The 1923 series was also marred by bad feelings. The American entry, the Columbia, had been struck by a trawler and later hit a rock ledge before she even made it to the race. She, too, was not a regular working sailing ship but was allowed to race. In the first race, the Columbia forced the Bluenose into the dangerous Sambro ledges and the Bluenose’s main boom jammed into the Columbia’s rigging. Nonetheless, the Bluenose won the first and second race and held her title, only to have it challenged by the Americans who protested over which side of the marker buoys the Bluenose had passed on. The International Race Committee then gave the title to the Columbia, causing Angus Walters to lose his cool and tell them all to go to hell as he walked away. The befuddled committee told the Columbia captain to simply sail the course one more time and be declared the winner. Instead, the Columbia’s Captain Pine set sail for home. The $5,000 prize money ended up being split between the two ships as a compromise.
Back to the Grand Banks
The Halifax interests were angry at Angus Walters for leaving the race and asked Bill Roue to build a new ship that could beat the Bluenose. Roue constructed the Haligonian in Shelburne, but in 1926 it was defeated twice by the Bluenose.
The Bluenose continued to work the Grand Banks through the rest of the decade. While owners and fish dealers were making reasonable profits, the lowly fishermen averaged something less than $1,000 a year. Big storms in ’26 and ’27 hammered the fishing fleets, and in 1930 the Bluenose herself ran aground due to pilot error in Placentia Bay and languished for a few days on a gravel beach near Argentia. Later that same year, after repairs, she was back in the race at Gloucester, sailing against the Gertrude L. Thebaud, owned by a French-Canadian who lived part of the year in Gloucester. The races were plagued by light winds, then rain. The “American” ship was declared the winner but Angus Walters claimed he wasn’t beaten. The next year when the race was held off Halifax, Walters whipped the Gertrude L. Thebaud, taking the prize. The two ships wouldn’t compete together again until 1938.
In the intervening years of the Depression, the fishing industry went bad as markets for salt fish shrank and nearly everything went bust. Angus Walters had kept on in the fishing business, however, and, later in that decade as president of the fishermen’s union, lobbied in Halifax for a small one-quarter-cent-per-pound increase in fish prices.
The Bluenose sailed to the Great Lakes to represent Canada in the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Arriving with great fanfare, the ship soon became ensnared in a series of legal wrangles. She was sued, she was charged with customs infractions and her crew found a bullet-ridden body alongside. An article inCosmopolitan would later even suggest that Angus Walters lost his composure when a female sightseer touched the wheel of the schooner and he swore at her for having “violated” his ship.
Despite a few controversies, the Bluenose earned respect in many ports for her racing achievements and in 1935 she participated in the Silver Jubilee Sailpast before King George and Queen Elizabeth at Spithead, England. Walters did his diplomatic deed, met the king and proceeded to sail home, only to get slammed by a severe storm that keeled the Bluenose over, nearly sinking the great ship.
The Sinking of a Legend
She was already appearing on a Canadian fifty-cent stamp when her image was adopted for the new 1937 ten-cent coin, a little piece of Nova Scotia sailing history jingling around in the pockets of every Canadian. Her last international event was a five-race series off Gloucester, this time with fewer restrictions on sails and crew. The Bluenose was in rough shape and showed it. The Thebaud took the first race, and the Bluenose the second. In the end, the Bluenose won the event and, as in the past, there was a furor over how the races were run. Angus Walters said he’d never race in the U.S. after that.
By 1939, the Bluenose was an obsolete vessel and considered too vulnerable to submarine attacks. Her owners saw no future or profit left in the ship and Walters bought what was left of the once-grand schooner for $7,200*. He tried to raise money to preserve this national treasure but no government office or organization thought it of much concern. Instead, war was on everyone’s mind. The East India Trading Company bought the ship in 1942 and Walters reluctantly sent her off to ply the waters of the Caribbean as a coastal trading ship. On January 28, 1946, she hit a reef off Haiti. The crew got off and the ship held together long enough for her engines to be salvaged but after that, she was left to her fate.
