Nanaimo, Duncan, & District Labour Council 

2012 Joseph Mairs Memorial

Ladysmith, Jan 21, 2012

Despite cold, rainy weather, this year's Joseph Mairs Ceremony was well attended in Ladysmith today. Trade unionists, some elected officials and labour entertainers met at St. Joseph's to commemorate the death of Joseph Mairs on January 14^th, 1914 and to discuss our common political conditions.



Entertainer Beverly McKeen opened the meeting with a new song about the use of plastics, and Martyn Jones and Charlie Fox sang some more traditional labour songs.

















Duncan Brown, newly elected school trustee in SD 79, introduced the agenda and other elected officials in the audience, including re-elected councillor Tom Duncan from Duncan, trustee Eden Haythornthwaite and NDP Member of Parliament Jean Crowder from Nanaimo-Cowichan. Alastair Haythornthwaite, IAMAW rep, noted that just as Joseph Mairs faced greedy multinationals 98 years ago, so do we.

Notorious robber baron James Dunsmuir had sold his more profitable coal holdings to another capitalist tycoon, William Mckenzie, in 1905, and those holdings eventually became Canadian Colleries Limited. By 1918 Dunsmuir sold the by then failing E&N Railroad to the Canadian government, where it was swallowed up as part of the CNR in 1923.

In the late 1800's and early 1900's upwards of 600 men were killed in the mines by completely inadequate working conditions. The strike of 1912-1914 in Ladysmith came after the United Mine Workers had organized all the mines on Vancouver Island, and were seeking safer working conditions. The Vancouver and Nanaimo Coal Mine settled in 1913, but CCL would not.

Canadian Colleries tried to send in scabs to operate the mine but in August 1913, the miners took over the town and drove out the scabs. In collusion with the owners, the Attorney General sent in the militia who arrested the strikers. Joseph Mairs was arrested and jailed in Oakalla for a year. While there, he became ill, prison staff refused him medical treatment, and 22 year old Joseph Mairs died in prison.

Class Language of Economics



Dr Ingo Schmidt, an economist from the Labour Studies program at Athabaska University, has co-authored and edited a number of books, most recently a volume on Varieties of Neoliberalism (in German) and is finishing, with Bryan Evans, a volume on Social Democracy After the Cold War .

He began by explaining he grew up in West Germany with working class parents who sent him to university – where he learned to speak not only working class language but academic languages designed to humiliate workers.

Economists, and other academics, he said, deny the existence of class. They will concede only that workers exist as a “factor of production”, one that is arrogant and too expensive. The very idea of class is disparaged, so that workers are not encouraged to band together and act as a class. The class of capital, on the other hand is adored and admired.

Economists, he said, will tell workers that it's up to you to choose what you want to do. If you don't have a job it's because you decided voluntarily not to work. If you do find work, but it doesn't pay well, it's because you decided not to go to university. If you go to university but can't find a job, it's the fault of minimum wages and union supporters that you can't find a job.

It's also your fault because you haven't voted for a market oriented party that would do away with unions, minimum wages and pensions. Having pro union legislation, public pensions, and fair taxes all discourage capitalists and cause them to flee to other countries so they won't “create” jobs in your country. All this, said Dr Schmidt, is utterly wrong.

The irony is, he said, that after all this talk of no class, economists really do believe in class struggle – the capitalist class struggle. They claim only capitalists create jobs, deride everything about unions and the welfare state that impede capitalism, and do their level best to make the working class believe in their nonsense.

Economists have trained a whole cadre of those who assist the capitalist class – lawyers, teachers, managers and journalists who have all swallowed some economics at university. They may not understand all the fancy words, or the lines of formulae, but the underlying message is clear. Unions are bad and so are their fellow travellers.

Why do working people buy into these messages? Because conservative political parties appeal to the pride of working people, because they target individual working people but never approve of those working people who band together in groups to fight for their class – these people are always lazy slobs who want a good life at the expense of others.

Next Steps

We need, he said to learn from these economists – what works. We need to combine independent concerns such as job loss, inflation, pensions, out sourcing as a labour movement. We need to find, he said, a slogan that is as effective as the 8 hour day slogan was at the turn of the century – one that combines issues of the working class with the big picture. And then we have to take discontent and turn it into energy.

Conclusion

The meeting concluded with Gabe Haythornthwaite summarizing the points made at the meeting and then Frank Nichols leading the meeting to Joseph Mair's gravesite in Ladysmith Cemetery to lay flowers in remembrance.

