But first…a word from the Sewer

Ahh, May. What a month. The weather is getting nicer, the days are still getting longer, everything is blooming… sneezes for fifteen minutes.

But May brings more than allergies. It also brings The Busy Times™. I now have four major projects sitting on my desk with very strict deadlines, some of which are in about a month’s time, and a date for my follow-up surgery which, I’ve been told, will make me significantly taller and able to crush paint cans with my bare hands (I’m joking…it’s minor, but is still…you know…surgery).

This edition of the newsletter is the 55th since I started publishing last year. What started as a project to help me rediscover my voice in the wake of incredible social media upheaval and follow that old scribe’s axiom “make sure you write something - anything - every day” has now become a place for me to share my research, my passions, and my thoughts with an ever-growing number of wonderful people (pssttt…that means you!).

This newsletter is something I love doing, but it is, realistically, a time-eating beast. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent about 95% of my time working on newsletter content rather than anything else. And I can’t keep doing that in the short-term. Some of these projects are paid, which means they deserve a lot of my focus as I need to ensure I can keep paying rent, making student loan payments, and keeping my cats fed. Because sometimes they look at me and I just know they see nothing but a giant turkey leg like in a cartoon.

I’ll have to slow down a bit over the next while. Until I can get through all the things in my Ulysses-sized to-do list, I’ll have to cut down on my content and possibly take a week off here and there. That’s not something I like to do, as I know many folks have come to expect content on a regular basis and I hate to disappoint on that front. But I’ve made some commitments to research groups and some wonderful folks in the community (I’ll hopefully be able to share some of what I’m working on eventually) and need a bit of time to devote the requisite amount of attention to these project.

I don’t have a specific timeline in mind right now, so this is all to say: don’t be concerned if editions aren’t as long and detailed (or if I take a week off every now and again) after this week.

Alright, on with the show!

So long, Mrs. Anderson

Yesterday was May Day or “Beltane”, an annual festival in Europe marking the midway point of spring. Since the late 1800’s, the day has been blended with International Worker’s Day, a global celebration of working people and their struggle for a better world.

There’s an interesting Hamilton connection to why that is the case.

Even before widespread industrialization in the city, Hamilton’s unions were active in the fight for better working conditions. In 1872, Hamilton’s unions launched a campaign for a nine-hour workday, with James Ryan, an engineer with Sir Allan Napier MacNab’s Great Western Railway, as their leader. Though the movement’s goal of Canada-wide general strikes throughout May and June of that year fizzled, they did manage to achieve two major wins.

The first was the passage of the Trades Union Act, which legalized union activity in Canada (this was a positive, albeit unintended consequence of their actions, directly related to Sir John A. MacDonald’s own political ambitions – a story for another time). The second was starting a movement that had the audacity to question the length of the working day.

Fourteen years later, workers in Chicago organized a May 1 protest in support of a modified version of that goal: an eight-hour day. When an anarchist threw a bomb at police during a demonstration in Haymarket Square four days later, they responded by opening fire on protesters, drawing previously neutral workers into the cause in solidarity. At the Second International (a global meeting of socialist and labour-oriented movements) in Paris three years later, a resolution passed calling for mass labour demonstrations on May 1, 1890 to commemorate what had become known as the Haymarket Massacre. Thus, International Worker’s Day was born.

Today, many in the west still associate May Day with the over-the-top authoritarian pageantry of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, which would use the day of the worker to showcase the best their planned economy had to offer.

In that spirit, I thought it would be pertinent to quickly look back into Hamilton’s past and remember the third woman to ever be elected to local office in this city. She’s a person who has been so thoroughly exorcised from our collective memory that few, if any, know anything about her at all.

Her greatest sin wasn’t that she was a fraud or a criminal or deeply unethical while in office. Her fault lay in her ideology, which she came to through a life of difficult work and challenging relationships. The reason we know so little of her today is that she maintained these beliefs at both the best and worst possible time.

The problem, you see, was that Helen Anderson was a Communist.

***

When I say that Helen Anderson is purposefully unremembered in Hamilton, that extends to some basic personal details as well as her political contributions, creating a kind of civic unpersoning of one of this city’s local leaders. There are a few things we know, but the sources are scattered and often biased against her, creating gaps in our understanding that may seem to leave out important information.

Here’s what we do know: she was born Helen Roberts to one or both parents of Finnish origin who were living in Vancouver at the time of her birth. We know her mother died when she was very young, which forced her to seek work as a domestic servant at age 14 to help support her family. At some point in her youth or early adulthood, she was introduced to Communist politics and became a dedicated adherent. After marrying her first husband - an organizer by the name of Hugh Anderson - the pair went to work gathering sympathetic workers to the cause. A brief stint in Sudbury was followed by a move south, to Toronto, before making their way to Hamilton in 1938 or 1939, where the pair linked up with local Communists and carried on with their organizing.1

Once in Hamilton, the pair’s story gets a little fuzzier. Hugh Anderson died in Sicily as a combatant in the Second World War but whether they were still together at that point is up for debate. In reminiscences to labour historian Cy Gonick, another noted Hamilton-area Communist muddies the chronological waters.

Bill Walsh (born Moishe Wolofsky in Montreal, the son of a respected Yiddish-language publisher in that city’s Jewish community) was briefly the Communist Party-affiliated alderman for Ward 6 in 1952. Prior to that, he was an involved party member in the area, working from within the United Electrical Workers and leading labour action across the city. He and Anderson had a long-standing feud, which Walsh attributed to some interpersonal drama. In his recollection, Anderson was cohabitating with another local Communist, John Miller, during the late 1930s. According to Walsh, Miller was convinced Anderson was unfaithful to him, which soured the former’s relationship with Anderson. Whether these are the spiteful memories of a political rival, the historical traces of a genuine misunderstanding, or a look at how complicated ethical nonmonogamy was a century ago, we’ll never know.2

All that’s certain is that Anderson started working in Hamilton’s local politics during a time when Communists were making gains and, as a consequence of that success, started earning the scorn of the city’s established political elites.

