperated with Mitch Hepburn in the 1945 Ontario election, drawing further criticism from many ranks. Sam Gindin briefly explains the continued support among some in the UAW in his broad overview of the union. The

'Unity' group was a coalition of independents, Communists and left-leaning CCFers, who supported a programme of independent lobbying, rather than endorsing the CCF as the sole political voice of labour. George Burt, Canadian director, reflected this balance until the end of the 1940s, when he would fall in line with the pressures being exerted from the international union and similar elements within the Canadian labour movement.63

Charlotte Yates offers a more detailed and insightful view of the political character of the Canadian Region of the UAW throughout this period. She argues that the tradition of the UAW, which had privileged a rank-and-file based organizational

structure, and the perseverance of a militant, syndicalist collective identity, impeded

Walter Reuther's attempts to bring the Canadian branch of the UAW in line with his programme.64 Reuther was attempting to shape the UAW in the image of General

Motors, thus consolidating power within the central executive body; a powerful force within the Canadian Region was not willing to bow to such an arrangement. The strong

left presence in positions of leadership ensured that both nationally and internationally, the Canadian branch of the UAW would resist attempts to bring it in line with the right- wing discourse that would come to dominate the broader labour movement's postwar agenda.

While a strong and varied body of work exists which explores the larger political, economic and social forces surrounding corporate and union development, fewer approach the issue from a local level. Particularly within the UAW, where independent locals which placed a strong emphasis on bottom-up, rank-and-file mobilization, and which favoured a community-based approach of social unionism, such a localized study is useful. The 1937 Oshawa strike was but a small step towards improving working class life and culture while providing an important balance to the increasingly concentrated power of capital. However, resistance against the movement by the hegemonic bourgeoisie state continued well after the production line resumed. To further an understanding of the victories, struggles, successes and failures as they pertained to working class life and culture, emphasizing workers above institutions, a local study has much to add to the current body of work. Perhaps then it would be fitting to return to

Oshawa. Notes:

1 Cited in Walter Johnson, Trade Unions and the State (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1978), 10. 2 "Celebrate Oshawa's 75th Anniversary," Oshawa This Week-Special Edition (8 March 1999), 3. 3 For a fuller history of Oshawa's early growth and development, see Magnus Mclntyre Hood, Oshawa: 'the crossing between the waters': A History of 'Canada's Motor City' (Oshawa: McLaughlin Public Library, 1968). See also D.S. Hoig, M.D., Reminiscences and Recollections: An Interesting Pen Picture of Early Days, Characters and Events in Oshawa (Oshawa: Mundy-Goodfellow Printing, 1933); Samuel Pedlar, Samuel Pedlar Manuscript, 1790-1904 (Transcribed from a microfilm of the original by Sharon Stark and Margaret Egerer, 1970). 4 Oshawa: The Manchester of Canada (The Canadian Souvenir Pub. Co., 1898), 3. 5 Dorothy McLaughlin Henderson, Robert McLaughlin, Carriage Builder (The Alger Press, 1968), 1. See also George Blake, Clan McLaughlin of Oshawa: A Story to be Told (Oshawa: July 2001), 3; Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-1997 (Toronto: Dundura Press, 1997), 36-37; Donald Harman Akenson, The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1984). 6 According to family lore, this was a wedding gift. Robert had recently married his first of three wives, and this was to be his first of six homes. Heather Robertson, Driving Force: The McLaughlin Family and the Age of the Car (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995), 50; Henderson, Robert McLaughlin, 7; Roy A. Petrie, The Canadians: Sam McLaughlin (Don Mills: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1975), 3. 7 Petrie, The Canadians, 4. 8 R.S. McLaughlin as told to Eric Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," Maclean's (15 September 1954). 9 McLaughlin as told to Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," (15 September 1954). 10 Cited in Robertson, Driving Force, 73-74. 11 Cited in Robertson, Driving Force, 56. A Great Canadian Industry and its Founder: Being a Brief History of the McLaughlin Carriage Company (no publisher, no date). 13 "Old Vindicator Files Reveal Bylaw Review," The Oshawa Daily Times (30 April 1937), 3. 14 According to Heather Robertson who has extensively surveyed the company records, this claim had little substance. By using cheap materials and selling at a high price, the return on each carriage was substantial, to say the least. Robertson, Driving Force, 85-88. 15 Robertson, Driving Force, 76,185. 16 McLaughlin as told to Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," (15 September 1954). 17 There were Canadians who were experimenting with the concept of a 'horseless carriage'; Henry Seth Taylor produced a steam wagon in 1867 in Stanstead, Quebec, the first in a long line who would produce variations of what would become the automobile. Many went broke because of the capital costs required; others would be forced out by the Ford production line. Bryan Swarbrick, "Those horseless carriage days," The Toronto Star (28 January 1977), 12, 14. 18 John B. Rae, The American Automobile Industry (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984), 11. 19 A Great Canadian Industry and its Founder, R.S. McLaughlin as told to Eric Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," Maclean's (15 October 1954). 20 A Great Canadian Industry; Hoig, Reminiscences and Recollections, 95. 21 Robertson, Driving Force, 90. 22 McLaughlin as told to Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," (15 October 1954). 23 George Mcintosh, "A Great Industrial Achievement," The Great Canadian Magazine (December 1910), 8. 24 Robertson, Driving Force, 97. 25 For a full discussion of the development and evolution of the relationship between the Canadian and parent company, see Dimitry Anastakis, "From Independence to Integration: The Corporate Evolution of the Ford Motor Company of Canada, 1904-2004," Business History Review 78 (Summer 2004), 213- 253. O.J. McDiarmid, "Some Aspects of the Canadian Automobile Industry," The Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science 6 (May 1940), 273. 27 Hoig, Reminiscences and Recollections, 97; McLaughlin as told to Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels" (15 October 1954); Robertson, Driving Force, 107-114; GMIn Canada: The Early Years (Oshawa: Public Relations Department, General Motors of Canada Limited), 10. A copy of the original agreement can be found at Parkwood Estate, Oshawa. 28 Cited in Tom Traves, The State and Enterprise: Canadian Manufacturers and the Federal Government, 1917-1931 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 5. See also Craig Heron and Bryan D. Palmer, "Through the Prism of the Strike: Industrial Conflict in Southern Ontario, 1901-14," Canadian Historical Review 8 (December 1977), 427; R.T. Naylor, The History of Canadian Business, 1867-1914 (Toronto: Lorimer, 1975); Gregory P. Marchildon, Profit and Politics: Beaverbrook and the Gilded Age of Canadian Finance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); William K. Carroll, "Westward ho? The Shifting Geography of Corporate Power in Canada," Journal of Canadian Studies 36 (Winter 2002), 118- 42; Sylvia Ostry, "Government Intervention: Canada and the United States Compared," Government and Enterprise in Canada, K.J. Rea and Nelson Wiseman, eds. (Toronto: Methuen, 1985), 24. 29 David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 28. 30 Bryan D. Palmer, "Class, Conception and Conflict: The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labour and the Working Class Rebellion, 1903-1922," Review of Radical Political Economics 7 (July 1975), 31-49. 31 Heron and Palmer, "Through the Prism of the Strike," 444. 32 Excepting the occasional trip to Muskoka, Robert McLaughlin was rarely away from the plant, and even spent Sundays in his office painting. The one trip he took in his lifetime, to California, was cut short after three days because due to his displeasure over there being nothing to do. Robertson, Driving Force, 149,229. 33 Traves, The State and Enterprise, 90. 34 Palmer, "Class, Conception and Conflict," 36, 40-1. 35 Stephen Meyer, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 7. See also Robert M. Laxer, ed., Technological Change and the Workforce (Toronto: The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1978); James Dykes, Canada's Automotive Industry (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1970), 21; Jane Jenson, "Representations in Crisis: The Roots of Canada's Permeable Fordism," Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique 23 (December 1990), 653-83; Bruce Pietrykowski, "Fordism at Ford: Spatial Decentralization and Labor Segmentation at the Ford Motor Company, 1920- 1950," Economic Geography 71 (October 1995), 383-401. 36 Rae, The American Automobile Industry, 45. 37 Robertson, Driving Force, 157. 38 GMin Canada: The Early Years, 10. 39 McLaughlin as told to Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," (15 October 1954). 40 Robertson, Driving Force, 165. 41 McLaughlin as told to Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," (15 October 1954). 42 Robertson, Driving Force, 168. The "Post Trial Brief Book for the United States," (1953) is available at Parkwood Estate, Oshawa. 43 Canadian Industries Limited, which had received one-third of all Canadian government contracts and which was jointly owned by the du Ponts and Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. of the U.K., would also garner much attention in the United States. It was found that CIL had suppressed competition in Canada and refrained from entering the export market to serve its parent corporations interests. Graham D. Taylor, "Management Relations in a Multinational Enterprise: The Case of Canadian Industries Limited, 1928-1948," Essays in Canadian Business History, Tom Traves, ed. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 151-169. 44 Maryann Keller, Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989), 18,46-47; Robertson, Driving Force, 187; Rae, The American Automobile Industry, 52. See also William Pelfrey, Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History (New York: American Management Association, 2006); Donald F. Davis, Conspicuous Consumption in Detroit: Automobile Elites in Detroit, 1899-1933 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); Alfred P. Sloan, Adventures of a White-Collar Man (New York: Doubleday, 1941). 45 David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology and Labour Struggles (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Bryan D. Palmer, Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992); Craig Heron, The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History (Toronto: Lorimer, 1996). 46 James Alexander Pendergest, "Labour and Politics in Oshawa and District, 1928-1943," MA thesis (Kingston: Queen's University, April 1973), 6. 47 Robertson, Driving Force, 224-8; Pendergest, "Labour and Politics in Oshawa and District," 19- 32. 48 General Motors press release, June 30,1927, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0003,0011,0001. 49 T.H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," The Citizenship Debates, Gershon Shafir, ed. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 71-134. 50 John Manley, "Communists and Autoworkers: The Struggle for Industrial Unionism in the Canadian Automobile Industry, 1925-1936" Labour/Le Travail 17 (Spring 1986), 112. 51 Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, Volume //(Ottawa: The King's Printer, 1944), 304. 52 "Mr. Sam," News & Views (September 1928), 3, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0003,0011, 0003. 53 The RCMP maintained surveillance over Eastern European community organizations in Canada in an attempt to intercept any communist threats to the nation. Gregory S. Kealey and Reg Whitaker, eds., R.C.M.P. Security Bulletins: The Depression Years, 1938-1939 (St. John's: Committee on Canadian Labour History, 1997). During the Depression, as radical politics gained greater support, 'foreigners' were often blamed as threatening democracy. However, of those deported from Canada for subversive politics by 1930, 2,864 of a total 4,025 were British. Pendergest, "Labour and Politics in Oshawa and District," 88. See also Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates, 99-124. 54 See for example David Lewis, The Good Fight: Political Memoirs, 1909-1958 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1981). 55 Manley, "Communists and Autoworkers," 133. See also Ian Angus, Canadian Bolsheviks: The Early Years of the Communist Party of Canada (Montreal: Vanguard Publications, 1981); Lita-Rose Betcherman, The Little Band: The clashes between the Communists and the political and legal establishment in Canada, 1928-1932 (Ottawa: Deneau, no date); Caren Irr, The Suburb of Discontent: Cultural Politics in the United States and Canada during the 1930s (Durham: Duke University, 1998). 56 Irving Abella, "Oshawa 1937," On Strike: Six Key Labour Struggles in Canada, 1919-1949, Irving Abella, ed. (Toronto: Lorimer, 1975), 93. See also John T. Saywell, 'Just Call Me Mitch': The Life of Mitchell F. Hepburn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). 57 On the American strikes and UAW, see Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labour (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Victor G. Reuther, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the UAW: A Memoir (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1976); Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936-1937 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969); George Douglas Blackwood, The United Automobile Workers of America, 1935-51 (Chicago: GD Blackwood, 1951); Wyndham Mortimer, Organize! My Life as a Union Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972); Our Union Heritage: A Chronicle of Labor's Struggle for Social Justice (Detroit: UAW Education Department, 1966). 58 Irving Abella, Nationalism, Communism and Canadian Labour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 154-62. See also Lewis, The Good Fight; Eric Havelock, "Forty-Five Years Ago: The Oshawa Strike," Labour/Le Travail 11 (Spring 1983), 119-124. 59 Derek C. Bok, and John T. Dunlop, Labor and the American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 208. 60 Paul Craven, 'An Impartial Umpire': Industrial Relations and the Canadian State, 1900-1911 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 85. See also Jeremy Weber, "The Malaise of Compulsory Conciliation: Strike Prevention in Canada during World War II," Labour/Le Travail 15 (Spring 1985), 57- 88; Laurel Sefton MacDowelL "The Formation of the Canadian Industrial Relations System During World War Two," Labour/Le Travail 3 (1978), 175-96. 61 Bob RusselL Back to Work? Labour, State and Industrial Relations in Canada (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1990), 25-6. 41

Peter S. Mclnnis, Harnessing Labour Confrontation: Shaping the Postwar Settlement in Canada, 1943-1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 191. 63 Sam Gindin, The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union (Toronto: Lorimer, 1995), 97,136. 64 Charlotte Alyce Bronwen Yates, "From Plant to Politics: The Canadian UAW, 1936-1984," Ph.D. thesis (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1988), 53. Chapter II

An Auto(crat's) Town: Paying Due Respect to the Founding Fathers (and Mothers)

My father had always felt, and George and I had come to feel, that the business was as much Oshawa 's as it was ours. -R.S. McLaughlin

I'm glad they would not tolerate the iniquitous condition that exists in the United States where they step right in and take possession of your property and will not move out even at the request of State police... If such a condition ever developed here I'd move right out of the country, but I don't think it ever can happen in Canada. - R.S. McLaughlin2

So -play up, Canadian lads! 'Play the game.' - Sir Robert Baden-Powell3

Long gone, but long from forgotten, Oshawa in many ways is a memorial to the

McLaughlin name in various shapes and forms, particularly to Robert Samuel and

Adelaide McLaughlin. Lauded as much for his philanthropy as for his business acumen, the city forms a tribute to all the man did for its people. "Oshawa's greatest citizen," indeed, "is everywhere," serving as a constant reminder that its residents "owe him more than we could ever repay.' Sam made many donations to various causes and organizations, and his name was attached to nearly every single one - lest we forget. The surviving founding members of Local 222 who generously agreed to share their stories for this project had, for the most part, nothing but good things to say about the first president of General Motors of Canada, and many listed off verbatim the many contributions he made to the community's life and culture. Given the attention and adulation these acts received in the local press, over and over and over again - the 43

McLaughlins owned a majority interest in the local newspaper, and the editor, a

businessman and devout Christian, was a member of Oshawa's small but powerful social

elite - it might be safe to assume that many citizens, past and present, would be well

versed in the contributions Citizen Sam made to the city of Oshawa.

There were some who provided an alternate discourse to the general appreciation

and respect that most paid to Sam McLaughlin. Roy Fleming began working at the

Motors in 1934, served on the union executive, the Public Utilities Commission, has been

a long-time member of the Union Rod & Gun Club, and is a regular contributor to The

Oshaworker. He offers a different perspective: "Of old R.S.? Well, you gotta realize that he was at the time [one of] the richest...in Canada, so he still controlled his own destiny....then he had places here and here, so he didn't, what you'd say, have to mingle with the poor people.... Well he didn't. Because he had another clientele up here, you know." Roy certainly recognizes the many contributions which were made: "Oh, he did a lot, yes, yes. But God knew how much money he had...and it was all made in Oshawa, you know."5 Or a goodly proportion, at least, and it all began in Oshawa. Myron Mech makes a similar point: "You see, R.S. McLaughlin owned this town, let's put it that way.

Anything, disregarding whether it's the council or whatever, it's what R.S. says." He notes that before the union, the town was run by businessmen who "were only interested in that part. To hell with the other part." As to Sam's contribution to his workers, Myron felt he "never got any compensation or help from the company or nothing. I remember during Christmastime. R.S. McLaughlin as I said ran this city, when there was no union.

On Christmas, a few days before Christmas, he would have truckloads of turkeys brought in fromth e west...to all employees with English pudding.... They used to throw it on the 44

porch, and the pudding.... He was using us." Likening the gesture to images seen on

television of bags of food being dropped in Africa, he notes that R.S. was among the

wealthiest men in the world. "That guy, it was, anything that he left behind or had named

after, there had to be some stipulation.... I've got a ring from R.S. McLaughlin.... And a

diamond for every five years. Big deal."6 Jeannette Nugent remembers hearing about the

turkeys too. "My mother told me once that, one year for Christmas R.S. gave all the

workers in the factory a turkey, and some of the men threw the turkeys back on his lawn,

and he never did it again."7

Before the welfare state and centralized bureaucracies of the postwar era came to

be in vogue, municipalities were the main arena of governance. These municipalities

were often administered and controlled by the industrial and professional classes;

Oshawa was no exception to this general rule. 'Public-spirited' and 'civic-minded'

citizens, as they were referred to in the press, headed local government. Furthermore,

'service' clubs and ladies' auxiliaries, comprised of the business and professional elite,

established welfare programmes in the interests of the community. It is my aim in this

chapter to explore these public-spirited modes of service; I shall argue that the boundaries

between public service and self-service were often conflated. The bourgeois state in

Oshawa had as its raison d'etre the training of 'good' industrial citizens - often this meant imposing 'good' middle-class cultural values and ways of living onto the working classes, while serving the dual purpose of inhibiting demands for middle class standards of living. By giving with one hand, charitable endeavours thus served to conceal exactly how much was being taken with the other hand. As Bryan Palmer convincingly contends in his exploration of 'the manufacturing of consent' by the Canadian branch of the 45

Goodyear corporation, capital has often been successful in extending its interests into a discourse of universal need, thus obscuring its own interests through benevolence, so as to emphasize the apparent reciprocities of social relationships rather than their gross inequalities.8 Often, these acts of giving also served the purpose of imposing social control over the masses upon whose cheap labour and compliance the bourgeoisie depended for their own high standards of living. Good citizenship was something to be imposed, as it was defined by prevailing middle class ideologies, onto those who had the misfortune to fall under their sphere of control.

R.S. McLaughlin was hardly the only member of Oshawa's social elite, but he was the wealthiest and headed the city's largest corporation. By the 1920s, Oshawa had become a one-industry town. The sons of Oshawa's long-standing elite still headed many of its businesses or belonged to the professional establishment. However, as car production in Oshawa gained ascendancy, many of the city's factories converted to parts suppliers, producing such things as bumpers (Skinner's Company, Limited), steel springs

(Ontario Steel), body hardware (Coulter Manufacturing), sheet metal (Pedlar People,

Ltd.) and glass (W.E. Phillips, Limited - named after and operated by the son-in-law of

R.S. McLaughlin).9 The interests of the ruling class in Oshawa, then, were the interests of General Motors, and vice versa. Furthermore, Sam McLaughlin accumulated an estimated amount of over four hundred million dollars in his lifetime.1 Certainly he was not the only person in Oshawa to have benefited from unhindered property and capital accumulation, the differential between cheap labour costs and prices that reaped massive profits through stock investments, and so on; however, it was to the benefit of many to be in the good graces of the city's wealthiest man. As a small social elite, it was also a tight- 46 knit group. As Peggy Gray, who grew up among this privileged social circle that revolved around the Oshawa Golf Club recalls: "It was right out of The Great Gatsby....

They all partied together. I remember some of the dress-up parties. I saw my father [Dr.

F.L. Henry] once in a blue sequined dress and a blond wig. A lot of drinking went on.

All that group drank. It was a gay life."11

By 1924, Oshawa had 15,200 residents.12 In that year it was incorporated as a city by Canada's relatively loose standards. In 1941 the population had grown to 26, 813, and stood at 28, 037 by 1948.13 Oshawa was in many ways a cross between a city and a rural idyll. As is characteristic of many small communities, there existed a unified and homogenous middle class with tied interests, who aimed to rally the community against the external threat of the larger urban dens of iniquity, irreligiosity and vice (nearby

Toronto made a fitting example) into a shared sense of community, thus reducing emphasis on internal divisions, particularly class divisions.14 However, within the community 'family', deep-seated class prejudices, exacerbated by ethnic and gender discrimination, meant that the labouring classes were treated as lesser members of society, children to be shaped into good industrial citizens. A good citizen as it was so defined was an obedient, thrifty, efficient, sober and industrious individual. Good citizenship as it was interpreted by the powerful typically reflected the requirements of the modern factory.15

R.S. McLaughlin is popularly referred to by many names: 'Mr. Sam,' which became 'Colonel Sam' following his being named Honorary Colonel of the 11th Ontario

Regiment in 1936 despite the lack of any military experience whatsoever, 'R.S.', 'the father of Oshawa', and from time to time 'Mr.' or 'Colonel McLaughlin'. There was also 47

'Kitchie-Kah-So-Kin-Esko', which was bestowed upon him by a Cree chief in

Saskatchewan after he was named 'Honorary Chief following the construction of the ill- fated Regina assembly plant in 1928, or, its English translation, 'Chief Strong Arm'.

Colonel Sam donated to the community both through General Motors of Canada and as a private individual; however, given the nature of the donations, it shall become apparent that the two are not easily separated, and in both capacities, the long arm of the corporation was making itself felt in its attempts to shape the cultural life of the community, particularly the labouring classes - 85 per cent of the population.16

Coincidentally, following tax law alterations in the 1950s designed to encourage charitable contributions, Colonel Sam engaged in what might be termed an orgy of giving. Unfortunately, that rests outside the scope of this study, and so I shall focus specifically on the 1940s with some contextual background - coming rather late to the idea of giving money away, his charitable nature seems to have thoroughly bloomed following the formation of Local 222, and in particular in the postwar period.

At a time when many industrialists were coming to see the value of welfare capitalism, and so were donating parks, libraries, and the like, Sam McLaughlin was buying Oshawa's fourteen acre amusement park, situated just outside the factory district, in order to construct his own private residence.17 In 1916, Sam set out to build what was at the time the most expensive house in Canada, Parkwood Estate. Completed in 1917, at a cost of $100,000, some of the most renowned architects, artisans and craftsmen both nationally and internationally were commissioned in its construction. The Darling and

Pearson architectural firm, perhaps best known for the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and the Royal Ontario Museum, were swayed to design the project, despite the fact that 48 they did not build houses.18 A staff of forty was required to maintain the fifty-five room mansion, including a secretary for Adelaide, three chauffeurs, a butler, cooks, maids, a private schoolteacher for the five McLaughlin daughters, and approximately twenty gardeners.19 Excepting a select few of the 'elite' serving staff that had houses built along the grounds, unmarried maids slept in the top level of the house and workmen lived above the garage. Complete with an indoor swimming pool, squash court, indoor bowling alley, an air-conditioned bedroom - Sam's - a horse arena and stables (later moved to his extensive property on the northern edge of Oshawa), the mansion remains the epitome of opulence. Servants were to use the back door, naturally, with the exception of Margaret Nelson, one of the McLaughlins' private nurses. 'Nursie' refused to use the back door, and reputedly was the only person who could boss Sam around. The other exception was at Halloween, when the children of Oshawa were free to approach the front door for a little treat. Three years after the construction of

Parkwood, General Motors donated a lakefront park to the city of Oshawa in its southernmost end. A plaque was erected acknowledging the generous contribution.