Maggie Phinney Honoured at Retirement

    Maggie Phinney, a Long time HEU delegate from Malaspina - Mid Island Local was honoured recently after her retirement.  Maggie has fought staunchly for the rights of people with disabilities.

  The plaque reads " In appreciation of many years of dedication to the labour movement as a delegate to the Nanaimo, Duncan & District Labour Council from the Hospital Employees Union."


Maggie has moved back to the East Coast to live.

2011 Joseph Mairs Celebration Has Political Discussion

This year the annual Joseph Mairs memorial in Ladysmith featured a panel discussion on
“how can we build a democratic political program which meets our needs now?”

The annual memorial is in honour of labour martyr Joseph Mairs. The 22 year old miner one of dozens of miners locked out at one Dunsmuir's Ladysmith coal mines to defeat the miner's demands for recognition of their United Mine Workers of America local.

The miners had control of the town of Ladysmith for only three days, and 41, including Mairs, were arrested after the Provincial Government sent the militia from Victoria.

Sentenced to a year in jail and a $100 fine, Mairs contracted a serious illness while in Oakalla Prison. Prison officials neglected to provide medical assistance, and Mairs died in Oakalla Prison.

His fellow miners erected this memorial in his honour several years later.




 Sharon Hazelwood, Art Farquharson & Friends



This year's memorial began with a musical interlude with Sharon Hazelwood, Art Farquharson and friends.



Duncan Brown, from the Community Alliance for Public Education introduced the agenda for the meeting.


First were more labour songs from Beverly McKeen and Martin Brown, as below.
















    Following the music, Duncan introduced a labour panel to lead the discussion of the day.



Panel participants Sister Ellen Oxman, (President of the Nanaimo Duncan and District Labour Council), Brother Stan Dzbik (President of Machinist LL456) and Sister Barb Biley (HEU) from the Comox Valley.


Alastair Haythornthwaite opened the discussion with a short summary of the history of Labour Politics in Canada. He noted the Supreme Court had recently affirmed the right to form unions and bargain collectively as a fundamental part of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yet, he said, corporate monopolies still dominate the economic and political life, and the present attempts by the wealthiest 5% of the population to roll back all the advances won by labour.


Ellen Oxman spoke of the need to bring people into politics one at a time. She noted there is a lot of work to do, but it can be done. Brother Dzbik noted it was a difficult question to answer, especially with the high level of apathy among youth. He finds it difficult to convince people to take part. He is convinced labour needs its own media as the mainstream media convinces workers to work against their own self-interest.

Sister Biley said the prevailing definition of politics described it as the domain of rich and powerful people. In fact politics has become a dirty word amongst the people. She preferred to redefine politics as the ability to participate in decisions which affect our lives. She predicted the gap between political perception and political power will grow, and every day farmers, workers and fishers are told they do not know enough to make the decisions.

Sister Oxman noted that it is in municipalities where the need of honest representation was keenly felt. She observed a lot of decisions are made at the municipal and local level. Brother Dzbik also noted the problem of candidates accepting support from labour councils and others on the basis of supporting progressive programs. Once elected, some representatives do what they want and often side with business and government against the interests of their supporters. Not controlling our own media he said, is one reason this happens.

Sister Biley observed community organizations and their activists have to work to become experts in matters under dispute. She mentioned Coal Watch as an example of a locally based group who oppose corporate power, foreign capital and Government policies. The recall campaign against Comox Valley MLA Don, McRae was another example of political power in the hands of people.

When Alastair asked the panel, "What worked in the past? Is it still viable today?", Sister Oxman replied that organizing still works, as does a healthy dose of indignation. Unions today, she said are more political and work harder than in the past. What's needed is a desire to make things better for everyone, not just union members. People want change, and we can get our changes, not through violence, but through politics, if people participate.

Brother Dzpik said that poverty was a big motivator in the past, but people's lives are relatively better now, and as they have enough, they are not so moved to stand up and fight. He said people need to see the corporations take away what we have, bit by bit.

Sister Biley thanked the Joseph Mairs Memorial for  organizing the discussion. She knows it is better to have everyone involved. She used as an example Stelco workers who have mobilized an entire city in their striggle against US Steel. With weekly Thursday meetings, rank and file members of the local know more about the steel industry than any politician.

Doug Creba, President of Mid-Island Co-op disagreed with Sister Biley's characterization of parties as arbitrary. He said he was a member of the NDP which matched the views of the assembly, and that he felt the co-op movement provided a template of a better economic order.

