Ferries and Communism?

[Scott]

Interesting piece of history. I found it while browsing eBay. Of course it's pre-BC Ferries... but it is local. Anyone know what it's about?

cgi.ebay.com/WORKERS-ON-A-FERRY-BC-MARXIST-ART-POSTCARD-c-1930s_W0QQitemZ320022216906QQihZ011QQcategoryZ35925QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Low Light Mike]

I just did some Googling of the artist's name, and I only found 1 reference, cut/pasted as follows:

Loft Gallery The Permanent Collection: 1980-81

This second exhibition in the Loft Gallery highlights two years during which the Permanent Collection took shape as a community asset. It was an exciting time for the gallery as it raised funds to move to its current location and a new sense of responsibility spawned a flurry of activity around the collection. Twenty-four works of art by Francis Harris, Toni Onley, Jack Davis, Judith Foster, Marion Morham Grisby and other noted artists were accessioned and increased the importance of the collection during these pivotal years.

---------------------------

I'm not sure if your thread title is misleading or not, as this appears to be a drawing re history of people in a city, and not necessarily of "Communism".....but that's just my take. Yes, the USSR emphasised the appreciation of workers....but that's not necessarily exclusive to Communism.

[BrianWilliams]

BCF and Communism?

Yeah, why not? From 1946 to 1959, Canada had a very large merchant marine industry. The unions that represented sailors were strong, but sadly they were often led by Communists - or people suspected of "Red" sympathies.

Do read of the Harold Banks/SIU controversy in the early1960's. Our national government allegedly imported Hal Banks from the USA to reform Canadian seamens' unions. In fact, Banks was another Jimmy Hoffa, and his Seafarers' International Union was a leg-breaking, thuggish version of the Teamsters.

The unions that struck CP Ships and Black Ball in 1957-58 included CPSIU, which was Communist-led ... so the BC Ferries' connection is quite right.

Were the deck officers and workers Commies? Not likely.

[BrianWilliams]

Whoops, first a correction. I mentioned CPSIU: I meant CMSG (Cdn Merchant Seaman's Guild) and the earlier, larger CSU (Cdn Seaman's Union).

Hal Banks' SIU was imported as early as 1949 to wreck the CSU. I think CMSG was the organization that struck Black Ball and CP Ships in 1956-7-8. Whether CMSG was in anyway Communist-led, I don't know.

WAC Bennett was an astute entrepreneur, a very effective politician; and the right leader for BC in the 1950's/early 60's.

Was he a doctrinaire anti-Communist, Red-baiting simpleton? No, as his record shows. Bennett certainly exploited the sound and fury of 1950's anti-Red/pink, anti-labour doctrine embraced by business.

In fact, WAC Bennett was a canny leader who did not give away BC's resources to exploiters.

We may now criticize forest management as practised by Bennett's government - for example- but in the 1950's, the Bennett gov't was Red in the eyes of the big companies: forest land was public land; each tree was public property to be harvested under gov't license, paid for by-the-each (stumpage), and Timber Leases carried the obligation to replant.

We can regret the vast clearcuts allowed in the period, but Bennett's regime never relinquished an acre of public forest to corporate ownership. Unlike the USA, where much state owned land was auctioned for pennies.

Pardon this, another of my rants. I believe the genesis of the USA/Canada softwood lumber dispute is in some Americans' perceived "unfairness" - that BC produces the best lumber in North America from public land; our producers pay by the thousand board-feet without having to own and tree-farm the land.

In fact, Bennett's system did favour local industry for many years. Our gov't helped pay for forest roads and fire protection, while exacting a modest charge for trees cut. Perhaps too modest: in 1973, the NDP Barrett gov't more than doubled 1950's stumpage rates, causing a firestorm of outrage from BC lumber companies.

Still they prospered, reaching 40% of the USA market by the late 1980's (though Bill Bennett continued to increase stumpage rates with market prices, wise man). Superior quality, competitively priced.