In 1963, Walters drove the ceremonial spike for the keel of the Bluenose II with a bit more accuracy than the Duke of Devonshire had for the original, but he had stated more than once that “The wood is not grown yet, that will build a boat which will beat the Bluenose.” Walters died in 1968.
In his book Once Upon a Schooner, Silver Donald Cameron notes that “fully half the Gloucester fleet was manned by Nova Scotians . . . the Gloucester crews were just about as ‘American’ as a CFL football team is ‘Canadian.’’’ He points out that these races were competitions between men who were mostly Nova Scotian and that all the bickering was the result of politicians, financial backers and publicity hacks.
Despite the fact that no one seemed to care very much when the Bluenose was sent to an ignominious job in the south, her image lives on in the psyche of this province. To many Nova Scotians, the dBluenose represents the grandeur of the great days of sailing ships and the spirit of a province integrally tied to the sea.
Chapter 37
Chapter 37
Maritime Rights and Marginalized People
The 1920s were a time of economic ruin and rebellion for Nova Scotia. Saint Mary’s University historian John G. Reid suggests that the Great Depression which swept the country in the 1930s began much earlier in the Maritimes, as early as 1920, and lasted right through the Thirties. Nova Scotians were familiar with hard times, but for that new breed of worker totally dependent on mining and industrial jobs there would be a whole new dimension to the hardships inflicted on them by an economic slump.
Nova Scotians, however, didn’t take the punishment lying down. They worked hard to survive and, when necessary, fought back to protect their meagre earnings and their rights. It was a watershed period which shaped attitudes and government policy for many years to follow.
With the end of World War I, the country was readjusting to peace time. For Halifax, this meant continued recovery from the great explosion of 1917, which, despite its devastation, had set in motion relief programs that were the basis for significant social reform. There was a brief postwar boom that quickly fizzled and, because of the new economic changes in Nova Scotia, it looked as though the people here would not have much control over their own destiny.
Between 1922 and 1925, the Maritime Rights movement flourished, fuelled by grievances shared by the three provinces. The Maritimes were suffering as a result of changes in railroad rates and other stumbling blocks impeding the economy of the East. Dartmouth writer H.S. Congdon, a leading exponent of the Maritime Rights movement, put Upper Canada fully at fault for trying to “have these provinces destroyed.” Prime Minister Mackenzie King was slow to recognize the inherent truth in what was being put forward by the Maritime Rights activists and, for a while, turned a deaf ear. As a result of mutual problems, the 1920s was very much a time of solidaritey for New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Nova Scotia as a strong regional identity emerged.
Not everyone was to share in this feeling of unity, however, especially the marginalized Blacks, Mi’kmaq and, to a lesser degree, Nova Scotian Acadians. Mi’kmaqs were still left isolated on reserves and Blacks continued to go to segregated schools in accordance with the less-than-enlightened 1918 Nova Scotian Education Act.
Although women had received the vote in 1918, significant barriers to equality still stood in their way. Lower-class women worked for very low wages and employers hoped to keep it that way. Like their male counterparts, these workers would not always quietly acquiesce to the boss’s demands. In 1925, for example, Halifax telephone operators went on strike for better wage
s. Inequality in the workplace existed almost everywhere, including Dalhousie University where highly qualified women were relegated to lower-paying jobs than their male counterparts.
“In Terror of Revolution”
Historian T.W. Acheson points out that, as early as 1914, the Maritimes had become a branch-plant economy. It was not unlike the early days of British occupation when major economic decisions were made far away in London. Now, important economic decisions about Nova Scotia would be corporate ones made in boardrooms well outside the province. When companies begin to cut back, they tend to protect their operations close to home and shut down branches farther away. Nova Scotia was very much on the periphery of North American industrial development and jobs here were considered expendable.
