Work Through Time: Cape Breton Stories of Land & Sea

Army at Sydney Steel Plant, 1923.
Unknown. 83-6299-13599. Beaton Institute, Cape Breton University.

Canada Day 1923 is recorded in the spoken memories of many Whitney Pier residents. A walk home from Holy Redeemer Church on that day was referred to as a “riot at Number 4 Gate and in the adjacent streets.” That year the strike was lost, but a Royal Commission followed.

Bloody Sunday, July 1, 1923

An eyewitness account: “I saw them coming down Tupper Street four and six abreast…and the women taking their children off the street terrified of these army people…On Sunday night those provincial police rode down the people at Whitney Pier…most of whom were coming from church. An old woman was beaten…a nine year old boy was trampled…a woman gave premature birth after she was beaten over the head.”

The first effective move towards a general union of steelworkers, including immigrants, was the establishment of the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee in 1936 under the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Five years later, the first contract between workers and management at the Sydney Steel Plant was negotiated. The United Steelworkers of America (Sydney Local 1064) were active and recognized in the 1940s with important strikes in 1943 and 1946. These struggles formed the basis of a strong labour tradition in the Canadian steel industry.

Thanks to the work of the union, there has since been a concern for health and safety, and a gradual recognition of the skills required in steelmaking – the combination of strength and stamina with intellect and machinery, and now computers. There have also been dramatic changes in hiring practices; since the 1970s, workers from all ethnic and religious backgrounds can be found in every department and in managerial positions.

This article originally appeared in From the Pier, Dear! Images of a Multicultural Community, by Elizabeth Beaton and Mary Keating, published in 1993 by the Whitney Pier Historical Society.

ⓒ 1993 Whitney Pier Historical Society