The American millers of shabby yellow pine, grown on badly managed private land in the SE states seized on our socialistic practices as an excuse to block BC lumber from the American consumers who wanted it.

The controversy continues - but it was that noted Marxist, WAC Bennett, who shaped our intransigent public ownership of resources.

There's not much need for me to remind y'all of WAC's other rigid anti-socialist measures: like buying the private BC Electric utility to create BC Hydro -at a dictated price. Good thing BCE was an Anglo-Canadian company. If it had been American owned, our late premier would still be called "WAC Castro" by the US Republicans.

WAC Bennett was a pragmatist. Though often a showman in his small-town way, and sometimes dazzled by grand schemes; he most often used good sense and surprising vision to advance British Columbia.

Cascade: I am aware of the great injustices done to small operators in the formation of BC Ferries, as you've explained.

There is no excuse for that steamroller policy. BC coastal services would be stronger with more small companies working their traditional routes in co-operation with BCF mainliners.

WAC Bennett may have had the fearless vision of FDR and Trudeau in building our BC, but there was a touch of Stalin, too.

[Neil]

Brian:

Wow. We sure have a different vision of old WAC's legacy. I respect yours, and I know a lot of people share it, but it's sure not how I remember the primitive old populist.

There's no question BC was in fine financial shape for a good portion of Bennett's reign. It was the post war boom; America was expanding into the economic colossus we recognize today, Europe was re-building, the steel industry was still thriving, everywhere a building boom was on- and everyone wanted the natural resources we were rich in.

Mickey Mouse could have looked good running BC. Often, it looked like he was.

True, WAC kept nominal control of our forest resources. But the reason our lumber looked so good in the U.S. was that WAC let all the forest giants clear cut a huge portion of our old growth forests; yes, it was wonderful quality stuff, but there was only so much of it to cut, and Bennett and his corporate friendly forests ministers gave precious little thought to what coming generations were going to sell once all the big stuff was cut down. Yes, there were tree planting operations, but in many cases they were poorly managed and did little to replenish what was taken. Forest companies stripped mountainsides and built stream destroying networks of roads, paying little heed to the few limp environmental laws the Socreds bothered to introduce. Raw logs were shipped by the boatload and trainload out of BC, with little effort by the Bennett gang to develop secondary industry.

The mining sector boomed as well, again, with few environmental restrictions on their open pit operations, and corporate friendly low royalties to keep the Howe Street promoters happy. The bucks rolled in, although not nearly enough to Provincial coffers.

Fishing fleets, native and commercial, were allowed to plunder our marine resources, again, with little thought for the future. The Fraser, and other rivers, were well on their way to becoming open sewers because the Socreds had no concerns about what municipalities, or corporate polluters, were dumping into them. Bennett loved dams, and the hydro-electric power that could be sold, or given away, and he didn't trouble himself overly about ancestral lands being deluged, or about any ecological concerns.

We were truly the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. Of course, it couldn't last. The land has only so much that you can rip out of it. But that was for another generation to deal with- the getting was good at the time, and I believe old WAC was a lot like my father, and others of his generation, who believed that BC was so vast, and so rich, that we would never run out of bounty.

The notion of WAC Bennett as some sort of socialist is a popular one, but I don't believe it bears any sort of scrutiny other than on the most superficial level. He was more of a small town populist, occasionally thumbing his nose at 'them big city fellers' whether they be corporate, or the evil feds. We're still recovering from the hick, reactionary, and dysfunctional federal - provincial relations climate the Socreds fostered, which they used to make themselves look good.

WAC Bennett a 'visionary"? Sorry. Can't buy it. The old man had the good fortune to come to power at the most propitious time in BC's history, and I believe he used his mandate to exploit to the utmost our natural bounty, with virtually no long term strategy for how successive generations might have to deal with the fall out.

As for the 'injustices' done to small operators in the setting up of BC Ferries, I think we're still waiting for some evidence there. I've seen some dark allusions to such on this forum, and some hints of examples being brought forth, but nothing substantial.