In the 1930s, Sam was understandably concerned about the welfare of the working people of Oshawa, thousands of whom had lost their homes and livelihoods.

Civic-spirited gentleman that he was, he commissioned Darling and Pearson once more, and a series of renovations and additions that spanned ten years commenced on

Parkwood Estate. It was a make-work programme. Unfortunately, there was not much time to enjoy all the luxury. Sam had a strong work ethic, as he laid out in a 1929 interview in the General Motors publication, News & Views:

Being brought up as I was to hard work and long hours the modern trend makes it very difficult for me to understand 49

how people can make a success of business spending as much time as they do playing around at this, that and the other thing. I think that the reason the average man isn't more successful, if you call getting along in the world being successful, is attributable to lack of hard work and application.

When asked if he always supported strict discipline in the training of a boy, he answered,

"Yes, I do, decidedly. He is controlled; it is like going through the military school or the army. He has to be obedient, he has to conform to rules and regulations...if he's allowed

to grow up to do as he pleases, he will probably not develop the same ability to control

others that he would have had if brought up strictly." As to his own hours, he noted: "My

working hours now are quite short. I get down in the morning about nine, leave about

twelve-thirty for lunch, back about two and leave about four-thirty. Then I go riding -

ride in the afternoon, not morning."21

What with all the hard work, one might wonder how he could find time to enjoy

the various properties he owned around Oshawa, the country, and the world, but he

managed. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, the McLaughlins vacationed yearly in

Aiken, South Carolina. In 1936, they purchased Cedar Lodge in Paget, Bermuda, one of

the largest estates on the island, which boasted a private boat dock, separate guest house,

and a half-million gallon private water tank to guard against the perennial water shortages

that plagued the island. Sam also began leasing a thirty-nine mile stretch of river in the

Gaspe Peninsula beginning in the early 1920s, which was renamed Cap Chat, made

regular trips to Long Point, an exclusive club owned by a dozen or so millionaires off

Lake Erie for duck-shooting (each duck cost approximately $103 to shoot), made yearly

trips to his private game reserve in Georgian Bay, Griffith Island, and kept numerous 50 private lakes in and around Oshawa fully stocked with trout for his personal fishing pleasure, to name but a few of his favourite pursuits.

During the Second World War, the McLaughlins made the Great Sacrifice of loaning their Bermuda estate to the war effort and wintered for those years in Oshawa.

Sam also drove a horse-and-carriage the few blocks to work to demonstrate the need for rationing. Those who could not afford a horse, carriage or car, walked or used public transit when it was running, but their efforts did not make the headlines. Sam never failed to remind his employees of their obligation to the war effort. Beside payroll deductions, blood donor drives where names were published in order according to those who gave the most blood, and Community Chest drives (directed by General Motors executives), there was also one of his favoured tactics of citing GM's monthly payroll:

'Speaking of payrolls Mr. McLaughlin said that the payroll of General Motors is averaging nearly a million a month, and he felt sure all workers in every industry would respond to the appeal to purchase war savings certificates.'

Of course, everyone sacrificed during the war. According to Sam, General

Motors of Canada "made a practice of limiting our profits to 1 Vi to 2 per cent on all war production. The Governor wouldn't have it any other way." The actual agreement was for no more than five per cent; Heather Robertson estimates the profit of General Motors of Canada to have been approximately $20 million by 1944.25 Granted, Canada's profit was undoubtedly trivial compared to General Motors' German branch plant, Opel.26 War may be profitable business when supplying one side of the battle, but it is doubly profitable when supplying both. That is a simple matter of economics. 51

Colonel Sam was also an avid sportsman. His horses, maintained on a 470-acre farm with an indoor arena, half mile track, and stables for sixty-five horses, with brood mare and foal barns, along with a herd of purebred Jersey cattle, won three King's Plates throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He also donated to the Oshawa Curling Club during the

Depression to keep it afloat, the Oshawa Tennis Club, and the Oshawa Golf Club.

George Nugent was a caddy at the Oshawa Golf Club in his youth. He remembers caddying for a party that included Sam McLaughlin, C.H. Carlisle, president of the

Dominion Bank of Canada at the time, and Lord Baxter, member of the House of Lords in England. "I think they gave us a dollar each. Ordinarily you played, you went eighteen holes and then you got seventy-five cents. They played nine holes and we got a dollar, so that was a big deal for us." George and his friends enjoyed playing golf too.

"Alexandra Park was not too far from us. I used to go over there to play golf until they cut it off because it got too dangerous. Golf balls would be hitting people, so they'd let us go on for so long and then they'd cut it off. We used to use it just like a golf course."

Tammy Harlock, a member of Oshawa's small Jewish community, well remembers the

Oshawa Golf Club too, although she most certainly was not a member:

Well, when we were going together, north Oshawa was called Pleasure Valley Ranch, Pleasure Valley? And there was a big sign up: Gentiles Only. And I have, I got this in my bonnet, and everybody knows it. If I won one of these twenty, thirty million dollar jackpot things, the first thing I would do was buy the Oshawa Golf Club, burn it to the ground, and make it into a parking lot for free for people for the hospital. You know why? There was the same thing. No Jews allowed.29

The McLaughlins were also heavily involved with the hospital, as were many of the city's industrial elite who made up the Board of Trustees. Upon moving to 52

Parkwood, they donated their former King St. residence to be used as a maternity home.

Adelaide is often credited with being the person responsible for the construction of the hospital. In 1906, at a meeting of about sixty ladies representing "all denominations,"

(according to the Protestant standard of the time) a vote on three potential projects was taken, a Business Girls' Club, a YWCA and a hospital. They were "to abide absolutely by, and to work for, whichever was the will of the majority." In January of 1907, a mass meeting was held, and the hospital was endorsed.

The Ladies' Auxiliary was formed at the same meeting, and included about 90 women.30 These ladies completed a house-to-house canvass, and raised funds from the community to build a hospital. Granted, some of the prominent industrialists chipped in a bit more given their greater means; however, everybody in the community gave what they could, and donations of all kinds were received and accepted. The name of the street on which the hospital was built was changed from Helena St. to Alma St., as the latter reflected the initials of the two women who were credited with having built the hospital.

In 1910, the first Board of Trustees was appointed in "the form of a committee of management and control, being made up of Mrs. R.S. McLaughlin, Mrs. Robert

Williams, ...Mrs. J.D. Storie, Mrs. J.O. Henry, Mrs. John Bailes; Messrs. J.D. Storie, J.P.

-J i

Owens, John Bailes, John Cowan and Robert McLaughlin." These were some of the leading industrialists of the city, a tradition that would continue throughout the 1940s.

Adelaide would take a particularly active role in the management of the hospital, and served as president of its ladies' auxiliary for much of her life. The auxiliary, however, was not open to everybody. Anne Black, whose skills were in high demand, 53

and who is fluent in more than one language, clearly remembers her experience with those ladies:

Now even the Oshawa Hospital, the Auxiliary there, the ladies, not everybody could join. I had a friend there, and they all liked the way I was knitting...and they said would you donate to the production? And I says, well...maybe I could join if you want, you know. Oh, well, you know, my husband, they're educated teachers and all that. Well, my husband was just a GM worker. This is true.... And we're just as good as they. And you know, when you learn anything, you learn from basic, from the beginning. Some educated university people aren't that smart anyway....32

The Board clung tightly to its power; the hospital was to be run as a profitable

business, and the excesses were invested in the market. In 1928, following rumours that

the city was going to take over the hospital, "a resolution opposing the taking over of the

hospital as a civic concern and expressing appreciation of the Board, Ladies' Auxiliary

and Staff was adopted unanimously."33

A Social Service Department of the hospital was established in 1925 which was

"undertaken by the Women's Auxiliary, to be operated solely by them." This was

followed by a mental clinic and an outdoor and travelling tubercular clinic.34 The social

welfare work "enables us to visit the patients in their homes...in order that we may record

their continued progress and home conditions, etc. These records are filed in the office at

the Hospital where they are readily accessible to the Medical Staff." And naturally those

who sat on the board would have access to all medical records; General Motors gave all

potential employees medical examinations. Surely this was a more efficient method of

screening potential hires, a joint 'community' venture. A relief committee investigated

the homes of patients who were financially distressed.35 In 1928, 42 home calls were 54 made; this reached 448, with 169 repeat calls by 1931, escalating to 676 annual calls by

1943.36

There was resistance to these home invasions, which typically resulted in middle class women teaching working class women how to be proper wives and mothers, imposing middle class standards of proper hygiene and home life. The entire health and social service establishment was one big happy family, as Dr. T.W.G. McKay, Oshawa

Medical Officer of Health noted in a Times-Gazette article. Home visits were carried out by the Board of Education and other "services with whose work we have become intimately connected" such as "the Public Welfare Board, the Ontario County Children's

Aid Society, the different service clubs, Rotary, Kinsmen and Kiwanis; the Women's

Auxiliary; the Oshawa General Hospital Ladies' Auxiliary; the Women's Welfare

League; the Home and School Clubs of the secondary schools, the public elementary, and the separate schools...." The purpose of the Oshawa Public Welfare Board was to

"investigate medical needs of persons acknowledged as city indigents, or financially unable to meet expense of medical care and treatment, and report to the Welfare office."37

At a time when many labourers had little to no health insurance, this encompassed much

of the city.

Physicians were apparently specialists in all fields, according to Dr. McKay,

Oshawa's leading doctor: "No one is better trained or situated to make the necessary

decision as to employability and type of employment to be undertaken, than an attending physician, and particularly so if he be one who has been associated with industrial

medical services in different classes of work or industry....and the work selected for that

person as closely as possible adapted and made suitable to the mental and physical 55 attitude of those persons."38 The Oshawa Board of Health offered such sound health advice in the local paper as: "Be well born." "Have Supervision of physical and mental development." "Be prepared by training for a useful life."

Efforts to sooth opposition against these invasive measures by the authoritative voice that professionalism sought to establish abound. Regarding the "still considerable confusion as to what constitutes a justifiable sphere of influence on the part of the official agency," the good of the community was to take precedence over the individual. Perhaps

"this type of so-called encroachment on the rights of the individual to raise his family as he felt best was resented by some people, but its value has been demonstrated over and over again."40 Mothers apparently were no longer adequately equipped to care for their children, and particularly a certain kind, given the prevailing class and ethnic discriminations of the day, but rather were to trust in 'professional' knowledge as the best way for these things to be done.41 The thin line between 'professional knowledge' and middle class morality was often blurred, so that a middle class version of 'proper domesticity' was the often accepted solution to the "plagues infecting urban social space." Class position was often seen as a moral position.42 Character flaws of the poor were to be replaced with virtuous middle class values such as industry and thrift - in other words, the system itself was not the problem, but the people living in what the system defined as the 'lower' scales. Karen Tice notes a special preoccupation with women's sexual morality among social workers at the time, and attempts to tame such misbehaviour, or 'cure' the character flaws were made. Social work often became a form of social discipline, and with the law on side, social workers and other home visitors had a great deal of power - there was no escape from the gaze - a gaze which was directed to 56 a disproportionate degree on the working classes. Mental testing also became an increasingly valued tool, although the 'science' of the day that was used to institutionalize people or label them as 'feeble-minded' has since been disproved. Given the close and often supervisory relationship between the hospital board, ladies' auxiliary and these social institutions, the industrial elite of the city maintained firm control over their perceived social inferiors.

Nursing was a favoured charity of the McLaughlins, and Adelaide in particular took an interest in the hospital's nurses. In 1915, a nurses' residence was built by the hospital under the vice-chairmanship of Adelaide McLaughlin; in 1947 a new nurses' residence was constructed thanks to the benevolence of the McLauglins; it was named

McLaughlin Hall. The residence was established for student nurses attending the hospital's nursing school. Such schools have since been criticized as sources of free labour, as the nurses' 'education' often involved completing domestic chores around the hospital. Not only was the labour free, nursing students paid for the privilege of working for free. Nurses occupied a complex position within the social order. On the one hand, nursing was considered to be a respectable female occupation, making it suitable for recruits to be drawn from the middle and upper tiers of society.43 Alternately, nurses were often an exploited source of cheap labour. Within hospital nursing schools, women were taught to be good domestic workers, and provided with medically sanctioned mothering skills so that they could in turn teach other women these skills according to professional standards; however, once they became mothers themselves, they were disqualified from this ambit of professional knowledge as married women were not 57

permitted to work. There was a brief exception to this rule during the war as married

women returned to nursing temporarily due to a labour shortage.

Colonel Frank Chappell, General Motors executive, city engineer, head of the

Oshawa Boy Scouts, and regular contributor to the local newspaper, lauded the hospital

as "A People's Organization," a "great humanitarian organization that has been nurtured through the years with consistent care by unselfish citizens, devoted to a great ideal."

And yet "so skillfully are affairs handled by those who serve on the Board, the

Auxiliary...the hospital has never faced the burden of debt.... It continues as it has been, a people's organization, a community enterprise.... And of course, such improved

efficiency means more work. ...subscribed for by the community and therefore owned by the community and to so great an extent voluntarily administered in trust for the community....

Indeed, 1949 marked a new era for the hospital, as it began for the first time publishing an annual 'Report to the People'. What the article does not mention was that the provincial government had recently enacted a law requiring that ownership should be in the name of an organization called 'The Hospital', and provided that membership in the organization could be secured by a donation to the hospital or auxiliary, the objective of which was to secure representation from the entire community. The 'Report to the

People', however, issued an often-voiced theme of the middle class discourse in Oshawa:

"Certainly the responsibility for the indigent patient does not rest with the hospital.

...there is still considerable loss on these indigent patients. ...paying patients...should not be asked to shoulder the additional burden of the loss incurred in providing 58 hospitalization for the municipal indigent group."45 In this sense, the sacred ideology of the individual was to take precedence.

The Women's Welfare League was another organization which was headed by some of the city's 'leading' wives, and one that caused a significant amount of contention from its beginning. Established in 1929 to provided clothing, boots and shoes for the needy, it also operated a hostel for single, unemployed men. Working closely with the welfare committee that was created and initially headed by George McLaughlin, the city's elite felt compelled to assist in staving off the impact of the Depression on the less fortunate. When children in Oshawa were discovered searching for food at the city dump, the mayor at the time, Thomas Hawkes, responded to the crisis by suggesting:

"We shall have to put up a fence, or something, make some effort to keep these people off."46 Sam McLaughlin spent more on his racehorses than relief when the Depression hit, and would continue to pour money into his horses and other leisure pursuits throughout the decade.47

The welfare programme established by the city raised quite a bit of resistance, and attempts to include representatives of the unemployed were ignored, as only property owners were considered capable of such a position. And with the poor, it was a case of being guilty until proven innocent. The Women's Welfare League, in taking on their task of distributing clothes to the needy, found that such a task "entailed a great deal of investigation into the genuineness of their needs by the social worker brought here by the

Associated Welfare Societies, assisted by the public health nurses and other visiting workers. These investigations showed the need for social work with many of the families involved." Mrs. Charles Robson, whose husband owned Robson Leather Co., headed 59

the visiting committee. On 28 January 1941, the minutes of the league reveal that there

were "so few families on relief and they receive only the bare necessities. The

investigation is able to do everything."49 Family welfare work continued throughout the

1940s, and the settlement house that was established in 1931 was maintained. These

welfare agencies eventually united under the umbrella of the Public Welfare Board; the

settlement house was a forum for social work, and held classes teaching women how to

be good domestic workers, organized visiting groups for 'the aged shut-ins,' and arranged

big sisters for 'delinquent' girls.50 An unstated but undoubtedly added benefit was

ensuring a well-trained labour supply of domestic help for the city's women of leisure.

Many residents of Oshawa well remember the activities of the city's welfare

agencies. Stewart Clapp characterized it as being "a little bit of salt, and a little bit of

pepper. If you wanted fuel to heat your house...they'd come down to look around, see

how much you had left, and if we wanted clothes in the Depression, we used to have to

go up, rummage through the old piano works...if you wanted a pair of shoes, they'd look

it up and see if you needed a pair." His wife Ruth also remembers the time well: "Oh

God, yes, many times I went to school with holes in my shoes. I used to cut cardboard

and double it over a couple of times and put it in your shoe - too bad if it rained."51

Jeannette Nugent also recalls the Depression years:

And in the summertime, we would all go barefoot to save your shoes for school, so, but everybody was barefoot, you know.... I do remember, like we were living on Olive Ave. there in the Depression. I remember my mother saying, I don't know where the next meal's coming from. I was supposed to be in bed, and Mom and Dad would talk...but at that time we were on welfare, and sometimes they didn't have a lot of food to give people. ...we lived right near the railway tracks, right in behind the CPR, and at that time the cattle were put in cars and they were shipped to Toronto to 60

be processed, you know. And sometimes they'd put the cattle cars on the side so the main train could whiz right through. And my mother would hear the cattle crying on those cattle cars, you know, like maybe they were in pain, maybe they were thirsty or hungry, but we didn't eat much meat. We had maybe chicken...maybe a roast now and again. That cruelty was, it was hard.

But in a time of shared need, many among the working classes banded together.

George Nugent recollects that the poverty of the times was not noticeable "that much

because in the Depression...not many people had anything anyway, except the

professional people, and people that had jobs, good companies." Jeanette makes a similar point:

But in the 30s everybody was the same. Everybody was poor. A lot of people were on welfare. We were at one time. Nobody locked their doors. Everybody shared. And we always had a garden; the idea was to raise enough potatoes and carrots so that you could eat on them over the winter. And I think that's what most people did. But when you had lots of produce from your garden you shared it with your neighbours. So everybody got along, everybody helped each other.52

Betty Rutherford illustrates that for some, however, dependency on institutional systems was necessary, and they were subject to obey the rules as they were set out by the town's self-proclaimed better classes:

That was welfare. They used to go in and even open up the people's drawers to see what they had. And I know, I know of, well...I went to school with her, and her husband had tuberculosis, and she had three children, and he was in the sanatorium for quite awhile, and she had to go on welfare. And when my mom and dad moved, like GM bought my mom and dad's farm, which they never knew GM was buying it because it was the first farm that they picked up in this whole concession....and one of my brothers, I had four brothers, and one of my brothers boarded with them, like with Mary and her hubby, and if 61

there was a car, when he got home, went home from work, if there was a car in the driveway, he wouldn't go in, because if they'd have known that she had a boarder, they'd have cut her off welfare.... You weren't allowed to 53

do nothing, no.

Betty Love also remembers the many restrictions placed on welfare recipients.

"If you had a home, if your home was you own, you still didn't get welfare."54 Indeed, welfare recipients were not permitted to own anything at all. 5 And no assistance could

be had until those operating the system determined it was necessary, thus controlling nearly every aspect of people's lives. Myron Mech, who was born in Canada and yet would have been labelled a 'foreigner' due to his Ukrainian heritage, also clearly remembers the degradation and discrimination of the times: In those days...there was no such thing as welfare. They used that building, where automotive museum is now, and they used to have a long counter...and the wall was shelved with all kinds of groceries. So what people, well, work in General Motors, if you put in six months out of the year you were doing pretty good...if you were liked by your supervisor or foreman, they called you back in November. And if they didn't like you...it's terrible.... we had to pay a poll tax because we were using public sidewalks and so forth. The girls didn't, but the boys did! Well, where are you going to get ten dollars in those days? When you were working, the most you could make, if you made a dollar and a half, two dollars a day, so you refused to pay it. So then the city says, well, you got to come and work for the city for a couple of weeks to pay off your poll tax.... Single boys had to have paid poll tax. That's discrimination again. Girls didn't, but the boys did, as long as you were single.

This was particularly unjust for those who lived in the south end of the city, as Myron illustrates: "And all along Bloor St. - now you had, from the CPR tracks where the

Cadillac Hotel is, north was all paved, South and Bloor St. going east and west was nothing but dirt roads. And in the springtime, March, you couldn't walk because you'd 62 be in mud up to your ankles...." Myron ended up being sent to one of R.B. Bennett's work camps during his summers off from school, and also worked at the city's relief store, where welfare recipients had no other choice but to shop:

I was sixteen. My father couldn't, he had to go therc.and they used to give you a slip of all the groceries and used to tell you, well, you can buy.... You go down there with a pillowcase or a flour sack, and you start at one end, and they just throw it in there and you could carry it on your back like this. I've seen, I had to work there, behind there, and I've seen men pass out from hunger. When I was, before I got in there to serve, my father couldn't get no allowance for me, though I was going to school, because I was sixteen. ... Then, the following summer, I was second year in high school. You know where they put me? Trenton airport. We worked building Trenton airport, boys like myself, twenty cents a day. And they had a commissary in there...one penny for cigarettes, or buy a chocolate bar for five cents, and this, that. You bought a pair of shoes for probably about a dollar and a half, or so. Before the summer was over, ready to go back to school, you owed them money. We had to go. We had no choice.56

Although swelling resistance and protest forced the store to close, attempts to exert control and construct dutiful citizens by no means subsided.