More hard times were in store for Nova Scotia. There were problems with the province’s coal and troubles in the steel industry. Railroads were not expanding as expected and so there was a smaller market for Nova Scotia rails. Nova Scotia had lost considerable political power as well. By 1921, the entire Maritime region accounted for less than twelve percent of the country’s population, whereas, at the time of Confederation, it had bee*n nearly twenty percent. Nova Scotians simply had a weaker voice in Parliament and diminished means to insure that the federal government made decisions favourable to them.
A change in the National Policy, for example, reduced a tariff on imported coal that had once protected jobs and kept mines in production on Cape Breton. Freight subsidies that allowed all manner of goods from this region to move cheaply toward Central Canada were also chopped.
Government policy and outside control of industry led to a crisis in employment: almost half of the manufacturing jobs in the region disappeared during the first six years of the decade. The export of fish remained steaÿdy for a while, but that too was to decline.
Between the two great wars, another sort of war erupted in Nova Scotia, particularly in Cape Breton. It was a battle between workers and employers and it had its greatest impact on the lives of miners. When the Canadian government reduced the import tariffs on coal, the owners of the mines began to lower the wages for workers. Dominion Coal and Nova Scotia Steel and Coal companies, major employers in Cape Breton, had been merged into BESCO, the British Empire Steel Corporation, headquartered in Montreal but run by directors in Montreal, London, Toronto and New York. The company pretty well had a monopoly on coal and steel in Nova Scotia. They were calling the shots.
BESCO had probably not completely considered the depth of the frustration and the convictions of the highly organized Cape Breton coal miners as they began slashing wages. Under the banner of the United Mine Workers of America, militant leaders like J.B. McLachlan were prepared to cause the mine owners some serious grief, if they were ready to short-change these men for the hard work that was at the centre of their lives.
Activism on the part of industrial unions had grown dramatically in the region since 1900. Strikes were often turbulent and they were lengthy. One at the Springhill mine had lasted for more than twenty-two months. Imagine how the miners in Cape Breton felt in 1922 when BESCO announced they were ready to chop wages by nearly forty percent. BESCO was also closing some of its steel plants (including one in Sydney Mines) and wanted to trim the number of workers and wages in its mines. In June of 1922, Cape Breton UMW members saw a cataclysmic disaster ahead. They were good and riled and went so far as to call for the “complete overthrow of the capitalist system and capitalist state.” By August, “Red” Dan Livingstone and J.B. McLachlan had their men looking as if they were ready for just that as they went on strike.
One Member of Parliament reported to Prime Minister Mackenzie King that people were “in terror of revolution.” Five hundred troops had already pulled in from Halifax and Quebec to subdue the radicals. Five hundred more, as well as a thousand police, were on hand, and some influential advisers to government were suggesting that British warships should be brought into Sydney Harbour just in case things became really ugly.
This time around, however, there was very little violence. Red Dan signed a deal, “under muzzle of rifles, machine guns and gleaming bayonets,” calling for a wage cut of twenty percent instead of what BESCO had proposed.
Another strike broke out in 1923 as the steel workers fought to regain lost wages. The miners voted to support the strike after they had seen the troops arrive again and the provincial police lead a charge on horseback against the citizens of the Whitney Pier area. Livingstone and McLachlan were arrested for “seditious libel.”
There was yet another strike in 1924 when BESCO called for a further twenty percent loss of wages and a strike again in 1925. These were turbulent, heady times for Cape Bretoners, who were tired of being beaten down. In the intense strike of 1925, fighting broke out again and again between miners and company cops and nearly 2,000 troops were brought in to keep a lid on things. Grievances between miners and the government, the police, the military and the company would be deep-seated as the result of the tension during these times.