***

Hamilton’s Communists were a regular feature of the city’s then-yearly municipal elections throughout the Great Depression. Party-endorsed candidates periodically sought aldermanic seats in the city’s working class wards 5, 6, 7, and 8 which, at that time, included the part of the city north of King Street from Bay Street in the west to Strathearne Avenue, the city’s eastern limit. In their more ambitious moments, they ran candidates for the Board of Control, the at-large local pseudo-executive that, in addition to regular council duties, oversaw municipal finances. Their boldest moments came in 1934 and 1935 when the party ran salesman John Hunter as their mayoral candidate, though he was unable to crack 3,000 votes city-wide in either race.

The party plodded along, content to place candidates on the ballot and serve as a general thorn in the side of the establishment (and, when appropriate, their more moderate frenemies on the left, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation or CCF). But all that changed in 1938.

That year’s election was anticipated to be more lively than any other during the Depression. Indeed, the Spec wrote that the 1938 election’s record number of candidates “promises to arouse a general election activity, which has been lacking in recent years.”3 Phrasing, but okay.

The Communists threw all their energy into their campaign for one of the two Ward 7 aldermanic seats. At the time, Ward 7 ran from Sherman Ave to Ottawa Street, encompassing those neighbourhoods north of King Street: Stipley, Crown Point, McAnulty, and Brightside. It was a deeply working class ward abutting the ever-growing Industrial Sector stretching southward into the community and northward into the shrinking bay.

They had tried for this seat a few times in the preceding elections. Their candidate in ’36, Phillip Luck did not live up to his namesake when he was disqualified three days after being nominated for the unforgivable crime of being a renter whose landlord had failed to pay their property taxes.4 The next year, the Communists ran Harry Hunter (as far as I can tell, no relation to their previous mayoral candidate), who was a party organizer and steelworker. Hunter placed dead last with 871 votes, which the Spec noted was “…significant in view of the fact that so many employees of the [steel] industry are residents of the ward.”5 

But they gave it their all in 1938, hoping that, after nearly a decade of the Depression, the working class residents of Ward 7 would finally be tired of their entrenched Conservative incumbent aldermen, Donald Clarke and Archie Burton. The Communists assembled a strong campaign team, worked with union members and other workers to spread their message, and even advertised in the decidedly Conservative Party-affiliated Spectator. Their simple ads made no reference to Hunter’s partisan affiliation, instead focusing on the prospect of something new for Ward 7: “Elect a Labour Man for Ward 7 – A Change for the Better!”

The organizing paid off and Hunter earned over double the vote he pulled a year prior, taking 1,773 votes and defeating Alderman Burton. The first avowed Communist had won election to Hamilton City Council.

Hunter’s first term in office was uneventful, as the Conservative majority on council (party members and supporters held 11 of council’s 21 seats) held a steady course of austerity and cautious, pro-business policies. But the road was about to get much more rocky for Hunter and the city’s Communists. Hamilton’s 1939 municipal election was held just three months after the start of World War 2 and, in those early days, the Soviets – and, by extension, all communists – were seen as tacit allies of Hitler’s Third Reich.

The Spec ran editorials praising the government’s decision to ban communist newspapers.6 Upon Hunter’s re-nomination for office, they published a biting editorial which included the line: “Since the Soviet-German pact was made every international communist must be regarded as a threat to the security of this country. The city administration is no place for communists or near-communists.”7 The mayor, William Morrison, backed by the nearly unstoppable force that was the East Hamilton Conservative machine (editorial cartoons portrayed it as a steamroller, crushing all in its path), provided the Spec with details of an evil communist plot to infiltrate municipal employees unions and sabotage local infrastructure. Morrison said this vile scheme “would have crippled vital services and industries, imperiled lives and property and completely disrupted the civil life of Hamilton.”8

The Spec’s editorial cartoonist was rather straightforward in their portrayal of the situation:

Despite the negative campaign, Hunter easily won re-election, shedding 160 votes from his previous total but easily beating the third place candidate, Sam Clarke, a one-time labour-backed candidate notorious for his flexible political loyalties. But even though Hunter had secured a second term, the trouble was only just beginning.

***

The year 1940 brought unique challenges to the Communists in the city. After Canada declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939, the government implemented the “Defence of Canada Regulations” which, in essence, gave the government sweeping powers to curtail any human right or civil liberty necessary in defence of the country. After two Communist Party members were arrested for handing out anti-war pamphlets, the case went to the Supreme Court which, with unprecedented speed, declared the Communist Party of Canada an illegal organization under the Defence of Canada Regulations on May 15, 1940.

Hunter, as a party member, was in trouble.

Alderman Robert “Tony” Evans immediately seized the opportunity to stick it to his Communist colleague. Evans was the very picture of an old school party boss, controlling the Conservative Party machine in Hamilton West while firmly occupying one of the two aldermanic seats in Ward 3 (Ainslie Wood, Kirkendall, Strathcona South, Durand West). While his party had held the federal riding since 1908 and (aside from one upset in 1919) held the provincial riding since 1898, by 1940, Evans’s influence had slipped. The Tories had lost key elections in the west end and were in desperate need of a win. In that spirit, he likely took the lead of new Ontario PC Party leader George Drew, who vowed to eradicate the Red menace from the province by any means necessary. To Drew, that included those he believed to be Communist sympathizers like the CCF and anyone involved in militant union activity. To Evans, that meant an opportunity.

The day the Communist Party was banned, Evans served two notices of motion at city council: one demanding Hunter’s resignation from council and another offering a $50 reward from the city for information leading to the arrest of “subversives” in Hamilton.