Adelaide began her involvement with the Home and School Association in 1920; throughout the 1930s she was national president of the Canadian Federation of Home and

School Associations. Through her efforts, music, medical examinations, and religious education became more deeply embedded within school programmes.57 In his study of

Home and School Associations in Philadelphia, William Cutler examines the power relations of school boards and the Home and School Association, which tended to be dominated by middle- and upper-class men and women.58 Such an arrangement ensured that business interests would be well reflected within the school curriculum, schools in 63

the north end of the city would remain better funded than those in the south, and

programmes for the provision of free milk and dental care would remain non-issues for

the ruling elite. After all, their children were well cared for. Betty Valentine explains

how some in Oshawa took care of their own dental needs as the conventional form was

outside their financial reach: "Believe it or not, we used to chew tar from between the

cement blocks on the street. It was considered to be good for your teeth."59 Furthermore,

middle class virtues of obedience, efficiency, thrift, sobriety and efficiency were well-

ingrained within the curriculum,60 a curriculum which focused on developing "the proper

attitude" in the child, the training of which "belongs to the teacher," and included such

"habits as cleanliness, posture, nutrition, exercise, rest and temperance."61

Empire was a popular theme among some circles in Oshawa, as well as within the

school system. The Board of Education sent scripts to the local school to celebrate

Empire Day at intervals in the 1940s; it required children to chant such poetic propaganda

as: "And over all these children, in all the far-flung lands of the British Empire, the Union

Jack will be unfurled in the breeze. The sun never sets upon our flag. It flies on every continent, in every ocean - a symbol of freedom, justice, fair-play, and honest dealing for every man who dwells beneath its folds." Children were further instructed to intone:

"We speak for Canada. The Union Jack of freedom will forever fly beneath Canadian skies." Apparently, the 'freedom' did not extend to presenting plays of their own choice, or speaking in their own words. Classics such as 'Rule Britannia' were required singing material, and the children recited that they were "all united in allegiance to the King; but the King stands for the people." And the celebrations were to be topped off with a resounding "GOD SAVE THE KING."62 Sam McLaughlin was one of Oshawa's staunch devotees of the British Empire. Beyond the pride he took in his British workforce, many of his charitable acts meshed well with the theme of Empire.

Colonel Sam was a long-time benefactor to military organizations, appreciating military discipline as he did - in others. He donated to the Legion and was a patron of the Ontario Regiment.63 In the "rank and file of a great industrial army" that was the

"General Motors Family," unquestioning obedience to the orders of the 'Colonel' is understandably a cause Colonel Sam might feel inclined to support.64 As the war drew to a close, Sam's generous spirit flourished. Incidentally this occurred in tandem with the escalating struggle between the union and the company while gains were being made throughout the decade for organized labour. In addition, a trained civilian army was about to return to the work place, comprised of veterans who were showing themselves to be quite supportive of the labour cause. In 1941, in a spirit similar to many industrial donors, Sam funded the construction of a bandshell. Despite the fact that this was a rip- off from at least one infamous U.S. automobile magnate, the local paper featured a story of a young boy visiting from Detroit who apparently found "that there is nothing in

Detroit to equal the band shall [sic] here." Events staged at the bandshell included marches, waltzes, and "will conclude, as usual, with a hymn tune and the Regimental

March."65 He also furnished instruments and uniforms for the Regimental Band, and donated tombstones for fallen soldiers.

Boys' work had been in effect in Oshawa for quite some time, undertaken by

'service' clubs comprised of local businessmen, such as the Rotary Club, the Kinsmen, and the Kiwanis. The Rotary Club, the most prestigious of the group, organized annual fairs where community donations were collected; they then controlled where those funds 65

would be directed, and put their name on the final result - Rotary Park, Rotary Hall,

Rotary swimming pool, aid to China, aid to Greece, etc. They also focused for quite

some time on work for crippled and disabled children, until available funds diminished in

the early 1940s. Money raised at the annual fair began to slide in the mid-1940s,

however, and the event was ultimately discontinued. The clubs all thoroughly

investigated each individual case in regard to disadvantaged children, because apparently

even children may have been unworthy frauds in disguise. The club's main activity

involved weekly luncheons to discuss matters pertaining to business efficiency and co­

operation. While one of the objects of the Rotary Club was "to encourage and foster" the

"recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations," membership was limited to

"male persons of good character and good business reputation."66 The Rotary Club also

sponsored sports organizations for young boys and Boys' Clubs, reflecting broader

societal fears of urban working class youths roaming the streets unsupervised which were prevalent at the time. The often expressed hope among middle class reformers at the time was to get such boys under supervised and 'good' influence, which it was assumed could not to be found in the working-class home, thus ensuring they had the proper training to become good citizens.

One of the favoured groups of the Rotary was the Boy Scouts, and in 1947 Sam caught the national eye when he donated a 165-acre site to the Scouts. Although it did not make the headlines, Sam once again purchased a public park in Oshawa, this time to become the property of the Boy Scouts.67 Michael Rosenthal explores the roots of the

Boy Scout movement in his analysis of the handbook, Scouting for Boys. While he does not explore the movement as it worked in practise, its theoretical foundations are no less important. Begun by the infamous Sir Robert-Baden Powell, who rose to international fame in the battle of Mafeking - earning his success by nearly starving the black troops who were serving the Empire, all the while keeping the whites well-fed - the Scouting movement was a reflection of the conservative militarist tradition which sought to inoculate young boys with 'proper' values. Although the movement never enjoyed much success among working-class youths - fees prevented many from joining - it was designed with working-class youths in mind.

As Rosenthal illustrates, Scouting was an ideology with firm roots in the interests of the upper class. It encouraged above all obedience to and acceptance of the social order, stressing the need to follow orders regardless of what those orders might be, and cheerfully! Boys learned about great deeds of how the empire was won, and the importance of obedience to king, employers, and officers. Each boy was to BE A

BRICK, and accept, unquestioningly, his proper place in 'the wall'. In the 'character factory' that Baden-Powell envisioned, these values would be internalized, and so become natural characteristics and behaviours. Scout Law maintained that "A SCOUT

IS LOYAL to the King, and to his officers, and to his country, and to his employers. He must stick to them through thick and thin against anyone who is their enemy, or who even talks badly about them."6 Baden-Powell saw no reason to include trade unions in the oath as boys did not belong to trade unions. Scouting for Boys positioned bees as all a society should aspire to: "They are quite a model community, for they respect their queen and kill their unemployed."70 Rosenthal points to Baden-Powell's two broad goals in the

Scouting movement: combating the enemy from without and within. The movement would combat degeneracy, thus creating a nation of strong, fit soldiers for the empire, and work against the inner threat to national efficiency, socialism and the labour movement.

David Macleod addresses a broader spectrum of boys' programmes in greater depth, including the Boy Scout movement, and the British Protestant middle class anxieties over the rising generation which determined much of the science guiding reformers at the time. By focusing on the practice as opposed to the theory of the movement, he reveals the social prejudices which led many organizing the movement to separate classes and ethnicities so that middle class white boys would not be unduly influenced by the others. He also points more fully to the difficulties character builders generally faced in infiltrating working class communities, as Boy Scouting was more likely to be viewed as 'sissy' in a cultural tradition that tended to value "physical prowess, spontaneity, and defiance of authority rather than self-restraint and an orientation toward abstract goals."

Although the Boy Scout movement was highly localized, following the Russian

Revolution, Baden-Powell moved towards greater centralization over fears of Bolshevik infiltration. The Canadian movement maintained closer ties to its British counterpart, and this trend towards centralization also materialized. Training camps for leaders were established, regular rulebooks issued, and the movements were also centralized locally, ensuring that the business elite maintained firm control over the appointments and activities of patrol leaders.72

Special employment bureaus were established for Boy Scouts in Canada, and they were often given preference in hiring. Boy Scouts were also to devote themselves freely to service. Scouts in Oshawa were put to service by engaging in such tasks as 68 cleaning and maintaining Rotary Park, planting trees, and gardening for the city's relief bureau. The ultimate goal of such activities was to foster "efficient manhood and citizenship."74 Scouting camps also tended to be reforestation projects; by the sixth annual Scout reforestation camp, 400,000 trees had been planted - the privilege for which they paid for in camp fees.75 According to a General Motors of Canada advertising booklet, among the many reasons Canadians owed a debt of gratitude to GM was that

"literally forests of pulpwood have been required to carry the imprints of these commercial announcements."76 Scouting was a fit way of giving even more to the community.

Scouting officials always protested that Scouting was not militaristic in nature, despite the many military officials who assumed leading roles in the movement. After

Oshawa Scouts received their new property, Camp Samac (Sam-Mac), which included an

Olympic swimming pool, log cabins, and council hall, they enjoyed "camporee outings," the first of which featured "a Commando Run over a course about a mile long. The course is complete with water hazards and is patterned after the training made famous by the soldiers in the present war."77 The camp also boasted a 16-foot pole dedicated to the

Cubs, a 26-foot pole dedicated to the Scouts, "while a 40-foot totem pole is known as the

'Big Chief. The carvings on the totem pole of the Big Chief depict the varied interests of Col. McLaughlin and stages in his life, from the building of motor cars to the winning of the King's Plate."78

Unlike Scouting, the Girl Guide movement sprang up of its own volition as girls took to Scouting for Boys, and set off to enjoy its adventures too. This originally posed a problem for Baden-Powell as the purpose of Boy Scouting was to make men, and girls dampened the image. The issue was soon solved, however, when officials created the

Girl Guides. As one early Guide remembers, many "reluctantly agreed to transfer their allegiance from their self-given name of Girl Scouts, becoming instead Girl Guides."79

The purpose behind the movement was the same, formation of character, but the female character was to receive very different training. "It is purely a womanly scheme and the aim of the pursuits engaged in is to make girls better housekeepers, more capable in womanly arts, from cooking to washing and sick-nursing to the training and management of children." The movement would make them "better mothers and guides to the next generation." While maintaining the emphasis on obedience, Guide Law also required that the girl be "pure in thought, word and deed." Second-class Guides had to master such techniques as cutting and sewing a Union Jack, lighting a fire, making beds and tying knots. Written in 1984, the official Girl Guide history protests that Sir Robert did not intend for Guiding to be a middle class movement; citing Sir Robert in 1914, it notes that he believed "much of the present human wastage will be turned into valuable citizenhood." Girl Guides "learn to care for those less fortunate...." Adelaide and her daughters donated much of their time and effort to Oshawa's Girl Guides. Under pressure from Adelaide, Sam donated a house to the Girl Guides in 1948.

In 1945, Adelaide realized her dream of establishing a YWCA in Oshawa.

Having received her teacher training from the Normal School, she undoubtedly felt close ties to the organization. Her conservative Christianity was often reflected in her projects, and the YWCA meshed well with her ideological leanings. Adelaide considered herself to be a strong advocate of women's interests. The only problem, in her mind, was the women themselves: 70

"It's a man's world at the moment because men spend their day reading, talking, working out some of the problems in connection with economics, business and politics. Most women never consider them at all - or at the most, it's an occasional hour or so at their women's club," the speaker scolded. "Reforms are often suggested by women with no knowledge of the drawbacks they will involve."83

The YWCA was another character building agency, one that sought to foster Christian beliefs, Christian citizenship, and Christian attitudes to industry, family life and public morals.84 Along with many other middle class character building organizations at the time, an emphasis was placed on training citizens according to their conception of democracy. In the 1940s, there were protestations from below, as females sought greater representation, but in many locales, the Board had no member representatives; also, in this period, the females it welcomed were those regarded as 'normal'. The 'problem girl' was to be left to other agencies.85 The organization lobbied the Ontario government to institute pre-marriage medical examinations for women, and "careful medical examinations" were emphasized in the residences; with young women in particular, this often meant undue concentration on ruptured hymens or signs of 'self-abuse'.

Colonel Sam and Adelaide built many beautiful houses throughout Oshawa for their daughters, but all ended up leaving the city to live elsewhere. In 1945, they donated the vacant house they had built for their daughter Eileen and her husband, W.E. Philips, who had since divorced. The residence was available to "business girls," originally under the age of 35, but the age was later reduced as "the older ones are better able to manage on their own." It also served as a welcoming centre for displaced persons, encouraged the reading of 'good books', to be chosen by the Board, held Stay at Home camps, and overall fostered the "growing up in mind, spirit and body in the Christian way 71 of living."88 In the postwar period, Adelaide House, as it was so named, also organized meetings for war brides to help them adjust to their new surroundings and teach them

'Canadian ways'.

Adelaide and Sam were not fortunate enough to complete any formal university training, but luckily for them Queen's University was selling degrees to those who could not earn them. Queen's has been one of the largest beneficiaries of the McLaughlins.

Throughout the 1940s, Sam contributed to the construction of Wallace Hall, McLaughlin

Hall, and a women's residence, Adelaide Hall. Adelaide received an Honorary Doctorate from Mount Allison University in 1947 and from Queen's in 1951. Sam received his first

Honorary Doctorate of Laws in 1946.

Upon celebrating Oshawa's Silver Jubilee in 1949, the Daily Times-Gazette proclaimed: "The city of today is a tribute to the hardy pioneers, the men of vision and business ability who built the foundations for the success and prosperity of the community, the men to whom the generation of today owes a debt of gratitude for having built so well."89 Sam McLaughlin always avoided being associated with labour disputes.

In 1945, he retired as president of General Motors, but remained on as chairman, and continued to sit on many other boards. By maintaining a pristine public image and spreading his benevolence loudly and often, he secured much loyalty and gratitude for those he 'served'. And in the 'democratic' system of industrial capitalism, where national resources were not distributed equally among all, he had the full authority and power to decide exactly how those resources would be distributed. Amidst plenty is often poverty, and this was certainly true in Oshawa. For those without the financial means to settle the debt they owed to their founding fathers, they could only repay that 72

generosity, public-spiritedness, and service which these great men gave so freely with

their undying gratitude, unquestioning obedience, blind loyalty and efficient industrial

service. For those ingrates who questioned their duty to the nation, an entire state

structure existed to teach the proper virtues and habits of citizenship befitting a good

industrial citizen - as it was so defined by the prevailing elite. The discipline of the law

and the paycheque served as an added incentive to conformity.

However, the city which these men had built so well was a very different city for

the majority who lived under its systemic power and control. It privileged the few while

the many were subject to the invasive arm of the corporation and state, the boundaries

between which were often blurred. The concentration of knowledge, resources and

power which was a feature of industrial capitalism left many dependent on the whims and

fancies of the industrial elite. The 'freedom' and 'democracy' for which so many

sacrificed themselves during the war years was in no way enjoyed equally by all; indeed,

the popular discourse of liberal democracy alleged that in order to ensure the 'national'

benefit of all, it was the duty of the many to bow in a state of perpetual dependency and

service to the better wisdom of the few. Meanwhile, the resources of that nation were

very unevenly distributed, and the 'service' doled out by the few promoted the interests of that few while leaving most subject to a system which left them as little more than pawns in the game of capitalist accumulation. The tale of Oshawa, however, is a tale of at least two cities, and its residents were not meekly accepting the injustice of the status quo; this is not a story of subjection. Working within the state, but in opposition to the injustices of that state as it affected the lives of the town's working class population, many of the working people of Oshawa were discovering that by banding together they 73 could provide for themselves the basic social justice that the prevailing inequalities of the economic and political status quo denied them. And they were becoming a force to be reckoned with. What the larger corporate state in which they lived and worked was not willing to give them freely - namely basic human respect, dignity, and the right to live their lives as they so chose, they were ready to fight for. And, as it turned out, if the state would not provide for their needs, together they held the power to build alternate structures for themselves. Notes:

1 R.S. McLaughlin as told to Eric Hutton, "My Eighty Years on Wheels," Maclean's (15 October 1954). 2 McLaughlin "expressed pleasure" over the actions of Premier Mitchell F. Hepburn during the strike. "President Glad Strike is Over," Oshawa Daily Times (23 April 1937), 12. 3 Cited in Robert E. Milks, 75 Years of Scouting in Canada (Toronto: Scouts Canada, 1982), iii. 4 "Celebrate Oshawa's 75th Anniversary," Oshawa This Week - Special Edition (8 March 1999), 41-42. 5 Roy Fleming, Personal Interview (20 April 2007). 6 Myron Mech, Personal Interview (23 April 2007). 7 Jeannette Nugent, Personal Interview (17 April 2007). 8 Bryan D. Palmer, Capitalism Comes to the Backcountry: The Goodyear Invasion ofNapanee (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1994), 17. See also Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002). 9 Canada as a Builder of Motor Cars (General Motors of Canada, 1932). Fisher was a subsidiary of the General Motors complex in Oshawa. 10 The Oshawa Kid, The National Film Board of Canada (1969). 1' Cited in Robertson, Driving Force, 26. 12 George W. Garner, Secretary-Manager, Oshawa Chamber of Commerce, "Oshawa Has Grown Industrially Since 1924," Daily-Times Gazette (8 March 1949), 14. 13 Eighth Census of Canada, 1941, Volume II, 514; "Oshawa's Population Since 1874," Daily- Times Gazette (8 March 1949), 24. 14 David Macleod probes this briefly in Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920 (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 224. 15 Meyer, The Five-Dollar Day, 7. 16 Pendergest, "Labour and Politics in Oshawa," 307. 17 Stephanie Beatty and Susan Gale Hall, Parkwood (Erin, Ontario: Boston Mills Press, 1999). 18 Now a national historic site (the house was originally donated to the hospital, but its upkeep was too great a drain), the public is free to tour the house, for a fee, and view the house and grounds. The servants quarters are not open to the public. "The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada Commemorates Robert Samuel McLaughlin," Parkwood National Historic Site of Canada, The R.S. McLaughlin Estate (Oshawa: Parks Canada, 4 August 2003). 19 Beatty and Hall, Parkwood, 10, 15. 20 Robertson, Driving Force, 308. 21 General Motors, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 003, 0018, 003. 22 Colonel R.S. McLaughlin (no publisher, 1980). 23 Colonel R.S. McLaughlin, 47-48; Petrie, The Canadians, 51; The Long Point Company, a private publication, is available at Parkwood Estate, Oshawa. 24 "R.S. McLaughlin Hon. Chairman With Aid. H. Macdonald as General Chairman," Oshawa Free Press (31 January 1941), 2. 25 Robertson, Driving Force, 303. 26 Jacques R. Pauwels, "Profits iiber Alles! American Corporations and Hitler," Labour/Le Travail 51 (Spring 2003), 223-49. 27 T.R. Elliot, Parkwood Hunters on Tanbark and Turf (J or onto: G.A. Davis Printing, 1934); Jim Coleman, "Squire of Parkwood," Mayfair (April 1944), 22; Jim Coleman, "Col. Sam is Bid Adieu," Canadian Horse (October 1954), 7. 28 George Nugent, Personal Interview (17 April 2007). 29 Tammy Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). ^° Marie Heffernan under the direction of Mrs. R.S. McLaughlin, A Short History of the Oshawa General Hospital (Oshawa: Mundy-Goodfellow Printing, 1935), 15. "' Heffernan under the direction of McLaughlin, A Short History, 18-19. 32 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). " Heffernan under the direction of McLaughlin, A Short History, 30. Heffernan under the direction of McLaughlin, A Short History, 38,46, 57. 35 Heffernan under the direction of McLaughlin, A Short History, 57. 36 Heffernan under the direction of McLaughlin, A Short History, 58; Published Facts and Historical Events of the Auxiliary Oshawa General Hospital: Book One, 1910-1957, Collected, Arranged and Presented by Mrs. Gordon Conant (December 1967), available at Guy House, Oshawa Archives. 37 "Dr. T.W.G. McKay, Oshawa, M.O.H. Offers Comprehensive Picture," Times-Gazette (29 January 1944), 3. 38 "Dr. T.W.G. McKay, Oshawa, M.O.H.," 3. 39 "Let's Keep Well. How Do We Do It?" Times-Gazette (29 January 1944), 4. 40 J.T. Phair, "Provincial M.O.H. Outlines Basic Requirements of a Community Health Program," Times-Gazette (29 January 1944), 2. 41 'Authoritative' publications were also being distributed on proper child-rearing methods; the federal government began producing The Canadian Mother and Child in 1940, replacing another publication that had been issued from 1921. As late as 1967, it warned women against long, tiring car trips as a woman never knew if she were prone to miscarry; it assured that if a woman was used to drink, a limited amount would not hurt and guided women on where the baby should sleep (a room by itself), and, of course, suggested that the husband may want to share the housework and care of the baby. The Canadian Mother and Child, 3rd edition, Child and Maternal Health Division Department of National Health and Welfare Canada. (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1967). 42 Karen W. Tice, Tales of Wayward Girls and Immoral Women: Case Records and the Professionalization of Social Work (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 18-19. 43 Thetis M. Group and Joan I. Roberts, Nursing, Physician Control, and the Medical Monopoly: Historical Perspectives on Gendered Inequality in Roles, Rights, and Range of Practice (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 70; Kathryn M. McPherson, Bedside Matters: The Transformation of Canadian Nursing, 1900-1990 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996). On the barriers against the establishment of nursing as a profession, see Lorraine Olszewski, "Nursing As A Discipline," Ed.D thesis (Indiana: Indiana University, 1971). 44 Col. Frank Chappell, "Oshawa...and its General Hospital," Daily Times-Gazette (16 April 1949), 13. 45 Mrs. Gordon D. Conant, Published Facts and Historical Events of the Auxiliary. The Canadian Medical Association abandoned its 1943 policy of support for a national health care policy. Janice E. Nicholson, "Representative Government and the Provision of Public Goods," Business and Government: Canadian Materials, Diane Jurkowski, Victor MacKinnon and Janice Nicholson, eds. (North York: Captus Press, 2000), 201. 46 "Children Seeking Food in Refuse at City Dump," Oshawa Daily-Times (2 September 1932), 1. 47 Sam's personal finance records are available at Parkwood Estate. 48 "Women's Interests Have Advanced Since 1924," Daily Times-Gazette (8 March 1949), 21. 49 "Women's Welfare League," The War Years in the Oshawa Region: A Collection of Interviews, Newspaper Clippings, and Other Related Material, compiled by Leslie Wright (Oshawa: .Oshawa Public Library Board, 1975), 248. 50 "Women's Interests Have Advanced Since 1924," Daily Times-Gazette (8 March 1949), 21. 51 Stewart and Ruth Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 52 George and Jeanette Nugent, Personal Interview (17 April 2007). 53 Betty Rutherford, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 54 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007) 55 For a fuller discussion of this as it pertained to sole-support mothers, see Margaret Jane Hillyard Little, No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit: The Moral Regulation of Single Mothers in Ontario, 1920- 1997 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998). 56 Myron Mech, Personal Interview (23 April 2007). 57 "Women Fear Too Much, Oshawa Gathering Told," Globe and Mail (IS October 1947), 12. 58 William W. Cutler, III, "In Search of Influence and Authority: Parents and the Politics of the Home-School Relationship in Philadelphia and Two of its Suburbs, 1905-1935," Pennsylvania History 63:3 (1996), 355-87. 59 "Celebrate Oshawa's 75th Anniversary," Oshawa This Week - Special Edition (8 March 1999), 38. On the middle-class biases and working-class disadvantages within the school system, see Maurice Craft, ed. Family, Class and Education: A Reader (London: Longman, 1970); Annette Lareau, Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education (London: Falmer Press, 1989); Miriam E. David, The State, the Family and Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). On 'no free milk,' see "Say Incandescent Lights Best For Schoolroom Use," Daily Times-Gazette (17 March 1949), 4. 61 T.R. McEwen, "Health Programme In the Elementary Schools," Times-Gazette (29 January 1944), 10. 62 "A Programme For Empire Day in the Schools of Ontario, May 23rd, 1945," The War Years in the Oshawa Region, 307-317. 63 Lex Schragg, History of the Ontario Regiment, 1866-1951 (Oshawa: Ontario Regimental Association, 1951). See also Mike O'Brien, "Manhood and Militia Myth: Masculinity, Class and Militarism in Ontario, 1902-1914" Labour/Le Travail 42 (Fall 1998), 115-41. 64 General Motors press release, 1927, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0003,0011, 0001 65 "Guest Artists To Feature Concert Thursday Evening," Times-Gazette (17 August 1944), 2. 66 Rotary and Kinsmen Clubs, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007, 0003,0010. 67 Progress Special Edition (17 September 1983), Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 003,0011,0001. 68 Michael Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 43. 69 Rosenthal, The Character Factory, 111. 70 Cited in Rosenthal, The Character Factory, 101 71 David I. Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy, 27. 72 Officials were apologetic over extending their authority, but the trend continued nonetheless. Milks, 75 Years of Scouting, 49. 73 Milks, 75 Years of Scouting, 47. 74 Milks, 75 Years of Scouting, 92, 112, 116, 179. 75 Milks, 75 Years of Scouting, 120. 76 Canada as a Builder of Motor Cars (General Motors, 1932). 77 "Boy Scouts Plan First Annual Camporee Outing," Times-Gazette (31 August 1943), 3. Colonel Sam bought the first seven acres in 1942; the entire camp was not officially opened until 1947. 78 "Boys' Dream of a Camp Donated to Scouts at Oshawa With Bonfire Ceremony," Globe and Mail (15 September 1947), 15. 79 Marita Robinson, Celebration: 75 Years of Challenge and Change (Toronto: Grosvenor House Press, 1984), 2. 80 Handbook for Girl Guides, cited in Robinson, Celebration, 5. 81 Robinson, Celebration, 13. 82 Robinson, Celebration, 32. 83 "Women Fear Too Much, Oshawa Gathering Told," Globe and Mail (18 October 1947), 12. 84 Mary Quayle Innis, Unfold the Years: A History of the Young Women's Christian Association in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1949), 193. 85 Josephine Perfect Harshaw, When Women Work Together: A History of the Young Women's Christian Association in Canada (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1966), 43, 115. 86 Harshaw, When Women Work Together, 133; Innis, Unfold the Years, 226. 87 YWCA, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007,0004, 0012. 88 "The Young Women's Christian Association," Daily Times-Gazette (8 March 1949), 23. 89 "Looking Into the Past" Daily Times-Gazette (24 June 1949), 22. Chapter III

Together We Stand Corrected: It's a Working Class Town

When this great strike is surely won, We will have less hours and lots more fun, The G.M.C. will come to time, When Thompson says sign on the dotted line. Hurrah, Hurrah!