Union Steamships was gone two years before the first revenue sailing by the new BC Ferries fleet. Coast Ferries was never a big player in the ferry business. Gulf Islands Ferries operated a tiny fleet of rinkydink vessels clearly unsuited for the expanding '60s. Surely no one can shed any tears for Black Ball or CP. Most coastal islands residents wanted proper government service- whether through BC Ferries, or Highways. Small local companies have disappeared from Alaska, Washington, and other areas- were they 'steamrollered', too, or just the victims of their own inabilities to keep up with public demand? In any case, I'd like to see the allegations supported.

'Ferries and Communism', indeed. There have always been a lot of socialists in the maritime unions, but I don't believe the old 'Admiral' ever had the slightest streak of pink in him.

[Neil]

Bennett not a 'red-baiter'? You must have forgotten his famous rallying cry, "The socialist hordes are at the gates of British Columbia". The old demagogue was never averse to raising the spectre of communism or socialism whenever it looked like the CCF or NDP was nipping at his heels.
I can think of four main companies that were in the passenger ferry business on the south coast when BC Ferries started up, but not six. CP, Black Ball, Coast, Gulf Islands.... the other two were?

To give the devil his due, Bennett did select a pretty efficient service model for the introduction of the new fleet. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done better than any previous service.

[Retrovision]

cascade,

I seem to remember a post of yours from somewhere around a year ago suggesting that, according to a thesis stored at UVic that is not accessible to the public, William Andrew Cecil actually orchestrated the ferry strike(s) of the 50s (or some aspect of them) in order to create his WSF look-alike system. I don't necessarily disagree with those actions, if true, if only because of the bleak situation of the time largely brought on by CP themselves (in many aspects including what you mentioned in your post, aswell as other factors such as poorly suited ship designs), though.

[BrianWilliams]

HornbyGuy:

I would have written your argument above ("primitive old populist") with equal fervour until about a decade ago.

As it happens, I do agree with most of your points by the each. Reflection, more reading and maybe more grey hair has mellowed my appreciation of the WAC Bennett era.

I hope the BC Ferries Forum isn't online in Heaven. My late father will be building thunderbolts to hurl at me for praising Bennett.

It's true, first, that WAC Bennett did not invent public ownership of forest land. His shaky, early government of untried small-town boys gave WAC his first shock: when Minister of Forests Bob Sommers was caught selling forest licenses for small bribes.

Sommers was a Kootenay teacher unprepared to manage BC's forests in the high-stakes corporate world. Bob Sommers went to jail, silly man, for his foolishness.

Bennett learned that stinging lesson in 1954. He then imported a few city slickers into his cabinet to run the tough ministries - like east Vancouver's Robert Bonner.

WAC was a primitive populist all his political life. He fed us rubes corny slogans and carnivals.

Under the aw-shucks image was a pretty effective govt. No, I don't agree now that Mickey Mouse could have run BC in the booming 1950's-early 1960's.

A real rube -the image Bennett cultivated- would have sold BC's land and resources to foreign industry. Our forests were poorly managed, in hindsight; but better than most frontier places at the time.

WAC came closest to a big sellout when he was dazzled by Axel Wenner-Gren's mid 1950's proposal to flood the entire Rocky Mountain Trench to generate hydro power. Thank goodness, the Federal govt reminded WAC that the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers were not his to give away.

Bennett recovered from that aberration and then pursued development with better advice, notably from Bob Bonner.

WAC Bennett was not a socialist, but his govt settled into a pretty good resource policy after 1958. We did spend a lot of taxpayers' money on highways, PGE completion and ... ferries.

Environmental protection was primitive, but no worse than most of western North America. Most importantly, I repeat, the Bennett years left us this legacy: we lost no public land, at a time when the pressure to sell out was tempting.

My fave guys, the Barrett and Harcourt NDP governments, were able to repair much of the damage done in the Bennett years because we still own the land.

I dislike WAC Bennett 'cause of my own political heritage, by review of his public image, and especially by the smug Chamber Of Commerce attitude he represented.