That council meeting was raucous, even by today’s standards. Several aldermen spoke of receiving threatening, handwritten letters demanding they not interfere with Communist activities in the city. Sam Lawrence, then a member of the Board of Control, was forced to define the difference between democratic socialism and communism, though came across seeming sympathetic to the Soviets. Controller Nora Frances Henderson gave a long speech about the need to defeat both communism and Nazism. Ward 2 alderman James Phin called for Communists to be sent to internment camps while Ward 8’s Robert Elliott was more direct: “Our forefathers had their troubles with rebels and they hanged them by their necks. And then they had no more trouble from that source. We might have to do that here at home again before long, and I would not hesitate to lead such a group against these Trojan horse enemies of democracy.”9

On May 28, council met to debate the Hunter affair. The meeting devolved into a political circus, with Evans using his time as speaker to tie the CCF and Communist parties, hinting that, if more power were granted, he would go after Sam Lawrence and the CCF-affiliated members of council as well. Lawrence opposed the motion on the grounds of democratic fairness, saying “This council has no powers or authority to unseat an alderman, and I regard this as the starting of the campaign for next December” referencing the upcoming municipal vote. He then turned it around on Evans, saying that, if Hunter was to be targeted for his commitment to the working class, then Evans should be similarly targeted “as the Trojan horse for the boss class.” Take that, you old Tory! You just got Lawrence’d!

When it was Hunter’s turn, he clearly presented his case: “I know I am not liked by the industrialists of this city or in Canada…I believe, however, I am doing everything I can to fight for the Canadian people’s freedom…I have never been a cheap politician, but I have fought continuously for what I thought was good for the working man…”10

The motion passed 15 - 4. Hunter and the two members of the CCF contingent present at the meeting - Lawrence and Ward 5 alderman Robert Thornberry - voted against it, as did one Tory holdout in the form of Ward 6 alderman John Hodgson. Hunter refused to resign and council had no authority to make him quit.

Evans’s motion was little more than the opening salvo of the 1940 election, just as Lawrence had predicted. With the help of the “Hamilton Auxiliary Defence Corps” (basically the 1940’s version of “Concerned Hamiltonians”) and the spurned Independent Labour Party (there’s a long story there, but, by 1940, the city’s original municipal labour party hated the CCF), Evans and the city’s Tories launched an all-out attack on Hunter and the CCF, accusing them of collusion with Canada’s enemies and undermining the war effort. The attacks paid off; Lawrence, Thornberry, and Ward 8’s Roy Aindow were the only CCFers returned to council, while Hunter was defeated by Ward 7’s great political chameleon, Sam Clarke.

And then, of course, came June 22, 1941. With the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the Great Red Menace which posed such a threat to the war effort suddenly became a key member of the Allies.

In the 1941 election, there was no Red baiting, calls for resignations, or massive campaigns slamming the city’s political left. All was quiet on the homefront, and the election results showed that. Only one incumbent member of council lost reelection. Hunter defeated his former seatmate Archie Burton by a mere 53 votes. According to the Spec, it looked like Burton would be returned to council until the Brightside polling district reported, where nearly 75% of voters backed the comeback Communist star.

***

Hunter easily fended off a challenge by Burton in 1942 while supporting his ward “running mate”, fellow Communist Peter Dunlop, who ran for the Ward 7 seat on the Board of Education. Dunlop only lost the seat by 2.2%, proving to local party members that there were other seats in which they were competitive.

So when it came time to nominate another trustee running mate for Hunter in the city’s 1943 election, Hamilton’s Communists turned to a long time organizer who had been making inroads in local activist circles. Anderson was nominated to run for trustee in Ward 7 on a platform of safeguarding the health care and education of children. And, despite her affiliations, she had a pretty easy go of it in the campaign.

Four months earlier, Ontario had gone to the polls in a provincial election. George Drew’s PCs won a modest minority, but the new premier was terrified of two things: the CCF formed the official opposition with only 4 fewer seats than his PCs and two Communists had been elected to the provincial legislature in Toronto-area ridings. In Drew’s mind, he was surrounded by Reds. It certainly didn’t help that, days after the election, the now-banned Communists regrouped as the Labour Progressive Party (LPP) and began working on expanding their influence.

Further complicating matters was the decision by William Morrison to not seek re-election as mayor. The local CCF, inspired by the success of their provincial brethren, aimed to replicate that at the local level and nominated Sam Lawrence as their mayoral candidate, two candidates for the Board of Control, and at least one candidate in each ward. The goal was a CCF majority on council.

The local Conservative establishment was apoplectic. The Spectator was the party’s foremost warrior, printing front-page editorials equating Sam Lawrence and the CCF to Hitler, the Emperor Nero, and an unholy amalgam of a parasite and a cancer. One of their more modest editorials reminded voters “Domination of the civic administration by a political group pledged to Socialism would be a calamity for Hamilton.”11

In their single-minded crusade against the CCF, the Spectator printed a long, rambling partisan editorial two days before the election, imploring Hamiltonians consider some of the “decent, common citizens” not affiliated with the CCF. They printed a list of those candidates citizens should consider, and included Harry Hunter and Helen Anderson. So fervent was the Spec in their opposition to social democrats that did all but outright endorse members of the Communist Party for local office.

Lawrence won a squeaker of a mayoral election, but the anti-CCF backlash ensured their council caucus did not exceed three, with the new mayor included. Hunter’s politically inconsistent Ward 7 seatmate, Sam Clarke, had cozied back up to the CCF, which cost him his seat. Hunter was returned with a record vote in Ward 7, but Anderson’s first foray into electoral politics in Hamilton was not as successful; she earned 45% of the vote and lost to incumbent trustee James Morris.

But she wasn’t done yet.

***

Hunter made the bold choice of running for a seat on the Board of Control in 1944. He had five good terms under his belt and believed the time was right to bring his message to a wider electorate. The LPP decided to back Anderson as Hunter’s successor and the pair ran on a joint platform: permanent low cost rental housing, full employment, tax reform to protect working people, and progressive urban planning.