Sister Biley claimed that political parties exist primarily to form government, and are tightly controlled with the leaders vetting each candidate. Brother Dzpik complained about the concentration of power in the hands of leaders like Stephen Harper. What power do individual MPs or MLAs have?

Sister Oxman noted that it was a myth that leftists don't know how business works. She noted many small business people also belong to the NDP. She pointed to the damage corporate tax cuts do to the economy, and how corporations try to persuade small business to identify with  the monopolies.


Next, a member of CUPE said he thought the discussion was "mind-blowing". He noted we no longer talked to our neighbours or kids about politics. When the coal miners went on strike in Ladysmith (editorial correction - lockedout), they were all in the same boat. Now we are each in our on world. We need to talk to our neighbours about the issues facing us. He suggested we start by changing our food buying habits to buy 10% more locally as a start.

Ken Hibert summed up the discussion, noted that in some ways, we were preaching to the converted. He hopes the video of the discussion gets wide circulation.






Next, Bob Smits, Administrator of the Nanaimo, Duncan & District Labour Council, and also Financial Agent for Jean Crowder, presented Alastair with a book on deep rock mining written by MP Charlie Angus, as a gift from MP Jean Crowder.

Following this, the participants were piped to the cemetary, about 1 block away. Following a brief speech, participants laid flowers on Joseph Mairs Memorial









 

Betty Smits, NDDLC Treasurer, lays flowers on behalf of the Nanaimo, Duncan & District Labour Council

2010 - Ginger Goodwin Memorial Still Going Strong

In 2010, 92 years after he was murdered by Dan Campbell, one might have expected the annual celebration of his life at the Cumberland Cemetery to be a private and intimate affair. Instead, those honouring the former BC Federation of Labour Executive member walked to the cemetery from the Cumberland Museum, near the site of the former office of Cumberland unions, where many more joined them.

2010 Labour Representatives Arrive at Cemetery

Speaking at a dinner held later that evening in Cumberland, Jim Sinclair, President of today's BC Federation of Labour, began by pointing out that the most radical thing a worker can have is a long memory. One of the reasons the establishment in 1918 was willing to go after a man whose tuberculosis had already made him unfit for military service was the way he tried to stop workers from participating in and dying in World War 1.

Ginger Goodwin was defiant - of the ruling classes. He knew the economic system was there to serve the needs of the rich, and to oppress working people. He would have been against our participation in the wars in Iraq or Afgahanistan. He was killed because he was a visible reminder of the opposition to Canadian participation in British wars.



 Art Farquharson, well known labour activist began this years ceremony with a number of well known songs including Banks of Marble and Family Car.

      Art Farquharson, at left

Former Campbell River, Courtenay & District Labour Council President Marianne Bell spoke about women in Cumberland the simlarities between 1918 and today as far as workers were concerned. Stephen Hume, (who is married to Susan Mayse, author of Ginger Goodwin, Cumberland's Martyr) spoke eloquently about paying tribute to those often forgotten, the men and women who are killed and injured on the job.

The miners in the graves at Cumberland died for small wages in some of the most dangerous mines in the world. They were gassed, burned beyond recognition, vaporized in massive explosions, crushed by cave-ins and blowouts, drowned, asphyxiated, mangled and maimed in runaway equipment.

At the ceremony, after representatives of today's unions and the NDP laid a bouquet of flowers at Ginger's gravesite, a red rose was laid on the grave of each man known to have died in the Cumberland mines. Miner's Memorial Day isn't just about miners, he said,  it's about all the loggers and fishboat crews, truck drivers and bicycle couriers, oil rig workers and police officers,  bush pilots and nurses who face risks on the job.

            Marianne Bell

    Kybor and Gordon Carter Sing " The Day They Shot Ginger Down"
   To hear the song as it was performed in 2009,
    click here The Day They Shot Ginger Down



An Iranian labour activist reminded those present that conditions in Iraq were especially difficult. Earlier this year, Farzad Kamangara, a teacher, was executed for "endangering national security" and "enmity against God". He was convicted in a sham trial lasting less than 5 minutes.




















 North Island NDP MLA Claire Trevena




                   
Following the ceremonies at Ginger's grave, the participants were piped to "miner's row" where many men who could not be identified were buried. A rose was placed on each miners gravesite, followed by visits to the Chinese and Japanese cemeteries to do the same. 