Didn 't need no welfare state, Everybody pulled his weight, Gee our oldLaSalle ran great...2

Oshawa has always had a large working class community. While previously

informal bonds and networks fostered through common need and shared experience had

served as critical means of support in times of strife and turmoil, the strikes of 1937 would spark a significant change in community life. Individually, Oshawa's working class communities were vulnerable to the concentrated power of the capitalist classes within the city. After 1937 and throughout the next decade, the city's major plants would organize and present a unified and politically mobilized challenge to the status quo.

While the gains made throughout the 1940s were slight in terms of wage increases, a more autonomous working class culture flourished, and along with it, added opportunities to shape and determine lived existence. In presenting a united and organized front against the exploitations of the capitalist system, Oshawa's unionized working class population of the 1940s earned for itself the sort of benefits upon which no monetary value can be placed - dignity, respect, greater control over their daily lives within the plant and, to a fuller extent, in the larger community. What government and business were unwilling to cede in terms of a social safety net and citizenship rights, organized labour was in some ways able to provide for itself independently of the state, thus dramatically improving the individual lives of many among the city's working people

through cooperative effort.

Local 222 was not the only union in Oshawa throughout this period.

Furthermore, General Motors employees were not the only members of the local, yet did

represent a significant majority, while the local was by far the most dominant organized

force in the city and district. The General Motors strike of 1937 has been hailed as the

birth of industrial unionism in Canada. By strength of numbers and due to the sheer size

of the corporation and its workforce, the strike gained both national and international

attention, and has thus been credited with sparking a greater national movement as the

CIO from then on began making headway across Canada. Body shop workers in the

General Motors plant first struck on 19 February 1937, bringing production at General

Motors to a standstill. Hugh Thompson of the UAW was called into Oshawa, and an

office was set up to sign members to the union. Two of the feeder plants negotiated

contracts before the historic General Motors strike. Ontario Steel Products signed their

first contract on 12 March 1937, and maintained 100 per cent union membership throughout the 1940s.3 Coulter Manufacturing also organized in the same month. The night shift at Coulters was the first to come together, but an informant notified management and they were locked out. Upon hearing the news, the day shift also organized and walked out in protest. A strike which lasted several weeks followed, and the workers were successful in signing their first contract in March of 1937.4

Skinner Company (a subsidiary of Houdaille-Hershey) also organized in March, and although the union was eliminated there during the war years, it was reorganized in

1946 by a group of militant leftists, including LPP member William Rutherford, John (Jock) Turner, Hughie Mclntyre and some returned veterans; the plant went from being

generally regarded as one of the worst workplaces in the city to one of its best. Workers

there were the first to negotiate company-funded medical coverage, a 37!/z hour work

week for forty hours pay, and steward recognition.5 General Motors employees would

gain none of these concessions by the decade's end. Nevertheless at the beginning of

April, 1937, Local 222 boasted approximately 4,000 members, making it the largest union local in the country.

After a strike that lasted fifteen days, workers at General Motors voted in favour of the first contract between Local 222 and the company on 23 April 1937, but they would not be recognized as an affiliate of the UAW-CIO by the company until 1942.

W.E. Phillips Glass Co. (which would become Duplate Safety Glass of Canada Ltd.) signed a contract on 10 May 1937. Kohen and Oshawa Box Factory and Ontario Mill and Lumber were also incorporated into Local 222 throughout the war years, although as suppliers of boxes for war materials their presence would be short-lived, particularly the latter as it was organized near the end of the war and shut down almost immediately afterwards. Together, these industrial units comprised Local 222's constituency.

The Oshawa and District Labour Council was granted a charter from the Canadian

Congress of Labour (CCL) on 14 December 1942. The United Steel workers of America, the UAW, the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, the Fur &

Leather Workers Union, the Oshawa Civic Employees Union, the Bakers & Dairymen's

Union, the United Rubber Workers of America, Ladies' Auxiliary 27, and Local No. 1,

United Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union affiliated.7 The Amalgamated Association of Street and Electrical and Motor Coach Employees' was also affiliated with this council, but would break off in protest over the council's support of free public transit.

The Oshawa and District Labour Council met monthly at the UAW hall in Oshawa, and as a whole were responsible for many of the changes which took place in the city.

Although I will focus primarily on Local 222 here, which made up 3000 of the council's

5000 founding members, it is important to note that there were other forces working cooperatively to improve working class conditions in the area. The Oshawa and District

Labour Council, incidentally, was the first in Canadian history to have a woman serve as president; Mabel Mayne of Ladies Auxiliary 27 of the UAW was elected to this position in 1948.9 Despite this, the new spirit which came to inject Oshawa was still very much one of fraternity and male privilege.

Laurel Sefton MacDowell explores the instantaneous change which swept the city as a result of late 1930s class conflict and unionization. Membership fell drastically in

1938. Dues at this time could not be collected on company property (although they were anyway, according to George Burt), lay-offs in the winter left many financially unable to pay dues, and attempts to undermine the union through press advertisements and in the workplace continued. Factionalism within the union itself contributed to this as well. A reorganizing committee was established, and along with the assistance of the ladies' auxiliary and other unions in the area, many workers' institutions sprang up in the city.

Gradually it became a more worker-oriented community.10 At the same time, working- class confidence increased with the development of these new institutions, which included a labour press, co-operative store, Players' Club, and sporting and recreational activities. The UAW also successfully gained church support from some quarters, and in

1938 Oshawa had its first church parade ever led by a union. Roy Fleming notes that 81 some churches, although certainly not all, proved a critical source of support, and in certain cases "did more organizing right off the pulpit." Catholic support was inhibited at first, as "the Catholic Church, they wanted to be aside...and then we had a couple of real priests come in, real labour guys, priests, and they just turned around the other way and they worked as hard as they could for us."11

Despite Oshawa's religious undertones, the Canadian Commonwealth Federation

(CCF) maintained a weak base in the first years, in part because of its early refusal to run a trade unionist, and partly due to its initial hesitance in encouraging trade union affiliation and unwillingness to participate in a 'united front' with Communists.

Municipally, the CCF was forced to participate with other political bodies through the

Labour Representation Association (LRA) that was established by the city's unions and progressive organizations to secure greater labour representation on the city council.

Throughout the 1940s, the CCF was endorsed by Local 222, although resistance by some to sole affiliation with this body remained as others advocated a broader political programme of agitation against all political parties or remained faithful to other parties such as the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). The union would remain fractured between the CCF faction and a loose Unity coalition of Communists, Independent Labour

Party (ILP) supporters, progressives and left-wing CCFers, some of whom feared that the specific needs of labour might be lost within a party that sought to represent such diverse groups as the middle classes, farmers and trade unionists. As one speaker put it, sole affiliation smacked of "taxation without representation."12 Furthermore, the staunch anti- communism of the CCF and its overall unwillingness to work with any other political groups remained a source of discontent with many. 82

Following its very successful first year when LRA candidates swept the municipal elections in 1938 and controlled city council, labour would continue to elect representatives each year, but was unsuccessful in securing majority representation. In

1938 the labour council set up new playgrounds on land held by the city, much of which had been taken over because of tax arrears, so that every section had a place for children to play, repaired roads in all areas of the city, appointed labour representations to the welfare board, and commissioned the first general audit in nineteen years. Major discrepancies were found from previous years, and it was discovered that three ex- mayors and substantial property holders were in arrears to such an extent that if they were to pay the city would be nearly free of debt.13 However, a 'Citizen's Committee' sprang up before the next election, comprised of the major business owners in the city, and by demonizing the labour candidates, making charges of 'dictation' and calling for

'democracy' rather than offering a platform, the group regained a hold on the city. A labour slate in the municipal election eventually came to be an accepted part of life in

Oshawa, and the local press began endorsing some labour candidates along with the old guard. Interest in municipal politics lagged during the war years on all sides as everyone threw their efforts behind the war cause. Between 1944 and 1949 labour elected three candidates out often possible positions, and one labour representative sat on the Board of

Education. Appointments to city boards continued to pose problems with gaining labour representation.14 CCF candidates were also elected to represent the riding in the provincial elections of 1943 and 1948, and federally in 1948.

Municipally, labour representatives continued to pose such 'radical' measures as free books for school children, tax exemptions for unmarried mothers, the construction of 83

low rental housing, permanent nurseries, vacation pay and fairer salaries for civic

employees and teachers, voting rights for all citizens eighteen years and older, which was

endorsed by the council in 1945, and accessible health care for all citizens.13 Committees

were also set up to make proposals for city planning and surveys of the local library were

made to ensure that it was properly stocked with books that took a fair view of the labour

cause.16 The council came to reflect its working class presence as heated debates, insults,

and language deemed unfit to print altered the more delicate relations which had formerly characterized city council sessions.

Roy Fleming, although unsuccessful in his first attempt to gain a position on the

Public Utilities Commission in the late 1940s, eventually emerged successful. "It was kind of an elite set-up...for the want of another word, a political ward-healer that they were pushing in. So they ran me, and I was elected." Politics in Oshawa had always been a case of "real Toryism...and every time one of them would have a useless son, and he had to have a political job. Like...the head of the conservative association...he had a son. He never worked but he was into trouble, wine, women and song. And they just, he'd have one political job to another." Politics posed greater challenges for waged workers:

Yes, well, see then another reason made it a little tough too. Like, I punched a clock. If I didn't work, I didn't get paid. But if a guy was on salary, and he went to a meeting...he still got his salary, which made it hard to operate with them.... Of course, you gotta remember, I was...six foot, 180 lbs, I had just finished playing lacrosse, so literally, I mean, if they'd cause too much trouble, what'd you say? Hold 'em out there: what? I can't hear you.... And once they got wise to that, they wouldn't try it, you know. ... But...I had two older brothers, we always had boxing gloves at home, and always had punching bags, you know, so you had to learn how to use your fists or you'd end up on the floor. So that was another thing, I had no fear....

Roy was able to use other skills to his benefit as a result of the union's educational programme. "But I had two things to my advantage. I'd been to labour school, learned all, you know, the books, and I knew how to run a meeting...." Roy had another distinct advantage, a wife who had been to law school. "See, my wife had been a law student.

And when we got married, they didn't work. And she used to go over the books and that, and boy, she could just pick out something five miles away, you know. So we'd watch them."17

Education was another area in which labour organization greatly improved working class conditions in Oshawa. Although labour was unable to gain a significant voice on the Board of Education, the union expanded educational opportunities by financing its own programme. As with all committees that were established, membership was voluntary and unpaid. Collections were often made throughout the plant aside from union dues to sponsor educational projects. While providing for children so that they did not have to work had become a key component of middle class respectability, in working class homes need dictated that everyone contribute to the family income, particularly children as married women were barred from many forms of paid employment. Post- secondary education remained out of reach for many due to high fees, although a few scholarships were given to exceptional students. Additionally, working class children often had to work while attending school. Ruth Clapp explains: "You didn't have a choice. Today is not like it was in those days, like today people stress education. In those days if you went to university, if you were smart enough to go, people would have 85 to be well-off. A friend of mine went and I thought, she was really clever in school, and I thought, oh my God, she must be a millionaire in order to go."18 Myron Mech wanted to attend university. "There was no way. Couldn't afford it. [It was] only the elite that were able to get to university." Scholarships for those lucky few were in some cases insufficient. He recalls an exceptionally bright friend who earned a scholarship, but with a disabled father at home whom necessity dictated he support, he was unable to take advantage of the opportunity.

Myron also describes further discrimination within the school system, what he terms 'hidden discrimination', which presented a further barrier to educational opportunity, specifically for those in Oshawa who were not of British descent, as "you were branded.... Garlic is a very medicinal thing, plant. They use that now. But we used to eat garlic for our health's sake, colds; you would come to high school, when I was going to high school at that time, you were sent home because you smelt of garlic." He goes on to explain that "the big part of it was, even in school, at the high school, when they made up classes, you will find out from the middle class people, their children, you wouldn't have any honkies in there, Pollacks, or anything. We would be in a class by ourselves. Disregarding how you made out when you graduated out of public school, it didn't make any difference."19

The city's only high school was in the north end of the city, across the street from

Parkwood Estate. For children in the south end, this often meant a long walk to school.

Oshawa had an electric street car, and bus service beginning in 1940, but many could not afford to use public transit. Stewart Clapp recalls: "They were nice streetcars...but they only ran on Simcoe St. If you lived anywhere else you'd have to walk to Simcoe to get 86

on the streetcar." He goes on to explain: "Never had any money for bus tickets. My

mother never had any to give us, you know. You had to walk. The guys would get

together, and we'd walk up there, start at about eight, and we'd get to school at nine."

Gordon Conant, former premier of Ontario, Crown Attorney, and master of the Supreme

Court, owned fields in the south end and employed students from that area to work in

them. "Gordon Conant...he had a big house down there on Simcoe St. He used to get us

guys to pick mustard, used to get ten cents an hour, before we went to school. And you'd

go through all his farms down there, he owned them all...."20

Tammy Harlock had to quit school to help with the family business. "But my dad was a tailor, you see, and in the hard times, when we were kids, nobody could afford to have...clothes made. So he ended up doing all kinds of things, delivering coal, and delivering, he was delivering milk until they found out - he came from Russia, he stowed away when he was a boy and came to Canada...." Tammy also illustrates a point that many make, in that small business owners often proved a critical means of support to the working class and union once it was established. Many donations were collected from local businesses in support of union activities. Even though times were hard for the small business owner as well, many still proffered a much needed hand of assistance. Harry

Sheriff, Tammy's father, provides just one example:

And you know, somebody'd come in that shop, and it was a big shot, you know, he'd want something done, and Dad would really charge him. Another guy would come in, a poor guy with a pair of pants that was just really ragged, ask him if he could fix it or something, Dad would say just a minute, and then go in the back, and he always had extra clothing around, I don't know where he got it from, somebody left it or whatever. He'd give it: put it on. He'd say, oh, I can't afford this. Dad would say: try it on. He'd put it on, okay fine. He'd say wear it.... But the guy that 87

had the money, he soaked. But the guy that didn't have it, he helped.21

Tammy, along with her siblings, and many other working class children, had to quit

school to help support the family. Granted, school as it was then, with its strict concentration on learning by rote, was not for everybody. ' Jiggs' Harlock, who spent his

summers working on a farm, did not care for it. "Well, I didn't like school, and I'd play hooky a lot."22 As Gordon Jackson points out, "in most cases, you're born with enough

brains or whatever to get along with and use them, but the school only trains you to a certain point. The rest you have to be, it has to be in you to do it, to finish off the work."23 Although theoretical knowledge, as it was coming to be valued in the school system, was not for everyone, many still had skills and other forms of education, possessing a host of practical skills. However, the dominant economic and educational system devalued such skills.

Despite the disregard of some for theoretical knowledge, the inherent political and socioeconomic system made it difficult for most working class children to attain such education. This was buttressed by scientific assumptions that genetic inheritances best- equipped male children to follow in the footsteps of their fathers, most aptly highlighted in a continuing system of primogeniture; women on the other hand were to be trained for work in the home, and classes for women more generally emphasized such 'womanly' skills as the science of home economics. Furthermore, the biases of the school system ensured that a worldview would be taught through a particular scope, one which privileged the prevailing economic and political system. In 1938, the Workers

Educational Association (WEA), which offered lectures by university professors on such topics as labour leaderships, laws, time study, collective bargaining, and co-operatives, 88

enrolled the largest number of students in its history in Oshawa.24 The courses stressed

viewing subjects from various perspectives, although throughout the organization's

history emphasis rested on an "unbiased search for truth."25 The WEA was by this time

led by many socialists, and as a compliment to lectures, stress was laid on worker-

directed tutorials. The WEA and the UAW formed a partnership; throughout the early

and mid-forties, Local 222 financed scholarships so that workers could attend the WEA

school in Port Hope, which combined work and leisure so as to provide both a holiday

and educational development for working class people. Drummond Wren regularly

visited Oshawa and contributed articles to The Oshaworker. Unfortunately, he would be

branded as a Communist amidst the panic that swept the continent in the Cold War era.

Additionally, whereas the International UAW privileged complete local autonomy in its

early years and left education entirely in the hands of each local, the election of Walter

Reuther and subsequent purge of the International changed that. In 1948, the

International took a greater interest in the education its members were receiving, and purchased a school in Kingsville, Ontario. Education received by union members

eventually came to be filtered entirely through the UAW.27

The union also sponsored community educational programmes which were started under the dedicated leadership of labour radical William Noble, head of the educational committee and editor of The Oshaworker until 1945. Voluntary donations were collected

in the plant to sponsor travelling lecturers.28 These bi-weekly 'Open Forum' events were held at the union hall, completely free and open to the public. They continued throughout the decade. Film nights also became a popular source of entertainment in Oshawa, and again, no charges were levied for these public events. National Film Board (NFB) 89 productions were screened, along with cartoons; advertisements stressed that the regular event was intended for the entire family. John Grierson was an extremely influential force at the NFB, and has since been criticized in his role as Canada's 'propaganda maestro'.29 With the exception of Charlie Chaplin productions, most films at the time ignored the realities of working class life. NFB documentaries were therefore among the first to place working class people and issues pertaining to their lives on the screen.

However, politically Grierson positioned himself 'one inch to the left' of whichever party was in power, and he was in many ways a spokesperson for the government. He hired university graduates who were mainly socialists, most of whom came from privileged backgrounds. A 'voice of authority' would represent the point of view he was trying to promulgate. The films in no way challenged the social order, and in effect promoted company unions. They claimed to present 'truth', and yet were very much mediated by state interests. In the postwar period, the government would take an increasing interest in monitoring the activities of the NFB, and political undesirables were removed, thus ensuring the productions would remain friendly to government interests. Film, nonetheless, was a medium which drew popular interest unlike any other, and film nights were among the most successful events held at the union hall. Free discussion groups followed each screening, thus providing a forum for criticism and democratic interaction.

They therefore served both educational and recreational purposes. Local 222 also played a leading role in establishing an Oshawa Film Library.33

Various other recreational activities were organized through the union, but which functioned independently and entirely through voluntary efforts. In the early years, these were a key way in which support was developed, and provided working class activities 90 fully controlled and organized by working class people. The inaugural meeting of the

Union Rod and Gun Club took place on February 9, 1938, and was open to all union members.34 In the early years, the Union Rod and Gun Club played a pivotal role in encouraging membership in the union. As much of Oshawa and its surrounding areas were privately owned, there were fewer places in which to hunt and fish. Roy Fleming has been a member since the second meeting:

They really, like the streams and that, they really pushed you out. Wouldn't let you in, you know. But then when our guys got around, found out they didn't own it. You know, they're shooting the bull.... But the police were up into something, trying to protect some land from guys who want to shoot the turkeys. But it's not their land at all. ... But they'll push you. ...they can take advantage of you.... I remember George, one of the first in, he said what a difference! I can now go fishing.

By pooling their resources, union members were able to buy some land from a fellow employee who had inherited it, for which they paid a one hundred dollar deposit; the remainder was to be repaid at their convenience. The land was maintained entirely through voluntary efforts, and membership fees provided for upkeep. "And we never locked - we had to put on a gate, for, in case somebody drove in and didn't know it. But it was never locked."

The group also took yearly trips to Lake Scugog, held annual banquets, and organized anything they choose and was supported by a majority vote. Meetings for the club were sometimes better attended than union meetings, and the Rod and Gun Club played a significant role in keeping the union afloat in its early stages:

And we were having our meeting, see, and then the government was against us. And...there was a meeting once a month. And if enough didn't show up, they could pull your charter out. So anyway, we were there, and they 91

didn't have enough for a meeting. But we were all union guys...they run in and got us, we went in and sat down at the meeting for a few minutes 'til the inspector went by, we run back to our own meeting. So we carried them, you know. But then we've always been self-contained, like, well, over the years, guys took money out of their pocket and gave it and all the rest of it. And nobody in the Union Rod and Gun Club gets paid. Nobody.

