Chapter 8. 8 After Lenkurt

It was not over. There were important repercussions. The most immediate and personal of these was that the Lenkurt Electric Company rejected seventy-six of the original 257 strikers.1 As threatened, the 181 who were taken on again lost all their accumulated seniority. Their pension, as well as their health and life insurance contributions would also be restored only after a year of work starting from the date of their rehiring.2 Most of those who were rejected by Lenkurt as unemployable troublemakers eventually drifted off into other areas of work. Brian Bethel, for instance, was provided a six-month stint as a longshoreman by the ILWU before becoming a long-time cable television installer, then supervisor, for Shaw Cable.3 As could be expected, none of the shop stewards were rehired. Les McDonald’s initial wish list for a unity slate of the left in the upcoming executive board elections in Local 213 was dealt an initial blow when George Brown, Lenkurt’s chief shop steward, was immediately rejected by the company upon reapplication for employment. As a tool-and-die maker, not an electrician, he had little hope of ever becoming a member of Local 213 again.

More was to come, this time from the IBEW itself. Leading activists involved in the Lenkurt strike were put on trial by the executive board of Local 213 “with added members sitting as Trial Board.”4 One of these was Jack Shirkie, International representative from Winnipeg. He replaced the now widely detested Jack Ross, who was making himself scarce. The charges were for participating in an illegal strike and for contravening several other clauses in the IBEW’s constitution. The internal trials ran from June 21 to July 19 at the Dunsmuir Street union hall, with suspensions handed down ranging from one to forty years. In addition to Art O’Keeffe, twenty-six electrical workers were charged with having violated the IBEW’s constitution.5 Significantly, this was more than had been suspended in the aftermath of the George Gee affair in 1955 and began a series of events demonstrating that the Lenkurt strike would be even more impactful. Those suspended included some of the main activists in the local union—Les McDonald, Jess Succamore, John Kapalka, Tom Constable, Sam Shannon, George Angus, George Brown, George Sharpe, and Barry Sharbo—plus some sixteen other Lenkurt members.6 But hardly any of the accused, whom the executive board described as “the extremist group who were responsible for leading 257 members of Lenkurt Electric on an illegal walk-out,” appeared to defend themselves.7 Having seen this movie before, the accused had decided beforehand that the Trial Board and its methods constituted a kangaroo court whose decisions had already been decided behind closed doors; the outcome was that the pronouncements on the severity of their punishment would be made in absentia. In a written submission, Les McDonald tried to delay the inevitable, pointing out that BC Supreme Court trials were about to begin and could be prejudiced by accusations and evidence presented in the union proceedings. But his plea for delay fell on deaf ears.8 John Kapalka was given a one-year suspension for permitting Art O’Keeffe to speak at the May 15 special general meeting, as he had been led to believe was agreed to by everyone on the executive board. The presidential hopeful and rival of Angus MacDonald on the unity slate was now also out of contention for the executive board elections. Tom Constable was fired from his position as assistant business manager, then suspended for three years; George Angus received a fourteen-year suspension; George Brown received a fifteen-year suspension. But the most severe sentences were meted out to Jess Succamore and Les McDonald. Succamore received two sentences for a total of twenty-five years, to be served consecutively. McDonald, also for two consecutive sentences, received a total of thirty years’ suspension. Both eventually appealed. Succamore’s appeal for having violated Article XXVII, Section 2, Subsection 12, of the IBEW constitution was initially successful, his sentence being reduced to five years by a Local 213 Trial Board review panel. Bill Ladyman, however, reimposed the original twenty-five-year sentence; it is not too much of a stretch to think that Jack Ross’s fat lip might have had something to do with it.9 Les McDonald also garnered little sympathy as he was symbolically the first electrical worker ordered to appear before the Trial Board.10 He had been targeted right from the beginning of proceedings, and it undoubtedly did not help his case that an informer in Division “E” of the RCMP Special Intelligence Branch had noted that “Les McDonald has been one of the key figures in promoting agitation” within Local 213.11 Did the RCMP Special Intelligence Branch co-ordinate its information with the International Office of the IBEW? The answer to this intriguing question remains unknown; it is not as if the International Office needed the RCMP’s help, as it was already fully informed about who was doing what in their agitated Vancouver local. But it certainly didn’t help matters. In two separate registered letters, Les McDonald was accused, like the others, of having violated the IBEW’s constitution. His first suspension was for having contravened the same constitutional provision as Jess Succamore. This was for his participation in disrupting the executive meeting of May 9 and for being present in the executive board meeting room when Angus MacDonald and Jack Ross were assaulted. The second fifteen-year suspension was for the role he played while being present during the violence on the Lenkurt picket lines.12 His thirty-year sentence, unquestionably meant to act as a deterrent to other potential reds, was the longest initially meted out to any member of Local 213 involved in the Lenkurt dispute. He was later able to have his sentence reduced to fifteen years on appeal as he raised substantial and reasonable doubt about the role he played, or did not play, in the action that led to the physical assaults on Angus MacDonald and Jack Ross.13

Art O’Keeffe, meanwhile, was suspended for forty years for his role in encouraging the Lenkurt strikers. But because his sentences were to be served concurrently, the forty years ended up being a fifteen-year suspension in total.14 He fought back tooth and nail and via his personal bank account to rid himself of the black mark now imprinted next to his name. He was eventually successful in having his sentences lifted in their entirety in 1970 at the IBEW’s International Convention in Seattle, Washington.15 Having been at work in the interim again as a power lineman for BC Hydro, Art O’Keeffe now felt compelled to go after the International Office to be reimbursed for lost wages and his expenses as “the cost and hardship on my family has been tremendous.”16 In that endeavour, however, it appears he might have been unsuccessful, and it remains unclear if the provincial labour body compensated him entirely for his exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses.17 His last public statement on the issue was a telling testament to his stubborn character: “I still feel I was not guilty.”18

Jess Succamore was generally positive in his summation of Art O’Keeffe’s role throughout his six years as business manager of Local 213, and in particular during the conflict at Lenkurt. It stands in sharp contrast to Terry Simpson’s earlier and mostly unfavourable assessment. Succamore thought O’Keeffe had evolved over time and became emblematic of Local 213’s “fighting tradition”:

I got to know Art O’Keeffe quite well. He told me on more than one occasion that he got caught up in the red scare, the McCarthy period, and regretted being a party to the charges against George Gee. He said he lost his footing a bit in that era; the other thing was that Local 213 was so factionalized back then . . . I got the impression that Art O’Keeffe got more progressive as he got older. Most people go the other way . . . it’s kind of dangerous to categorize people and think they are going to go through life unchanged. . . . After Lenkurt, I never heard him knock anyone who took a progressive position. And, at the end of it all, I had a grudging admiration for O’Keeffe.19

Meanwhile, the deposed business manager was scathing in his public condemnations of Bill Ladyman and the IBEW hierarchy. He considered the suspensions imposed by the IBEW on leading activist members of Local 213 to be “revengeful retaliation designed to crush all opposition to themselves and the international office and to further eliminate certain members from seeking elected offices.” Always colourful in his use of language, he continued: “Their foul actions following their cruel and callous disregard for the jobs and livelihood of the terminated employees [at Lenkurt] is their final unsavoury act before being swept out of office in the forthcoming elections.” Predicting difficult times ahead for the IBEW in Canada, O’Keeffe concluded: “Ladyman’s vicious vindictive attitude, coupled with the local executive board’s unprincipled, undemocratic procedure of giving extremely severe sentences is a terrific boost for those who advocate Canadian unions for Canadian workers.”20 He did not own a crystal ball that foretold the future nor was he revealing his sources, yet his predictions would prove to be more than wishful thinking.

Art O’Keeffe’s diatribes against officers of his own union, critical of an organization he had belonged to most of his adult life, may have also been sparked in 1966 by a June 28 meeting of the Vancouver chapter of the Electrical Contractors’ Association. Speaking to an attentive combination of employers, the “Terrible Troika” of the IBEW publicly flew their true colours.21 Ken Rose, executive assistant to Bill Ladyman, was the first of the union representatives to the microphone. He explained that labour must realize when it is in error and discipline local unions when they fall out of line. He made specific reference to the revocation of Local 28’s charter in Baltimore, Maryland in August 1961. Following multiple court cases, the IBEW had replaced Local 28 with a new local union, Local 24, even though an overwhelming majority of the local’s members supported the union executive.22 He then zeroed in on the Lenkurt dispute: “Our own union vigorously disciplines errant locals when they are wrong.” Rose, who in 1973 would succeed Ladyman as the IBEW’s Canadian vice-president, went on to say: “Labor and management must sit down and decide where common interests lie . . . only in this way can stability within the industry be effected.” Angus MacDonald followed Ken Rose, stressing the law-and-order campaign that had repeatedly characterized his public pronouncements throughout his career: “It’s my opinion that labour has to operate within constitutional, provincial and federal law.” As for International Representative Jack Ross, the cagey veteran was reported to have pledged “full support for a better understanding for management problems while solving the problems of the electrical workers.”23 Pronouncements such as these made it clear that the three IBEW spokesmen felt co-operation and collaboration with employers were key to the survival and continued existence of trade unions. The original issue at Lenkurt, that of equal pay and working conditions for women who did the same job as men, was not deemed to be important enough to mention. Equally significant, the brief but violent episode in Burnaby that laid bare the raw class antagonisms that erupted out of this vital issue was ignored as much as was feasibly possible.

Whether Art O’Keeffe pondered the significance of these overtures is open to conjecture. He was not overly frightened by a suspension from union office or of having to go back to climbing hydro poles. But they were the least of his concerns at this point in his life, as he was now in a real court, on trial for having defied ex parte BC Supreme Court injunctions. He was not alone. The very next Monday following the weekend meeting of the defeated Lenkurt employees at the Pender Auditorium, George Murray, QC, who had earlier assisted Justice Aikins, now assisted Justice James MacDonald in identifying and arraigning an unprecedented seventy-six trade unionists and their supporters for contempt of court.24 The writ asked that “imprisonment, fines or other appropriate penalties or punishment be levied against them if they are found in contempt.”25 The initial seventy-six cited by Murray was later reduced to a more manageable thirty, then finally twenty-nine when one charge (against Douglas Evans) was stayed. Everyone’s attention would now be focused on the action in court. Witnesses were called, testimony taken, and punishment was eventually meted out over a four-month time period. At the end of the legal process seven of the charged were acquitted, while twenty-two individuals, all connected to the labour movement, were convicted of having violated Supreme Court injunctions against picketing. Justice Macdonald found the twenty-two guilty as charged on September 19, then passed sentence on September 30. On September 28, two days before sentencing was to be pronounced by the judge, Premier W. A. C. Bennett proclaimed that he was ordering his labour minister, on purely economic grounds, to take the necessary steps to ban all overtime in British Columbia as the province “can go on to higher prosperity or into a recession.”26 Judge MacDonald, however, did not mention this proclamation, which inadvertently addressed the reason that led to the Lenkurt strike.