Content with their campaign against the CCF, the Spec focused on two referendum questions on the ballot in the 1944 election instead of badgering candidates. The paper’s position - “yes” on a by-law to expand the hospital, “no” on a by-law for parks and recreation spending - drew the bulk of their focus, leaving candidates of all stripes to campaign unimpeded by the Conservative Party’s paper in town.

Hunter lost his bid to serve on the Board of Control, despite winning the popular vote in Ward 7 and coming a close second in Ward 8. But his aldermanic seat was taken by Anderson, who beat the now-independent Sam Clarke by just 23 votes, becoming Hamilton’s third woman member of council and second elected Communist.

Anderson’s first term on council was uneventful. In contrast to previous years, the power of the Conservatives had been diminished, with only 6 Tory-affiliated aldermen and controllers returned, along with 3 affiliates each from the CCF and Liberals and 9 independent council members. Indeed, the biggest challenges that council faced were passed off to voters in the form of three referendum questions asked during the next municipal elections: money for parks, nationalizing the HSR, and shortening the working week for firefighters to 48 hours.12

But that term of office also brought the end of the war. Germany surrendered in May, followed by Japan in September, meaning council’s focus was on providing stable, consistent municipal services to a demobilizing population. But global politics was shifting as well. The end of the war meant the Soviets were, once again, viewed as dangerous enemies. And any Communists in the west were seen as potential Soviet agents. Their perceived capacity to create chaos - especially if they were in government - was endless.

***

Despite the storm clouds on the horizon, the election of 1945 was relatively tame. Anderson was re-nominated to stand in Ward 7 while Hunter made another crack at the Board of Control.

Over in the west end, Tony Evans’s time as Hamilton West Conservative Party boss was coming to an end. He had retired from council in 1943, passing the mantle to fellow Tories Herbert “Lance” Smye and Vern Knowles. By ‘45, Knowles was done with local politics and the Conservatives had two favourites to replace him: Ellen Fairclough and William Morrison Jr., the son of the former mayor. Both candidates faced off against independent John Stewart for the second Ward 3 seat. On election night, Ward 3 produced one of the closest election results in Hamilton’s history: Stewart had beaten Fairclough by just 3 votes.

Smye would be appointed to the Hydro Electric Commission shortly after the election and, by June, council opted to give the vacant seat to Fairclough, given how close she had come to winning anyway. Doing so meant two women - one Communist and one viciously opposed to communism - would serve on council at the same time.

Fitting, then, that their campaign advertisements were placed beside one another in the Spec the weekend before the vote.

Such as it was that both women would serve on council for 1946, the year everything changed in Hamilton.

***

1946 was Hamilton’s “burning year”. In March, a group of children found a dismembered torso on the side of the Escarpment, kicking off the Evelyn Dick affair and the sensationalized trial that set the eyes of the world on Hamilton.

A few months later, the city’s labour revolts started, with Spectator printers walking off the job in June, Westinghouse’s employees striking a few weeks later and Stelco’s steelworkers following suit shortly after that.

The city’s establishment was livid at the demands of workers for fair pay, secure housing, and adequate benefits. The Spectator, published sloppily and with noticeably different fonts and layouts, railed against Communist takeovers of unions. Stelco placed ads in the paper imploring workers to go to work, take care of their children, and attend church services regularly, rather than engage in labour union militancy. Westinghouse bussed in scabs and put them up at the Royal Connaught, prompting regular downtown pickets of the upscale hotel.

Mayor Sam Lawrence spent time in England during the early days of the strikes, meaning the city was run by acting mayor Nora Frances Henderson. Henderson’s deeply conservative values meant positioning council in favour of the city’s business owners and industrialists, regularly speaking with the Spec about how unfair the greedy unions in town were being.

When Lawrence returned, he led thousands of striking workers and union labourers on a 3 kilometre march from Woodlands Park through the city, proudly proclaiming that Hamilton’s working people were the real majority: “We are the many; they are the few,” he told the assembled crowd of 6,000.13 Henderson wasn’t ready to cede everything just yet, and became the city’s foremost champion of “law and order”, decrying the union activity as little more than “mob rule” and attempting to pass resolutions on council calling for provincial police to come into the city and “deal” with striking workers. Day after day, Henderson would show up at picket lines to “test” her constitutional right to cross them, always bringing photographers and journalists with her, hopeful that they would capture the moment “labour radicals” harmed an innocent woman. Every time, she was allowed to cross without incident.

The Conservatives on council supported Henderson’s efforts legislatively. Just before the election, Fairclough advanced a motion on council to terminate every contract with municipal employee’s unions in an attempt to make union membership voluntary. Anderson challenged this during a council meeting on November 26, claiming this was an attempt by council to undermine union activity in wake of the strikes. Council’s archconservative, Ward 2 alderman Bill Warrender, tried to stop Anderson from speaking on procedural grounds, angry that she had the audacity to question the motives of council’s right-wing. Though she was allowed to continue speaking, the vote passed with an overwhelming majority in support.

Anderson and the city’s militant left knew they needed to step up their game in order to counter this rising tide of anti-union sentiment on council. So she made the decision to try for a promotion. Helen Anderson would be running for a seat on the Board of Control.

Anderson was nominated to run by Harry Hunter and, in turn, the pair nominated party activist Peter Dunlop - the one who had sought the Ward 7 trustee seat the year before Anderson as Hunter’s running mate - to run for Anderson’s council seat in Ward 7. They concentrated their efforts on the two races, hoping the city’s workers, with their newfound class consciousness, would propel both to victory.