But I now recocgnize that he was an exceptional man who left BC a better place than when he started.

[BrianWilliams]

A late PS:

Coastal fishing was rapacious in the 1946-1980 era -- but that was not a BC policy. The Canadian government regulates salt water fishing, and was asleep while our salmon were raped in the North Pacific.

BC has a responsibility of course. 1940's-50's-60's logging was badly supervised on Pacific watershed streams. The worst, though, were the massive clear cuts on private land on SW Vancouver Island. The worst pillage was in the CPR-owned E&N grant of 1871; it's most of the Island south of Barkley Sound, but extends to the highlands west of Strathcona Park.

BC came very close to wrecking the last great salmon river in the whole world: our Fraser River.

WAC Bennett was a doddering old fool when he proposed the Moran Dam on the Fraser River above Lillooet. It was 1967.

Perhaps he signed a paper presented by BC Hydro engineers without looking, or maybe he wanted to pick another fight with Trudeau.

Anyway, the Canadian govt was finally very active in saving salmon rivers(*), so Bennett was in for a helluva fight. I'll bet Moran was a bargaining chip in his dream of a BC-Yukon-Alaska railway.

Pardon a digression: the Fraser River is the largest of the very few big BC rivers that are neither international or inter-provincial. Without our BC-Canada 1960's fishery agreement, we could pave the Fraser without opposition.

I think Bennett extorted the Dease Lake RR subsidy from Ottawa by withdrawing Fraser River dam proposals. Hmm. Must learn more.

(*) I wish Canada would be aggressive in pursuing our right to the survival of BC salmon in the ocean. We're one of 9 members of the North Pacific Fisheries Convention -- but when Russian, Korean and Chinese boats take Skeena, Nass and Fraser River salmon on the high sea with illegal nets, we shrug and do nothing.

[Dane]

cascade said:

The local Mayor for Central Saanich - wrote his Master on the start up of the BC Ferries, and he had access to WAC - so called private papers. Parts of his Master Paper where high lighted in BC Stat. He was photographed in the UVIC Library with the people from BCSTAT - and the summary of his works is still listed on the web.

You, the general public, can go to UVIC and read WAC papers - but you can not read what this Mayor said in his Masters works - I don't know why?

I read WAC papers and they do make some interesting reading. I also wonder why or how did UVIC get them - as there doesn't seem like a lot of them - given his time in power.

The current local mayor? Do you know when he graduated? Do you know what faculty he was in?

[Scott]

I think it's easy to judge WAC by current day environmental standards. I'm not saying he was an environmentalist, but he I don't think we can really blame him personally for an additude that was so prevalent in those days. I don't think he could have done what he did without being a visionary to some degree. He did things that most people wouldn't dare do and took on people that others would be afraid to take on.

Even though the projects he undertook weren't considerate of many issues that we would have to face these days I'm kind of glad we have some of those dams and roads today.

[BrianWilliams]

Cascade: Were you were still a BC resident in WAC's years?

You said: " Also the press - which could be controlled better by someone like WAC. Power was in a few hands - with limited checks on it. The rich ruled ..."

In the late 50's-early 60's WAC Bennett was skewered by Pacific Press, owners of the Sun and Province newspapers.

The Vancouver dailies were Liberal (Sun) and Tory (Province) in slant; and they hated the CCF-NDP more than Bennett's Social Credit. Still, they ridiculed the populist Bennett govt at every opportunity.

WAC may have loved the attention, and it didn't hurt his gang in our over-represented rural areas.

Behind the sound and fury, big BC business quietly supported Bennett of course. We could have done worse.

Bennett had to temper his policies with some appeal to Howe Street/Bay Street/Wall Street interests, but he had a base of electoral support in the boonies that made the pinstriped capitalists accept BC terms for doing business here.

I am a lifelong supporter of CCF and NDP ideals for our province, but I now realize that the Bennett era accomplished much of what the social democrats wanted in the 1950's.