Most of the twenty-two convicted were fined, in varying amounts from $100 to $500, but four ended up at Oakalla Prison, in Burnaby. Paddy Neale, president of the VDLC, and Tom Clarke, vice-president of IWA Local 1–217, each received a six-month sentence; Art O’Keeffe, formerly Local 213’s business manager, was sentenced to four months; and Jeff Power, of the Vancouver Marine Workers’ and Boilermakers’ Industrial Union, to three months.27 As they were being led down the courthouse steps to a waiting paddy wagon, a supportive George Gee, like a spectre haunting Local 213, was heard to murmur in melodramatic tones: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”28 Headlines printed in enormous type appeared in the Sun and the Daily Province, both loudly proclaiming that trade union leaders had been sentenced to jail.29 While they eventually all got time off at Christmas to spend time with their families, it was the symbolic gesture of sending union leaders to jail that had the greatest public effect.30 There was no mistaking the message: union leaders and union members had better obey the laws of the land, no matter how unjust the situation or how unfair the laws. Justice might indeed be blind, but the law was the law.

Undoubtedly the most dramatic moment during the trials occurred when Tom Clarke ignored the advice of his lawyer, Tom Berger, the future leader of the BC NDP and eventually a BC Supreme Court judge himself. Clarke stood up before Justice Macdonald read the sentence and offered a lengthy declaration that captures some of the essential meaning of the Lenkurt strike from a left-wing union point of view:

I will not be intimidated by courts or court action or people of your ilk when in my opinion I am morally right. Nor will I stand idly by and watch my fellow workers and fellow trade unionists treated in a like manner.

It has always been a basic premise of the trade union movement that an injury to one is an injury to all and when one is injured it behoves all to come to their assistance.

This I will do.

As you are well aware some of the rights that society as a whole enjoys today were won by the blood of working men and women. The employer has always used all at his disposal to retard the growth of trade unions and free thought, resorting to murder, so-called “legal execution,” troops, police, spies, stool pigeons, scabs and what have you, all to no avail. In this day and age the employer has become [a] little more sophisticated and does not generally resort to the tactics of old but he still retains this inclination. He now uses the courts to do what he cannot accomplish himself.

I wish to make my position quite clear. I do not wish you, your lordship, to be under any illusions as to my actions. If a picket line appeared around this building tomorrow and you were to grant an injunction prohibiting picketing, I would join that picket line if requested to do so.

In closing I will say that I refuse to apologize to you, this court or anyone else for my actions. What I did was what I know was right.31

Beaten, a significant number of Local 213’s militant minority did not simply drift away into the world of family and work. Those who had been most active on the picket lines at Lenkurt, then in the subsequent dramatic events at the Dunsmuir union hall, convened in the latter part of September at the Pender Auditorium in Vancouver. About sixty people were in attendance and they listened to speeches of sympathy from three representatives of the BCFL: Ray Haynes, Len Guy, and Charles Stewart. Their speeches hit the expected notes: the cause had been just, the Lenkurt workers had been wronged, and they were disappointed that more was not achieved to turn the tide of events in their favour. There was polite applause. People began to leave. However, the real question that was left begging was the classic and celebrated one formerly posed by Vladimir Lenin: “What is to be done?” Succumbing to a long-contained sense of passion, Les McDonald leaped onto the stage and took control of the microphone. In what Jess Succamore has described as “a marvellous speech” he recapped the events of the last few months, concluding that “what we need is a new Canadian Electrical Workers’ Union.” This new union would be run by and for Canadians, would be based on truly democratic principles and, most importantly, would be free of dictatorial control imposed from south of the border. The meeting erupted in enthusiasm for the idea. Tom Constable stated that he was sure he could get the gas workers to join. George Brown agreed that the timing for the formation of just such a union was propitious.32 Most of the main left-wing activists involved with the Lenkurt dispute were on the same page, and enthusiastic about the possibility of change. It was a momentous speech, and though he didn’t realize it at the time, it would become one of the highlights of Les McDonald’s trade union career.33

But then the Communist Party intervened and called Les McDonald and Local 213’s left faction to a meeting. The party explained its recent historical experience in trying to set up separate, independent, and progressive unions in other jurisdictions. Especially important in its view was what had happened in British Columbia to the Woodworkers’ Industrial Union of Canada (WIUC), which had split from an increasingly conservative and anti-Communist IWA international leadership group in 1948. Other than for an isolated local in the East Kootenay town of Cranbrook, the WIUC was to become inconsequential and eventually fade away in the face of a combined employer and IWA red-baiting campaign.34 The party did not want the same detrimental and self-defeating experience to be repeated with electrical workers in the IBEW. On the one hand, this was logical enough and in keeping with the Communist Party’s recent past.

What was somewhat puzzling, on the other hand, was how it rejected a nearby phenomenon. Almost simultaneously with the events at Lenkurt, the eight hundred union workers employed at the Harmac pulp and paper mill in Nanaimo, just 60 kilometres away across Georgia Straight, had had a contrasting experience. Emerging from the stifling political atmosphere of the McCarthy period in the early 1960s, the pulp and paper workers in British Columbia were in the process of breaking away from their international union and backing the formation of the Pulp and Paper Workers’ of Canada (PPWC).35 Led by union leaders who, in the past, had co-operated with Communist labour and political activists, the PPWC and its new Harmac local was to be ultimately successful in being able to survive with their new identity and win collective agreements from employers.36 Including the earlier emergence in 1960 of other national unions, such as the Canadian Union of Operating Engineers or the Confederation of National Trade Unions in Québec, careful analysis might have concluded that the conditions of labour relations in 1966 were in flux and measurably improving for independent Canadian unions.

Despite the sympathy of some of the heavyweights in the upper echelons of the Communist Party’s leadership, the discussion did not end with a willingness to explore new tactics.37 The PPWC was not Communist-led or organized, so did not fall into the party’s historical frame of reference. Another important point to consider was that the leadership of the PPWC’s former international union was also not as ruthless or as bloody-minded as those in the building trades.38 Ernie Fulton described what happened at this crucial moment within the left faction of IBEW Local 213:

Yes, there was talk of secession from the IBEW at that time. George Angus was involved with it as well as many other people. I remember we went to a meeting on it, and Jack Cody was there. Cody led us to some extent in coming to the final decision, which was, though some of us might want to leave, we wouldn’t be able to get enough of the total membership to leave the International to be able to survive. Really all that would happen is that we would be taking ourselves out of the IBEW and the union would then bring other people in to do our job. So, while there was talk about secession, it was judged not to be the best thing to do.39

A few days later, and in accordance with party discipline, Les McDonald recanted his previous enthusiasm for an independent Canadian electrical workers’ union. He told a subsequent meeting of activists that the formation of a Canadian electrical workers’ union was merely his projection of an “idealistic” world. He hadn’t really thought such an important matter through to its logical ramifications.40 Les announced he would appeal his suspension but stay in Local 213 and the ranks of the IBEW. Lenin was to be taken at his word: Communists had to “remain in the reactionary unions, work there, conquer the masses, drive out the leaders.”41 Though Les never talked about it later on in life, the ideological flip-flop he was forced to perform publicly was without question difficult and probably humiliating, especially as he did not easily admit to the error of his ways. A proud, combative guy, he had been forced to reflect on the possible negative consequences of this intensely earnest carpe diem episode, then backtrack shortly afterwards and repudiate his spontaneous attempt to seize the day.

To make a brief but important point, his heartfelt speech begged the question as to the very notion of spontaneity as a negative aspect of the human condition, of how progress is made in the world. Progress, however defined, is arguably both the product of thoughtful planning and spontaneity. In fact, it could be argued that these are intrinsically linked as the very foundation stones of human existence; both, probably for good evolutionary reasons, are part of our DNA. Spontaneous decisions very often do lead down figurative and literal culs-de-sacs; but they can, on occasion, also lead to exciting new ways of seeing and doing things. Spontaneity always begins as mostly accidental—an involuntary reflex, a moment of passion. But slowly, mostly by trial and error, and given a positive nurturing environment, it can then lead to better understanding; it can then also lead both to the adoption of fundamentally better patterns of behaviour and a critical rethink in relation to effective forms of organization.

Swallowing his pride, Les McDonald did as he was told by the Communist cadres in the BC trade union movement. Undertaking the formation of a breakaway union at this particular point in time was still considered too risky as the party did not want to repeat the catastrophe of the 1948 WIUC split from the IWA. Their thinking was that an independent Canadian electrical workers’ union was foolhardy, reckless, and undoubtedly doomed to failure. Instead, it proposed to do what it had done in 1960 in the context of a potential breakaway within the Ironworkers in Vancouver, when it had urged workers to fight for “Canadian autonomy” within international unions, because “the answer to US control and domination . . . cannot be found in the secession of individual locals or splinter movements.”42 What should not be overlooked is that party analysis must surely have pointed out the disreputable mixed bag of vanguardist rivals involved with the Lenkurt defeat, out of which came support for the idea of a new and independent Canadian electrical workers’ union. Shop steward George Brown was a former Trotskyist, and so considered unreliable, while the Maoist-oriented PWM militants had shown up on the picket lines uninvited, drawing attention to themselves with unplanned, unco-ordinated, and aggressive picket line behaviour, all the while handing out factional leaflets promoting their cause. As far as the Communist Party was concerned this was dangerous company to keep in any projected new union; control, let alone a preponderant influence, would be difficult to assert. Left-wing unity evidently had some limits. It just wasn’t going to happen. Les McDonald thus remained disciplined in 1966 and hewed to the party line. It was momentarily ironic; the Communist Party was asking Les McDonald to take the same position as the ossified officialdom from the IBEW’s International Office. His Comrade on the City Committee, Jim MacFarlan, reflected on this episode years later:

Les McDonald was labelled an “adventurist” only because he challenged the usual way of doing things. Yet the Communist Party recognized he was potentially an outstanding trade union leader. Immediately after Lenkurt Les McDonald needed to be brought to heel, but the Party knew full well that he could still be extremely valuable. After his famous speech they appeared to be understanding with him, judiciously pointing out the error of his ways.43

The possibility of a concerted drive to organize a Canada-only electrical workers’ union was arguably an opportunity missed. Jess Succamore, for example, disagreed almost immediately with McDonald’s decision to toe the party line and stay in the IBEW. In the process, his own Lenkurt-based leadership group was open to criticism for its lack of willingness to admit that it, too, had exhibited a lack of foresight and discipline after their parking lot “study session.” Even once they were back at the union hall, circumstances make it appear that the spontaneous decision not to go back into work was allowed to disastrously play itself out. At the end of the day Succamore commented on the issue with his usual sense of humour: “The only successful spontaneous revolutions are the well-planned ones!”44 On a more serious note he would also go on to compliment Les McDonald’s role during the Lenkurt strike:

Les was the most supportive guy from the other units in Local 213 during the Lenkurt strike. He understood the issues quite well. I have no qualms about saying that at all. Through that issue he was really good, supportive, and he coerced the leadership of the local to do the right things. He commanded a real presence on the floor of any meeting. He would articulate principled positions, so he was pretty impressive in that role. And he was quite obviously the leader of the left faction within Local 213. Ernie Fulton was part of it then too . . . as was Cliff Rundgren and Bob Towle.45

In addition to Succamore, not all the Lenkurt activists shared Les McDonald and the Communist Party’s point of view. Galvanized by McDonald’s inspirational speech on the necessity of starting a democratic, independent Canadian union, George Angus, George Brown, Donna Pooghkay, Barry Sharbo, John Wood, Dave Unger and Jess Succamore decided to leave the IBEW and inaugurate the Canadian Electrical Workers’ Union. Part of a small group of seventeen activists, they would constitute the first elected executive board at the founding of the new electrical union on November 6, 1966. The deliberately chosen date was significant as it was precisely sixty-five years earlier that Local 213 had been granted its charter by the IBEW. The fledgling executive board sided with the views of the Canadian Autonomy Council, a group of reform-oriented IBEW members based in eastern Canada. Council members had written to IBEW International President Gordon Freeman, stating: “We have lost faith in you and what you call democracy.” Jess Succamore wanted an immediate change to the well-known fact “that the Canadian trade unionist is the only worker in the world who is controlled by a foreign country.” In terms of what had happened in Local 213 and the perspective from the west coast, Donna Pooghkay probably summed up their feelings best about the IBEW: “By the time we finished fighting them, we knew there was nothing we could do in that union. . . . There is still nothing you can do in that union.”46

An already-existing alternative for the unhappy group of electrical workers might have been UE. The group did consider the Communist-led international union, mostly based in electrical manufacturing plants in the United States and eastern Canada, but ultimately rejected it. Even though UE provided for Canadian autonomy, the risk of having that autonomy rescinded under unpredictable future circumstances was too great. It was better to belong to a purely Canadian union so no American organization, with or without a left-wing leadership, could take it away. Citing the merger of Harvey Murphy’s Communist-led Mine-Mill local in Trail, BC, with the United Steelworkers in 1967, George Brown felt vindicated in his earlier rejection of UE as he noted the latter “supported the move.” He wondered if UE would make a similar decision if, after convincing workers to join their organization, it decided “to join hands with the I.B.E.W. at a later date?”47 Brown’s political past, as well as Wood and Unger’s membership in the PWM—castigated by the Communist Party for being China-oriented Maoists—were decisive factors in the final decision.48 Their refusal to subordinate themselves to the Communist Party’s political ideology weighed heavily in the balance and was likewise fortified by the appeal of Canadian nationalism. Politically non-aligned, but always willing to work with those he could agree with on trade union issues, Succamore concluded: “UE didn’t seem to quite fit the bill.”49

The political composition of the fledgling CEWU executive board is undoubtedly what kept Les McDonald and Local 213’s Communist-led left faction from co-operating with the new union. Not to overemphasize a point, but relationships between the party and competing communist groupings were rarely friendly, with any contact between them quickly deteriorating into outright hostility. The dynamic of the debacle that became the Lenkurt Electric strike, having to some extent been initially set in motion by a shop steward with a Trotskyist background, certainly didn’t help matters and was to harden McDonald’s increasingly negative attitude toward rival vanguard organizations.50 With limited presence or experience to draw on within the other five unit sections of Local 213, there was also no political base a Trotskyist-tinted faction or the PWM could rely on to build support for a mass exodus from the IBEW and into an independent Canadian union. As a united front of left-wing electrical workers no longer appeared to be in the cards following the dispute at Lenkurt, the mere suggestion of secession from the IBEW therefore quickly became a non-starter for the vast majority of rank-and-file members in Local 213.

There were nevertheless about seventy-five “mostly wiremen” who secretly took out individual membership cards in the CEWU at a cost of $1.25 each to show support for the brand-new Canadian electrical workers’ union.51 Fearing retribution from the IBEW in case his identity was revealed, one anonymous electrician from Local 213 wrote a critique of the lack of real democracy in the American-based union. Meshed into a substantial nationalist perspective, the electrician, in his evaluation of recent events, candidly declared his support for an organization that was made in Canada and was for Canadian workers only.52 As critics might have pointed out, his outlook raised the question of whether or not the bullying and employer-friendly forces that had emerged over decades of growing bureaucratic interference by the IBEW was not also a very real possibility in a Canadian union. And what of the issue of the mobility of international capital? After all, Lenkurt Electric was an American company. Should this reality not be matched by truly international unions?53

Avoiding an attempt to address these serious questions, the unhappy wireman might have retorted that these were nice theoretical concepts, something picked up, perhaps, while on a visit with Peter Pan to Neverland. He would have pressed his point further by latching onto the last question and pointing out that the concept of “internationalism” itself was mostly delusional, a notion that ignored the history of the vast majority of American-controlled international unions. Referring to Local 213’s recent turmoil in Vancouver, the anonymous electrical worker underscored his firm belief in the necessity of having unions that would start within national boundaries, establish democratic fundamentals, then “go in any direction chosen by a Canadian membership:”

To me, it is a matter of simple democracy, a right to form our own policy through a democratic Canadian constitution. . . . It is not a subject to be questioned, but a right that must be established. This duty must be carried out by the rank and file, let us not suffer the illusion that our present so-called leadership will fight for these rights: on the contrary, the large percentage of these American lackeys will leave no stone unturned to see we don’t get them. But there is no doubt that workers in Canada are on the move, and the growing tide of resentment against dictatorship from Washington through our own Canadian stooges is growing irresistible. We will never be satisfied until our needs and grievances get the sympathetic ear of a Canadian union for Canadians.54

Combined with the persuasiveness of Les McDonald’s firebrand speech at the Pender Auditorium and despite circumventing some critical issues, this one-sided type of argumentation focusing on the seeming lack of democracy and Canadian autonomy in the IBEW, proved to be enough to inspire the small group of secessionists.55

To avoid the problematic field of construction work and the inside wiremen in the context of a breakaway union, the freshly minted CEWU concentrated its efforts on electrical manufacturing. Eventually, in May 1967, the new union found its moorings and won its first certification by winning over the 114 workers from the IBEW at Phillips Cables in Vancouver. This success was partly due to the fact that Jess Succamore still had contacts within the plant from his previous employment at Phillips before working at Lenkurt. He was fully cognizant of the bitterness engendered by the past work stoppages at Phillips, with no strike funds coming from the IBEW, and was able to leverage this unhappiness to good account. Support was also provided by the brand-new PPWC, which provided speakers and helped distribute literature. The main thrust of the campaign was to “vote Canadian” as part of their very own “Canadian Centennial project.”56 The push to win over the workers at Phillips was also helped in no small measure by Jack Scott and the PWM. Scott, who had left the Communist Party in 1964, and the PWM he subsequently founded held that the Canadian economy was increasingly dominated by American capital and that the initial struggle of workers should be directed at breaking the domination of the United States over the Canadian economy. As a key corollary to this position, the PWM promoted the independence of Canadian unions vis-à-vis international unions in the CLC.57 Commented Scott on the breakaway CEWU: “We used to print their material for them, do it for nothing . . . If they wanted to print leaflets we did it and we printed the original membership forms for them and so on . . . [But] we didn’t do it openly.”58 Spearheaded by the politically neutral Succamore, who was in desperate need of support and would visibly accept help from all and sundry, the collective effort at Phillips Cables was eventually successful, with a slim fifty-seven to fifty margin voting for the newly founded CEWU.59 This was followed by another successful raid on yet another unhappy manufacturing local of the IBEW, this time in Sentinel, Alberta (near Blairmore). Despite public red-baiting accusations by Jack Ross in the wild rose province that the CEWU was headed by “Trotskyites” and that Alberta electrical workers in manufacturing “were being led astray,” the new Canadian union was off and running, though for the most part it struggled financially and for recognition.60 Following many trials and tribulations, and yet more minor successes—such as at previously unorganized Cascade Electronics in Port Moody—it merged with CAIMAW in 1969. The merger initiated a new direction in organizing for the CEWU in that it no longer restricted itself to the electrical sector. Prior to merging with the Canadian Auto Workers, which later became Unifor, it was successful in organizing over 7,000 members from various labour sectors, becoming the major voice for Canadian unionism in Western Canada. As a senior officer for both CAIMAW and the CCU, Jess Succamore directed the organizational efforts of several new Canadian unions. While he profusely lauds the leadership given him by George Brown and Kent Rowley during these organizing drives, he freely acknowledges that for him and his close collaborators the event that let the genie of Canadian unionism out of the bottle was Les McDonald’s rousing speech at the Pender Auditorium.61

Local 213’s elections were supposed to be held in June 1966, but were delayed until July 30 by Bill Ladyman, on the recommendation of the executive board.62 The left unity slate that had been proposed by Les McDonald to sweep out the conservative group in the local union would itself be partly swept out of the political landscape since several of its key representatives found themselves suspended and ineligible for election by the nomination deadline of July 15. In any case, the executive board had informed the membership on June 29 that “all former nominations are void.”63 Who was left? The answer to this question—a deliberate double-entendre—were those who had not personally participated in the Lenkurt debacle, either on the picket line or in the ensuing drama at the union hall, but who were still motivated enough to wanting to be politically active in Local 213. Most of them were socialists or social democrats of varying hues, though a few names might make for an interesting starting point for discussion. Led by Jim Kinnaird, who was elected to the business manager’s position, the new participants on the executive board were a progressive amalgam of old and new and included John Leslie (president), Tom Forkin (vice-president), Norm Read (recording secretary), and Stuart Houston (secretary-treasurer). As his four-year suspension had recently come to an end, veteran Jack Cody was re-elected chair of the Gas Unit, while Art Goy—third time lucky—became the representative for the inside wiremen. The conservative stalwarts, led by Angus MacDonald, and including Fred Allison, John Hiebert, J. P. Milner, and Frank Hogan, were all soundly defeated. It was a complete reversal of the election results in 1960. Unabashedly elated, Art O’Keeffe declared to the press that: “This is a smashing victory and membership repudiation of the tactics of the old Executive.”64 But as Les McDonald has recounted to the author, the real movers and shakers, the Lenkurt militants and union rebels, were also now all on the outside looking in. This group was effectively eliminated, its chief activist figures not even being permitted to participate in Local 213’s unit and general meetings as they had for the most part been suspended. On the surface, the clear electoral choices between left and right created by the Lenkurt dispute was then won by those who were “left” rather than the real, militant and activist left. Those who won election in 1966 were individuals whose left-wing politics were safe as their ideological positions were only verbal, individuals who now saw their chance to potentially win leadership positions. An argument could be made that Jim Kinnaird’s subsequent rise in influence within the BC Federation of Labour was precisely because he did not participate in the Lenkurt dispute. He stood on the sidelines, cheered on the good guys, expressed sympathy for the workers who had lost their jobs, then jumped into the leadership race when everyone else had already played their hand. In his defence he had a family to support, and probably didn’t want to risk getting hurt or being arrested on the picket lines at the Lenkurt Electric plant. All reasonable justifications, and from a certain perspective an indication of intelligence and good survival instincts; it was just so very cautious and so very safe. In an echo of what had happened almost fifty years earlier in the trade union movement across Canada, the “reformers” within the Vancouver electrical workers had simply bided their time, watching and cheering from the sidelines as the “rebels and revolutionaries” took a stand on the Lenkurt issue and were subsequently enmeshed in an internal union crisis.65 Then, when they had eliminated themselves via predictable International Office intervention, the reformers stepped into executive board positions that went begging for anyone with a progressive bone in their body. In no way was it planned with any foresight or anticipation of being able to grasp the local levers of power, but it happened. It was more by accident than by design, yet the position of business manager fell into Jim Kinnaird’s lap. As he recalled: “I really had no ambition, but guys kept promoting me.”66 At any particular moment in time, history usually consists of elements of chance and uncertainty. Good things can come to those who wait. The aftermath of the Lenkurt Electric strike might be a case in point.