The Spec, while characteristically fixated on Mayor Sam Lawrence and his evil CCF, took some time to throw a little shade Anderson’s way. In their descriptions of candidates for the Board of Control, they described Nora Frances Henderson as “one of the best public servants this city has ever had. A woman of integrity, intelligence and great courage.” Anderson, on the other hand, was described as “Shrewd, aggressive, extreme Leftist.”14

The 1946 election was one of the best the city had ever seen. Over 65% of eligible voters turned out to cast ballots, including nearly 68% of voters in the LPP’s heartland of Ward 7. That enthusiasm led the LPP’s Peter Dunlop to top the polls in the ward, replacing Anderson and continuing the Communist Party’s domination.

Few in the city were prepared for when the results for the Board of Control election came in. Henderson had topped the polls in the city’s wealthy Wards 1 to 4 and, thanks to a modest showing elsewhere, won the most votes of all controller candidates, becoming the city’s deputy mayor again for 1947.

But in an incredible upset, Anderson placed second, winning one of the four available seats. Not only did she win, she took the most votes of all candidates in Wards 5 to 8 - the city’s working class core. In Ward 7, she won over 1,100 more votes than her nearest challenger, CCFer Roy Aindow.

The Spec brushed off the LPP’s success by saying that, of the 2 LPPers and 3 CCFers who won local office, “those five were considerably more eloquent about their desire to serve all the people of Hamilton than in hymnals to their fairy godfathers.”15

Despite her win, local Communists didn’t see her victory as a unifying moment. Shortly after her election, a meeting of Hamilton-area Communists saw Anderson face off with Jim Beattie, another party member and activist. Beattie cornered Anderson at a Communist Party meeting, demanding to know if she had forfeited all her pay to the party, as was typically required of Communist elected officials. Anderson refused, citing her expenses, which set off a fierce debate in the local party and damaged Anderson’s reputation as a team player. Even despite their success, local Communists still couldn’t kick their addiction to infighting.

***

The 1947 term of council did not see Hamilton make any moves toward becoming a Soviet dictatorship. There were no motions presented in favour of collective farms, no statues to Stalin erected in Gore Park, no bosses lined up against any of the city’s walls. Anderson and Dunlop worked to provide a voice for working people in a chamber that was decidedly stacked with centre-right ideologues, albeit in a more doctrinaire way than their few CCF colleagues. But anti-Communist hysteria was rising in the city once more and the threat Anderson posed became all that more real after a surprise announcement.

Nora Frances Henderson was retiring from council.

It is unclear if she knew at the time, or had made the matter known to anyone if she did, but Henderson had cancer and would die less than a year and a half after the 1947 election. With Henderson retiring, Anderson stood a chance at earning the most votes of any Board of Control candidate. If she did, she would become deputy mayor and, during Mayor Lawrence’s scheduled summer trip to England, would have served as acting mayor.

The idea of an actual, card-carrying Communist as mayor of Hamilton terrified the city’s establishment. The Spectator ran an editorial in November entitled “Protect Your City!” that read:

The Hamilton Women’s Civic Club, a right-wing shadow party dedicated to supporting Henderson and fellow conservative candidates refocused with the loss of their star and, instead, endorsed an all-male slate for the Board of Control against Anderson under the headline “OUT WITH THE COMMUNISTS”.

The relentless campaign hammered the Communists, painting Anderson and Dunlop as dangers to Hamilton’s civic safety. No matter what campaign they put up, they could not withstand the weight of the establishment’s attacks.

Dunlop held on to Ward 7, though with a much reduced percent of the vote. Anderson won Wards 5 and 7, but was unable to poll higher than 4th in any other ward, losing nearly half her support and her seat on the Board of Control. Anderson gave an interview to the Spec following her defeat, in which she lamented the loss of labour solidarity and attacked the “severe Red-baiting campaign” that, she believed, contributed to her defeat. She promised to devote herself “even more than heretofore in the struggle to achieve unity of the working people” and that her defeat was “only a temporary set-back.”17

Despite Anderson’s optimism for the future, it was clear the influence of Hamilton’s Communists in the municipal sphere was waning.

***

At some point following her defeat, Anderson remarried, this time to Vince Coulson. Prior to the war, Coulson was an organizer with the United Autoworkers (UAW), after having been fired from aircraft manufacturer De Havilland for his union work. He became President of the UAW Local for De Havilland plant in Milton, but was deployed to Europe as a paratrooper soon after. He was injured in the Netherlands and discharged, after which time he was introduced to Anderson. When he arrived in Hamilton, he became an organizer with the United Electrical Workers union, which counted quite a few local Communists among their ranks.

Shortly after their nuptials, Anderson (who would, from that point on, run as “Helen Coulson” or “Helen Anderson Coulson”) announced a city council comeback, this time in one of the vacant Ward 8 council seats. Anderson’s campaign focused on opposition to a proposal to sell wartime housing to tenants, instead focusing on expanding the rental program. Her campaign generated controversy as the Red scare grew, with one of her opponents - local veteran’s welfare officer Walter Ellis - running as an explicitly “anti-Communist” candidate. Anderson placed last, with nearly 1,000 fewer votes than her “anti-Communist” opponent.

Anderson persisted, running again for the Board of Control in 1949. Her campaign was largely ignored by the Spec and the city’s political establishment, who saw her and the LPP as a spent force. Their suspicions were proven correct when Anderson placed 8th in the race and Dunlop lost his aldermanic seat by a wide margin. For the first time since 1940, there would be no Communists on Hamilton City Council.

In 1950, Anderson’s old rival, Ellen Fairclough, was elected to Parliament in the riding of Hamilton West. One of her first orders of business was proposing the federal Progressive Conservatives pursue a full ban on all Communist activity in the country, saying that both a ban on the party and better training for the wayward youth of the moment would prevent any Communists from being elected anywhere in Canada.18

A little over a week later, Anderson and the LPP responded by announcing she would do the unthinkable: run for mayor. In doing so, Anderson became the first woman to ever seek the office of chief magistrate.

