What force on earth is weaker…

Present and Past

Tomorrow, the voters of Ontario will head off to the polls to elect members to the 44th Parliament of Ontario. Polling stations across the province will close at 9:00 and, with automatic tabulators working to efficiently count initial results, we should know who our MPPs are shortly after.

Of all the races people will be watching, one of the most talked-about is the one in Hamilton Centre. The riding’s 80,000-odd electors get to choose between seven candidates standing as candidates for five parties and two independent bids amid a torrent of controversy and infighting that has turned a once-safe NDP seat into a veritable battleground.

With this intense focus, Mainstreet Research conducted a Hamilton Centre-specific poll to gauge where the lower city’s electors might put their support. Released yesterday, this poll has shaken things up and doubtlessly given the few undecided voters in our midst a better indication as to who they’ll back when they walk behind the voting screen tomorrow. While the poll was buried behind a paywall, campaigns have been sharing the information to rally their supporters in these last few hours of active campaigning, giving us a glimpse into the results. The poll looks something like this:

Fears that the Progressive Conservatives’ parachute candidate Sarah Bokhari would sneak up the middle in an NDP/Jama fight seem to have been overblown, as Bokhari is polling around the level of support she got when she ran against Andrea Horwath in 2022 (the PC average since the riding was recreated for the 2007 provincial election is 15% of the vote).

Indeed, it now seems to be a race between the NDP’s Robin Lennox and the Ontario Liberal Party’s Eileen Walker. Walker has been reaping the benefits of the NDP/Jama schism, pulling the once-devastated Liberals back to the level of support they had in 2007 when popular local broadcaster Steve Ruddick was their candidate.

But this election can go any way. There’s only been one poll and there are a multitude of factors that can influence the race in Hamilton Centre.

The strength of Jama’s ground game cannot be understated. The ONDP is putting up one hell of a fight and the central party is pouring resources into the riding. The Ontario Liberals have been noticeably absent on the campaign trail and Walker’s performance in the Cable 14/Spectator debate did not do much to inspire confidence. Lucia Iannantuono and the Green Party have been riding a wave of momentum, capturing the support of local progressives disillusioned with the NDP/Jama fight and hosting a big Super Saturday event at The Staircase last week. And, then there’s the odd Dean Blundell-leaked audio allegedly of Bokhari demanding payment in exchange for something to do with files (it’s all very confusing and I wouldn’t necessarily read too much into this, but the PC aversion to speaking with the media and voters means this might not get cleared up and just add one more layer of uncertainty to everything).

The division between Jama and the NDP is the central story, though. And it is reflective of an event that happened in our city’s history that ruined the political left for decades. I began writing this piece a while ago, but I think it’s important to share now. Because, no matter what happens after tomorrow, there will be pieces to pick up.

***

Imagine, if you will, the following political drama: Just before an election, an interesting new political force comes onto the scene in Hamilton. Through their skillful organizing and decision to work within a system that had historically marginalized them, they’re able to build a coalition that ties together seemingly disparate elements of the city’s “political left”. Differences in opinion are set aside and strong personalities are reminded they are part of a team working toward a larger goal. Thanks to the coalition they build, and the support they earn from the political establishment, they win and, in their victory, it seems like Hamilton might be on the verge of seeing a new kind of politics take hold.

Then, not long after their success, a wildly polarizing issue of global concern presents itself, ripping at the loose threads that bound the movement together. The result is a schism that plays out for the whole city - and, indeed, the province - to see. Allies turn on one another, friends pick sides, neighbours split with acrimony.

What follows is an entirely different election campaign, this one brutal, disheartening, and demoralizing. The coalition is splintered and, in their anger, both sides decide to run against their former comrades. This campaign divides resources, attention, and, ultimately, the city as a whole.

The result is the left’s near-complete electoral oblivion and their relegation to the political sidelines for decades, handing control to the political right, who use their power to reshape everything they see in the image they want. The consequences of this shift ripple through generations, impacting people long after the smoke clears.

It shouldn’t be hard for many Hamiltonians to picture this scenario. But this was a scene that played out 91 years ago, during Hamilton’s municipal elections of 1934. And the lessons from that fight - a fight that pit factions of the city’s left against one another - might give us some insight as to what could happen should the same thing occur here after the ballots are counted in Hamilton Centre on February 27.

So let’s take a look at the events leading up to December 3, 1934 and what the results meant, and still mean, for Hamilton. Because, in many ways, we are still living with the consequences of that particular instance of left-wing division.

Let’s do some history. Because our future may depend on us remembering.

Blame the HSR

Prior to 1906, Canada’s two major political parties - the Liberals and the Conservatives - had fought for the support of working class Canadians. As Martin Robin notes in Radical Politics and Canadian Labour, “the Grit and Tory parties co-opted into their political machines leading labour leaders and reformers,” which created a situation called “Partyism” - the commitment by labour leaders and organizations to work within existing parties to advance the cause of working people.¹ There were occasional instances where working people would run independent campaigns against Liberal and Conservative candidates, but they were either soundly defeated or, if elected, quickly scooped up into (usually) the Liberal caucus.