While undoubtably many come to honour a labour hero, a great deal of emphasis is also placed on just getting together with others of like mind and the camraderie and good will and renewed determination that goes with every Miner's Memorial Day in Cumberland.








Below, NDDLC Delegate and Hospital Employees Union North Island Regional Rep Carol Bunch lays a wreath at the gravesite of an unknown miner killed in a mine disaster.

Are Those Roses Worker Friendly?

Meaghan Cursons of the Cumberland Museum explained that all the flowers used in the ceremonies are fair trade flowers from the Comox Valley Flower Mart.

"The international cut flower industry is devastating for women.  There is heavy pesticide use throughout the cut flower industry.  So this year we had a real serious conversation about where those flowers are coming from."

“You really need to think about who is producing roses, what is their wage like, what is their quality of life like, and how far are the flowers flying in jet planes—some really important questions.  So I hope that every year that we’re challenged by doing this right.”

Joseph Mairs Memorial Held in Ladysmith January 24

The annual Joseph Mairs Memorial was held January 24 in Ladysmith BC with a gathering at St Mary's Catholic Church, followed by a graveside service and laying of flowers in Ladysmith Cemetery.

The meeting began with a song from Art Farquharson and Alan O'Dean.

Alastair Haythornthwaite then briefly described the historical situation after World War 1 , the change of former superpower Britain to a junior partner of the U.S.A. and some of the events where Canada acquiesced to US actions, including the invasions of Grenada and Somalia.

He went on to point out similarities between the demand to reduce wages and working conditions during the 1914-1918  war and the subequent foreign wars to enforce corporate rule with conditions after 911.    
   
        Charlie Fox                                                                            Art Farquharson


He then introduced Charlie Fox to sing his Joseph Mairs song about the young miner who died from inadequate medical care while imprisoned for participating in the 1912-1913 coal mine strike in Ladysmith.

Charlie, who recently lost his wife Verna to illness, pointed out that behind events in the past were concealed ideas that only become clear to us as time goes by.

In his song, Fox pointed out the mines had taken a million tons of coal from Vancouver Island, and Mairs died in Oakalla.

Alastair Haythornthwaite then introduced the guest speaker, Professor Ben Isitt. (Below)

Isitt began by noting that Canadian workers of today can learn lessons from what workers in the WWI era went through. Just as now, the political elite were opposed to popular social movements, and the process of waging war amplified social tensions in the country.

Foreign adventures, including the Allied intervention in Soviet Russia which saw Canadian troops  sent to fight against Soviet workers, the examples of war profiteering, and the conscription crisis led to the radicalizing of industrial unionism.
Ben Isitt at Left

During the war, workers saw the evidence of cold storage plants groaning with food, while wholesalers hoarded food in order to profit, created a mounting gulf between    
workers and the political elite.

Workers forced into the army paid a very high price. 24,000 Canadians were killed, 600,000 Allied soldiers died, and the plans to conscript unwilling recruits increasingly radicalized workers.

The BC Federation of Labour including Vice President Ginger Goodwin,  organized a referundum on conscription - if approved, the Fed would organize a general strike if the government brought in conscription. Worried a Trail smelter strike would cut off zinc and magnesium from war  production, the draft board, ignoring Goodwin's lung condition that had exempted him from service, classified him as fit and ordered him to serve.

Goodwin, as we know, fled to Vancouver Island where he was shot by former Police Constable Dan Campbell and died of his wounds. The VDLC organized a 24 hour general strike on the day of his funeral.

As the radicalization of workers increased, there were riots in Quebec, and by returned veterans in Toronto. The government banned the IWW, many socialist parties and imposed widespread censorship, outlawing union newspapers and other publications.  Canadian workers called for Hands Off Russia.

On the 21st of December, 1/3 of Canadian troops in Victoria waiting to be sent to Russia mutinied and had to be forced to march at bayonet point past Fort and Quadra to a waiting ship. The ringleaders were court martialed. The hysteria among the political elite led to the deportation without trial of radicals.

More and more workers were joining the OBU - the One Big Union. In Winnipeg in 1919 a local strike mushroomed into a general strike. Even though the strikers did no damage or caused any violence, while "special constables" provoked the strikers at every turn. Even the police were out on strike. Finally the RCMP opened fire on the strikers.

JS Woodsworth, who had been charged with libel for quoting verse from the Bible in support of the strikers, became Member of Parliament. The Comunist Party was formed in 1921, and there was an upsurge of support for the Farmer/Labour parties.