The bowling league proved to be another strong incentive in gaining and

maintaining union membership. It was also formed in 1938, and was open to all union

members in the city, men and women. Those who found themselves laid off during the

'is

period of conversion to civilian production were still able to play in the league. The

executive and rules committee was elected yearly, and demand soon exceeded supply as

space constraints limited it to forty teams.37 Although some teams affiliated with the

Canadian Bowling Association (CBA), not all did, and as the largest league in Canada

there was no need for all teams to do so. The CBA was courting the league; however, a

general feeling that it was "dominated by the City of Toronto" left many teams unwilling

to join. Affiliation remained the choice of each individual team.

Prior to the organization of Local 222, the mercantile league dominated the sports

scene. Baseball was one of the most popular sports in the city, and players assumed

control of the league almost immediately after the union formed: "The General Motors

Baseball Club lost money last year, lost quite a bit - due to the elaborate methods of

sponsorship employed, and this year the club is to operate with only a skeleton executive,

a small group of workers." The league had suffered due to poor company management,

as had baseball in the city more generally: 'Some years ago General Motors took over baseball in this city, and when Junior sponsorship was dropped, it wasn't long until the seniors flopped and baseball died in Oshawa."39 The local press often expressed concern 92

over the lack of 'homebrew' players on the city's sports teams, a result of larger

companies importing strong players in an attempt to stack their teams. A flourishing

independent league of unionized players sustained itself for some time, and the executive was elected each year. In 1946, the elected executive decided to enter its first team into the city league and the independent league was discontinued.40 The teams continued to be self-managed by an elected body, and in the last years of the war, an RCAF team requested and gained admittance to the union league.41

A hockey team was much more difficult to establish, given the greater amount of capital required for the game. Charles Sleeman, who began working at General Motors in 1926, played for various company teams before he was laid off and ended up riding the rails like so many others at the time. Teams were organized by department. Foremen not only controlled the workplace, but also recreational activity: "He was the manager of the hockey team and different things, sports and things like that."42 Five locals within the

UAW financed a hockey team, but by 1945 it had lost a lot of money. Local 222 agreed to finance its share of the debt.43 A local hockey club was started in the 1946-47 season, and in the next season, the membership endorsed the sponsorship of a hockey club to play in the Oshawa Industrial League.44 Although playing within the mercantile league required that the union team conform to the rules as they were set by those running the league, the team's executive was at least still elected by its working class membership.

As such, a degree of democratic control over the team's management and accountability to the membership remained in place.

Sport for women in Oshawa as a whole left something to be desired in this period, and there does not seem to have been any teams started by women other than those within 93 the bowling league. As the Executive shifted to the right later in the decade, 'girls' were encouraged to partake of the activities offered by the YWCA, including archery, and men were later encouraged to join in the activities it offered for males.45 One club within the

YWCA was at this time advertising that newly "arrived British women are welcome at the club at any time." A group of Dutch women broke off and formed their own independent club.46 The editor of The Oshaworker from 1946 through to 1950 was

Arthur Shultz, a virulent anti-communist who was also the union's only paid executive and its secretary-treasurer throughout the decade. The encouragement to join this organization came despite the fact that the YMCA and YWCA had long been sponsored by large employers to foster efficiency and a proper industrial spirit within its workforce.

While Shultz may have seen no problem in directing Oshawa's female population to a staunchly Protestant middle class organization which had originally started to "save girls from papists," refused dialogue with Catholics among its central executive until well into the 1960s, and whose sole mandate at the time was the "growing up in mind, spirit and body in the Christian way of living,"47 his views should in no way be taken as indicative of the membership. Alternately, agitation from below sparked many reforms within the

YWCA, leading to a much more democratic organization.

Organized labourers were also the impetus behind some broader community recreational activities which would significantly alter Oshawa's cultural scene. Prior to the union craze which overtook the city and surrounding district, the most anticipated annual event in the city was the General Motors picnic which drew large crowds from all parts of the county. The picnic was manned by employees, without pay, but the company's Executive planned the activities. As such, "the day's fun" was the 94

Executives' softball game, for which the players donned the "most artistic array of evening gowns."48 Children were given free ice cream, soft drinks and chocolate bars, as well as rides on a merry-go-round, ferris wheel, and the whip. Lest an advertising opportunity be missed, General Motors hats were given away. The "rules and regulations," as set by the Executive, were enforced by "the city detective force," and

"under the direction of city and General Motors Police."4

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, a new event became something of an institution in Oshawa, the annual Labour Day parade and picnic.50 Workers marched through the streets of Oshawa, and the parade finished with a large picnic at a public park. The event was organized by an elected committee, and planned in cooperation with all the unions and auxiliaries in the district. Representatives from the General Motors War Veterans

Association, the Polish Veterans Association and the Canadian Legion also joined in the march of solidarity.51 Prizes were awarded to the best costumes and floats, which the ladies auxiliaries often won. Some dissent arose one year, however, as General Motors required that its employees' make up their missed hours on Labour Day.52 Local 222 also began throwing its own 'monster picnic' following the celebration of its tenth anniversary, and although events varied year by year depending on what each committee choose to arrange, activities included horseshoe pitching, trapshooting, track and field events, literature displays, free dancing at the Jubilee Pavilion (fees at this time were regularly charged per set of dances), bands, softball matches and boxing. Free pop, ice cream, popcorn and rides were also provided for children.53

Various other community activities were organized by union entertainment committees, including variety shows, amateur shows, Bingos, music lessons - 95

instalments provided by the unionS4 - and balls and dances with "dress optional." One of

the main entertainment centres in Oshawa had been the General Motors Conventional

Hall, where members of the General Motors 'family' were permitted to perform "one or

more of Gilbert and Sullivan's light operas" as well as choral and orchestral concerts.55

The union hall provided a place where people were free to perform what they wanted, as

they wanted, and under their own direction. The shows and dances were open to the

public.

However, in terms of entertainment, little could compete with Oshawa's dance

halls, particularly the Jubilee Pavilion, or, as it is fondly referred to by its regular patrons,

the Jube. Advertised as "Eastern Ontario's Most Unusual Ballroom,"56 tickets for dances

were purchased for ten cents. Following each set, the dance floor was cleared with a rope

and the fun began anew. Middle class fears over working class sources of amusement

and attempts to control them pervaded this era, and dance halls were a particular target.

Yet in the era of Swing and the Big Bands, little could deter the people of Oshawa from

heeding the call of its dance halls. Alcohol was not permitted on the premises as the

owner was unable to secure a license, but as Ruth Clapp illustrates, the law in some cases

only posed a problem if caught breaking it: "You'd try to sneak your own booze in.... Oh

sure! You'd sneak it in your shoebag." Her husband Stewart "knew the guy that owned

it before, and he tried to always get a license for the Jube, but he could never get one."57

Pool halls were also popular. Mike's Place was not only a pool hall but served as a meeting room for one cell that was incremental in starting a union - a red sticker on the door indicated that a session was in progress. Movie theatres and beverage rooms were also favourite sources of entertainment. Beverage rooms were often not as popular for younger people, however, as women and men were segregated in different rooms. As

Stewart Clapp recalls: "They never had bars in them days, they had these beverage rooms you'd call them. And you went early you'd get a glass of beer. A big, big glass for ten cents.... But the women couldn't go in there. They had to go to a separate beverage room, and if they wanted a beer, you used to have to stand there waiting with a beer for them. That's how archaic the laws were...."58

Unfortunately, many recreational activities required money, and in a time of general economic instability there was little to fall back on. Workers' compensation covered workplace accidents which were reported immediately. General Motors had a private hospital which dealt with these, and offered limited coverage for some hospital costs which were contributed by the employee through payroll deductions. In 1946, the

Legislative Committee of Local 222 began lobbying for an extension of unemployment benefits as most workers were not covered by compensation or unemployment insurance, passed in 1940, for missed time due to sickness or accidents.59 In the absence of any adequate government or corporate protection, organized workers at Local 222 took matters into their own hands. A host of sick and social clubs were established and run throughout the 1940s. They were completely voluntary and functioned independently.

Each worker who wanted to participate paid a small monthly fee, and this entitled them to coverage in the event that they became sick and missed time from work. As each company and department had its own committee, and each group was responsible for drafting its own by-laws as was determined by the will of the majority, a full discussion of each programme is impractical. However, all offered some level of compensation for sick members, and there were common themes. When a person missed time at work due 97

to illness, they would be visited and brought flowers. If they lived outside the city, a package would be sent to them. Most importantly, sick members received a small

income from the fund while off from work because of illness.60

Medical coverage also excluded the family of employees. Coulter employees

were the first to negotiate a family medical insurance programme, in 1948, part of which was covered by the employee and part of which was funded by the company.61 The idea of a family insurance plan, fully funded through payroll deductions, received company approval in 1947 at General Motors, although it would take until 1950 to settle on an insurance company and gain majority support. The idea of a blood donor service was also raised, for while so many in Oshawa had responded to the call for blood during the war years and beyond, this did not mean that they were entitled to blood when they needed it.63 Anne Black recalls how some people at the union helped her out in a time of need: "I had that big operation. The union, the men helped and gave the blood because we had no money. I'll never forget that."64 This was not necessarily something specific to the union, and when hard times hit many had friends and family to rely on, the boundaries between the two realms not always so sharply drawn within some communities. Blood may have been financially unavailable to many, but as Betty Love remembers: "Your friends. Your friends came."65

For larger financial needs, there was the United Automobile Workers Credit

Union, Oshawa's first credit union, established on April 2, 1938, and sustained in large measure through the dedicated efforts of Art Shultz and a group of devoted activists.66

Although the government stipulated that the 'United' had to be dropped upon its incorporation in April of 1944 as it implied too close an association with trade unions, its 98 mandate remained the same: the cooperative principle of collective self-help.

Incorporation was necessary to gain insurance on people's savings. "Not for profit, not for charity, but for service," the organization was initially open to all employees of

General Motors, their immediate family and any of the company's feeder plants (which at the time encompassed a good part of the city's population). With a twenty-five cent membership fee, one dollar deposit and the purchase of one share, membership was secured and each person was guaranteed one vote in the running of the organization and election of the executive. A loan protection policy was added in 1944, and in 1945 savings insurance was added. Both of these premiums were fully funded by the credit union. The amount which could be loaned varied as stress was usually placed on the fledging organization during the holiday season and throughout the summer so that a by­ law was passed in 1944 limiting loans to $200. This was increased to $500 in 1948.68

The reconversion period following the war also added pressure as many members found themselves unemployed, but the credit union survived.

Reconversion placed stress on many lives as large numbers of people became unemployed in the immediate aftermath of war. The permanent closure of the aircraft division at General Motors resulted in nearly 2,000 lay-offs. In December of 1945,4,893 people were unemployed in Oshawa.69 Of all the women who were laid off in this period only five had enough seniority to be recalled, leaving 250 women permanently out of work. Women remained on separate seniority lists at General Motors and would be ushered back into segregated departments following the war. Unemployment insurance protected against the initial shock - the need was so great by the end of 1945 the unemployment office had to rent the UAW hall71 - and the shift to civilian production took place relatively quickly. General Motors produced 51,772 vehicles in 1946 and

85,360 in 1947, a number which would almost double by 1950.72 But chronic unemployment continued to plague Oshawa throughout the rest of the decade, and it would continue to suffer from one of the highest rates of unemployment in the province, measured by the number without work as opposed to the amount of available jobs.73

'Jiggs' Harlock remembers his experience clearly. He was involved in the 1937 strike, but lost his seniority in the transition from the boys' to men's group before the war. He ended up returning to the farm labour he had done as a child during his summer vacations, "and worked for a dollar a day, thrashing right from morning 'til night, a dollar a day." Hearing of a better opportunity, he seized it:

Well, anyway, I come back to Oshawa, I heard the tannery was hiring, Robson Leather Company down in Oshawa...that was the place that polluted the creek, the harbour...the water was all green from the stuff...running out of the tannery down the Oshawa creek. So when I first went to the tannery, I went in the door there, and there must have been fifty to a hundred guys standing there waiting for a job. Just standing there. So, this was eight o'clock in the morning. Gus Martin, he was the super, he'd come out of his office and walk by down through - never looked nobody in the eyes, but he had good peripheral vision, he could see, he'd go down and check his foreman; if nobody was in, that day they happened to be sick or didn't come in, he lost his job.... So all the guys would take off. but not me. I stood there all day. ...until quittin' time. So I'd take off, next morning was down again. I done that all week.... And finally he knew who I was.... So I got hired for eighteen cents an hour. I worked there, I worked there for a year, yeah, this was in '39, 1939, so the war is starting to get going again. I belonged to the Oshawa Motorcycle Club, and we, oh eight or ten of us, you know, and we didn't know what, some of us had jobs, some of us didn't. Eighteen cents an hour, we knew we could get a buck a day in the army, and your clothes and your meals, so hey. we joined the army.... All discipline, eh, if you didn't have 100

your collar done up, somebody'd rake you over the coals, eh.

After a very adventurous time serving overseas, Jiggs returned to Oshawa to his wife

Tammy and son Bobby, whom he had not seen since he was seven-months old.

After I got discharged I went to the Motors and they hadn't started up yet....they said we don't owe you a job now anyway if we did start up because you were called sometime and you never showed up. That was the rule in the General Motors then, if you got called and didn't show up...you lost your job. So the last place I worked was in the tannery, so I went down to the tannery, they said: we don't owe you a job here, you were only temporary help before the war. Well, I knew the ruling was, they supposed, the government was supposed to give you the job that you had when you joined the army, so I went down there...and they hired me back there for thirty-six cents an hour now, this was in '46.... So, this Gus Martin, he didn't like that, eh, putting pressure on there.... So what they done, they put me over...in an old, cold barn, nobody with me here, nobody with me, and that was pretty hard to take after being with guys, hundreds of guys all the time, you working all alone for thirty-six cents an hour. He used to come through that building once a day to try to catch me not working, he was gonna fire me, I knew that, but he couldn't fire me because I always was working.... So finally he put me on nights. The only man in the tannery on nights was the night watchman, he had one arm, I don't know how he lost it, me and the night watchman working nights. So finally one time...my wife and a friend brought my lunch down to the tannery. She seen me in there with this water and steam and that, she says, you're not gonna work here.74

Tammy remembers the time well too. "I said, no man's working like that to keep me in, and I made him quit right away. I didn't recognize him."75 Jiggs then got lucky, and met up with a friend he had known before the war: "He got to be a group captain, but he got to be an alcoholic too, so I run across him in Oshawa, eh. ...He says hey, I'm looking for a guy at a cleaning establishment, running a cleaning machine, you got thirty-five bucks a 101 week. He didn't tell me at the time, but I had to go down in the morning at the crack of dawn and clean out the boiler...." Fortunately for Jiggs:

the Motors starting going very good then, and I went to the Motors and they hired me back, and I...just got under the wire. Like, any veterans that got back within a year after they got discharged they would take them in. So I got my service, General Motors give me my service that I missed when I was in the army, five years...the Union brought that in.76

Jiggs was fortunate in finding employment, but not all were so lucky.

Local 222 also supported the strike at the tannery in 1947; a sum of $3217.14 was given in solidarity, $250 of which came from the treasury. The remainder was made up by voluntary collections. According to Norman Boddy, the financial secretary of Local

205 of the Tannery Workers Union, the assistance went a long way towards helping them prolong the strike and securing the contract they had been hoping for.7 This was hardly the only support Local 222 provided to other unions, both within the city and across the nation. From 1939 to 1948, member contributions to other strikes, collected primarily through voluntary donations, totalled $42,000, with an average dues paying membership in that period of 2,678. This does not include the amount raised by the ladies' auxiliary, which also supported all local strikes morally and financially, and raised money for those outside the city. Approximately $29,000 of that went to other UAW locals; the Ford

Windsor strike of 1945 which won the Rand formula, and the McKinnon Industries strike of 1948 in St. Catherines which sought wage parity between the General Motors divisions of Oshawa and Windsor were two major beneficiaries. The membership also voted for greater moral support in the form of a sympathy strike during the Ford strike; however, the leadership of the CCL did not sanction this action, and a sympathy strike never 102 materialized.79 By 1947, the ability to offer moral support to fellow strikers would become much more difficult.

The Ford Windsor strike began on 12 September 1945 and lasted until 19

December 1945 when Justice Ivan Rand handed down his infamous ruling which would go on to form the basis of corporate state and union relations, as what would be known as the Rand Formula became the foundation of Canadian labour policy.80 One of the most important demands in the strike was the check-off and union shop, something many workers across the nation were fighting for. Insecurity plagued unions as dues were collected on an individual and informal basis. A union shop would mandate that each worker covered by a collective agreement must become and remain a member of the union, whereas the check-off would place responsibility for collecting dues from all employees on the employer through payroll deductions, which would in turn be passed on to the union. Rand refused to grant a union shop as he believed this would shift too much managerial control to the union, but did award the check-off.81 To further encourage the development of unions as mature and responsible organizations, Rand provided for a series of penalties which would be placed on the union in the event of an 'illegal' or

'wildcat' strike. This in effect made the union responsible for policing its own membership. Work stoppages during negotiations were prohibited, forcing a cooling off period, and in the event that the union leadership did not reject wildcat strikes, the union and its membership would be subject to heavy fines and the loss of seniority. As such, capital would retain its essential rights to property and managerial control, while unions would be accommodated into this landscape with limited powers to significantly alter the status quo. 103

In 1946, General Motors granted a voluntary and revocable check-off, and by

November of that year, all of the plants under contract with Local 222 conceded this.82

The 'dues wicket' remained open as many choose to pay their dues as they had always

done, but nearly 3,500 voluntarily signed up for the check-off.83 Under the leadership of

the left-leaning chairman of the bargaining committee, Malcolm Smith, the union again

tried for the union shop and check-off in 1947. Despite his efforts to secure a better deal

in a long negotiating process, the company was only willing to concede the Rand

formula. The membership voted in favour of this, and dues were automatically deducted

from December of 1947 onwards.84

Almost immediately, the company's stance hardened, as speed-ups were introduced and wage increases proved unsatisfactory to the membership. In 1948, the

General Motors bargaining committee requested a 16 lA cent hourly raise to meet increased costs of living, a 40 hour work week without a loss in pay, a social security plan and more statutory holidays with pay. The company countered with a ten cent wage increase which was rejected by the membership. A strike vote was taken and declared illegal by the company; 86.2 per cent of the membership voted in favour of strike action. A strike vote was refused by the Minister of Labour, and the two-year agreement that was reached provided for a nine cent hourly raise and two additional statutory holidays. The penalty for an illegal strike at the time was $3 a day to be levied on every employee for each missed day, along with the loss of one year of seniority for each missed week for every employee involved in the strike. The check-off could also be suspended. It was agreed that the contract could be reopened in sixty days, at which time the bargaining committee tackled the issue of the Rand formula and the agreed upon 104 penalties. The Rand formula had at this point become a generally contentious issue as there were reported cases of supervisors using it as threats against employees to secure compliance.86 However, the McKinnon strike was taking place at the same time, and

General Motors shut down due to a lack of parts, leaving many out of work and placing the union in a tenuous bargaining position.87

By 1949 there were complaints surfacing that contract negotiations were becoming too long and drawn out, and that the old era of price cuts and speed-ups was resurfacing, as General Motors was still running on its efficiency system. While slight gains were made in reducing efficiency rates, discontent continued to escalate until 11 a.m. on 26 October 1949, when 5,300 workers walked off the job in a wildcat strike.89

The strike was provoked by four arbitrary dismissals the week before. General Motors was attempting to increase production from forty to forty-seven cars a day while breaking previous profit records, a familiar story to the workers whose employment extended back to 1937. Three stewards, Dick McEvers, Bill Talbert and Basil Mothersill, refused requests to work faster, and were immediately fired as a result. The fourth dismissal occurred on the same day when left-winger committeeman Lloyd Peel was overheard telling a group of men about the arbitrary dismissals, and according to people on the scene, the superintendent's voice boomed across the floor: "You're fired too. Take it from now."90 A week before the strike a request to meet with Charles Daley, Minister of

Labour for Ontario, was disregarded.91

The strike lasted twenty-four days. The International refused to support the job action as the strike was declared illegal, but the local leadership remained united with the membership. The company eventually agreed to revoke the dismissals and instead levied 105

suspensions on the four men. Two stewards were suspended for one month, one for three

months, and committeeman Lloyd Peel received a six month suspension. The local assumed the responsibility of paying the men's wages until they were permitted to return to work, and negotiated penalty exemptions for new hires who were still working under probation.92 The vote to return to work received 79 per cent of membership support, but given the heavy penalties that were being levied daily and the lack of international support, their hands were tied.93 The Rand formula provided much-needed union security, but this security would come at a cost.

Reuther supporters held leadership positions through the latter half of the decade, and The Oshaworker, with Art Shultz as editor, increasingly became suffused with anti- communism and toed the International line. In 1947 the CCF was endorsed by the local as the political arm of labour.94 The membership was still very much split, however, and in 1948 the union elections produced the closest result in the history of the local.

William Rutherford, LPP member, won the presidency, but as he won by only 47 votes, another vote was taken with a third candidate removed from the ballot. W.L. Grant emerged victorious, and would remain president of the union for the rest of the decade.95

In keeping with the Cold War climate that was clouding union relations in the period, some rather underhanded methods were used the next year to silence those voices which veered too far to the left. William Dafoe, president of the CCF club and successful labour slate candidate, outlined how some in the city were ejected on the basis of their political beliefs and ethnic background. All city employees were required to bring their naturalization papers to the heads of their department. He claimed that this had been done for their own good: "Oh, there was two or three communists - I've forgotten their 106

names - but there was two or three communists, I think who wanted to get back to their country. So, they kicked up a bit of a fuss around at some of the meetings and got deported."96

The executive of Local 222, comprised primarily of Reuther supporters by the end of the decade, also did its part to silence political opposition to the status quo; it refused to endorse Bill Rutherford on the municipal labour slate in 1949 due to his political affiliation. At this time, the Executive received majority support when a grievance was raised at a membership meeting over the issue and a vote taken to measure support for its actions; however, Bill rallied his forces and at the end of the year returned with majority support to pass a motion of censure on the Executive "for the way they handled the candidates in the last municipal elections."97 The Executive maintained its stance and refused endorsation, citing a breach of the International constitution as their reason for acting against the will of the majority - this would not have been the first time that the local violated the international constitution in the interests of local autonomy.

However, the issue of local and national autonomy in the face of an increasing

International presence was far from over. A new generation was rising in the local with its own distinct political vision, and the issue of local autonomy would rise again with it.