Her platform was simple: more low cost rental housing, lower HSR fares, more respect for working people, and a pro-union policy at city hall. Incumbent mayor Lloyd Jackson dismissed her and her campaign, telling the Spec rather bluntly: “I think the best thing to do is to ignore it.”19

Her campaign came at a bad time for organized labour, which was in the middle of a thorough purge of Communist sympathizers in their membership. The Hamilton and District Trades and Labour Council met after her announcement to discuss the conundrum in which they found themselves: vote for a Communist despite their pledge to oppose communism or vote for Jackson, a vehemently anti-union mayor. The meeting concluded without a result or guidance on how members should vote. The Spec was more clear in its campaign; of Anderson and the LPP, the paper simply wrote “She and any of her past and present fellow travelers who may be running should be defeated.”

And defeated she was. Anderson earned just over 14% of the vote, well behind Jackson’s 86%. Her best showing was in her old ward (which had become Ward 6 after a boundary realignment) where she earned just 25% of the vote.

There were three more runs for the Board of Control after that. In each, she placed dead last. After her rival, Bill Walsh, lost re-election to the Ward 6 alderman’s seat in 1953, she ran for it in ‘54, again placing last.

In 1955, she made her final stand. Anderson was nominated as the LPP candidate for the provincial legislature in the riding of Hamilton East. Largely ignored, except to be vilified in the media as a Soviet agent, she again placed last, earning just 674 votes. She would never run for office again.

***

The conclusion to Helen Anderson’s story is unsatisfying. After 1955, there are scant records of her in local media. The Vernon’s City Directory list her and Vince living in a bungalow on the west mountain near Garth and Mohawk until the directory’s last edition in 1969.

After that, there’s nothing.

Even the Communist Party has barely maintained a record of her, even erroneously reporting she was a municipal politician in Toronto in their 2021 Political Report.

Helen Anderson was a trailblazer in this city. She was the third woman to serve on council, the second to win a seat on the Board of Control, and the first to stand for the office of mayor. She ran on ambitious platforms, focused her politics on working people, and helped get like-minded people elected.

But she was a Communist. Her politics were either ignored or attacked by the city’s political establishment. Her career was ended by mass hysteria over Soviet influence in the city. And, after 1947, Anderson was unable to fully participate in Hamilton’s civic life.

This is all part of a pattern. Hamilton’s local politics is exceptionally cruel to progressives, particularly progressive women who have the audacity to question the political establishment. Our civic affairs are aligned in such a way that mediocrity is rewarded, particularly if that mediocrity is employed in the service of the status quo. But, if anyone dares question that status quo, especially if they’re a woman, a person of colour, or have any politics a hair left of centre, they’re deemed an enemy, an outsider, a “barbarian at the gates”.

Anderson’s story is similar to that of another trailblazing woman in the city. The second woman elected to council, Agnes Sharpe, was actually the first woman elected to public office in Hamilton, having been elected to the school board in 1929 and to council in 1934. But she was affiliated with the CCF, a dedicated pacifist, a resolute feminist, and a fervent anti-monarchist who refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the king. Much like with Anderson, she is nearly entirely unremembered, save for in the minds of the small number of local history buffs nerdy enough to dig through archives and learn about her.

That, I think, is the saddest part of this all. Anderson worked to make life better for working people in this city. She was brave enough to stand for office and put her name beside her ideals. You may not agree with some or any of what she did or the politics she advanced, but at least she had the courage to stand for something. Even after serving on council for years and working in this city’s organized labour community, she is mostly unremembered some 80 years after being elected to local office.

The treatment of Anderson’s legacy makes one feel small. Like, no matter what someone can do, they still might be forgotten because they dared believe in something outside the norm. Because they had the boldness to challenge the prevailing order. Because they were different.

That’s part of the reason I dive into history and pull out the stories of people who contributed to the civic life of Hamilton. If we believe this place matters, then we have to believe the ambitious civic leaders from the ranks of labour, those early women who sought local office, and the scores of daring dreamers who ran for something they believed in mattered as well.

Helen Anderson’s contributions to this city mattered. The contributions of every labour activist - ILP, CCF, Communist, NDP, unaligned progressive, all of them - mattered and still matter. Working people matter. And more of our politics should be focused on bringing working people into the conversation. Anderson knew that. She fought for it. And she shouldn’t be forgotten because of it.

Happy Belated May Day.

Run me through an industrial-grade scrap metal shredder

Anyone else hear that?

Last Friday, #HamOnt social media lit up after people from across the city and into Burlington heard…something. Curious users posted all over Reddit and X/Twitter (and I presume Facebook) to crowdsource an answer as to what the sound really was.

This isn’t anything new. People ask “what was that noise?” on the r/Hamilton subreddit with such frequency that it is now an in-joke for regular users (along with “what’s that smell?”) and has been incorporated into the message board’s pinned FAQ section.

The people of the Parkview neighbourhood understand this problem better than most. For over five years, residents in the city’s east-end community - bounded by Barton East, Parkdale North, and a web of angry highways cut through delicate natural habitats - have been raising concerns about two of the large industrial operations that border their neighbourhood: AIM Recycling and Triple M Metals.

In 2019, residents were so angry, they staged a protest to raise awareness and generate political momentum on a push to do more about the constant noise and pollution coming from these facilities. They complained about shredders and trucks and processing happening around the clock - sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes on Sunday mornings, sometimes ceaselessly for days on end.

The companies responded in 2020 by expanding, starting up what came to be known as the “mega shredder”. It began spewing brown dust over Parkview. There was so much dust that people could “taste” it. And, of course, there were the explosions. There were 15 explosions on site in the first portion of 2020 as the company ran whole propane tanks through their shredder. The fire department slapped them with an order to clean up a dangerous pile of cars. The Ministry of the Environment shut down their shredder until they could prove they would stop their acoustic assault on the community.

Not only did they keep going, they increased their efforts. The explosions came so frequently pieces of the homes closest to the plants would just start…falling off because of the vibrations. All through the ordeal, the companies were tight-lipped. There were some meetings and comments to the media but, when the pressure increased, AIM and Triple M ghosted the community, all while carrying on with their shredding adventure.