One of the first tasks of Local 213’s new executive board was to constitute a review panel for the trials undertaken by the outgoing executive board. These took place from November 15, 1966, to January 4, 1967. Chaired by long-time socialist and former Communist, Tom Forkin, a reconstituted Trial Board encouraged appeals to the original sentences imposed in June and July. As the accused had not appeared in person at their original trials, new evidence was now available after they had testified or had counsel represent them. After the second Trial Board had also listened to the tapes of the original trials, most of the sentences were reduced in duration, and some were completely dismissed. Marion Bachewich, Betty Bradley, and nine other Lenkurt employees, for example, were exonerated of “having participated in an unauthorized work stoppage” as “we find the charges to not be substantiated and our decision is that all penalties . . . be quashed.”67 But Jack Ross, Bill Ladyman, and the International Office were all watching to see how far the new reform-minded executive board would go. It was apparently too risky to completely reverse all the original sentences. The new Trial Board members tried to reduce Jess Succamore’s heavy-handed penalty to five years but, as mentioned previously, his original sentence was reimposed by a vigilant Bill Ladyman. However, they were partially successful with Les McDonald as his suspension was reduced to fifteen years when he appealed. Jess Succamore was scornful in his appraisal of the timidity exhibited by the new Trial Board. He argued that its reluctance to completely exonerate him from his sentence had “condoned the conduct of the previous trial board in everything except the fact that they decided the sentence was overly zealous.”68

Merely attempting to reduce the stiff sentences initially foisted on the Lenkurt rebels and activists appeared to be too much for the International Office. It added to the perception that the IBEW was not able to control a continuously defiant local. On February 28, 1967, Bill Ladyman dropped a structural bombshell when he announced that Local 213 was to be split into three component parts: Local 258 was to be the new contract linemen and BC Hydro local; Local 264 was to be the new manufacturing local; while Local 213 would carry on as a smaller entity with the inside wiremen, neon, and communication workers. With the creation of two new electrical locals in Vancouver, no one group within what remained of Local 213 could now unduly influence another as before and the Communist Party-led left faction, in particular, could be contained within the inside wiremen’s unit where it was now largely concentrated. The recent electoral sweep in 1966 by the remnants of the unity slate was all for naught. Everyone would have to start all over again, and within smaller, less influential groups. As a way to contain its critics, it was a brilliant tactical manoeuvre by the International Office. Bill Ladyman defended his actions by announcing that the new locals would provide “a greater degree of autonomy for the membership.” He went on to write:

Coming so soon after the “Lenkurt affair,” I am sure there will be those who, for their own personal reasons, will raise the cry of “International dictatorship.” However, regardless of any innuendoes, I have made my decision based solely on the continuing problem which appears to be confronting our members in the manufacturing field . . . Since becoming Vice-President of the First District I have directed my efforts towards amalgamating Local Unions for greater strength and stability within the various branches of our industry. At the same time, as with the situation in Local 213, we must be realistic and acknowledge the fact that where our membership is discontented and where it is apparent the existing status quo does not serve the best interests of the said membership, I must reluctantly agree to create new Local Unions.69

Ernie Fulton thought otherwise. His analysis of the division of Local 213 into three distinct entities was that Ladyman’s focus on the manufacturing unit was a smokescreen designed to distract his audience. The real fear of the International Office was potential instability and political opposition within the workforce of BC Hydro, the single largest employer of electrical workers within the Vancouver local. As Fulton put it, “Local 213 was split up, it seems to me, in order to stop the Hydro workers from being affected by the left wing that was now centred in the wiremen’s section.”70 Conjecture, certainly, but given the decades-long series of crises within the local, it was a not unreasonable conclusion.

Initially in disarray, the inside wiremen concentrated on rebuilding their forces and learning the ropes within their reduced scope of operations. They also had to cautiously learn an altered political dance with the usual partners: Jack Ross, Bill Ladyman, Ken Rose, and the International Office. This process became increasingly awkward as the nascent CEWU was now taking public potshots at the new leadership of Local 213, accusing it of being overly cautious and even of trying to entice back to the IBEW fold some of its more outspoken leaders. Jess Succamore, for example, was offered a job through Local 213’s dispatcher three or four months after Lenkurt because, as he wrote at the time, “the C.E.W.U. had started signing up workers at Phillips Cables.”71 He also resented the fact that the Communist Party appeared to be embarking on a political campaign of character assassination vis-à-vis the supporters of Canadian unionism. It was ironic “that the persons who are doing the political RED baiting are among those in the (C. P.) Communist Party machinery that exists within Local 213 . . . the red baiting tactics of the C. P. boys are taken somewhat with a laugh . . . but it does put the local party boys on a par with the antics of the International.”72 While certainly not defending the Communist Party, Local 213’s new business manager, Jim Kinnaird, fired back at the CEWU, with the opinion that “the trade union movement is being once again plagued by demagogues who hope to niche out a shelf to park themselves, knowing only too well that when they step off into the stream of negotiations they will not only sink themselves but take everyone else down with them . . . They are using your Union as an escape for their own frustrated failings in the union movement.”73 Relationships on the left were starting to become seriously frayed.

It got worse in the next few months as Succamore accused Kinnaird of continuing with his political smear campaign. Kinnaird, he alleged, had tarnished the leadership of the new Canadian union “as dissidents, ne’er do-wells, and Peking Communists.” And this from “a business agent whose name was on the Communist Party slate circulated before the last general union election.”74 He wondered where Kinnaird would stop, and if his attacks were not just a way to ingratiate himself with the International Office. It was unfortunate, but the non-partisan Succamore was clearly being judged by the company he kept. It got to the point that the PWM’s John Wood and Dave Unger volunteered to step down from the inaugural executive board of the CEWU as “it was just giving the labour brass an opportunity to attack them.”75 Both Brown and Succamore refused their offer on the grounds that political affiliations should not be used to disqualify anyone in the CEWU from active participation in the trade union movement. Regardless, the left among Vancouver electrical workers, no longer together in the same organizational tent, was now at war with itself and visibly tearing each of its constituent factions apart.76

Still more was to widen the gulf between the contending groups. In the spring and summer of 1967, there was a lengthy three-month electrical workers’ strike in Kelowna. Local 213 still had jurisdiction in the Okanagan’s largest municipality and chief shop steward, Mike Scheer, had attempted during the strike “to prevent an imported scab from carrying out repair work on a utility pole.” The widely respected union man had charges of assault laid against him and two of his fellow electrical workers. Worse, the charges against the shop steward, “the backbone of the strikers in Kelowna,” included the much more serious “assault with intent.” At the end of July, several weeks after this regrettable physical confrontation had occurred, three IBEW officials flew into Kelowna from Vancouver in an attempt to end the ongoing work stoppage. The group included newly elected Jim Kinnaird and John Leslie, respectively business manager and president of Local 213, and International Representative Jack Ross. They used the IWA offices in Kelowna to negotiate with municipal officials. A reporter for The Western Canadian Lumber Worker wrote: “IBEW informants state that Kinnaird told them that the strike could be settled but one of the conditions was that Mike Scheer’s job was to be terminated.” Additionally, civic officials working alongside the prosecuting Crown counsel gave the perplexing appearance of a perfidious mixing of legal proceedings with the bargaining process: “City officials would reduce the charges to minor assault if the strikers ratified the agreement.”77 Rather than fight for both a reasonable contract and Mike Scheer’s complete reinstatement, the newly elected leaders of Local 213 convinced the Kelowna membership that the easiest path to ending the lengthy dispute was to compromise on the fate of their chief shop steward. The Kelowna electrical workers could get both a collective agreement and save Mike Scheer certain jail time; the unsavoury trade-off was that they would have to agree to the employer’s demand that his position be eliminated. Left unstated was the consequence that the dedicated union man would effectively be fired. After a short discussion on the lack of integrity ingrained in the proposal, the deal was agreed to. It is unclear as to whether or not Scheer participated in the give-and-take at the meeting; if he did, he probably volunteered to play the martyr to bring an end to the financial hardships of his fellow workers. A collective agreement was then duly signed. Scheer was found guilty in court of the lesser charge of minor assault, given a one-year suspended sentence, and was ordered to post a $500 bond to keep the peace. But the agreed-upon compromise was that the post Scheer had occupied then got axed by his vengeful employer.78 And with the axing of the Kelowna utility position, so too went the veteran lineman with nineteen years’ experience. Kinnaird, Leslie, and Ross would have argued that the outcome of the Kelowna strike was part and parcel of the difficult choices faced by trade union leadership when thrust into unpredictable and volatile circumstances. They also had a card up their sleeve that they had not yet revealed. However, as could now only be expected, the CEWU was scathing in its condemnation of this Solomonic-type agreement. Kinnaird and Leslie, it charged, “have proven to be mere puppets cavorting in the hands of Jack Ross, the International’s leading string puller. The actors have changed but the play remains the same.”79 As events were to later prove, the CEWU was far too hasty to rush to judgment, but it was nevertheless a damnable indictment on how Mike Scheer’s fate was used in the bargaining process. No longer fearful of retribution, the CEWU pioneers were eager to point fingers at Jack Ross and his all too apparent willingness to sacrifice an electrical worker. A short time later, Kinnaird, Leslie, and Ross played their trump card. As was his prerogative, Jim Kinnaird appointed Mike Scheer assistant business manager for Unit 1, a paid union position. It was an innovative solution to a thorny problem and helped solve the collective bargaining impasse in Kelowna. To the linemen’s presumed delight and the electrical utility’s dismay, the militant Scheer was now not going anywhere; more than ever he was going to be a thorn in the employer’s side, enforcing the newly signed collective agreement.80 While appearing at the outset as a difficult and necessary sacrifice, the eventual solution proved as creative as was possible under the circumstances. As many of the political activists in Local 213 already knew, Jim Kinnaird knew how to play the game. He would run unopposed for the post of business manager in Local 213’s biennial elections during the next two election cycles.