The financial gains made throughout the 1940s were slight. Any increase in wages was typically met with price increases, as North American capital continued to protect its profits. Inflation in Canada after the war was the highest in the

Commonwealth, and Canada was just behind the United States in terms of its increase in the cost of living.99 Profits continued to soar to all-time highs in the postwar era.

Furthermore, managerial authority and control over the workplace was entrenched within 107 the Rand formula. The nature of auto work would remain the same, and management would retain ultimate authority in shaping the nature of this work, as well as in determining profits and prices, while labour would continue to bear the brunt of the blame over price increases in the mainstream media.

When asked about the enjoyment derived from their work, many former employees of General Motors did not have much to say. Gordon Jackson did not dislike his job: "Well, I guess, the main thing to realize is that if you want to eat, and you want to live, and you want to get along, you have to do what you have to do, and as far as when I first worked there we used to have a lot of fun, used to kid around, when there wasn't any big deal, you did your job you never got in trouble, so...I wouldn't say that, I wouldn't say I didn't like my job, but, it provided me with a more or less good living, but...." He goes on to note: "They replaced a lot of them with machines. When I was there all you saw was men. Now you might see five guys where you used to see a hundred."100

Stewart Clapp also remembers the nature of a job where he spent most of the days of his life: "It was very boring. You did the same job. Eight hours a day and 365 days you were working at the same job. It was boring, boring, boring. But you had to get a job and that's how you made your money." He also notes the dramatic changes in the nature of the work: "They welded manually, they did everything manually. Now they got all the robots. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Everything was done manually then.

Everything."101 George Nugent remembers one event worthy of note about the workplace, as while "working on battery cables, I lost all of my fingerprints because of the acid." Myron Mech recently visited the plant, and was amazed by the innovations made in the realm of mass production. "It's a different thing. They took us through, took 108 me and two others...through the plant, I was amazed, you know, the mechanical robots and all that stuff...they've just gotten back the amount of people working in there...it's going to go less and less."103 Jiggs Harlock also visited the plant: "Oh, it would just boggle your mind! We had as many as six and eight guys working on one car. Now you look down the line and you see fifteen cars and nobody around them, just robots going.

Just arms moving back and forth putting stuff in and that."1

Yet while unionization did not radically alter the capitalist state in which they lived, it did significantly improve the living standards of many. The bureaucratic conciliatory machinery of the state meant that gains varied from place to place, so that while workers in General Motors won a 44 hour work week in 1937, some of the feeder plants of Local 222 were still battling a 55 hour work week in the 1940s.105 While progress was slow, many of the gains made by unions eventually became law or were adopted by other companies to prevent the unionization of their workforce. The Hours of

Work and Vacations With Pay Act of 1944, unemployment insurance and a pension plan

(a minimal contributory plan was introduced by General Motors in 1947 and subsequently renegotiated by the union) brought about greater annual income stability, so that many workers no longer had to hold their hand out for charity but instead earned a yearly living wage. Beyond guarding against yearly insecurity, this also gave some among the working classes the opportunity to embark on modest travels following retirement. As Stewart Clapp notes, "...to take a trip to Florida, that was unheard of....

You went to Lake Simcoe or something, you figured you had a good holiday, you know."1 Protection from arbitrary supervisors, no longer having to do special favours just to maintain a job, the ability to freely express grievances and have them addressed, 109 and seniority protection so that those 'too old to work but too young to die' were sheltered from the cold logic of the market which abandoned them at forty or fifty years of age - such things are financially immeasurable, yet invaluable in terms of basic human dignity and respect.107 No longer were individual workers completely vulnerable to the concentrated power of the capitalist state, for together stood thousands of brothers and sisters willing to protect their common interests against exploitation. And what the state was unwilling to freely give in this period, the members of Local 222 showed that they could contribute themselves by pooling and sharing their resources and developing union initiatives in new quarters. A thriving union culture in Oshawa offered workers educational opportunities, health and sickness care, assistance in times of need, and many other tangible supports. Trade unionism was paying impressive dividends for workers. 110

Notes:

1 E.J. Pomery, Auctioneer, Oshawa (12 April 1937), Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007, 0001, 0002. 2 General Motors, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0003, 0011, 0001. 3 Official Opening U.A. W. Hall: November 17, 1951, 12, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007, 0001,0002. See also The Oshaworker, 1944-1949. 4 Official Opening U.A. W. Hall, 12. See also Don Nicholls, ed., Forty Years of Progress: Local 222 Oshawa, 13, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007, 0001, 0003. Both companies have since closed their doors in Oshawa. Ontario Steel was renamed Rockwell and moved to Milton. 5 Bill Rutherford, "The Houdaille Unit of Local 222," Forty Years of Progress, 69. See also The Oshaworker, 1946-1949. The steward system at General Motors was disbanded in 1955 after years of unsuccessful attempts to gain recognition. 6 George Burt, "The Early Years," Forty Years of Progress, 16. 7 Durham Regional Labour Council: 5tfh Anniversary, 1942-1992, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007, 0001, 0010; M.J. Fenwick, "Congress Four-Point Wage-Hour Programme Endorsed by Oshawa and District Labour Council," The Canadian Unionist, 94. 8 "Bus Union Gets Jittery Over Public Ownership," Globe and Mail (30 October 1948), 10. 9 "Oshawa and District Labour Council Elects First Woman As Its President," The Canadian Unionist (February 1948), 43. 10 Laurel Sefton MacDowell, "After the Strike - Labour Relations in Oshawa, 1937-1939," Canadian Working Class History, 2nd ed., Laurel Sefton MacDowell and Ian Radforth, eds. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2000), 512. 11 Roy Fleming, Personal Interview (20 April 2007). 12 "One Party Cannot Claim Exclusive Represent Labour," Times-Gazette (7 May 1945), 3. 13 Pendergest, "Labour and Politics in Oshawa and District," 226-242; Sefton MacDowell, "After the Strike," 516. 14 Municipal Elections, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0021, 0001, 0007; The Oshaworker (6 February 1946), 1; The Oshaworker (15 December 1948), 1. 15 The Oshaworker (2 May 1945), 2. 16 The Oshaworker (6 December 1944), 2. On middle-class encroachment on working-class leisure time, see Rosenzweig, Eight Hours For What We Will.. 17 Roy Fleming, Personal Interview (20 April 2007). 18 Ruth Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 19 Myron Mech, Personal Interview (23 April 2007). 20 Stewart Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 21 Tammy Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). 22 Jiggs Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). 23 Gordon Jackson, Personal Interview (18 April 2007). 24 Sefton MacDowell, "After the Strike," 513. 25 Ian Radforth and Joan Sangster, '"A Link Between Labour and Learning': The Workers Educational Association in Ontario, 1917-1951," Labour/Le Travail 8/9 (Autumn/Spring 1981/1982), 41. See also Marcus Klee, '"Hands-off Labour Forum': The Making and Unmaking of National Working-Class Radio Broadcasting in Canada, 1935-1944" Labour/Le Travail 35 (Spring 1995), 107-32. 26 Radforth and Sangster, '"A Link Between Labour and Learning,'" 75. 27 The Oshaworker (21 April 1948), 4. 28 The Oshaworker (28 February 1944), 1. 29 His perspective was undoubtedly shaped by his upbringing; his parents were both teachers who were deeply committed to social justice, and in his childhood he worked in soup kitchens organized by his mother to relieve stress during village strikes. Margaret Ann Elton, "Democracy as a Fighting Faith," John Grierson and the NFB (Toronto: ECW Press, 1984), 103. ,0 Ken D. Jones and Arthur F. McClure, Hollywood at War: The American Motion Picture and World War //(New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1973), 16; Gary Evans, John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Ill

Press, 1984), 9. See also Gary Evans, John Grierson: Trailblazer of Documentary Film (Montr6al: XYZ Publishing, 2005); William Robert Young, "Making the Truth Graphic: The Canadian Government's Home Front Information Structure and Programme During World War II," Ph.D. thesis (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1978); H.D. Waley, "British Documentaries and the War Effort," The Public Opinion Quarterly 6 (Winter 1942), 604-9. 31 Evans, John Grierson and the National Film Board, 153. 32 #>/York University, 1990), especially chapters 3 and 6; Don Morrow, Mary Keyes, Wayne Simpson, Frank Cosentino, Ron Lappage, A Concise History of Sport in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989). On sport and paternalism, see Joan Sangster, "The Softball Solution: Female Workers, Male Managers and the Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, 1923-60," Labour/Le Travail32 (Fall 1993), 167-99. 41 The Oshaworker (21 June 1944), 4. 42 Charles Sleeman, Personal Interview (16 May 2007). 43 The Oshaworker (7 March 1945), 1. 44 The Oshaworker (18 February 1948; 20 October 1948), 3. 45 The Oshaworker (20 April 1949), 4; On women's sport in Oshawa, see "Review of Oshawa Sports During Last 25 Years," Daily-Times Gazette (8 March 1949), 22-23. 46 My emphasis, "Rendezvous Club" (8 March 1949), 23. 47 Harshaw, When Women Work Together. 48 "Snapshots of General Motors Picnic" (13 August 1928), Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0003, 0011,0004. 49 "Snapshots of General Motors Picnic" (13 August 1928). 50 The Oshaworker (2 May 1945), 4. See also Craig Heron and Steve Penfold, The Workers' Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). 51 "Complete Plans For Celebration This Evening," Times-Gazette (31 August 1943), 1. 52 The Oshaworker (20 July 1949), 1. 53 The Oshaworker (4 June 1947; 2 June 1948), 3. 54 The Oshaworker (16 August 1944), 1. 55 "Family Spirit Feature of General Motors Oganization," General Motors Public Relations, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0003,0011,0001. 56 Times-Gazette, (29 November 1945), 13. 57 Stewart and Ruth Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 58 Stewart Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 59 The Oshaworker, (1 May 1946), 2. See also James Struthers, Wo Fault of Their Own': Unemployment Insurance and the Canadian Welfare State, 1914-1941 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983); Ruth Roach Pierson, "Gender and the Unemployment Insurance Debates in Canada, 1934- 1940," Labour/Le Travail 25 (Spring 1990), 77-103. 60 For an example of some by-laws, see The Oshaworker (2 February 1949), 2. 61 The Oshaworker (1 December 1948), 2. 62 The Oshaworker (5 February 1947), 4. 63 The Oshaworker (19 January 1949), 1. 64 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 65 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 66 Auto Workers Credit Union, Guy House, Oshawa Archives, 0007, 0001, 0002. 112

67 Auto Workers Credit Union. In 1952, as per the Ontario government's regulations, membership was limited to those under contract with Local 222. 68 Ibid; The Oshaworker (1 December 1948), 4. 69 The Oshaworker (7 March 1945; 6 December 1945), 1. 70 The Oshaworker (5 September 1945), 1-2. 71 The Oshaworker (9 January 1946), 1. 72 General Motors, GMin Canada, 10. 73 In June of 1948, Oshawa had 1,541 unemployed citizens with 242 available jobs. "Seasonal Employment Record High in Canada; Fewer Layoffs Noted" Globe and Mail (30 June 1948), 3. See also The Oshaworker (6 March 1946; 21 May 1947; 16 July 1947). 74 Jiggs Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). 75 Tammy Harlock, Personallnterview (19 April 2007). 76 Jiggs Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). See also The Oshaworker (6 February 1946), 1; CD. Selby, "Job Placement for War Veterans," Journal of Educational Sociology 18 (October 1944), 112-6. 77 The Oshaworker (1 October 1947; 19 November 1947), 2. 78 The Oshaworker (20 October 1948), 2. 79 The Oshaworker (17 November 1948), 1-3. In the Ford Windsor strike, 80 per cent of the membership voted in favour of a sympathy strike. "Oshawa Votes Ford Support If Call Comes," Globe and Mail (15 November 1945), 1. 80 David Moulton, "Ford Windsor 1945," On Strike: Six Key Labour Struggles in Canada 1919- 1949, 130, 148-49. 81 Russell, Back to Work?, 224. 82 The Oshaworker, (6 February 1946; 20 November 1946), 1. 83 The Oshaworker (5 March 1947), 1. 84 The Oshaworker (3 December 1947), 2. At least one steward refused to run for re-election in protest over the Rand agreement. The Oshaworker (6 April 1949). 85 "Oshawa GM Local Likely to Reject Company's Offer" Globe and Mail (16 June 1948), 7; "Union Strike Vote Illegal, Says GM; UAW Deny Charge," Globe and Mail (25 June 1948), 12; "Oshawa Workers Strongly Support Strike Action," Globe and Mail (28 June 1948), 3. 86 The Oshaworker (6 October 1948), 1. 87 "GM Plant Will Close Until Nov. 15 at Least," Globe and Mail (29 October 1948), 1. " The Oshaworker (5 January 1949; 19 January 1949; 20 July 1949). 89 "GM Strike Stills Oshawa Heartbeat," Globe and Mail (27 October 1949), 10; "24-Hour Pickets Patrol As 5,300 On Strike At G.M.," Toronto Star (27 October 1949), 1. 90 "GM Strike Stills Oshawa Heartbeat," Globe and Mail (27 October 1949), 10. 91 "Union Is Ignoring Contract G.M. Claims In Telegrams," Toronto Star (28 October 1949), 3. 92 The Oshaworker (21 December 1949), 2. 93 "Record Vote Ends Strike At Oshawa," Globe and Mail (21 November 1949), 1. 94 The Oshaworker (17 December 1947), 2. 95 The Oshaworker (17 March 1948), 2. 96 "An interview with Mr. Finlay Dafoe," The War Years in the Oshawa Region, 76. 97 The Oshaworker (19 January 1949), 2. 98 The Oshaworker (21 December 1949), 4. 99 The Oshaworker (19 October 1949), 3. 100 Gordon Jackson, Personal Interview (18 April 2007). 101 Stewart Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 102 George Nugent, Personal Interview (17 April 2007). 103 Myron Mech, Personal Interview (23 April 2007). 104 Jiggs Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). The Oshaworker (15 March 1944), 3. See also Bryce M. Stewart, "War-Time Labour Problems and Policies in Canada," The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 7 (August 1944), 426-46; MacDowell, "The Formation of the Canadian Industrial Relations System During World War Two," 175-96; Webber, "The Malaise of Compulsory Conciliation," 57-88. 106 Stewart Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 113

10 On the pension plan, see Local 222 in the 1940s, Local 222 library. On supervisory relations before the strike and the support unionization offered, see Carole Conde" and Karl Beveridge. Oshawa: a history of local 222 United Autoworkers of America, CLC (1982-83); C.W.M. Hart, "Industrial Relations Research and Social Theory," The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 15 (February 1949), 53-73. Chapter IV

Unsung Heroines: Women at Work in Oshawa

And they 've not been any too well known For brains and planning and organized thinking But I'm sure the women are equal And they may be ahead of the men.

-Woody Guthrie, 1942

The UAW embraced among its major planks the issue of equality and sought to

combat discrimination, not only among the 'upper crust' but within the ranks of the

working classes as well. Exposing the evils of discrimination was a key feature of its

educational programme. In 1945, a recommendation from the International executive

urged all locals of the UAW to include in their collective agreements a clause which

would ensure a more equitable work environment: "The company agrees that it will not

discriminate in the hiring of employees or in their training, upgrading, promotion,

transfer, lay-off, discipline, discharge, or otherwise, because of race, creed, color,

national origin, political affiliation, sex or marital status."1 The UAW was from its

beginning an overwhelmingly male dominated organization. Many automobile factories

did not hire women at all. General Motors in Oshawa had segregated departments for

female employees, where they engaged in work viewed as suitable for women, such as

cutting and sewing, or in the wire and harness department; many of the feeder plants also

had a small female workforce. However, women were discharged upon marriage.

Throughout the war years, as women entered the workforce in large numbers, issues

surrounding discrimination against female employees assumed a position of prominence.

Equal pay for equal work became a central concern, women were consulted as to whether or not they would like to continue working following the cessation of hostilities, women 115

contributed to the planning of a postwar world, and proposals such as communal kitchens

and permanent nursery schools were offered as solutions to a postwar world where men and women would have equal opportunities.

Despite the results of an international UAW survey which found that 85.5 per cent of women working in war industries wished to remain in the workforce, the postwar world presented a radically different reality for many women as the promises of the war years were abandoned. Women were laid off in mass numbers and found themselves in an increasingly hostile work environment as the social and political discourses of the times dictated that women should marry and remain in their proper place in the home.

Pamela Sugiman and Nancy Gabin have both engaged in detailed studies of the position of women in the UAW within the context of the workplace.3 By so doing, many women in the postwar era easily emerge as complacent supporters of paternalism; however, such an approach overlooks the very real role that many women played as active agents of social change through what was often the only means available to them in the cultural and political environment of the time. Emily LaBarbera Twarog rectifies this oversight in her work on the women's auxiliaries of the UAW, noting that their fight for equality did not embrace gender as a central category but instead moved "beyond gender to include class and race."4 By challenging the myth of the conservative housewife and illustrating the crucial role these auxiliaries played within the trade union movement, it becomes apparent that many married women did continue to fight for social justice and reforms that would improve the lot of the working classes as a whole. An organized forum was created by working class women to make their voices heard and act in the interests of their community. 116

The literature to date on the Canadian Region of the UAW makes but brief reference to its auxiliaries. As such, it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking these women only appeared during strikes to feed hungry picketers, and then disappeared back into the kitchen until the next skirmish. On the contrary, these auxiliaries provided a critical means of support to the union and the women involved. By engaging in collective and co-operative action, they were a potent lobbying force locally, provincially and nationally. Through collective action, they worked to improve their communities, and together presented a strong voice for social justice as defined from their viewpoint, thus providing an opportunity for action on issues which included but also moved beyond the workplace to encompass the needs of families as they pertained to broader working class society. Women may have been denied an equal position within the workplace, but they still maintained an active and critical role within the labour movement, the home and the community. Although these women worked outside the larger socioeconomic and legal structures of the time, they were nonetheless an important force in improving the lived conditions of the labouring classes.

The importance of female support to the cause of labour organization has long been recognized. Home life and the workplace cannot be separated as one directly affects the other; indeed, due to the 'family wage' supported by unions in the postwar era and long-standing practices of firing married women, this was particularly true at the time. As such, the interests of improved workplace conditions were very much the interests of women in the home, along with fairer wages. Wives also play a key role in fostering and maintaining male support in organizing drives and strikes, for their role in managing the home economy required that they make great sacrifices on behalf of 117

themselves and their children when wages were cut off. As Denyse Baillargeon

illustrates in her study of housewives in Quebec during the Depression, married women,

although barred from many public spheres of employment, played a role in

supplementing incomes during times of economic strife. In addition, they could provide

a potent lobbying force within the home in encouraging men to accept any wage so as to provide for the family. Women's auxiliaries were formed in conjunction with the

industrial unions as a means of gaining much needed female support and providing education by women for women on the goals and aims of the trade union movement.

Ladies' Auxiliary 27, affiliated to Local 222, received its charter on 30 July 1937.

From that point on, it remained the largest auxiliary in North America. As the current president of the auxiliary, Jackie Finn, outlines in her history of the auxiliary, forty members immediately signed up, and although few at that time knew the meaning or purpose of an auxiliary, it would not be long before the women were actively working to define their role in the interests of their community.6 Now known as Family Auxiliary 27 and accepting females and males as members, the original auxiliary accepted the wives, daughters and mothers of union members. A separate organization also existed for the children of union members and their friends, the Union Youth Club.

Auxiliaries were not a new concept at the time. Many organizations had an auxiliary comprised of wives whose purpose was to raise funds for the organization to which they were affiliated. However, Ladies Auxiliary 27 from its beginning functioned in a distinct manner from the prevailing norm. Although affiliated to Local 222, it was an entirely independent and self-supporting organization. In addition, its purpose was not to raise funds for the local. Instead, the funds raised were distributed by its membership to 118

various political and social causes as decided on by the auxiliary itself, and more

specifically, the will of its majority.7 According to Meg Luxton, wives' committees

reflect a new organizational form where female autonomy from the union is emphasized,

including the right to control funds and make independent political decisions. She also

notes that they are action-oriented, and suggests these features reflect a significant break

Q

from their auxiliary forerunners. However, in the case of Ladies Auxiliary 27, these

features have been characteristic of the organization since its formation. It often worked

in co-operation with the union, other auxiliaries, and community organizations, but it functioned as a fully independent entity and the distribution of its funds was determined by the will of the majority of its female members. Radically democratic and valuing its autonomy, the women of Ladies Auxiliary 27 made their own political decisions, and did not always follow the political direction of the union. They also maintained full control over their own independent committees, including political action, education, elections, entertainment, and sick fund, to name a few.

Furthermore, it is often assumed that catering was the responsibility of the auxiliary. However, no union event was catered without first receiving majority support from the membership. Additionally, the auxiliary received remuneration for these activities, and so it was an important source of raising funds. Although many dedicated auxiliary women worked tirelessly on the picket lines by feeding strikers and quenching thirst, collecting donations from local businesses, clothing, and other necessities to keep the home fires burning in times of economic strife, these activities were purely voluntary and were neither a precondition of auxiliary membership nor the main purpose of the auxiliary. Each woman had a choice as to whether or not she would like to participate in 119

those activities. It just so happened that many chose to volunteer their services. Finally,

before any funds were distributed in support of striking workers, democratic support from

the membership had to be gained. In emergency situations, the executive was

empowered to distribute an agreed upon amount of funds for the cause of striking

workers if deemed necessary.9

The main purposes of the auxiliary as outlined by Lynn Rak, long time member

and activist, is to educate families on the history and role of both the local and the trade

union movement in general, to assist striking locals as well as the trade union movement

in general, and to fulfill the responsibility of ensuring that the community serves the

needs of its people.10 A monthly fee often cents was required for membership. Like the

local before it gained the check-off, leniency was often shown in regard to membership

dues and penalties over arrears, despite this being in violation of international by-laws.1

Therefore, the auxiliary did not raise its membership fees, but rather earned many of its

financial resources through collective employment. This would be especially important

for women at a time when the ideology of the male breadwinner ideal reigned, for it left

open the possibility that men could assume full economic power within the family. An

informal cultural tradition among many women in Oshawa offset this economic power

structure somewhat, as Anne Black discovered to her surprise after moving from

Winnipeg to Oshawa: "Every payday, every two weeks the women, well I followed my

sister, you know, she was here longer; I was shocked, women waiting for the men to give

them cheques...we'd all go there, too.... It was like a family."12

The auxiliary did not have the large membership that the local boasted. Its numbers ranged between 100 and 200 women throughout the decade. As such, they did 120

not have the same economic resources. Additionally, although gains had been made by

the union, finances were still very tight for working-class families throughout the decade.

