Human Rights A Day

Winnipeg general strike begins 40 days of social unrest.Canadian soldiers returned from World War I to find war factories shutting down and bankruptcies triggering massive unemployment and rapid inflation. Knowing that many had profiteered from the war industry, the veterans resented their futile search for decent jobs, pay and working conditions. On May 1, 1919, the Building and Metal Workers Union of Winnipeg went on strike for better wages, prompting the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council to expand matters into a general strike. On May 15, 1919, the city’s telephone operators, known as the “hello girls,” became the first of 30,000 union and non-union workers to take to the streets. It had been only two years since similar worker frustration had led to the Russian Revolution – a fact that so scared the Canadian government, officials quickly amended the Immigration Act and the criminal code to threaten strikers with deportation and imprisonment.Winnipeg’s mayor went even further, firing most of the city’s po