At about the same time that Jim Kinnaird was proving his worth in Kelowna, both the CLC and the IBEW got busy studying the issues surrounding international unions in Canada. The national labour body first established a Commission on Constitution and Structure to conduct an extensive study of the Canadian labour movement; Bill Ladyman served on the commission “to look at questions of structure, mergers between unions, affiliation and unity.” Then, in both 1966 and 1970, the IBEW put together committees to address the Canadian sovereignty issue. In all three cases the responses of the Canadian IBEW locals could best be categorized as lukewarm and favouring non-involvement. Historian Edward Seymour thought the process was flawed from the outset: “Some believed they were dealing with a stacked deck, others were quite satisfied with the status quo, while still others felt that no matter what the committee recommended action would not be taken.”81 Despite the consequential pressures resulting from the foundation of the CEWU and other nationalist movements within unions in Canada, the result was that not much of anything changed.82

In seemingly almost perpetual estrangement from its parent organization, the progressive “left” grouping now in charge of the executive board of Local 213 at last tried to engage in reforming the IBEW from within. In April 1970, at a general meeting, and in keeping with the Vancouver electrical workers’ decades of frustration with the lack of national and local autonomy within the IBEW, they supported Jim Kinnaird’s bid to replace Bill Ladyman as International vice-president for Canada.83 Bill Ladyman was targeted because the Vancouver electrical workers felt he was historically unfriendly to Local 213, and a too-willing puppet of the International Office of the IBEW. He was known for having previously categorized some of the critics of international unions from his home country as “subversive left-wing elements,” and as someone who was not prepared to fight and demand “on behalf of the Canadian membership certain fundamental rights that lie well within the structure of our own brotherhood.” In particular, Ladyman was derided for having treated Canadian delegates to the IBEW convention in Seattle in 1970 as “errant school children.”84 Not to adopt too cynical a view, but Kinnaird’s education on the upper echelons of the IBEW would follow the same steep learning curve as had been exhibited by at least two of his outspoken predecessors, George Gee and Art O’Keeffe. As in previous decades, the IBEW machine proved too powerful. Tainted by the mass firings and accompanying political upheaval during the Lenkurt affair, Kinnaird would not be successful in winning what had recently become an elected post to the IBEW’s International Office.85 Ken Rose, who succeeded Bill Ladyman as Canadian vice-president in 1973, would then oppose Kinnaird publicly, inasmuch as he was convinced that in Vancouver “political radicals were orchestrating dissent for their own purposes.”86 A short time later, as president of the BC and Yukon Building Trades Council, Jim Kinnaird would counter Rose’s one-sided assessment and would author a “Canadian autonomy” submission to the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. As a result of his strongly worded “appeal to reason,” Jim Kinnaird would be viewed with suspicion south of the border and as a threat to American control of Canadian locals. In particular, his call to international unions to recognize “a people’s march for a recognized national status” went over like a lead balloon.87 Visibly frustrated, he gave up on the unchanging IBEW.88 Turning his attention elsewhere, he was to become assistant deputy labour minister in BC’s first NDP government in 1973, then subsequently rise to the post of president of the BC Federation of Labour in 1978, and was to die in office five years later in 1983.

In 1973, Cliff Rundgren succeeded Jim Kinnaird as business manager of Local 213. Jack Cody, who had been elected president by acclamation, pointed out in his regular column in 213 LiveWire that “no one is happy. . . . The losers because the margin was close and a slightly altered run could well have meant the difference between victory and defeat. . . . The victors, unhappy because the mandate, though clear, was not substantial [enough] for comfort.”89 Rundgren, a former acolyte to Les McDonald within Local 213’s Communist-led left faction, would arguably travel full circle and increasingly be on guard against the remaining activists within the Vancouver electrical local. He was also to become increasingly gun-shy after having to deal simultaneously with emerging and related developments in the new decade: slow economic growth combined with surging price increases, or “stagflation.”

Cliff Rundgren was initially remarkably successful, managing (as an assistant to Kinnaird in 1972) to help negotiate industry-leading wage increases in addition to loudly proposing a trend-setting reduction in the work week to thirty-seven hours per week. Two years later, now as head business manager, he was even able to wrangle a tentative deal for a thirty-four hour work week with forty-eight independent electrical contractors who had been targeted by the union as they had remained outside the new corporate umbrella, the Construction Labour Relations Association (CLRA), founded in 1969.90 Rundgren’s push for a thirty-four-hour week was in response to a demand from Local 213 for a reduced work week to combat unemployment.91 But negotiations were difficult precisely because of unemployment, and so the reduction in the work week to thirty-four hours was not to be.92 The CLRA successfully pressured the independents to toe the corporate line and retract the potentially groundbreaking agreement.93 Hoping undoubtedly to capitalize on the recent strife within Local 213, and echoing what had been attempted before in 1958, the newly formed CLRA had, in 1970 and 1972, instigated massive lockouts.94

This last-mentioned year was particularly unnerving—during negotiations, the CLRA attacked the dispatch system used by the unions. In response, the electricians, carpenters, plumbers, boilermakers, cement masons, and heat and frost workers formed a “Six-Pact” alliance to fight the issues. Within days of announcing their pact, RCMP officers raided Local 213’s union hall, along with five other offices belonging to the Six-Pact.95 The raid was followed two years later by a difficult and long, drawn-out nine-week strike of the building trades “Ten-Pact” in May and June of 1974. This sequence of events undoubtedly contributed to Rundgren’s growing caution.96 The British Columbia construction employers were attempting to force the building trades into bargaining together, thereby putting an end to the often-successful contractual union whipsaw and leapfrog strategies of past decades. The federal government then upset the traditional apple cart of local-led negotiations when Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau contentiously imposed a national system of wage and price controls from 1975 through to 1978. Under Cliff Rundgren’s leadership, which has been described by his critics as mostly aloof and growingly cynical in outlook, Local 213’s well-known militancy went into decline after these frustratingly long picket line experiences and heavy-handed government interventions.

Within the IBEW itself, a distinctive note of warning to any unruly local in Canada was sounded yet again in 1977 when Toronto Local 353’s business manager, Warren Chapman, was summarily dismissed by International vice-president Ken Rose; Chapman was replaced by Bill Hardy, the very man he had duly defeated in the 1975 local union elections. According to historian Edward Seymour, Chapman was charged “with not conducting the affairs of the local in a proper manner.”97 As with Local 213, his sins apparently centred on the way the dispatching system (the spare-board) was managed in the local union. Chapman had ignored the employers’ constant demand to be able to recall by name any unemployed electrician they wanted, sometimes a relative or a friend, but normally the most productive one available. Having reached the top of the spare-board, fussy electricians would also no longer have the luxury of refusing offers and waiting to cherry-pick a potentially advantageous long-term job assignment, whether it was in Toronto or out-of-town. Seymour noted that business manager Chapman had decided to implement the new procedures, even if they were contentious: “When a member reached the top of the [spare-board] list he was given the option to take available work in town and had three days to make a decision. Refusing the available work would move him to the bottom of the list and the process was repeated.”98 A year later, in 1978, the situation in Toronto worsened as Local 353 was placed entirely under trusteeship, the ousted executive board members claiming they were “victims of trumped up charges by the International office.”99 Regardless of the precise truth in the matter, Cliff Rundgren obviously paid close attention to the interventionist repercussions of such actions. As with John Raymond and Bill Ladyman previously, International vice-president Ken Rose was evidently not someone to be trifled with. Forced to become politically reactive, the Vancouver business manager was assailed and boxed in by a succession of major events, mostly out of his control. His critics within Local 213, such as Paul Yorke, remembered that the adverse effects of the defeat at Lenkurt—the splitting up of Local 213, the police raid on Local 213’s office, combined with the strikes and lockouts of the 1970s and the IBEW’s continuing heavy-handedness with a wayward Ontario local—meant that the new business manager was understandably wary of offending the IBEW’s International Office.100

Nor was Cliff Rundgren probably all that keen to work the tools again as a rank-and-file wireman. In fact, as time passed, the embattled business manager appeared more focused on perfecting a well-known and time-honoured transformation: becoming a well-entrenched and efficient trade union representative. In alignment with his predecessors, he learned to successfully manipulate the levers of local union power, such that his particular interests were presented “as the universal interests” of IBEW Local 213.101 To his vocal critics he also appeared to become increasingly fixated on neutralizing his opponents within the Vancouver electrical workers’ local. Anecdotal sources such as Alfred (Alfie) Huston, who was president for Local 213 from 1985 to 1988, recounted how the dispatching system at the union hall was eventually altered to match those put in place in Ontario to help reach this objective. These changes, in turn, appear to have been an ameliorative modification of what was imposed on IBEW construction locals on behalf of employers in the United States. Huston had a close-up view of the circumstances leading to this eventful change in hiring hall procedures that he felt had distinct political overtones. It would prove to be a momentous example of what can happen when crisis meets opportunity:

When an unemployed member signed onto the list, he was situated by the number of days he had worked in the last year. 365 days put you at the bottom of the list, 0 at the top. This was the most fair hiring system you could possibly get, it also protected the militants from being black listed off the jobs. This was eventually changed by the Rundgren regime to a 50% name request and 50% by order of the list position. This worked out well for the employers, they just hired extra bodies and laid off the ones they didn’t request. They would do that a few times and have everyone they wanted. This worked well for Rundgren, too, as he now had most of his opposition unemployed and not on job sites keeping the employer and other members honest.102

Not unsurprisingly, Cliff Rundgren’s supporters saw matters through a much more positive lens. Influential electrical workers such as John Neilson, an assistant business manager, then at the heart of the matter as Job Dispatcher for Local 213, did not disagree with Huston’s assessment. But he immediately added an important caveat: “Rundgren had no choice.”103 Alfie Huston, a second-generation Vancouver electrical worker, disagreed. He thought that it was not as if “Rundgren had no choice; it is always better to do the right thing, than duck and run. The truth is he didn’t have the guts for a fight, also no intentions of ever going back on the tools. He handed us over to the IO [International Office] with the help of the CLRA.”104 The best that Rundgren could do was to keep the altered dispatching system as an “informal arrangement,” such that it was never officially in the collective agreement. Both the hostile political climate under the rejuvenated Bill Bennett Socreds and a growing unemployment calamity was such that employers were unrelenting in pressing for concessions. Safeguarding long-standing provisions in the collective agreement would have been an arduous task for anyone responsible for the welfare of electrical workers. Given the difficult circumstances, Neilson found that the business manager was “very good at his job, a good leader, not dictatorial.”105 Other Rundgren supporters, such as Jagdish (Jack) Saran, had similar sentiments about the former Communist. Saran found him to be approachable, calm, kind and considerate: “I would walk into his office, unstopped by the office staff, was not interrupted, and go into his office to talk to him about any problem our union was going through. . . . I had the impression that this guy could get things done without any yelling or screaming.” He thought Cliff Rundgren was hard-working and was somewhat perplexed with the continuous barrage of criticism aimed at the embattled business manager. Saran wisely observed that unions were complicated entities, where almost nobody is completely right or completely wrong. He tried to compare the political issues to the family squabbles he had witnessed growing up in India: “I grew up with the attitude that there are different family members who have different opinions and different likes and dislikes. But that doesn’t mean that you start hating each other just because he or she does not agree with you one hundred percent.”106