Isitt ended by pointing out that WW1 left Canada affluent. The circumstances were different from today, but the antagonisms are the same.




Piper Frank Nichols then led the participants to the cemetery where members of his union marked the graveside of Joseph Mairs with a cenotaph.




































































Treasurer Betty Smits and Vice President Jim Sadlemyer
lay flowers at the graveside of Joseph Mairs. 

Ginger Goodwin - A Worker's Friend

Albert "Ginger" Goodwin

On July 27 of 1918, United Mine Workers labour organizer Albert "Ginger" Goodwin was shot in the throat by a hired private policeman outside Cumberland, British Columbia. His murder sparked Canada's first General Strike .

‘Ginger' knew what side he was on.

He wasn't a tall man - just over 5 feet, 6 inches. Frail. Suffering from lung disease - probably tuberculosis. His only distinguishing feature was his red hair.

Albert "Ginger" Goodwin didn't look like much, but he had a towering moral presence. His short life was spent fighting for people who work hard for little reward - and it ended with a bullet and immortality as a labour martyr.

Goodwin was born in Treeton, Yorkshire, England on May 10, 1887. He was 15 - relatively old - when he started work in the Yorkshire coal mines. In 1906, he emigrated to Canada in search of a better life and found work in the Cape Breton coal mines.

In 1909, the miners went on strike. They lost. Black-listed and broke, Goodwin moved to Cumberland on Vancouver Island. Again he worked in the coal mines. He was active in the strike of 1912-1914. It appears that the vicious coal strike on Vancouver Island  radicalized Goodwin's views.

After brief jobs in Merritt and Fernie, Goodwin began work in the Trail smelter in 1916. Goodwin was elected Vice-President of the British Columbia Federation of Labour in 1917 and secretary of the Trail Mill and Smeltermen's Union, Local 105 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. 

When Goodwin arrived in Trail he started on with Cominco, as a smelterworker. He soon joined the Socialist Party of Canada  local, and within two months ran as their candidate in the provincial election of 1916 for the Trail riding. One of Goodwin’s trademarks at this time was his anti-militarism, and his aggressive rhetoric against the war in Europe. He decried it as an attack on the international working class, and encouraged all workers to refuse to go. In 1917, when the draft was introduced in BC, Goodwin and the BC Federation of Labour organized a referendum demanding the labour movement use the general strike should any workers be drafted against their will.

Soon after, Goodwin became involved in an organizing drive at the Cominco smelter with the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelterworkers (Mine-Mill). Goodwin opposed World War I for political reasons: he believed that workers should not kill each other in economic wars. He registered for conscription as required by law, was medically examined, and was placed in category D (temporarily unfit). Shortly after, he led a strike at Trail to obtain the eight-hour day for smelter tradesmen. On 26 Nov. 1917, 11 days after the strike began, he received a telegram ordering a medical re-examination.

Despite his lung problems, his conscription status was changed from "unfit" to "fit for service in an overseas fighting unit." The reclassification amounted to a death sentence. This came immediately on the heels of Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden stating that there was “no likelihood” of men in categories B, C, D, and E being sent to war. “It is only men who have been included within Category A who can be called out for active service in the trenches,” he added. Sensing treachery, Goodwin’s Mine-Mill local protested, but to no avail. Goodwin was re-examined, and classified A – ready for the front. He was given a month to report for duty.

Goodwin’s last union function was attendance at the January 1918 convention of the British Columbia Federation of Labour. He was nominated for president but he declined to run. His appeal against conscription was rejected by a tribunal on 20 Jan. 1918. The final appeal was heard by Lyman Poore Duff* of the Central Appeal Tribunal, who denied it on 15 April 1918. Goodwin was ordered to report to army barracks, but he hid in the mountains west of Cumberland with others resisting conscription, who were supplied with food by friends. He lived off the land there with a small group of other draft dodgers, whose general whereabouts were known but who had been successful in hiding for months.

On 27 July Goodwin was shot to death with a single bullet by Dan Campbell, a former Constable of the Dominion Police, one of three members of a police search-party looking for men who were evading the Military Service Act. Campbell claimed self-defence, saying Goodwin had pointed a rifle at him.  Provincial police charged Campbell with manslaughter and produced witnesses who told the preliminary investigation that he had vowed to “get” the fugitives “dead or alive.” The trial at the fall assize was moved to Victoria from Nanaimo at the request of the defence. The grand jury in closed session returned “no bill,” that is, a refusal to commit Campbell for trial.