Thrift certainly was not something that had to be taught by employers to the working

classes, for it was a necessity of life. Betty Rutherford recalls the challenges of strict

budgeting: "I can remember our holiday pay always went to pay my oil bill."13 Anne

Black also strictly budgeted: "And the pennies we saved for little Christmas decorations,

to have a Christmas tree."14 Yet despite having so little financially, they still found time

to work tirelessly to improve their community, and everything that they raised was in turn

given away. "You know, we had fun. We had nothing much, but we had, there was love,

and you know, it was very nice."15

During the war, the auxiliary continued to function, despite the fact that many

women were juggling employment and family responsibilities. Despite these added

duties, their meetings were often better attended; one front-page headline in The

Oshaworker in 1944 reports: "Ladies Auxiliary Representative 'Bawls Out' Members of

Union." This was due to the fact that turnout at the auxiliary meetings suggested "much more interest in the Auxiliary by the members than in the Union."16 Ruth Clapp worked

in the munitions factory in Ajax during the war for some years, but had to quit: "Oh, I had powder poisoning in my system, in my blood. And I was hospitalized for quite a while, but I had to rest after that." After a period of unemployment, she started working at General Motors until just before her first daughter was born. Some women hid their pregnancies so that they could continue working. Ruth's reason for doing so was because

"if you got pregnant and you were working at the GM...unemployment insurance, you couldn't get because you were classed as not being eligible for work. You had to hide it." Tammy Harlock had worked at Pedlars since she was sixteen as she needed to

contribute to the support of her family. After she got married, she continued working as

the plant converted to wartime production, and she also hid her pregnancy:

And I wore a smock then, and then I used to kind of leave it a little bit open, and this one guy, I had to lift things, and he'd go and lift them for me. Here he knew what was wrong, he knew I was pregnant, I didn't tell anybody. But one girl said to me, she bumped into me, she says, hey Harlock, what have you got there? You know, like, she hit my boob. I said, oh, I got a new padded bra.18

During the war, married women were not expected to relinquish their jobs after marriage

or pregnancy, so Tammy continued to receive pay when she quit her job due to

pregnancy. After she had her baby, Tammy's mother watched him while she continued

to work until a nursery was finally established in Oshawa. She worked at the munitions

factory in Aj ax as well, which provided free transportation to work for those who lived

outside a mile and a quarter radius. The trips were not always pleasant, as "they used to pick us up at the top of the highway in what we used to call cattle cars, and we'd all just be in there, and all these men, and some of them would grab a feel, and the girls would be upset, you know, and drive us way down to where the factory was." She was happy when she was able to secure a better job at the Motors.20

The Department of Munitions and Supply spent approximately $800,000,000 on industrial plant expansion during the war, much of which was invested in Central

Canada, and so rather than bringing the work to the periphery regions, recruiters were sent out to bring women from the outlying regions of Canada to the factories. The munitions plant that was built in Ajax, part of Canadian Industries Limited, began experiencing labour shortages in 1942, and recruiters were sent to the Maritimes, 122

northern Ontario and the Prairies in order to draw women to southern Ontario. Room and

board were deducted from their paycheques, and they were housed in residences near the

plant. Between May of 1942 and March of 1945, 2,346 women were uprooted by the

National Selective Service.21 They would have had less freedom to escape the

notoriously bad working conditions in Ajax.

Agnes Jackson did not work at the munitions factory, but did migrate from

Halifax to Oshawa during the war period when she met her future husband who was on

leave from General Motors and serving in the military. It was difficult for her to adjust to

a new cultural environment, as she found there to be stark differences between Ontario

and Nova Scotia. "It was a totally different atmosphere coming from Halifax and then

coming here." Whereas the war loomed large in Halifax given its proximity to the sea,

abundance of uniformed soldiers, and the perpetual fear of invasion, in Ontario it was

easy to forget there was even a war going on, "and people seemed more anxious to line

up to buy something...." She goes on to explain the scarcity of goods in Ontario: "Oh,

yes, everything was hard to get. They lined up for a pair of stockings. When you saw a

line you joined it. And then eventually found out what you were lined up for. But soap

was very scarce, stockings, it doesn't matter what it was.... A lot of Maritimers came

here to work." While Agnes was not a labour conscript, she did have the opposite problem, for she had enjoyed her work as a teacher and in the civil service during the

war. "I didn't like it much. I couldn't find work, we had no place to live.... When I first came here I tried to get work, and of course at that point the men were all coming back or had come back, and jobs for women were scarce."22 While she had a husband to help her adjust to her new surroundings, it was a difficult transition. Anne Black also remembers the cultural differences between Winnipeg and Ontario, and the difficulties adjusting. As she and her husband were not the first in her family to make the trek to Ontario searching for work, she was fortunate to have a familial support network in Oshawa. Furthermore, her involvement with the auxiliary introduced her to a larger family network. "We found it hard. We lived with my sister. We all cooked together and I joined the auxiliary....

But when I come here, the apples, and Mary brought them in the house and I says, oh, they're rotten. You know it was awful, I must admit, but boy after, when I knew how hard, I'd cut them out and I'd make apple sauce."23

A Wartime Day Nurseries was established in Oshawa in January of 1943, which was staffed with two paid employees and forty volunteers.24 Such an establishment was undoubtedly very helpful to working mothers. The hours of operation were flexible according to the schedules of working mothers, problems involving transportation were negotiable, and the children were fed; a child care centre was later added so that children to the age of nine were entitled to care.25 The committee members in charge of the nursery were Adelaide McLaughlin, Mr. D.G. Stevenson, Superintendent of the

Children's Aid Society, Dr. T.W.G. McKay, and Mr. J.C. McGill, Relief Administrator.

Ladies Auxiliary 27 created its own child care centre committee and day nursery committee. Members attended meetings of the centre's administrative staff and monitored the child care facilities, reporting back to the auxiliary on the activities of each, and also appealing for things which the centre needed, such as cloths, toothbrushes and toys. They also lobbied for a permanent child care centre in Oshawa.26

Many women joined voluntary organizations throughout the war years through the city's Voluntary Services Bureau, and engaged in such activities as salvage 124

collection, 'Knit for Britain' groups and serving at blood donor clinics. Auxiliary

members also participated in these, as well as forming their own wartime committees.

Cigarettes and holiday boxes were sent regularly to union members overseas. They also

formed a war vets committee which raised funds to assist and entertain returning

veterans. They raised money to donate a fully equipped canteen to the Red Cross.

Representation on the Wartime Price and Trade Board was secured, and prices monitored throughout the period to prevent profiteering. Further community activities were organized, unrelated to the war, but which continued through the period. A nursing home committee was formed with the purpose of both visiting and sewing garments for the elderly. Teas and parties were given for residents of the Ontario Mental Health

Hospital. Betty Rutherford found that task emotionally difficult: "And I always used to make squares and that for them. I could never sleep that night, 'cause I'd go there and help, and I was just amazed at the amount of young people with mental problems. Unless you are with them, you can't, you just can't fathom it, you know."28

The auxiliary also cooperated with the Red Cross and delivered meals to those who were unable to prepare food themselves. As Betty Love remembers, there did seem to be occasional fraud: "And you know in those days we didn't have a lot of money for gas. You didn't. You put your own gas in." She remembers delivering meals to one very large, beautifully landscaped house:

I thought these people have got more money than I have, and here I am running around with my gas and my time to take them their food where I could be going to somebody that really, really needs to have a dinner. And it just sort of made me feel bad that I felt that way, but I thought, and it was an elderly couple, but they were both, I found out later that they both went to the theatre quite regularly and things like that. Well I think if you can go to a theatre you can make a dinner, you know. That was my thought at the time.29

But they continued their service, for as Betty Rutherford notes: "It was just like everything else. People abuse everything. But the majority of them needed it."30

The auxiliary also organized its own activities to raise money. Annual bazaars and rummage sales were held throughout the decade. Donations were collected from local small businesses, and the women sewed and knitted articles which they then sold.

Bingos were also a major source of income. In 1944 they raised over $2,000.31 Local

222 also held Bingos as a means of raising money until some trouble with the law arose, but both functioned independently of the other. Due to a dispute over the legality of

Bingo games, the women were forced underground in 1946. The auxiliary lobbied

Attorney General Leslie Blackwell, sent a delegation to interview the mayor of Oshawa, along with sending letters to the mayor each month until permission to hold the games was granted. In the meantime, Bingo games were held in women's homes. Betty Love, the daughter of George and Mary Slater, both active leftists who were involved with the union from its beginning, and the latter of which served as president of the auxiliary from

1942 to 1954, recalls that Bingos eventually ceased:

Well I know my sister used to call Bingo. And she would go, I never was Bingo...but they did have big crowds. And then the churches started to have Bingos too, and that made too much competition, so that's why that was done away with at the union hall, because there was too many, and it wasn't really profitable to run a Bingo when there was, and then that Red Barn started about that time too, and between private organizations and churches and unions, and whatever other groups, it got to be saturated with Bingo games.33 At the time, it was a key source of income for the auxiliary. They also earned money by

catering union functions, renting kitchen supplies, and in some cases, helping the union

with their social functions in other ways for financial remuneration, depending on the will

of the assisting committee. Each had the power to determine on their own whether a fee

would be required for their services.34 Membership dues also contributed to their

financial resources.

An independent source of income is important for obvious reasons, however it

became more so as the local executive shifted to the right while the majority within the

auxiliary remained sympathetic to a united front politically. The auxiliary continued to

support the local despite political differences among their respective executives, and such

differences did not interfere with the presentation of a united front, full support for the

union during periods of strife or participation in joint educational, entertainment and

social endeavours. However, the auxiliary withdrew its delegates from the local's

political action committee in 1945.35 While many of the aims of both groups remained

the same, the women pursued their own independent political agenda throughout the

decade. In the same year, following the succession of William Noble by Art Shultz as

editor of The Oshaworker, the activities of the auxiliary disappear from the union paper.

Whereas the women had previously contributed a regular column, this was no longer the

case after 1945. A defeated motion to invite Shultz, the editor of the paper, to speak at a

meeting suggests that this was an ongoing source of tension for many of the women.

The auxiliary continued to champion the cause of the trade union movement through political action, and pursued many similar aims to those of the union; however, their 127 political program was independently organized as each was required to submit to the majority will of their respective membership.

The auxiliary continued to support both parties within the labour movement.

Candidates frombot h the Canadian Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and Labour

Progressive Party (LPP) were permitted to speak at their membership meetings during election campaigns, both received support in canvassing if volunteers within the auxiliary wished to form committees in support of a party of their choosing, and candidates were permitted the use of the auxiliary kitchen and facilities for their campaigns. However, the auxiliary did not endorse the CCF, and stressed that any political representative had the freedom to speak to the membership upon request.37 As such, the auxiliary continued to support a more united front in their political programme which placed value on the freedom of anyone to speak regardless of political orientation; furthermore, the freedom of their membership to support any party of their choice was key. They remained in line with the favoured approach of many within the Canadian Region of the UAW until late in the decade, where a broader programme of political agitation against all parties was preferred to sole affiliation with one. Both parties within the labour movement, along with the mainstream political parties, tended to be male dominated and thus concerned foremost with issues affecting males.38 However, the organization was independent, completely controlled by females, and included many politically aware women. For the majority, a shift to the right seems to have held little appeal. Later in the decade, when two CCF candidates addressed the auxiliary, they "spoke briefly and requested assistance from our auxiliary for lunches and scrutineer work."39 Candidates from both the LPP and

CCF received time on their agenda until late in the decade. 128

The political programme of the auxiliary was broad, and while it continued to

support the cause of the trade union movement, special concentration was placed on those

issues which affected working class families. It made regular donations to the Canadian

Tribune, and monitored the local press, writing letters of protest when the cause of labour

was not given fair treatment.40 In 1943, the auxiliary affiliated with the Oshawa and

District Labour Council, and continued to elect a delegate each year. A committee of six

women was also established to attend city council meetings and report back to the

membership on its activities.41 A Women's Day was organized on the picket line during

the Duplate strike in 1946.42 Food was prepared for local strikers, and in such situations

the auxiliary organized and self-managed what Betty Love calls a "real production

line."43 Various strikes were supported both financially and morally by the auxiliary. It

assisted with all strikes taking place in the city, and sent funds to steelworkers in

Hamilton, lumber workers in British Columbia, miners in Nova Scotia and Quebec, the

Allis Chalmers local in Wisconsin, and remained dedicated supporters of the Canadian

Seamen's Union, supporting them both financially and lobbying the government on their behalf many times throughout the decade. The women also raised funds for the Ford strike in Windsor, and sent money not only to the striking local, but also separate funds to its auxiliary. They also collected coupons throughout the strike which were forwarded to the strike kitchen in Windsor.44

Price control was a major plank within their political programme, and the women sent letters, distributed petitions, purchased mass quantities of postcards to be sent to politicians, and organized consumer boycotts either in support of striking workers or in protest over high prices. Alternately, when prices were reduced, the auxiliary sent letters commending the price cuts to the supplier and local press. Delegates were sent to

protest at Queen's Park and Parliament Hill in conjunction with both union protests as

well as with the Housewives' League, with which the auxiliary affiliated in 1948.46 Prior

to this, the auxiliary participated in many of the League's political lobbies and protests,

and regularly entertained speakers from the organization. Speakers from other

organizations, such as the Consumer's Board, also addressed meetings upon request, and

wherever possible, "a woman speaker [was] preferred."47 Delegate expenses for all

political lobbies and conferences were funded by the auxiliary, and they were provided

with "the same amount for expenses as...the men" for events in which both the union and

auxiliary participated.48

The construction of low-rental housing was also an issue to which the auxiliary

devoted a great deal of attention. In the postwar era, the country was in the midst of a

housing crisis. Throughout the depression, 60 per cent of those unemployed were either

directly or indirectly involved in the building trades.49 During the war, some wartime

houses were rapidly constructed for the wives of soldiers, but they were of inferior quality due to the pace at which they were erected. By the end of the war, Oshawa was

experiencing a serious housing crisis. Many working class families were living with extended family, and reports of overcrowding abounded. Rental restrictions also prevented many from obtaining lodging. As one editorial signed 'A Mother' in the

Times-Gazette explains:

I am an ex-serviceman's wife and I have been looking for a place to live for the last six months or seven months. The only answers you get from all the apartment owners, and other people who have rooms or houses to let is NO CHILDREN. 130

What is wrong with children? They were children themselves and someone had to put up with them and people are still putting up with them. If we don't have children our generation would probably die out and after all why did the boys go to fight in Europe against the Germans and the Japs. It was for the right to have free speech and make this a better world for our children to live in. ...There is a lot of talk about building Community Centres for Memorials for those who died in this war and for those who returned. What would be a better Memorial than to see that the children of our city had decent homes.50

Although labour's representatives did not gain a majority position on city council, those

endorsed by labour and elected were relatively successful in opening up the north end of

the city somewhat to low cost housing. The south end was already crowded while the

north end contained many spacious uninhabited areas. The majority of alderman on the

city council refused a motion to construct the first wartime houses on city lots near their

homes, citing depreciation in property values as the main reason. As Alderman Brown

put it: "The idea of putting one of these houses in a good district! Anyone who would

vote for a motion like that needs his head read." A motion made by the two labour

candidates to hold a public meeting on the issue was lost, and Alderman Dafoe, a labour

candidate, noted that he would not like the citizens of Oshawa to know that "any

alderman would object to having one of these houses near to his own home. If they are

considered good enough for the dependents of our soldiers and for returned men they are

good enough to be placed anywhere."51 Although the labour candidates did not win a

public meeting on the issue, the entire transcript of the session was reprinted on the front page of the local newspaper; they were successful in passing a motion that the houses be built on 'good' city lots. These houses were later resold cheaply after soldiers returned. 131

While the auxiliary continued to lobby the municipal, provincial and federal government on the issue of housing, conditions remained substandard at the end of the decade. Although a minimal housing project began in Oshawa in 1948, by 1949 some were still living in buildings that had been condemned. In one case, fourteen people were living in a two-story rat infested building deemed by an inspector as unfit for human habitation. One of the residents noted that his family had previously been living in a garage: "And it was far better living accommodation than this place." Jiggs and

Tammy Harlock also lived in a garage with their young son after the war. Following his shifts at General Motors, he and Tammy worked together on building their home. They built the garage first, and lived in it while they contmued construction on the house.

Others also purchased land and gradually built their own houses, while some purchased the houses which were being mass produced by construction companies on the outskirts of the city. Despite little success in motivating politicians, the auxiliary remained dedicated to the cause of low-rental housing.

The auxiliary also launched a swift protest against the short notice given to workers in Ajax to vacate the residences constructed during the war once war contracts were cancelled, and both the union and auxiliary lobbied to have the plant converted to peacetime production.54 Ajax became an educational centre for veterans, and a branch of the University of Toronto was established there. CD. Howe was confronted by a large crowd of men, women and children from Oshawa, Whitby and Ajax when he visited the area. Some of the children booed him, and a young girl balanced on a fence behind him turned an alarm clock on and off while he was speaking. Howe placed the blame for the slow housing construction on the municipality, while the mayor of Oshawa volleyed 132 blame back to Howe, stating that "Mr. Howe prides himself on being the father of Ajax.

It would appear as if the father has abandoned the child. A good father would not leave his baby on the neighbour's doorstep and then expect the neighbour to pay for the baby's upkeep."55 While the bickering over responsibility continued, the people of the area faced a continuing housing crisis.

Many issues affecting children and young people were also taken on by the auxiliary, and included writing letters to the Oshawa Board of Education requesting that school grounds be made available for recreational purposes outside of school hours, the

Ontario Department of Education so that children would be educated in the Night Hawk

Center, and protests were organized against both the municipal and provincial educational authorities in support of the provision of free textbooks for students.56 The women also voiced a strong protest against compulsory cadet training under the Drew government.57 Additionally, they raised money for the Sick Children's Hospital, Cancer

Fund, and Appeal for Children; before making donations to the Community Chest, representatives were sent to their meetings to ensure that the funds were going to the proper sources.

The women ran their own educational committee and sick fund. Representatives were sent regularly to meetings with the union's educational committee up until 1947 when requests for representation began being launched. At this time another issue was raised, for although the auxiliary had a voice in union affairs, they had no vote.58 For example, while speakers were hosted at their meetings from various health insurance companies, they were unable to vote on which company would be used. The wives and children of General Motors employees would have to wait until 1950 for a family health care plan to be passed by the union membership, even though the women settled on a plan in 1948.59 The auxiliary also maintained its own sick fund. Members were free to make use of a sick box which was placed in the union hall. Individual women who found themselves in difficult financial positions were also assisted by the auxiliary. As

Betty Love explains, "I think it was just taken out of...what earnings there was in the kitty...'cause we didn't have a lot of money.... But I know they did help people that were in dire straits...."61 Anne Black also remembers that assistance was given to individuals by the auxiliary if needed: "But everything was confidential. But...we just helped the needy, that's all.... If they needed more, they'd go to the union, and the union would help. As I said, they helped me...when we needed blood 'cause you had to pay, but at the time we never had the money. It was hard, but we got help."

Alongside union cooperation in educational matters for most of the decade, the auxiliary continued to maintain its own independent educational programme. The executive corresponded regularly with Drummond Wren of the WE A, and he attended their meetings on occasion. Open invitations to the school in Port Hope were also sent to the auxiliary yearly throughout the 1940s, and carpools were organized to allow women without transportation to attend. Betty Love, one of the women with a car, recalls "we had an old car, and I had to have a wire to hold the back door so it wouldn't open.

And...the custodian...he was so helpful all the time...he'd say, if you'd bring that up I'd fix it for you.... I'd have a carload of women.... And those women, I'm telling you, we never had so much fun." The women also purchased their own educational literature for distribution within the city, and organized educational booths at the annual picnics.

Various speakers who attended meetings were chosen by the auxiliary. They also hosted 134 representatives from auxiliaries across the province as they formed so as to share knowledge with them on how the auxiliary in Oshawa was run. Delegates were sent to the annual UAW conventions, where UAW auxiliary members would meet, share ideas, vote for the international executive and establish international by-laws. In 1945, the international board representing all the auxiliaries of the UAW were hosted in Oshawa.64

The auxiliary also organized and funded its own recreational activities, while continuing to work in cooperation with the union entertainment committee. A flourishing auxiliary bowling league enjoyed much success for decades. Betty Rutherford was one of many who attended regularly: "I remember going bowling above, upstairs, at the old

Motor City bowling hall, and taking the kids, the women, we'd carry the buggies with the kids in it up the stairs.... And then we started having tournaments with other auxiliaries.

That was a lot of fun." She also remembers informal and spontaneous activities: "We used to always have picnics too. We'd go to a park, you know, and everybody would bring their lunch and put it on a big table, and you'd all join in."65 The auxiliary also played an active role in organizing the large annual picnics and parades on Labour Day and the Local 222 picnic. During the holiday season, the women arranged annual children's parties, and gifts for each child were purchased by the auxiliary. Sleighing parties, family nights in conjunction with the union, and annual banquets for the women were also arranged. There were also variety and amateur shows, and the women presented plays.

The auxiliary organized bus trips each year, usually to Buffalo or Niagara Falls.

The women paid for the trips, but it was cheaper and therefore affordable buying together rather than separately. Crossing the border was often a trying experience, not only for 135

those who were deemed Communists and so denied entry into the United States. As

Anne Black remembers, "they would check our purses...I know one had her bank account

bank book...they took it away, when you come back they'll give it to you. It was very

strict."66 Yet it provided an opportunity for many who had never had the opportunity to

travel to do so, and a break from their home responsibilities and routine, as well as the

chance to freely socialize with other women independently. Not all were able to enjoy these excursions. Betty Rutherford was raising five children and had a husband who was very active in union affairs: "I didn't go on no trips."67 An outing fund was also established in 1946 so that excursions could be collectively funded, thus providing the women with greater independence financially.68

Women would continue to face obstacles in gaining fair representation in the male dominated UAW well beyond the 1940s, and automobile factories are still predominantly male environments. Married women would continue to be dismissed from most workplaces until well into the 1950s. Sex segregation at General Motors would not begin to break down until the 1970s.69 However, while many have focussed on the injustices which faced women in the workplace, fewer have explored how these women created their own institutions as a means of expressing their political views, making their voices heard through collective action, and improving their communities. Like Local 222,

Ladies Auxiliary 27 was a radically democratic organization. These women protected and maintained their independence from the union, while they continued to support both it and the broader trade union movement. By controlling their own funds, they were able to express themselves on political issues which held the most importance to them, and in the process, they worked tirelessly to improve their community not only for themselves, 136 but for all working class people. In so doing, they provided a strong voice for issues which held particular importance for working class women and children.