The IBEW would become one of the key construction unions that shook up Canadian labour organizations in later years. In 1970, Local 568, the major local in Montréal, was placed into trusteeship following “une désobéissance massive” (a massive act of disobedience). Two years later, 13,000 electrical workers in Québec decided that they did not want to have an expensive but voluntary pension plan become compulsory.107 Demonstrably unhappy, they left the IBEW en masse between 1972 and 1974 and formed the Fraternité interprovinciale des ouvriers en électricité (FIPOE).108 These almost entirely francophone electrical workers would become the first of seventeen construction unions in “la belle province” to eventually leave their international organization. While they maintained that departing from the IBEW was really about “practical reasons,” and held out an olive branch in the form of maintaining “fraternal ties” with the American-based union, in hindsight it was arguably a pretext for becoming “maîtres chez nous.” As with other construction unions, FIPOE then immediately affiliated with the Quebec Federation of Labour (QFL), exploring channels to get a direct charter from the CLC.109 The new union might have inadvertently been facilitated by Henri Gagnon’s resignation as president of Local 568 in 1971. Elected to this influential local union position in 1968, Gagnon was viewed with suspicion by the IBEW for at least two reasons: first, he had strenuously argued against American insistence on the pension issue, their decision to place the Montréal local under trusteeship, and the imposition of an International Office overseer.110 Second, Henri Gagnon was well known in Montréal as a renegade Communist as he had been in and out of the party’s Central Committee during his lifetime. In this regard, and arguably equally impactful, he had been suspended by the IBEW in the early 1950s for his previous Communist Party affiliation. Gagnon’s resignation in 1971, along with that of business manager Guy Perrault, unwittingly opened the door to a pair of independence-minded candidates: Guy Daoust (president) and Roland Fiset (business manager). In the face of continuing IBEW intransigence, the Québécois nationalists would successfully oversee a transfer of loyalty with a huge majority of Local 568’s membership moving en masse into FIPOE. Enigmatic characters like Gagnon were then left on the outside looking in, especially as he would famously criticize FIPOE for its “banditry” and for breaking away from the IBEW “under the false banner of nationalism.”111 His public disapproval of the methods used by FIPOE to assert itself during its early days were, unfortunately, not an exaggeration. As famously described in a two-year Royal Commission headed by Justice Robert Cliche (1974–1975), several of Québec’s construction unions—including FIPOE—had become discouragingly enmeshed in a pervasive and sinister gangster-like culture of “violence, sabotage, walkouts and blackmail.”112 Even Gagnon got savagely beaten.113

The immediate result was that the French Canadians in the newly formed FIPOE were, in turn, put under trusteeship between 1975 and 1978 by the government of Québec. This preceded a wide-ranging provincially imposed system of government oversight of construction unions and their employers (which is still in place), ameliorated by closed shop conditions on all major Québec construction sites.114 At the beginning of a huge and historical parallel debate in Canada, with two subsequent referendums on the separation of Québec from the rest of the country, the subsequent inaction of the CLC on this complicated file was completely understandable.115 Evidently fearful of losing a substantial component of the Canadian trade union movement to an independent French-Canadian nation, the CLC quietly tolerated the majority French-speaking electrical workers departing from an anglophone and American-controlled international union, yet still belonging to the QFL and hence the CLC.116

Compounded by the lack of action on the part of Canada’s national house of labour, the IBEW’s response to having lost 95 percent of its electrical workers in Québec was, in turn, tremendously consequential. Undoubtedly embittered that the provincial government had not forced electrical workers to return to the IBEW fold at the end of its trusteeship of FIPOE, the AFL-CIO building trades department first voted in 1979 to expel the French-Canadian electrical workers and demanded that Louis Laberge, head of the QFL, do the same. Having earlier in his career become a public supporter of the Parti Québécois, the French-Canadian nationalist and “indépendentiste” flatly refused to do so, instead strengthening the hand of “QFL-Construction,” a newly created building trades department directly affiliated to the Quebec Federation of Labour; it immediately became a parallel organization to the international unions’ Québec Building Trades Council. When the CLC continued to tolerate QFL-Construction, more than ever a blatant expression of dual unionism, a second, more dramatic step, was evidently required; it came in the form of the English-speaking Canadian building trades outside Québec withholding their share of per capita dues to the CLC. Matching them tit-for-tat, in 1981 an increasingly assertive national labour organization refused to buckle under, instead suspending the international construction unions from the CLC.117 The IBEW and most of the building trades in English Canada then raised the stakes—at the direction of IBEW vice-president Ken Rose, they left the CLC and formed their own national labour body, the Canadian Federation of Labour (CFL), which lasted from 1982 to 1997.118 The IBEW’s action reflected the increasingly loud nationalist voices within the construction unions; however, not all the building trades outside Québec immediately joined the CFL—the carpenters, ironworkers, and labourers, all three with a history of noteworthy Canadian autonomy disputes, initially refused to adhere to the new labour organization.119 Just so that there were no misunderstandings, an intolerant Ken Rose warned any potential electrical local with similar ideas in the rest of the country, “that any IBEW local that affiliated with the CLC would be placed in trusteeship.”120 The result was that organized labour across Canada was badly divided for fifteen years. As the CEWU in Vancouver had split from Local 213 in 1966, and FIPOE from the IBEW in Québec in the period from 1972 to 1974, so did the IBEW and eleven other building trades unions secede from the CLC in 1982. Having been suitably educated on the matter, his trade union career having rewarded him at times with the fruits of solidarity, Les McDonald would subsequently argue that nothing good could come from all this splintering within the ranks of organized labour.121

While the IBEW and the CLC dealt with the broader ramifications of splits and secessions in Canada’s organized labour, the fallout from Lenkurt continued to reverberate locally in British Columbia. An event of some significance occurred in early 1969 when Local 213 amalgamated with about 250 members of Local 999 in the West Kootenays, based in Castlegar. This event, which curiously went against the historical tide of reducing Local 213’s jurisdiction in British Columbia, was initiated by Jim Kinnaird and surprisingly supported by Bill Ladyman and Jim Wolfgang, the latter who had replaced the now-retired Jack Ross.122 The reason for the International Office representatives’ change in attitude became evident a few years later when Kinnaird argued in 213 LiveWire that geographically outlying electrical workers were politically unhappy and that “the overall membership had better recognize this shift and move away from complete and absolute Vancouver authority.”123

Cliff Rundgren would echo this position when he, in turn, was elected business manager in 1973. It was demonstrably unfair, he wrote, that the increasing number of Local 213 members outside the Lower Mainland would “lose their input since they have limited access to Vancouver general meetings.”124 When many of the electrical workers were on summer holiday, Rundgren then presided over the elimination of general meetings in August 1974, when Local 213’s new by-laws “were handed down from the I.O. [International Office].”125 It was a fundamental change. As with Bill Ladyman’s decision to split up Local 213 into three separate entities in 1967, on the surface it appeared that the elimination of general meetings was a much-needed reform based on a sense of geographic fairness and that it improved the democratic process. On a practical level, though, it now meant that for a resolution to become local policy it first had to be presented as a notice-of-motion at all five units in the same month, then brought to the floor and voted on in all the units the following month. Some of the units met on the same date, a meeting that now had to include the new unit in far-off Castlegar. Realistically, only the local’s executive board would be able to successfully co-ordinate political action and promote their version of trade union philosophy in the remaining units of Local 213.

The isolation of the activist left-wing elements in the Vancouver-based inside wiremen’s unit was virtually assured once the IBEW had successfully implemented a strategy that enabled closer control of these dangerous, unruly elements and their accompanying insurgent ideas.126 As a young cable worker in the Vancouver electrical local at the time, Paul Yorke recalled: “The election of Cliff Rundgren as Business Agent was the last nail in the coffin of Local 213. . . . The membership’s ability to take action was dead.”127 In the late 1990s, during a CLC-sanctioned raid, Yorke would help lead a section of unhappy cable workers out of Local 213 and into the Telecommunications Workers’ Union, at the time an independent Canadian union.128

As events transpired, Cliff Rundgren did not have much to fear; the Communist faction, for instance, was no longer a factor within Local 213. The aftermath of the Lenkurt dispute, followed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, had succeeded in eradicating the party for good among the Vancouver electrical workers. Terry Simpson commented on the declining profile of the party: “The Party was a pushover in the 1960s as compared to what had existed in the 1950s. It was like sinking a coastal steamer as compared to a battleship. By 1973 the Party was more or less defunct.”129 The IBEW also sold the Dunsmuir union hall and established a much smaller one on Nordlund Avenue in Burnaby. It has since relocated yet again and is now situated in Port Coquitlam.

Immediately following the Lenkurt strike, Les McDonald was without work. No company would hire him, nor would Local 213 authorize a dispatch as the new executive board had not yet taken office. Then one late summer evening, a fortuitous knock at the door of the modest Pemberton Heights split-level home changed his fate. It was the aging Fred Hume, retired head of Hume and Rumble, the largest electrical contracting company in Western Canada, and also former mayor of both New Westminster and Vancouver. He commiserated with Les, then offered him a job as a groundman in the line contracting section of the company, now run by his son, while affairs at the union blew over. A lineman in his youth, Fred Hume had always been sympathetic to some of the leading activists within Local 213 and was known to have been particularly friendly with Ed Simpson (Terry’s father), a long-time member of the Communist Party of Canada and coach of Hume and Rumble’s industrial ice hockey team.130 Hockey, and sports in general, had always been important to Hume, and he was quite aware of the newspaper stories describing Les McDonald’s role as part of a citywide committee to attract an NHL franchise earlier in the year to Vancouver.131 Hume was also cognizant of George Gee’s fate following his lifetime expulsion from Local 213 eleven years earlier and did not want that history of unemployment to repeat itself.132 Les thus continued to bring in an income to support his family and was eventually able to work again as an inside wireman after about six months as a groundman for Hume and Rumble. Ever the optimist, he looked forward eventually to regaining the right to fully participate in Local 213’s political affairs.