We built a thriving economy based on resources at first. Yes, BC attracted outside capital to create paper mills, sawmills, coal mines and fruit packers.

Without fear, Bennett's BC built highways, railways and hydro dams on the public dime. Some projects were misconceived disasters. But many of 'em are the foundation of our prosperity today.

Maybe Bennett was a bit of FDR, Mussolini and even Stalin. His time has passed, and we don't need another WAC Bennett.

The last imitator was our Glen Clark. Thirty years too late, and without the sense to know it.

[Neil]

I remember the euphoria on the part of progressive forces in this province when Dave Barrett was elected Premier in 1972. Whether it concerned health care, the plight of the mentally ill, education, social services, women's rights, labor relations, whatever; many people were convinced that BC had been in a sort of social dark ages under the Socreds, and I think there was really little sense that Bennett and his gang had "accomplished much of what the social democrats wanted", in the '50s, or any other decade. There was a sense that we had gotten rid of a government which could not effectively deal with any problem that couldn't be fixed with concrete and steel.

To put things in perspective, compare Bennett's legacy in BC to Tommy Douglas's in Saskatchewan, and consider how little wealth Douglas had to work with. What, in the end is more important- the bridges and highways and dams, or the social policies that make for a more civilized society, and which become the model for national policy, and which are fiscally intelligent as well?

The world is full of politicians like WAC Bennett; people, who, it is said, were 'good for the times', but who in reality simply road the coattails of an economic expansion not of their own making, and used the bounty of that growth to build impressive looking testimonials to their 'vision'. Yes, a lot of what the Socreds built was very useful, and the infrastructure they created opened up certain opportunities for further economic growth. But lots of other provinces and states on this continent were building in the same way, publicly or privately.

I can't help wondering how modest Bennett's accomplishments might seem, if a true visionary like Douglas had been in power here, with the resources that WAC had. Along with all the nifty dams and highways, we might have had a social policy legacy the world would look to.

[BrianWilliams]

It is very, very hard for me to argue for Bennett vs Tommy Douglas.

It's a shame that T.C. Douglas was not a British Columbian in the early 1950's. Harold Winch was the CCF leader in the crucial election of 1952.

CCF won the election by popular vote, but the convoluted transferable ballot gave the unknown Socreds a one-seat edge. (in the later words of Michael Moore: a fictional Premier?)

Winch was a solid man, but could not beat the appeal of Bennett, once WAC had a grip on government.

The British Columbia CCF/NDP needed a Tommy Douglas to rally the folks with fire and vision. We waited 20 years, while Winch and Bob Strachan fumbled.

We got our TC Douglas, at last, with Dave Barrett. Like Douglas, Barrett was a man founded on hard training - though Jewish, Dave was a Jesuit by education.

Tommy Douglas was a bare-knuckles boxer who became an ordained Baptist minister because the strict discipline of that faith appealed to him.

Barrett got almost of all his three-year term right. Like WAC, Barrett's cabinet was thin on talent (except for Bob Williams and Alex MacDonald) so Dave enacted his own vision of the New BC.

The Agricultural Land Reserve; ICBC; massive new Provincial Parks; the Islands Trust; Regional Districts; mineral royalties based on volume; a Ministry of Environment and much more ... all alive today.

If WAC Bennett was the right man for BC in the 1950's, as I've come to believe; then Dave Barrett was his follower in the 1970's.

Both guys were much alike. Populists with grand egos, sure, but these guys did more for BC in their time than all the other caretaker premiers we've had.

[Neil]

Well, Brian, I guess we'll never see eye to eye on WAC, but I certainly agree with you on Dave Barrett. I met him, and my wife and I did some grunt work on one of his campaigns, and I've always thought he was one of the most decent men I've ever met. In public or private, whether or not there were media people or the public around to impress.

It's said that history cannot be properly written until all the principal players, their immediate descendants, and friends and foes, are long gone from the scene; so who knows what will finally be written about WAC. I rather think, though, that history will be a lot kinder to Dave Barrett than some of his detractors are now. I wish he'd had more than three years.