Issues of class were by and large the central tenet of their programme, and the concerns they raised affected women and children of the working classes rather than broader issues of gender discrimination. Yet given the economic circumstances at the time, their consciousness of class place is understandable. It requires a certain distance from economic need to suggest that issues of gender can be separated from class concerns, or that gender should assume precedence.70 While they did not tackle gender equality outright, they fiercely protected their right to maintain their independence, and their right to act cooperatively with the union or autonomously if they so chose. These women lived in a patriarchal society where notions of male superiority and ideals of a proper woman's place pervaded the popular discourse. Married women's labour was often demonized, positioned as taking employment away from those with families to support. They emerged from a period of high unemployment, unstable incomes and deep economic need, and remained very close to this sense of material instability. High unemployment rates continued in the postwar era, and this was one of the many political issues the auxiliary often championed. Social scientific discourses 'proved' that a good mother was one who stayed home to raise her children; while the state was willing to invade the working class home to tell women how to be 'proper' mothers, it also articulated the prevailing ideology that equated bad mothers and delinquents with

71 working women. Given the outright prejudices they endured from their middle class

'sisters', it should not be surprising that auxiliary women's greatest loyalty and sense of solidarity rested with their brothers and sisters of a similar socioeconomic station. 137

Working class men may have been prone to support male privilege, yet they reflected

prejudices that women faced at all levels of society.

Ladies' Auxiliary 27 served many important purposes throughout the 1940s. It

was an important support system for the union as it reached out to women so as to spread

knowledge about the trade union movement, thus fostering support in the home when

sacrifices were required in order to make gains. It also proved a critical source of support

during strikes and times of strife. These women became very active in the community,

and set out to try to improve it for working class people and those who were in need. It

also provided a forum for union women to engage in political activism and make their

voices heard on a larger scale through collective action. In the sisterhood that was

developed within the organization, it provided a critical means of support for women during times of challenge. By standing together and building their own independent

support network, auxiliary women made themselves less vulnerable not only to the dominant political and social institutions which surrounded them, but also to the power imbalances of their home environments. By so doing, they not only improved their own lived circumstances, they continued to fight to improve conditions for all those of a similar social position around them. 138

Notes:

1 The Oshaworker (17 October 1945), 3. 2 The Oshaworker (31 May 1944; 21 June 1944), 2. 3 Nancy Gabin, "Women Workers and the UAW in the Post-World War II Period: 1945-1954," The Labour History Reader, Daniel J. Leab, ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 407-432; Pamela Sugiman, Labour's Dilemma: The Gender Politics of Auto Workers in Canada, 1937-1979 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994); Pamela Sugiman, "Privilege and Oppression: The Configuration of Race, Gender, and Class in Southern Ontario Auto Plants, 1939 to 1949," Labour/Le Travail 47 (Spring 2001). Ruth Roach Pierson,' They 're Still Women After All': The Second World War and Canadian Womanhood(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986). 4 Emily E. LaBarbera Twarog, "Out of the Strike Kitchen: The UAW Women's Auxiliaries' Campaign for Gender Equality," OAH Panel: Women, Men, and Auto Unionism (17 April 2006). 5 Denyse Baillargeon, "Indispensable But Not a Citizen: The Housewife in the Great Depression," Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings, Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn and Robert Menzies, eds. (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2002), 179-198. See also Bettina Bradbury, Working Families: Age, Gender and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993); Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Women's Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). 6 Jackie Firm, "CAW Family Auxiliary #27: 70 Years and Still Strong," Family Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall. 7 UAW Ladies' Auxiliary Records, Union Hall, Cash Book, 1948-1959; Minutes of General and Executive Meetings, March 19, 1945-November 10, 1948. Unfortunately, records prior to this period have been destroyed by fire; see also The Oshaworker 1944-1945. 8 Meg Luxton, "From Ladies Auxiliaries to Wives Committees: Housewives and the Unions," Through the Kitchen Window: The Politics of Home and Family, Meg Luxton and Harriet Rosenberg (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1986), 63-81. 9 UAW Ladies' Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (14 July 1948). 10 Lynn Rak, "C.A.W. Family Auxiliary #27: 60 Years and Still Going Strong," CAW Family Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall. 11 UAW Ladies' Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (9 October 1946). 12 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 13 Betty Rutherford, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 14 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 15 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 16 The Oshaworker (17 April 1944), 1. 17 Ruth Clapp, Personal Interview (4 April 2007). 18 Tammy Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). 19 Pierson, "Gender and the Unemployment Insurance Debates," 98. 20 Tammy Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). 21 Ken Smith, Ajax: The War Years, 1939-1945 (Toronto: Alger Press, 1989), 165-6, 168. 22 Agnes Jackson, Personal Interview (18 April 2007). See also Stories From the Homefront: Oshawa During the Second World War (Oshawa Community Museum and Archives, 2004). 23 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 24 "Voluntary Service Centre Will Register Volunteers," Oshawa Daily Times (9 January 1943), 1. 25 "Oshawa Day Nursery Fine Environment," War-Craftsman (April 1945), 1. 26 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting, (25 April 1945; 9 May 1945; 13 June 1945; 27 June 1945; 8 August 1945; 24 October 1945). See also Alvin Finkel, "Even the Little Children Cooperated: Family Strategies, Childcare Discourse, and Social Welfare Debates, 1945- 1975," Labour/Le Travail 36 (Fall 1995), 91-118. 27 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting, (28 March 1945). 28 Betty Rutherford, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 29 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 139

30 Betty Rutherford, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 31 The Oshaworker (4 April 1945), 3. 32 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (9 January 1946; 27 February 1946; 9 April 1947; 12 May 1947). 33 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 34 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (23 January 1946). 35 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (9 May 1946). 36 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting, (28 January 1948). 37 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (27 November 1947). 38 Joan Sangster, Dreams of Equality: Women on the Canadian Left, 1920-1950 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989); Dan Azoulay "Winning Women for Socialism: The Ontario CCF and Women, 1947-196I," Labour/Le Travail 36 (Fall 1995), 59-90. 39 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (12 May 1948). 40 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (11 September 1946; 9 October 1946). 41 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union HalL Minutes of General Meeting (9 October 1945). 42 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (9 September 1946). 43 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 44 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (14 November 1945). 45 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (24 April 1947). 46 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (27 May 1948). 47 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (13 June 1945). 48 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (9 October 1947). 49 "Tells Rotary of Federal Plan of H. Improvement," Oshawa Daily Times (30 April 1937), 3. 50 Times-Gazette (29 November 1945), 16. 51 "Wartime Housing Units To Be Placed On Good City Lots," Times-Gazette (10 June 1944), 1, 14. 52 "Rat Drowns in Bottle of Milk In Downtown Home in Oshawa," Globe and Mail (5 August 1949), 8; on home ownership and the working-classes, see Sean Purdy, "A Property Owning Democracy?: Home Ownership and the Working Class in Canada," Labour/Le Travail 31 (Spring 1993), 341-53; Sean Purdy, "Scaffolding Citizenship: Housing Reform and Nation Formation in Canada, 1900-1950," Contesting Canadian Citizenship, 129-47. 5 Jiggs and Tammy Harlock, Personal Interview (19 April 2007). 54 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (13 June 1945). 55 "Howe Errs in Housing Statement, Oshawa Mayor Tells Federal Voters," Globe and Mail (7 June 1948), 10. 56 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of Executive Meeting (9 September 1946); Membership Meeting (25 September 1946; 18 September 1947). 57 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of Executive Meeting (22 April 1947). 58 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (27 November 1947). 59 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (13 October 1948). 60 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of General Meeting (13 June 1945). 61 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 62 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 63 Betty Love, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 64 "Auxiliary 27 UAW-CIO Entertains American Guests," Times-Gazette (25 September 1945), 6. 65 Betty Rutherford, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 66 Anne Black, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 140

Betty Rutherford, Personal Interview (14 May 2007). 68 UAW Ladies Auxiliary 27 Records, Union Hall, Minutes of Executive Meeting (25 March 1946). 69 Pamela Sugiman, '"That Wall's Coming Down': Gendered Strategies of Worker Resistance in the UAW Canadian Region," Canadian Journal of Sociology 17 (Winter 1992), 1-27. 70 Carol A. Stabile, "Postmodernism, Feminism, and Marx: Notes from the Abyss," In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda, Ellen Woods and John Foster, eds. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997), 143. 71 Katherine Arnup, "Education for Motherhood: Creating Modern Mothers and Model Citizens," Contesting Canadian Citizenship, 247-271. Conclusion

Local 222 and General Motors of Canada have played pivotal roles in shaping the

community of Oshawa. Its historic position as a one-industry town has meant that both

the corporation and the union have touched directly or indirectly the lives of many of the

city's residents. Prior to the formation of the union, the corporation and those who ran it

enjoyed a position of dominance within the city, and as such, the city was run in the interests of the company and its suppliers. As notions of welfare capitalism came to be cemented in corporate practice, "Oshawa's largest corporate citizen" played an increasing role in the community.1 In that the interests of General Motors were the interests of

Oshawa, the father of the General Motors 'family' had only the interests of Oshawa's resident at heart. As Sam McLaughlin protested, "money never meant anything to

George or to my father. We never worked for money itself- no money could hire us. I was through as far as that was concerned, because in this world you get three square meals a day and a nice bed to sleep in, and the rest is fluff. So I had in mind the fact that

Oshawa had to carry on and our workmen had to have jobs."2 But of course, the best interests of the corporation are not always the best interests of its workforce, and the interests of the corporation within the community are not always in the interests of the majority of its residents.

I have explored different conceptions of community service, probing the ways corporate citizens carried out their citizenship duties, and how this came to be challenged as workers and their families set about creating their own definitions of citizenship. No longer content to be passive recipients of charity, many among Oshawa's working classes set out to improve their own lived existence and attempted to make the community in 142

which they lived a better environment for all its citizens. Before the strike of 1937, the

paternalism of the city's elite and the family discourse sustained their privileged position

within Oshawa; however, the desperation of the Depression years and the increasing

inequalities of the capitalist social order ultimately propelled workers into action. No

longer would the historic dominance of a select few in the city go unchallenged. Through

the medium of the UAW, many of the working classes took greater control over their

own lived existence and exercised their own conceptions of citizenship. Although Local

222 would remain relatively vulnerable and insecure during its initial years, by the close

of the Second World War, its position was solidified as it enjoyed greater support among

its members and the larger community. By converting theory into practice, many

dedicated union members were illustrating that they could improve their lives and the

lives of those around them. However, the postwar period was in many ways a time of

both continuity and change.

I have examined the development of Oshawa, its largest corporation and its

largest union, highlighting how a concentration of resources among a few secures for that

few a position of hegemony. Placing these developments within a national and

international setting, I have also traced the historic linkages between business and

government which defined the capitalist state. In a tradition outlined by Karl Marx, the

Canadian state and its local variations confirm that "every form of production creates its

own legal relations, forms of government, etc." so that "the right of the stronger

continues to exist in other forms even under their 'government of law'."3 The significant changes which radically altered the production process are analyzed from the vantage point of labour, illustrating how: all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power.4

By exploring this historical growth and change, the "natural" nature of work and the

social relations it spawns are challenged. As a social construction created by humans, the

system can in the same vein be altered by humans. In that people make their own history,

they do not always do so under conditions of their own choosing, "but under

circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."5

The strike of 1937 was not the first attempt on the part of workers in Oshawa to

organize, yet it was the first successful attempt. Despite support among many of the working classes in the city, the victory in 1937 did not automatically secure a stable position for the union. Workers would continue to face resistance from the corporation, government, and segments of the broader local and national community. The improvements which organization brought for workers and their families were not won without a struggle, and the victories gained did not come without many sacrifices on the part of those who risked their livelihoods in order to fight for basic assurances of human dignity and respect. Such things were lacking in the dominant social system which continued into the 1930s, and workers overcame much resistance from many sources.

From here my analysis shifts to the local level in an attempt to transfer the focus away from large institutions and the legal system toward working people. Central to my study has been the memories of people who lived and worked in Oshawa, all of whom 144 were involved to some extent in the strike of 1937, whether as workers, their spouses or their children. These contributions greatly enriched my understanding of Oshawa in the

1940s.

Such memories form the basis for Chapter Two. Sam McLaughlin is remembered to this day by many as Oshawa's greatest citizen. Reflective of the power structure of my research process, I broke from the views expressed by many in relation to that man. By analyzing the contributions made both by Sam and Adelaide McLaughlin individually or in cooperation with the city's tight-knit elite, I argue that constructs of'community service' often serve the interests of the few within the community rather than its larger body of residents. The generous spirit of the McLaughlins flourished in the 1940s.

However, an examination of the roots of those causes which received support illustrate that their main goal was character building and training in appropriate citizenship - a citizenship which very much met the needs of the modern factory. Stimulating thrift, industry and obedience, the charitable organizations supported by the city's wealthiest citizens aimed to teach people how to be good citizens and good workers. A concentration of financial resources allowed those with the greatest wealth to exert social control over the city's population, while serving the dual interest of promoting themselves as model citizens and obscuring the inequalities of the social order.

Although the fundamental power structures where in no way significantly altered in their various class, ethnic or gendered manifestations in the 1940s, people in Oshawa were at work building alternate structures to meet their needs and employing their own visions of citizenship. Interpreting citizenship as something to be exercised rather than taught, they set out to improve their own lives along with the lives of those around them, while also working together to provide for themselves those things which the reigning

socioeconomic order denied them. In the 1940s, then, the lives of many among the

working classes changed as avenues were opened to them in the areas of education,

health care and recreation. Collective action also secured better treatment within the

work environment. As such, despite the lack of material gains made throughout the

period, vast improvements were nonetheless made in terms of security, respect and

dignity. A thriving working class culture, organized through democratic will and funded

by democratic and voluntary efforts, allowed for such programmes to be organized by the

working classes for the working classes. While significantly improving their community

for the majority of its citizens, efforts to improve the local, provincial and national communities also continued.

Despite a major plank within the UAW which encouraged anti-discrimination within all walks of life, discrimination continued. Women, who had been embraced within the union during the war period found themselves abandoned following the cessation of hostilities. Discriminatory hiring practices continued, buttressed both by the union and the company. Furthermore, women would continue to receive discriminatory treatment at the hands of their brothers within the UAW.6 Much of the literature on women connected to the UAW has focused on their position within the workplace; meanwhile, the actions of those women who continued to fight for social justice, worked to improve their communities, and through collective effort independently of the union overcame some of the massive gender inequalities of the times have been completely overlooked or receive only brief mention in the histories of the UAW. Surely it is long past time to rectify this great injustice. The women who made Ladies' Auxiliary 27 146

displayed a deep commitment to their view of social justice. Often acting in cooperation

with the union, the auxiliary remained entirely independent of it. In this sense, the

women were able to finance and create their own political and social agendas. Although

issues of gender were not a central plank within their platform, they did address class

issues as they pertained to women and children of the time. Radically democratic and

militantly guarding its independence, the auxiliary raised concerns which were at the time

of the greatest importance to its membership. Fighting for rights which affected working

class communities as a whole, they continued to raise their collective voices in struggle

against the inequalities of the larger system as they saw them. Through collective action,

they worked tirelessly towards their conceptions of social justice.

This study has undoubtedly raised more questions than it has answered. The

focus here has been on community service, both in the ways which some service the

community through financial donations while others developed means of servicing their

communities through collective effort. However, a study which examines the

institutionalized legal and government systems in place at the time would undoubtedly

add to an understanding of the specific time and space in which people lived and

laboured. Furthermore, a broader study which provides a more detailed analysis of

Oshawa as it was before the union, and which traces the development of both the union and company over a longer period of time would also have much to offer. The compromises of the postwar era had an effect on future relations between the union, company and community for quite some time, and these effects continue to be felt today.

A local study is particularly important when dealing with one-industry towns or unions with strong traditions of democratic rank-and-file action which stress social unionism and community improvement, such as within the UAW - traditions which the Canadian Auto

Workers Union (CAW-TCA) has sought to maintain. However, detailed localized studies have little to offer on their own, and comparative studies are also of great benefit to historical scholarship.7 Comparisons between other locals of the UAW/CAW-TCA, other unions within one-industry towns, and even with company towns that never developed a strong union presence have much to add to working class history. 1 "Kettering Kept GM in the Lead," The Midweek (14 September 1983), 16. 2 R.S. McLaughlin, 75 Years of Progress (Oshawa: 18 September 1944). 3 Karl Marx with Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: Prometheus Books, 1998),

4 Erich Fromm, ed. Marx's Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1983), 52. 5 Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 2004),

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Newspapers:

Canadian Unionist. Daily-Times Gazette. Globe and Mail. News & Views. Oshawa Daily Times. Oshawa Free Press. Oshaworker Times-Gazette. Toronto Star. War-Craftsman. Personal Interviews:

Black, Anne [Henlock], Jackie Finn, Betty [Slater] Love, Betty [Holliday] Rutherford (14 May 2007). Clapp, Stewart and Ruth [Preston] (4 April 2007). Fleming, Roy (20 April 2007). Harlock, Earl 'Jiggs' and Tammy [Sheriff] (19 April 2007). Jackson, Gordon and Agnes [Cochraine] (18 April 2007). Mech, Myron (23 April 2007). Nugent, George and Jeannette [Mark] (17 April 2007). Sleeman, Charles (16 May 2007). APPENDIX - Short Biographical Sketch of Interview Participants

Black, Anne [Henlock]: Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Anne Black and her husband moved to Oshawa to seek employment. She is of Ukrainian descent. Anne joined Ladies' Auxiliary 27 in 1940 and has remained a member throughout her life. She was engaged in various jobs throughout her life, in conjunction with her work with the auxiliary, the last of which was employment at the post office.

Clapp, Ruth [Preston]: Before she married, Ruth Clapp worked at General Motors between 1942 and 1946. After she had her children she was unable to work until they were older. She then worked part-time in the service sector until retirement. She was also a member of Ladies' Auxiliary 27.

Clapp, Stewart: Of Welsh descent, Stewart Clapp's father immigrated to Canada so that his children would not have to work in the mines. Stewart was employed at numerous jobs while a teenager, and was educated at a technical school. He served in the army during World War Two, and married his wife Ruth in 1944. Stewart began working at General Motors in 1936 and retired in 1974.

Fleming, Roy: With a father who had been employed in the building trades in London, England, Roy Fleming received an early trade union education. His father came to Canada in 1912. Roy was raised in Oshawa, and has been very active in the union and the Union Rod and Gun Club from their outset. He was first hired at General Motors on April 13, 1934. Roy remains active in the retirees' chapter of the union, sits on the Retirees' Environmental Committee, and contributes a regular article to The Oshaworker. He served for several years on the Public Utilities Commission in Oshawa.

Harlock, Earl 'Jiggs': Born and raised in Oshawa, Jiggs Harlock worked at many jobs until he secured employment at General Motors. He spent his childhood engaged in farm labour while also going to school. He was first hired at General Motors in 1936 but lost his seniority when he was no longer classified in the boys' group. He subsequently joined the army and served during the Second World War. After working at Robson Leather and a laundry for some time, he was again hired at General Motors after the war. He retired from General Motors in 1974.

Harlock, Tammy [Sheriff]: Like so many among her cohort, Tammy Harlock had to quit school to help support her family. She helped her father at his tailor's shop, and worked for some time at Pedlar's in Oshawa. Tammy's father emigrated from Russia, and her family is of Jewish descent. She was employed in a few different factories during the war, but her formal employment came to an end with the cessation of hostilities. She

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took in sewing to help with the family finances, and once her children had grown she worked part-time at the library at Durham College.

Jackson, Agnes [Cochraine]: Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Agnes Jackson migrated to Oshawa in 1946. Trained as a teacher, she entered the civil service during the war. Once she had married she would have liked to continue working but was unable to find employment as she was married. She became a full-time mother and homemaker, occupying herself by becoming involved in various community organizations.

Jackson, Gordon: Born on the outskirts of Oshawa in 1919, Gordon Jackson has lived in the area throughout his life. He went to high school in Oshawa and worked at Beaton's Dairy until he left school to take a job at General Motors in 1937 where he started in the boys' group. He enlisted during the Second World War, during which time he met his future wife, Agnes. Gordon retired from General Motors in 1975.

Love, Betty [Slater]: Although only a girl during the 1937 strike, Betty Love hails from a long tradition of union activism. Her mother and father, George and Mary Slater, were long-time union activists and played a significant role in building the union in Oshawa. Her mother was president of Ladies' Auxiliary 27 from 1942 to 1954. Betty joined the auxiliary in 1940, and has remained active in it throughout her life.

Mech, Myron: Of Ukrainian descent, Myron Mech migrated to Oshawa with his family from western Canada. He worked at a variety of jobs throughout his youth, including farm labour, the tannery, Oshawa's relief store, and at a work camp during the Depression. His father began working at General Motors in 1926, where Myron was subsequently hired in 1937.

Nugent, George: Before he began working at General Motors in 1937, George Nugent was a caddy at the golf course in Oshawa. He was seventeen when he was first hired at General Motors in 1937, where he worked in the boys' group. George was born and raised in Oshawa. He married his wife Jeannette in 1950. He retired from General Motors in 1976.

Nugent, Jeannette [Mark]: Raised in Oshawa and the surrounding district, Jeannette Nugent's father worked for General Motors, and later her husband. Jeannette well remembers the Depression years, when her mother fed the many hungry people who would appear at their door. She took a business course which was offered in Oshawa, and was employed in various offices until she married, at which point she ceased working to care for her family.

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Rutherford, Betty [Holliday]: Raised on a farm just outside of Oshawa, Betty Rutherford carries many memories of the 1930s and 1940s. Situated along the railway tracks, their farm was a favourite haunt for those seeking a meal during their travels. Her family did not have much, but her mother always found a way to feed a hungry traveller in need. Betty remembers many interesting dinner guests. She worked for ten years on the line at Chrysler and raised five children. She married union activist Bill Rutherford and joined Ladies' Auxiliary 27 in 1945.

Sleeman, Charles: A long-time resident of Oshawa, Charles Sleeman first began working at General Motors in 1926 at the age of seventeen. He worked in the body shop where the first work stoppage which sparked the famous strike of 1937 occurred. Charlie lost his job during the Depression, and like so many other young men at the time, joined the community that rode the rails. He fondly remembers how the men looked out for one another in their time of need. His father and brothers also worked for General Motors, and his sister worked in the office. He has remained a lifelong union activist.

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