Union Zindabad! — South Asian Canadian Labour History in British Columbia
Union Zindabad! South Asian Canadian Labour History in British Columbia focuses on the history of South Asian1 immigrants as workers, and their relationship to the labour movement in BC.
Union Zindabad! South Asian Canadian Labour History in British Columbia focuses on the history of South Asian1 immigrants as workers, and their relationship to the labour movement in BC.
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Fraser Mills was a vast lumber plant on the north shore of the Fraser River, in what was then the Francophone
community of Maillardville—now a suburb of Coquitlam, c. 1930.
Image b-08359, courtesy of the Royal BC Museum.
Workers from all ethnicities were represented
on the Strike Committee, as well as all Relief
Committees. 10
The few South Asian women who lived at
Fraser Mills in 1931 also participated in the strike,
presiding over the union’s community kitchen
which served strikers at large outdoor tables using
produce, chickens and eggs donated by Japanese
and Chinese farmers.
“Everybody went out, although most of the
Orientals who were very, very afraid of being
shipped back to China or to Japan or to India. In
spite of all, they stood up. Although they didn’t
come very strong on the picket line, they never
scabbed and they never bucked the union.” 11
During the strike skills were bartered among
workers to provide basic services such as shoe
repairs, hair cuts and supplying firewood. On day
three of the strike, machine guns were mounted
at the mill gates by police, who kept the strikers
under constant surveillance.
At a mass strike support meeting in New
Westminster, millworker K. Mariyana outlined
their grievance with the long-standing exploitative
practice of labour contractors. He said that
Japanese workers had to go through a “Japanese
boss”, just as there was a “Sikh boss” and “Chinese
boss”, who for all intents and purposes, were
agents for the company. Asian and South Asian
workers were hired and fired at will. They had no
10 Minutes of Strike Committee, October 10, 1931, quoted in Jeanne Williams Meyers, “Ethnicity and Class Conflict at
Mallairdville/Fraser Mills: The Strike of 1931”, (Thesis, Simon Fraser University: 1982), 101.
11 William Elio Canuel, interview by Cheryl Pierson, March and May 1972, audio, Item AAAB0004, Reynoldston Research
and Studies oral history collection, Royal BC Museum.
Chapter 4 • Searching For Working Class Unity | 41
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