Last spring, AIM committed to building a four-storey noise barrier, but has been dragging the province through the courts to try and get off without assuming much responsibility.

Triple M tried the same but, just over a month ago, came to an agreement with the province to plead guilty to five charges in exchange for bringing the total charges down from 15. They were fined $281,250. And they’ve asked for the province’s permission to legally run their shredder around the clock.

And then they shredded a propane tank last week and made people in the city think there had been an earthquake, meteor, or some kind of bomb detonated nearby.

So why is this a problem?

Well, for one, something exploded and scared the devil out of everyone.

But, beyond that, it speaks to our uneasy relationship with manufacturing and industrial operations in Hamilton.

Triple M and AIM are two large companies, operating in close proximity to a residential community, that have been taken to task by the city and province for their business practices a few times over the past few years. Residents want some kind of resolution, but they’re only met with obfuscation.

When Parkview residents protested in 2019, the Spec sat down with then-councillor Sam Merulla to get his take on the issue. He gave a couple of answers as to why nothing could be done: the tools the municipality has won’t do much to help, the province isn’t really doing their job, and any effort to stop an industry from doing industrial things wouldn’t be good for business. As he told Jon Wells, “shutting down an industry at 7 p.m. [would face] resistance based on the economic impact.”20

Shoulders shrugged, fingers pointed, pockets stuffed.

And that brings us to another reason why this matters. Who takes responsibility when a corporation engaged in industrial operations messes up? The municipality in which the business is located or the province which is tasked with regulating the business?

Our government can be confusing. Where city hall ends and Queen’s Park begins can be baffling, even to the most seasoned of civic activists. The complex interplay between provincial governments and the feds is already strange enough without a cohort of adversarial premiers purposefully testing the limits of the Constitution to both settle political scores at home and stick it to Canada’s favourite punching bag, Justin Trudeau. Hell, it seems like every week, there’s some new headline out of Alberta that reads something like: “Premier Danielle Smith vows to ignore Ottawa’s new ‘job-killing’ ban on kicking puppies. Why it might be easier for her than you think!” City hall and Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill all get mashed up together in our minds because we hear about joint funding for projects, legislative finger pointing when complicated matters arise, and the frustrating undefinability of contemporary issues the people of drafted the constitution over 150 years ago couldn’t even fathom.

That’s the thing about democracy; because we have more of say and get to see more of the process than people in authoritarian countries, we expect to be able to get it. But it often seems a lot less straight forward than “identify problem → demand action → problem is fixed by people in power”. And when things get confusing, people tune out.

The growing desire for strongmen and authoritarians who promise to sweep into office and smash their way through problems is a direct result of this. Earlier this year, the US-based Pew Research Center released a report on the state of democracy in a few countries around the world. Tens of thousands of people around the world (including in Canada) were surveyed on democratic satisfaction, belief in certain systems, and confidence in political leaders.

Overall Canadian satisfaction with democracy has declined from 70% in 2017 to just 51% in 2023. That’s higher than in places like France, the UK, and the US, but lower than in Australia, Germany, and Sweden. A full 64% of Canadians believe that political leaders don’t care what they think. Most troubling are the figures regarding government system; the percent of Canadians who believe democracy is a very good system has declined 12 points from 2017 while 19% of Canadians want a strong leader-centred authoritarian state like Russia and 14% would like full military rule like in Myanmar.

When you’re living beside a scrap metal recycler that has been crunching up propane tanks with such vigour that they’ve been exploding and knocking pieces of your house down, but you can’t figure out who will hold them accountable, you start to feel really powerless. A strongman who commits to smashing his way to a solution gives you the feeling that you have a little power again.

Where democracy fails because of bureaucratic lethargy or intergovernmental bickering, the seeds of authoritarianism grow.

Parkview residents - and everyone in Hamilton - should not feel like the rights of a metal shredding corporation supersede our right to live in peace, in good health, and not be scared silly by random explosions. Our civic leaders and provincial politicians should recognize that and work harder to make sure residents feel like they’re being heard. Otherwise they’ll make themselves heard in other ways.

Anyone else hear that?

Hoppin’ on the Chad Train

The feud between the city and CN Rail over the Jamesville redevelopment project continues to drag on, with the latter claiming they want to be “an enabler” for new housing while still fighting the city on the details of the project.

Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP Chad Collins waded into the controversy by calling on the provincial government to issue a ministerial zoning order (MZO) to bypass the Ontario Land Tribunal and get the project started. But, as Joey Coleman points out, railways are a federal responsibility, so Collins has some power to lobby Pablo Rodriguez, a fellow Liberal and the current Minister of Transport. CN was privatized by the Chrétien government in 1995 (it’s now owned by, among others, Vanguard, Blackrock, and Bill Gates…a conspiracy theorist’s dream team), so they don’t have much power, but the feds could still participate, even if just symbolically.

More interesting is the first bit of Joey’s tweet. The ol’ “Chad for Mayor” line has been circulating around the local rumour mill for a bit, especially given the dismal polling for the federal Liberals and Collins’s palatability as a centre-right Liberal with local government experience who could do well in the suburbs, as well as in the city.

In that light, Collins’s entry into the CN MZO debate seems like an attempt to include himself in a municipal story to keep his name in the news. Because, let’s be honest, he’s kept a very low profile in Ottawa. That could be both a good thing (not tied too closely to the unpopular Liberals) and a bad thing (not providing any coherent reason why he should be elected to anything if he’s not going to do anything).

We’re 907 days out from the 2026 municipal election. There are people kicking the tires, making the rounds, and putting out subtle feelers for possible campaigns for trustee, council, and mayor. There are a lot of wonderful people in our community deserving of our consideration for these offices.