While the miners proved themselves to be dedicated and vigilant when it came to protecting their rights and their wages, there were no clear winners. The life of a miner and his family would continue to be a struggle. BESCO itself was in a deep financial mire before 1926 and the company was out of business by 1930. Dawn Fraser, a Cape Breton poet of the time, had this to say about the death of BESCO: “may Satan’s imps attend your hearse – adieu, adieu Cape Breton’s curse.” *
In 1926, Mackenzie King finally decided that the Maritimes really did have some special problems and the serious disadvantages should be addressed. He appointed Andrew Rae Duncan to head a royal commission and look into the mess. As a result of his commission Duncan suggested reform – a twenty percent reduction in freight tariffs, federal subsides for coal, steel and to the provinces themselves, along with financial assistance in developing the ports. John G. Reid notes that it was a fine-sounding proposal but that King and his cabinet had created it as pretty window-dressing and nothing significant came of it. i
The Prophet of Co-operation
The Twenties were a rough time for Nova Scotia. In many ways, the quality of life diminished as control over the economy moved out of the province. The union movement brought new militancy out of self-defence, but it also helped to draw a hard line between economic classes. On the other hand, the sense of regional unity had been sparked by the political and economic hammering that the province was taking, and it would be a basis for a revitalized identity reminiscent of pre-Confederation times.
One labour-related crusade that was to have a lasting impact on the region was the Antigonish Movement, led by a Catholic priest, Moses Coady. Coady saw that farmers and fishermen were being taken advantage of in their business dealings and wanted to help educate rural Nova Scotians to have more control over their own economic and social well-being. In 1928, Coady began to spread the word of co-operation through self-help groups. Co-ops were set up around the province for housing, consumer goods and medical concerns. Coady was a fiery, dedicated leader who argued that “Co-operation is the only means in our day through which the masses of people can again have a say in the economic processes.”
Fishermen and farmers organized to create their own marketing organizations so that they had more say over the price they would receive for their harvest. Some saw Coady as radical and dangerous T– after all, this was a kind of “communism.” But his approach was down-to-earth and practical and he won over many converts to his co-op way of thinking. Community education was at the heart of the movement and Coady was bolstered in his efforts by the even more “radical” priest Jimmy Tompkins, who created Canada’s first co-operative housing project outside Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, in 1935. He also helped establish credit unions and libraries to advance the cause.
The co-ops grew and became well-established and helped many Nova Scotians through the critical rough times of the Thirties and on into the 1940s. Coady went on to establish the Nova Scotia
Teachers’ Union and, in 1930, the United Maritime Fishermen’s Co-operative. Soon after his death in 1959, workers from the Coady Institute at St. Francis Xavier University were travelling to poorer countries around the world, spreading the methods that had proved so successful in a poverty-stricken Nova Scotia.
Living on a Dollar a Month
The 1930s was the decade of the Great Depression across North America, one that Nova Scotians had already experienced in a head start. Trying to protect their jobs, the Americans closed down the border to Nova Scotian immigrants looking for work, so now there would be no new money sent back home from the Boston States to help support families in the villages and outports. Within the province, the politicians who fared best were those who argued that they could do the most with the least. This was more the skill of the illusionist, not the realist.
Nearly every sector of industry was headed for the basement, and jobs vaporized. Between 1929 and 1933 the forestry business plummeted down seventy-five percent, fishing production was cut in half and the value of farming goods produced decreased by nearly forty percent. The need for coal was cut nearly in half and the steel industry fell by a whopping sixty-two percent.
Nova Scotia was reduced to a bare-bones economy and the system wasn’t ready to cope with the needs of the unemployed and their destitute families. Relief responsibility for all the victims of the economic crash fell not to the province or the federal government but to local levels of government. As a result, there were insane discrepancies in the relief money available from one town to the next. A relatively prosperous town such as Amherst doled out a hefty $5.70 per month (close to the Canadian average) to its 2,000 impoverished residents in 1933. If you lived in a poorer neighbourhood, like Guysborough, for example, you’d be lucky to receive Q$1 per month, although during many months there was nothing at all to offer to the most poor.
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