strikes and family history

From mac
check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reesor_Siding_Strike_of_1963

so i am back in kap. I have not been here since i was two, my mother's family is from here and there is much family history, emotions and politics involved

to begin with, my first memory is a trip to kap. I was two, i had been in the hospital for a long time after a strep infection spread to my hip and i almost lost use of the leg. the day i was released my dad picked me up and took me by overnight train to kap for christmas. we had no food and he begged a bannana from a porter. I remember sleeping on the lower bunk then waking up and seeing the trees go by for hours outside the window. Last night watching the northern lights out the bus window brought this back

i should explain, my mother grew up here. Her father, Fred Flatt, was manager of the mill, fluent in Cree, French and a little German, very well respected. This was the management side of the family, my other grandfather being a freverent union member and CCF member.

everything i heard about pop (Fred) has been amazing. He was so loved in Kap that they named a road here after him. My mother and my father have had only wonderful things to say about him, and he actually had a huge influence on my father and (I think) his approach to working with people.


Then I found out he was the mill manager when 11 union members were shot dead at reesor siding. Admittedly, the company was not there when the shooting happened - independent farmers were scabbing during an important strike, basically supplying the timber mill with wood during the strike (they supplied up to 25 percent of the mill's wood usually), the workers went out - unarmed- to stop them loading wood. Though the OPP was present, they did not disarm the farmers, nor interfere when they opened fire killing eleven workers.

Sure no one from the mill management was there as far as i can tell. But the mill owners asked for the seven day weeks to meet quota, the mill owners asked for the wage freeze at this time, both of which led to the strike. And like it or lump it (my pop worked the floor himself in his early years) my pop would have been the face of this management

in his later years, pop fought the owners over pollution issues. As well, he had a rep for being very close to his workers. He must have been very torn when the massacre happened, and perhaps this had something to do with his disillusionment with the  Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company in his later years

To add to the mix, and this is not something I talk about, my mother, who was always a little fey (sadly she is deeply affected with alzheimers now a days and not the brilliant creative woman i was raised by though still soo lovely) swore that my pop traded his life for mine. When I was so sick at two, he spent a time alone with me in the hospital room. Soon after he was diagnosed with cancer and died around when i was five

I have a plan. I will visit his grave, i owe him many things, the stories my father told me of a man who loved  the people who worked for him, who loved to fish and be in the bush, bring things forward that i wish to emmulate. I will bring him flowers

and i will bring flowers to the memorial for the workers killed a reesor siding

i miss you pop. Strangely, it is your fire and compassion i think i bring to the work i do to overturn capitalism which in the end is a system which alienates all of us who are forced to work for it.