Two years later Les McDonald left the Communist Party. Having been appropriately enlightened over his decade of progress to the existence in the increasingly staid organization of a Soviet-directed “cascading series of marionettes,” he had visibly matured and was finally able to come to terms with the meanings of Stalinism.133 That his introduction to the Communist Party had been mostly through trade union circles might explain how he had been largely shielded from some of the more sordid political machinations of the Toronto-based Central Committee.134

But it could not last. What may have helped precipitate Les McDonald’s increasing disillusionment about the Communist Party and its leading lights were allegations that he was an agent of the RCMP. On August 11, 1967, a police mole had reported on a (presumably recent) meeting of the trade union branch of the Party in Vancouver. First, the mole reported that those at the meeting spent most of their time discussing what to do about “some friction that existed between two comrades” in the same field, namely George Gee and Les McDonald. According to the mole, Gee (who, unlike Les, was in attendance) was particularly accusatory about “some of McDONALD’s escapades during the time that the International moved in to break up Local #213 and [create] three other separate Locals.” More concerning was that the meeting chairman, Nigel Morgan, had stated that “although there was nothing that a person could put their finger on for proof there were circumstances that were very questionable, with regard to McDONALD, from a viewpoint of security.” As the mole further reported someone as saying, “It may also be proven that he is just an impossible Leftist and not an agent.” But the seeds of doubt had been planted. What appeared to stop the former union heavyweights from acting, the mole noted, was that if the Party were to “lower the boom” on McDonald, they ran the risk of becoming “public enemy number One where he is concerned and he would attack GEE, the Party and the United Electrical Workers.” Additionally, the party’s trade union director, Charles Caron, “seemed to have a great deal of faith in McDONALD and was very disturbed when it had been suggested that McDONALD was a police agent.” The RCMP mole concluded his remarks with the following analysis: “It would appear that McDONALD’s allegiance is under question by the Party and McDONALD can expect to be given a rough time in the very near future.”135

Quite apart from suspicions that he had been an RCMP informer, two additional political issues came to confound McDonald. The first was that his restless, challenging spirit chafed at the Communist Party’s ideological devotion to democratic centralism, especially as it was revealed over time as much more arbitrarily centralist than it was democratic. He was not alone in holding this view. After touring British Columbia to hear opinions on the issue, Ben Swankey, a key BC Communist Party executive member in the late 1960s, presented similar findings to the Central Committee in Toronto: “I fought hard for the elimination of democratic centralism, which I didn’t think was very democratic.”136 Conjecture perhaps, but it would have been informative if he could have gone beyond the specific context and critiqued the endemic authoritarianism seemingly required in all vanguardist parties? What should also be considered is that Les McDonald embodied a rare breed of lefty as he was both a Communist and a sport individualist and his independent streak chafed against the irritating restrictions of party discipline. Second, and more importantly, promoting a party-oriented agenda or engaging in class struggle skirmishes, attractive as they might be, could no longer overshadow the reality of Soviet tyranny. His experience at the Czech border in 1968 meant that for Les, real, live, existing communism became the God that failed.137 His disillusionment with the failings of Soviet-style communism was reinforced in 1977 during a two-week visit to East Germany as part of a large Canadian sports and coaching delegation.138 Like so many others before him and since, he had now come through the Communist Party.139

After the fateful summer of 1968, Les McDonald joined the growing ranks of ex-Communists looking for ways to continue the struggle against oppression independently. In April 1969, he presented an eight-page discussion paper to a forum of formerly Communist and left-leaning trade unionists, in which he criticized breakaway unions in Canada for producing “fractured organizations.” He also recognized that the existence of specifically Canadian branches within the framework of so-called progressive international unions (such as in Mine-Mill or UE), even if they could claim autonomy, “still implies a higher authority which can exercise suzerainty.” Rather than get caught up in this dilemma, however, he focused on the growing, and increasingly disquieting, corporate and political control of Canada by the United States. “The deepening crisis of imperialism and resulting offensive against the working people on the home front,” he argued, “calls for militant policy and a new outlook that recognizes the need for social change.” Marxists had a special role in this respect to assist labour in developing such an outlook. Although this would be challenging, he acknowledged, “the outcome will be to place labor in its rightful role as a leader for social change and independence in Canada.” He wanted to see workers in Canada not merely aid, but in fact “play a leading role in the struggle for economic and political emancipation of itself as a class, and our nation as a whole.”140

On the issue of the Communist Party and its vanguardist role on this important question, Les McDonald would have agreed wholeheartedly with Homer Stevens, Communist leader of the Fishermen’s union, who argued retrospectively: “Not that the working class can solve everything on its own. But to make changes in our system can’t be done by following someone else’s ideas and strategies.”141 As the years went by and the Communist Party in Canada inexorably shrank, McDonald would nevertheless have concluded, along with former Comrade Jim MacFarlan, that “the party smacks of death and defeat; it’s a dinosaur.”142 The NDP, a disheartening and continuously compromising social democratic party, temporarily became his hard-to-accept alternative on the left. Following his frustrations with the Dave Barrett-led government, in particular its back-to-work legislation aimed at the strike-bound members of the pulp and paper workers in 1975, Les would recast himself as an independent socialist. For a number of years, however, he appeared genuinely irritated and uncomfortable that the political North Star of his young adulthood had irremediably gone askew. In any case, he had other outlets for his energies, and, with time, it became apparent that his new North Star was the organizing and promoting of mass participation in sports events. On the political-personal front, despite an ongoing disagreement over Czechoslovakia that lasted several decades, he eventually re-established a relationship of sorts with Bill Stewart. Both Bill and Dora had remained unapologetic defenders of the Soviet Union, and Bill had retired from his political career with the Communist Party of Canada having risen through the ranks to become Party leader in Ontario. Agreeing to disagree, at least up to a point, Les began corresponding intermittently with his once-activist friend and former mentor retired to the small Okanagan community of Peachland, BC, in 1988.143 But that was as far as it went: they rarely, if ever, met face-to-face again, their political disagreements ruling out a potential renewal of their former friendship.

Les McDonald’s break with the Communist Party did not mean that his jobsite activism or political acumen had been entirely extinguished. In the 1972 lockout he teamed up with a young electrician, Alfie Huston, “running flying picket squads” to help co-ordinate the shutdown of Vancouver-area construction sites.144 Three years later, unable to curb his combative instincts and continuing to loathe a perceived IBEW-permitted exploitation of workers, particularly when he felt personally victimized, McDonald was identified in the local press when he helped lead a two-day wobble on Vancouver’s Pacific Centre construction site. Alongside eight other left-leaning electricians who were protesting out-of-town workers on permit being kept on the job by the company, Canadian Electrical Contractors, while Local 213’s members were laid off—leading notably to the firing of an exasperated Fred Reilly, the electrical crew’s shop steward—Les McDonald was reprimanded and charged by Cliff Rundgren. On the face of it referencing Rundgren’s past political preferences, it came to be known as “the 1975 purge.”145 The Vancouver Sun reported that the resulting union trial “stemmed from internal disputes over handling of layoffs out of seniority order on some Greater Vancouver construction sites. . . . The charges alleged slandering of other members, advocating or causing work stoppages, usurping responsibilities of leaders, and failing to follow rules and procedures for resolving differences.”146 Six of the electricians suspended by the union would appeal to the International Office, then eventually launch legal proceedings against Local 213.147 Their expensive judicial appeal through the British Columbia legal system would be mercifully short-circuited as the matter was settled out of court. Terry Simpson, the previously unsuccessful rival to Cliff Rundgren, started the ball rolling by registering a very rare win in his appeal to the International Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1978.148 His redemption was followed by the unusually benign intervention of the International Office whereupon it admitted defeat, lifted all the associated suspensions, and agreed to cover the legal expenses of the affected electricians.149

The peace between the contending groups did not last. A year later, in 1979, during Local 213’s now triennial elections, the background described as a “bitter internal union dispute . . . amid pleas for Canadian autonomy,” Terry Simpson was fined $1,000 and suspended for six years in relation to “an anti-establishment election leaflet . . . containing statements about [Cliff Rundgren’s] performance and handling of union funds.” W. A. (Dusty) Rhodes, Sharon Boudier (the first fully certified female electrician in Local 213), Keith Apps, Alfie Huston, Robert Duffey, Richard Mathews, Gerry Halferty, and Paul Yorke were fined a matching $1,000 and suspended for between three and six years each.150 Having run on a third opposition slate alongside Jim Gee, the newly elected president, W. Lloyd Fedewa, was put in charge of overseeing a Trial Board panel. But he refused to have the previously appointed group of “establishment executive members” sit on the panel as they had “issued a leaflet of their own defending Rundgren and attacking the rebel unionists.” In an interview with a Sun reporter, Fedewa thought the initial Rundgren-supporting panel appointees had already “prejudged the situation.” His line of logic would unfortunately not be shared. The IBEW’s top representative in Canada, Ken Rose, had taken an interest in the affair, advising Fedewa along the way not to proceed with any changes as these would contravene the union’s constitution. The newly elected local president brazenly refused to heed the advice, instead conducting an initial hearing with a freshly minted Trial Board. Demonstrating historical continuity in Local 213, what happened next did not surprise knowledgeable observers; for his efforts in attempting to exercise a minimal level of independence, the International Office intervened and relieved Lloyd Fedewa of his presidential duties. It then laid a variety of charges against him, including alleging slander, then suspended him for one year.151 Reacting in turn, the recently deposed president commented: “It’s the Canadian autonomy issue again. We just don’t have it.” He concluded by declaring that Cliff Rundgren had seemingly become a willing servant of establishment forces in the IBEW as he was now “in the international’s camp. When he gets in trouble, he just cries to the international.”152 Having recently felt the sting of suspension, Fedawa was perhaps too quick to judge. It nevertheless appeared that Local 213’s business manager had discovered which side his bread was buttered on and was now prepared to adopt the IBEW’s view of the world. As with so many of his predecessors, Cliff Rundgren didn’t really change the position of business manager or the way his local functioned in a business union environment; instead, as his critics never tired of pointing out, the position gradually appeared to change him.153

In October 1982, a BC Supreme Court trial was held in the matter of the fines and suspensions. Two of the original nine did not join the expensive lawsuit. Represented by Vancouver lawyers Leo McGrady and Stuart Rush, the aggrieved members of Local 213 alleged that the IBEW had unlawfully “removed a newly elected president and wrongfully suspended six other members following an election dispute.”154 Three weeks into the trial, realizing they might lose, the union again threw in the towel. The International Office agreed to lift Terry Simpson’s six-year suspension and reinstate him as a member in good standing. It also agreed to pay out a substantial $56,000 to cover legal costs incurred by the plaintiffs, as well as overturn all outstanding suspensions. An essential point, however, had been made yet again: challenging the IBEW’s near-predicable arbitrary and mean-spirited responses meant risking expensive legal action. A relieved Simpson commented: “Workers in Canada and the United States are held in the same thrall by international unions like the IBEW. They hold them in a real iron grip. Well, maybe we’ve loosened their pinky a little bit.” He concluded by promising to help organize yet another opposition slate for the next executive board elections in Local 213, some two-and-a-half years into the future.155

Another important lesson to be learned from this lamentable series of events is that the cohesion and internal discipline of the former Communist-led left faction within Local 213 was now completely torn asunder. Dismayingly endowed with an easily triggered and often unforgiving personality, Les McDonald should have been more willing to listen to others who understood that the Communist Party was constituted of imperfect human beings “who make use of the positions they are elected to [to] perpetuate their personal outlook.”156 That Les was either not capable, or unwilling, to bend even a little to the opinion of others with whom he had previously worked, and who now had the audacity to tell him what procedures he needed to follow in terms of policing a collective agreement, explains his second suspension in 1975.