Goodwin’s funeral on 2 August in Cumberland drew a mile-long procession and, in Vancouver on the same day, his death prompted British Columbia’s first general strike. Cumberland was overrun as thousands of people turned out for Goodwin’s funeral. Buried with all the attendant rites the labour movement could offer, Goodwin became a symbol for an increasingly radicalized population. When workers in Vancouver downed tools across the city to protest his murder, they offered a brief preview of the labour strife that would become a six-week general strike in the spring of 1919. When, after a short investigation, Campbell was not even charged with Goodwin’s murder, further protest occurred.

The strike Goodwin had led at Trail had been called off on 20 Dec. 1917 without its aim being achieved, but the next April the provincial government legislated the eight-hour day for all smelter workers, effective 31 March 1919.

The controversial nature of Ginger Goodwin’s death has prompted continuing speculation and suspicion; it has also focused attention on his short life and meteoric rise to trade-union leadership. His surviving writings show a rough-hewn assault on capitalism, a call for the achievement of a more just society through the replacement of private ownership of the means of production by production for use, not profit, and an anti-militarism that made him urge workers of all nations not to participate in economic wars. The methods he advocated for achieving the new society were “education, organization and agitation” and the election of members to legislatures. With Marxist rhetoric, he referred to wage slaves who “would rise up in rebellion and overthrow the master class.” He could also sound utopian, portraying post-capitalism as “the new age with its blossoms of economic freedom, happiness and joy for the world’s workers.” His union activity, like that of Frank Henry Sherman* in Alberta, showed a pragmatism which sought a more immediate redress of wrongs. The courage of Goodwin’s conviction in resisting militarism when he was conscripted during wartime, with what proved to be fatal consequence to himself, has been better appreciated in peacetime.

His remains are buried in the Cumberland cemetery: nearby, a section of the Island Highway had been named "Ginger Goodwin Way" until the Campbell Liberals renamed it in a fit of pique. He won't be forgotten.

Ginger Goodwin's Funeral

August 2, 1918

“I never saw the funeral because Father, I guess, more or less wanted to keep us kids out of it and we didn't go into town and view it. But the casket was packed shoulder high right through Cumberland,” Ken Hurbury said. “When one bunch of men got tired, another bunch went in. He was all highly thought of, you know. A man has to be highly thought of when he's accused of a crime and billed as a criminal and yet the whole town turns out for the funeral and he's packed shoulder high throughout the town.”

The white coffin was piled high with flowers. When the procession reached the outskirts of town the pallbearers dropped it from shoulder height but still spelled each other off on the road eastward. Past the brewery; past the road in Number Five pit where Ginger had worked before the Big Strike, past Slaughterhouse Road; through the marshy flats of the company farm where broken down pit mules ended their days; they walked up and around a gentle hill.

At the crest, just where the road swings north toward the Japanese and Chinese cemeteries and on to Courtenay, any who looked back that sunny day would see smoke from Cumberland chimneys; and beyond; the Beaufort Range spanning the eastern horizon; a little snow would still cling in the high snowfields; eagles and raven would wheel above the smoky blue mountain wall glistening with still glaciers.

Some looked back and thought, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth. Joe Naylor would not be one who thought so. Like his dead friend, he had little patience with parsons, and the only help that had come to Ginger Goodwin among those hills came not from heaven but from the common clay of friends. Miners, farmers, merchants like the Campbells; that miners who brought their own languages and customs in a new country steeped in old world cruelty; socialists all the more determined to bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old; their children, their wives and husbands; their friends; Cumberland people remembered that when the head of Ginger Goodwin's funeral procession reached the cemetery, the last marchers still waited to leave town.

The funeral included everybody in town, practically. They called it a mile of people,” Karl Cue remembered. “Everybody loved him, you know.”

Excerpt from “Ginger” by Susan Mayne.

Still Remembered Today

Today Ginger Goodwin is still the focus of Miner's Days, held in Cumberland every year in late June. The Campbell River, Comox and District Labour Council spearheads this effort, organizing breakfasts, talks, and the singing of labour songs at the Cumberland Museum, followed by the laying of flowers and a memorial service at Goodwin's gravesite in the Cumberland Cemetery.



Here, Betty Smits, Treasurer of the Nanaimo, Duncan & District Labour Council, lays flowers at the 2009 annual ceremony at the Cumberland Cemetery.