Women’s part in the 1932 Alberta mining strike

“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner once said, then added, “it’s not even past.”

In her debut historical novel Revolution Songs, Carissa Halton, an award-winning Alberta author, explores the Crowsnest Pass mining strike of 1932. Halton told Christian Courier that she was fascinated by the bitter labour dispute, not just because of its importance locally to Alberta, but because it is “a little-known story about Canada at a time of deep division and transition.”

“Polarization and tactics for increasing radicalization are as real today as they were then,” added Halton, who sees sobering parallels between the mining strike and contemporary times.

In 1930, Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader and seminarian John James Maloney moved from Saskatchewan to Edmonton and revived the Alberta KKK. By 1932, the movement was growing in Alberta. Both Klan and Communist movements “were building off of pretty universal fears and needs” that still factor into today’s Canada.

Halton referenced an article in The Tyee by born-and-bred Albertan Marcello Di Cintio. Di Cintio joined separatist Facebook groups and attended the “Alberta Independence Rally” earlier this year. Everywhere, the rallying cry for separatists was anti-immigration. Di Cintio pointed out that while these groups could be considered fringe, over half of Premier Danielle Smith’s referendum questions target immigration – and her proposed policies (like denying healthcare to someone who doesn’t have an “Alberta-approved immigration status) – do too. “These ideas feel cribbed from the Alberta independence policy documents. They echo what the separatists have been saying, both onstage and online: foreigners are to blame for Alberta’s ills.”

Halton says Alberta has been here before: “[The] fear of immigrants and racial/cultural difference was how the KKK in Alberta grew in the 1930s.”

History of surprises

Halton grew up in Crowsnest Pass, yet there was a lot she did not know about those 1930s-era events: “I didn’t have any idea that KKK crosses had burned there, nor did I understand the extent of the Communist leanings that existed among the town’s coal mining families, nor did I know how active the RCMP were in surveilling non-criminal activities of labour and non-British social and cultural groups.”

In 1932, six mines in Crowsnest Pass were beset by a bitter months-long strike. The coal miners were demanding the promise of job security and safer working conditions. Cave-ins and explosions regularly resulted in serious injuries, even fatalities.

The miners were backed by Communist organizers and they faced down local police, the RCMP and the KKK. In this bitter conflict, no one hesitated to use inflammatory accusations against the other. Establishment forces tended to be Protestants and denounced working-class miners as inferior foreigners and Catholic agents of the Vatican.

In the archives, Halton discovered “there were so few stories of the women who were contributing to the social change of the 1930s.” Women ran businesses, led protests, taught political perspectives, baked food and delivered babies.

“Many of these women struggled to find their power: some saw they could claim it by demanding system change, others tried to find it in their art, in science, in their personal relationships,” says Halton.

Halton’s novel revolves around two women: a young girl serving in a wealthy mining executive’s house and a policeman’s wife with ambitions for her husband. Both women are caught up in the conflict and faced with difficult choices.

Church-endorsed tension

Halton says, the right-wing Klan grew by “exacerbating fears [that] British-born or British descendants had of non-British immigrants populating the prairies after World War One.” The government wanted immigrants to do hard work, for example, mining, but was “far less open to their political ideas or divergent cultural values,” so it used “police forces to enforce conformity.”

“In the 1920s and 30s, media outlets were far more likely to be affiliated to political positions, and the influence of publisher to editorial was strong. Also, the proliferation of smaller copy/print machines like the mimeograph helped groups like the illegal Communist Party of the time and perfectly legal Canadian Ku Klux Klan to print and widely share their views,” explains Halton. “[These new technologies] lowered the bar to entry in sharing their radical messages with the masses.”

Christian faith did not do much to calm the situation. The contentiously Protestant Klan was highly critical of Eastern European immigrant labourers who were largely Catholic, reflecting local fears that Catholics might grow more influential socially and politically.

“Both Catholic and Protestant leaders in the Crowsnest Pass preached strongly against the Communist influence in the mining union,” says Halton. Neither addressed the dangerous and oppressive working conditions for miners, let alone concerns about fair treatment and just wages.

Eerily familiar

Halton sees echoes of the Crowsnest Pass conflict these days: “Like we see in social media today, both the KKK and Communists used ‘gutter’ tactics to achieve solidarity and/or action. Both inflamed tensions by adding fuel to people’s natural fears. They worked anonymously, leveraged conspiracy theories and used shame as a tool of solidarity . . . For me, I think we can do better to initiate change in our communities.”

Halton carefully researched past events and, at the end of her book, includes detailed historical notes about her sources and methods. It took a long while for Crowsnest Pass folks to speak openly about the hard things that happened long before.

“Of course, the conflict that the strike created in the Crowsnest Pass had very long shadows in the community,” says Halton. “Even into the 70s, activists of the 30s were unable to get citizenship or jobs with the federal government. It is only now that people are really able to feel comfortable talking about it.”

As Faulkner said, the past does not die.