At the same time, crack-down on unruly elements among the inside wiremen during Local 213 elections in 1979 helps to illustrate the subsequent turmoil within the union. Having been forged during the 1950s and 1960s, this particular edition of the Communist-led opposition caucus had irreparably fractured and devolved into a toxic pit of personality differences and incessant in-fighting. It was a sorry time.157 Les loved to sing working-class songs and ballads, particularly those recounting episodes of rebellion or the brotherhood of man: in an earlier era he might well have been a classic itinerant, troubadour-type Wobbly.

The incorrigible McDonald, now nicknamed the “Red Baron” by his fellow electrical workers, was finally able to fully reintegrate Local 213 in 1981. Fifteen years had elapsed since his initial suspension from the Lenkurt affair. As Bill Stewart had done before in his relationship with him, he now assumed the role of mentor to younger electrical workers. He was an integral part in trying to protect and keep the “bubbly crew,” or “bubblies” (a colourful nickname for alcoholics), somewhat productive on worksites, and advised a politically engaged “variegated left” faction within Local 213.158 But time was passing him by and the personalities and issues had changed; things were not the same. In Trail, British Columbia’s industrial hinterland, a red-tinged beacon of inspiration, for example, had been extinguished as a fatigued and aging Harvey Murphy (born in 1900) had seemingly given up the fight against his anti-Communist business union rivals; in exchange for a pension, he led his Mine-Mill local into the waiting arms of the United Steelworkers in 1967. Within Local 213, too, the older Gee-era cadre of Communists had either all retired or passed away. In 1973 the first, and single-term, NDP government in BC under Dave Barrett’s leadership removed jurisdiction surrounding labour disputes from the hands of injunction-enthused Supreme Court judges when, under Bill King’s ministerial guidance, it brought into existence a completely revamped provincial Labour Relations Board. Seemingly a deliberate counterpoint, severe governmental cutbacks into British Columbia’s social safety net were imposed in the early 1980s by a rejuvenated Social Credit Party, followed by the neutering of Operation Solidarity by the IWA’s Jack Munro in a backroom deal with a second-generation Bennett premier, Bill (“Mini-WAC”) Bennett. An emboldened anti-labour Social Credit government had then immediately afterwards facilitated construction of the Pennyfarthing condominium development in Vancouver’s False Creek with non-union workers; provincial legislation applied to “special economic development projects” now permitted companies to legally skirt the building trades’ non-affiliation clause. Being able to do so meant that union workers could henceforth be forced to work alongside non-union workers on these “mixed” construction sites. Alfie Huston remembered that Les and Monique were “serving soup to the picketers” on the Expo site, but it was to no avail.159 Court cases ensued and the building trades lost. An additional phenomenon, “double-breasting,” did not help, either. Under this practice, traditionally organized companies opened up a non-union twin and then shifted all their work to the latter, which meant that a large portion of IBEW members remained unemployed.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that electricians continued to make a living while continuing to pay their union dues. They did this by working for non-union contractors in BC, becoming small-time contractors themselves, finding employment in other trades, or moving to Alberta and Ontario where they worked on permit through other locals. Travelling wiremen were now adopting the itinerant lifestyles of the “boomer” linemen of previous decades who moved around the continent following employment, but the boom conditions of the 1960s had given way to the bust of the 1980s, and work was scarce. It also meant that the trade union movement in BC and its activist members were yet again forced to give up rope in the perpetual tug-of-war of contested class relations. As ever, it seemed, a hoped-for enduring and progressive turn to the left had been either undermined or quashed.

Les McDonald’s time away from local union politics certainly hadn’t helped matters. No longer as driven to rise up the union ladder as before, he did not wield the same level of influence at union meetings. Yet it appears he still had enough residual reputation to be nominated as a delegate to the IBEW’s International Convention in Toronto in 1986. In the midst of the campaigning alongside a new generation of oppositional activists, Cliff Rundgren named him personally in a newsletter headlined “Credibility Counts.” Mailed to every member of Local 213, it spurred a startled McDonald to react prior to the vote by writing an indignant letter of protest to Alfie Huston, who had recently been elected president of Local 213. Normally not one to overreact to personal attacks, the North Vancouver electrician pointed out the obvious intent of this one-sided procedural intervention from on high. He thought Rundgren’s comments were “extremely derogatory . . . highly libelous and personal[ly] vindictive,” and considered it “impossible to measure the influence such an unsubstantiated slur on the members named, or it’s [sic] effect on the vote being conducted.”160 As could only be expected, however, the election of delegates was now slanted in favour of the “Rundgren Team.” Having been directly targeted as being part of an oppositional, nefarious, and Rundgren-described “Wrecking Crew,” with no right of reply by way of the local’s closely guarded mailing list, Les McDonald was unable to earn a spot as one of Local 213’s ten representatives; instead, he finished a dismal seventeenth out of twenty-one candidates.161 Though he had been making his way toward the exits for quite some time, it was a momentous blow to his ego and contributed to the increasing disinterest he exhibited for participating in trade union politics. Adding to his disenchantment was that Local 213’s resolution “calling for the I.B.E.W. to reaffiliate with the C.L.C.”—something that he adamantly supported—did not find favour with the Resolutions Committee at the Toronto convention and so failed to pass; the same held true for eighteen out of the nineteen resolutions presented by the Vancouver local.162 The unchanging stranglehold of the International Office on its own electrical locals in English-speaking Canada remained overwhelmingly apparent. As with Jim Kinnaird years earlier, it dawned on McDonald after reading the convention report that it might not be possible to reform the IBEW in his lifetime. The fact that Montréal’s Local 568 was placed under trusteeship for the second time in eleven years in 1985 did not help either.163 Disillusioned, trade union activism increasingly became the road not taken.164

In addition, other activities diverted Les McDonald’s energy during his suspension. Turning back to sport, his first passion in life, he was selected to take part in the government-sponsored Yukon Alpine Centennial Expedition in the summer of 1967, during which multiple teams of climbers scaled upwards of a dozen peaks in the remote St. Elias range. Specifically, Les was a member of the team of climbers, four Canadian and four American, who made the inaugural ascent of what came to be called Good Neighbour Peak, which straddles the Yukon-Alaska border. It was fortuitous timing as he definitely needed distraction from the disastrous outcomes of the Lenkurt strike. Training and preparing for several months in advance was a good way to clear his head and focus on something else.165 In contrast to his experience in the building trades in general and the IBEW in particular, Les’s latest cross-border effort ended well. He and the other team members successfully scaled the 4,785-metre peak and, after sitting out a major snowstorm, slowly but safely made their way back to base camp.166

Having worked as an assistant coach of the Whistler Mountain Ski Club from roughly 1969 to 1973, and having helped design and spearhead competitions on the Harmony Bowl downhill course at Whistler (known at the time as the “Back Bowl”), he then explored the possibility of gaining a position in the late 1960s on the executive board of the Canadian Alpine Ski Association. Rebuffed by the bemused conservative guard of the ski racing association, he turned his attention instead to other outdoor athletic endeavours. With a number of good friends, most notably Al Fisher and Loreen Barnett, he established the Alta Lake Sports Club and organized a number of annual events in and around Vancouver and the Whistler valley. He organized the first women’s-only Stanley Park seawall race in 1973, then switched ski codes in the winter and moved away from alpine skiing due largely to the growing and exponential costs of participation. With Fisher and Barnett helping, he directed family and friends over several years in the rehabilitation of long-abandoned and overgrown logging roads to create the nucleus of the cross-country ski trails intertwined around picturesque Lost Lake.167 The first triathlon he organized was in 1981 at Jericho Beach in Vancouver. Ever the sportsman, he became a world-class triathlete in his own right, zealously training every day with (not always) compatible friends, rain or shine.

Les was not just a sportsman; he was also an administrator. He was president of Triathlon Canada from 1984 through to 1996, and also spearheaded the founding convention in 1989 of the International Triathlon Union (ITU) in Avignon, France. Having been elected president of the ITU in Avignon, he relied on his experience as a “long-time trade unionist” to skillfully inaugurate a World Cup circuit in 1991 for the best triathletes on the planet, insisting that triathlon must be the first sport to offer equal prize money for men and women athletes.168 Les McDonald had evidently not forsaken his upbringing nor forgotten the bitter struggle of the women at Lenkurt. Having retired from the electrical trades in 1993, at the age of sixty, he then proceeded to guide triathlon into the Olympic Games and the multi-sport event had its debut at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. It was unquestionably his greatest political triumph. In retrospect, it was also the culmination of his exposure and commitment to “proletarian internationalism,” the Leninist ideal of building transnational bonds between working people around the world. The easy transference of this long-term objective to middle-class triathletes was to have positive and long-lasting effects on the triathlon community. Although he was not always on good terms with the sometimes-polarizing ITU president, Scott Zagarino, the former vice-president of USA Triathlon was nevertheless forced to admit: “At the bottom of it all he is the most passionate person in the world about the importance of sport in bringing different cultures together.”169

It’s a cliché, of course, but out of the ashes of defeat at Lenkurt, Les McDonald rose like the legendary phoenix to Olympian heights in triathlon. He was ITU president for nineteen years, from its inception in 1989 to 2008. He was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 2007 and into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2009, he received the Olympic Order from IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2010, and he was also the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal in 2012. Most importantly for him, though, he was invested into the Order of Canada in 2013. Its motto was particularly poignant for the now-retired sport administrator: desiderantes meliorem patriam—“they desire a better country.” Indeed, Les McDonald did wish this for Canada, but it hadn’t always been through the vehicle of sport.

Bernard St-Jean, long-time functionary of the French Triathlon Federation (FFTri), was one of Les McDonald’s most trusted lieutenants in Europe. Originally from Dax, St-Jean’s description of the ITU president’s irrepressible temperament is worth reproducing. His retrospective and very personal account of the success of this charismatic character in building an Olympic sport that was differently directed—McDonald, pointedly, never tired of telling his triathlon audience that “nous ne sommes pas comme les autres” (“we are not like the others”), which lends insight into how he might have impacted the world of trade union politics in an earlier phase of life. As St-Jean remarked:

I think often . . . of Les who comes alive in my memory at unpredictable times. Not only does he appear in my imagination during my regular contact with the triathlon world, but also when I find myself in the street and simply meet with someone for the first time. Les left an impression on me with his overwhelming communicative enthusiasm and his permanent thirst to know, to advance a position, and to persuade his audience. We both had an exacting degree of discipline, but he had a capacity to demonstrate that I do not have, allied with an ambition to change people’s minds come what may. Never weary—or at least Les never showed any signs of fatigue—he was always ready to defy the impossible.170

Triathlon’s gain might have been the labour movement’s loss.