But we have to ask ourselves: is Chad Collins one of those people? Someone who spent 26 years in local office serving as a staunch defender of the status quo and has used their time in Ottawa to critique the provincial government for not overriding municipal autonomy? Another career politician who comes from a political family?

Some food for thought. And there’s no rush; you’ve got over 900 days to chew it over.

Felling the tree

As reported by Joey Coleman, the vote at yesterday’s General Issues Committee meeting on the naming of Magnolia Hall failed on a tie vote. The name change will go to council for a ratification vote next week, where the result is, at this point, anyone’s guess.

Shortly after the vote, Ward 7 councillor Esther Pauls told Bay Observer publisher John Best that she “accidentally” voted yes and will be changing her vote to “no” during next Wednesday’s council meeting.

Mayor Horwath and Councillor Tadeson will hopefully be present for the vote next week, but it is unclear how they’ll vote on this issue. Indeed, even this vote was a surprise, as this issue should not have been as controversial as it ended up being.

I covered the history of St. Mark’s and some facts about the church, proposed names, and arguments around the renaming process in my 4000+ word essay in last week’s edition. I’d certainly never assume my long essays would influence public policy, but I had at least hoped it would provide a counterbalance to the arguments being made by a very small minority in the community who oppose this name change on spurious grounds.

There were three letters added to the GIC meeting agenda that addressed the name change. They call on council to not approve the name change for a number of reasons, including unfamiliarity with the Engage Hamilton portal, the lack of a town hall on the issue, and disrespect to the community by not including its name.

The Engage Hamilton platform has been active since 2020 and has been used for public engagement projects around the city. This specific renaming process was advertised in the Spec, put all over the internet, and sent to relevant community groups. People took time out of their day to fill out the Engage Hamilton survey and connect with the team working on the naming process. There were hundreds of submissions and an genuine effort by participants to engage with the process. Staff worked hard to ensure this renaming effort included the widest array of voices and a diversity of opinions. Because, at the end of the day, the new centre will be a public building, not a building reserved for the exclusive use of those who live in the historic Durand neighbourhood.

And a town hall? In this economy?

A widely-advertised online survey wasn’t representative but an in-person town hall will be? Yeah, okay. Every overworked, underpaid, run-down-to-the-bone-and-three-milliseconds-from-a-full-on-breakdown Gen Xer and Millennial I know has time to get off work, find a sitter, scarf down a half-frozen microwave burrito, and run down to a community centre on a Tuesday night so they can sit in a stuffy room and listen to people with way too much time on their hands try to pass rambling stories off as questions for two hours.

A town hall is a chance for the small community of heritage gatekeepers in this city to pack a room and make it look like they are somehow representative of everyone. They can yell at their nasty woke councillor, tell stories about the good old days, and create a media story around how the community “rose up and fought back” against this egregious erasure effort. A town hall would be theatre and only skilled actors would prevail.

As for the “Durand” connection, I shouldn’t have to keep saying this, but, since the heritage gatekeepers in our midst have chosen to selectively remember our history, it needs to be repeated: James Durand was a slaveowner. Even in the 1800’s, it wasn’t okay to own people. Sure, we get into murky water when we try to judge people from the past by our standards today, but if we’re playing a weird moral ambiguity dance around slavery, we’re clearly letting some other feelings be known as well.

Yes, it is important to acknowledge the hard work of community advocates who helped ensure this project was a success. But you’re not doing that by slapping the name “Durand” on it. You’re just creating one more reminder that one of the city’s founding families claimed ownership over another human.

Frankly, this backlash seems out-of-touch and upsettingly entitled.

The concerns raised are that heritage gatekeepers weren’t more personally consulted and given preference when the renaming process began. The letters submitted to GIC (which copy each other heavily, signaling a coordinated effort to oppose the new name) heavily reference the past, attack the integrity of the renaming process, and take subtle shots at the Ward 2 councillor.

Worst of all, though, is the colossal waste this represents.

Renaming the building was literally a symbolic gesture. It was the easiest thing council could have done. But, instead, it became another chance for council’s conservative block to dig their heels in and make it look like the nasty progressives are the bad guys. These woke out-of-towners come in with their magnolias and their bikes and don’t even have the decency to consult people who have lived here for 50 years! Aren’t these wacko socialists making Hamilton so much worse with their war on cars and disrespect for our history!?

We have a housing crisis, a crumbling democracy, transportation chaos, an irrevocably ruined climate, widening polarization, and an addictions crisis that’s taking hundreds of lives a day. There are real, genuine, actual problems that need to be addressed. Tasking staff with spending hundreds of hours, allocating thousands of dollars, and pouring an immeasurable amount of energy into naming a building and then throwing all that away because a very small group of people are mad they weren’t consulted harder is actually embarrassing.

This is more than a name. This is government waste. This is a loud, angry minority bullying politicians into getting their way. This is what makes people tune out.

Seriously, council, not okay. Do better.

Cool facts for cool people

• Acting Police Services Board (PSB) chair Fred Bennink’s term on the board has officially ended. The Community Safety and Policing Act prohibits former auxiliary officers from serving on the same PSB that employed them, so Bennink is off the board. With Pat Mandy already gone, Cameron Kroetsch suspended until the code of conduct review against him is over, and now Bennink shuffling off, the PSB is almost an entirely different body than it was when I first wrote about it three months ago. Let’s hope the PSB’s new member brings some positive change to the board!

• Two provincial by-elections happened today - one in Lambton—Kent—Middlesex and one in Milton. The results to not look great for the Liberals, who placed a distant second in the former and lost some of their 2022 support in the latter. This was supposed to be a test of new leader Bonnie Crombie’s strength, but ended up being a cakewalk for the Tories. Honestly, the only party that should be celebrating is the far-right populist New Blue Party, which looks set to take fourth place in both ridings, outpacing the Greens. In Milton, they actually came within a few hundred votes of beating the ONDP which is…troubling. Time for the provincial parties to regroup, reset, and refocus.