The relationship between labour and the big parties was always rocky, particularly in Hamilton; for all the gestures made to labour by the established parties, not a single MP or MPP between 1867 and 1906 that represented Hamilton could be considered to have come from the “working class”. But all of that changed thanks, in part, to an HSR strike.

***

In 1906, the union representing HSR streetcar operators - Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America (AASEREA) Division 107 - and the private entity that ran the HSR - the Cararact Power Company - were locked in a bitter dispute over a new contract. Unable to reach an agreement, the fight went to arbitration where both sides picked outside representatives to hammer out a deal. For their part, AASEREA 107 turned to Allan Studholme, a well-respected figure in the city’s labour movement to speak for them.

Born in England, Studholme had come to Canada and settled in Hamilton shortly after the city’s turn toward industry. After he found work as a stove mounter, he quickly became involved in local labour activism. By 1906, his decades of work in the local labour movement had earned him ample respect and he was known for his dedicated commitment to the wellbeing of his fellow workers.

While Studholme was seeking a better deal for the city’s HSR operators, Hamilton East’s long-time Conservative MPP, Henry Carscallen, died after months of ill health. Attempts by the local Liberal Party establishment to convince Thomas Watkins, the owner of the popular downtown department store The Right House, to stand as their candidate were unsuccessful, so local labour activists approached Studholme to run as their candidate in the scheduled by-election, seeing an opportunity to have a straight Conservative v. Labour fight. The Spec (as the city’s Conservative Party-backed paper) was unenthused about this prospect, writing “The wiser heads are opposed to the labour organizations meddling in politics,” and claiming that Studholme was only considering running to “be rewarded with a fat government job”.³

Between the by-election and the HSR negotiations, tensions in the city were running high. When the Cataract Company reneged on a deal they had made with Studholme, the HSR officially went on strike, which the company responded to by firing every striking worker and hiring scabs to keep the HSR going.⁴

Residents of the city overwhelmingly supported the strikers, going so far as to hurl rocks and eggs at the few streetcars that still operated. The Hamilton Police were stretched to their limit protecting the scabs and streetcars while the people of Hamilton took to wearing blue ribbons emblazoned with the words “We Walk” - a very clever play on words - and shunning the HSR. In between frantic reports about the actions of “unruly” strikers, the Spec continued to promote the candidacy of their man in the race, Conservative candidate and local lawyer J.J. Scott, positioning him as the real champion of working people and claiming that even prominent labour leaders believed that Scott’s victory “seems to be a certainty.”⁵

And then, on the evening of November 23, 1906, someone’s car broke down.

***

The Cataract Company announced that they would resume evening streetcar service on the 23rd, using scabs to keep the streetcars running. The police indicated they did not have the resources to protect every streetcar, so HSR service was reduced to just four cars.

Not long after the first streetcar started trundling down James Street, a private automobile on the street started having engine trouble. Unable to carry on, the car’s operator stopped right around old City Hall where crowds had already gathered to jeer the HSR’s scabs. At the time, personal cars were still a bit of a novelty, so more people began crowding around the disabled automobile to see what was going on. The assemblage grew and grew and, each time a streetcar would pass, some of the people in the crowd would throw rocks and hurl obscenities at the scabs. Before long, all of James Street between King William and Gore Street (today part of Wilson Street) was packed with people.

Sometime around 8:00 PM, another streetcar passed and someone anonymous figure in the crowd hurled a rock as it passed, striking and breaking one of its windows. The sound of shattering glass sent the crowd into a frenzy. The Hamilton Police entered the crowd, determined to let the streetcars pass and bring order to the situation, but their presence simply enflamed tensions. When a detective attempted to arrest a young boy who had been throwing stones, the crowd turned on him and the other officers. Nightsticks were swung with abandon, fists flew, a police officer drew his gun as a warning.

From a vantage point up in City Hall, Mayor Sanford Biggar watched in horror as the crowd began to riot. As angry Hamiltonians began ripping up streetcar tracks, smashing store windows, and marching through the streets toward one of the HSR’s streetcar barns, Biggar called for militia troops from Toronto and London. The militia began to pour into the city in the early hours of the morning and were promptly sent to protect the HSR’s assets and managers.

The presence of the military on the streets of Hamilton drew even larger crowds and, by the next evening, the riots had flared up again. In response, the head of the militia, Colonel Septimus Denison, read the Riot Act, which allowed for the temporary suspension of civil rights and near complete control of the city by the military. In an attempt to calm the crowd, council member John Allan climbed the steps of City Hall to make an impassioned plea for order, only to have the Hamilton Police storm the crowd while he was speaking. Denison demanded the Hamilton Police arrest Allan for agitation, but the local force worried that such an action would make the situation uncontrollable. The irate colonel only backed down when Allan fled the scene, his pleas doing little to ease tensions. With no one listening to any voices of reason, the police worked their way through the crowd, clubbing (there were rumours that officers and militiamen had bets on how many heads they could knock) and arresting the rioters, hauling them into City Hall, which had been converted into a temporary jail.

The weekend featured sporadic vandalism and violence, but, after the second night of rioting, people began to return home and cool down. Then, on Monday morning, at the end of the James Street streetcar line by the ferry docks on Guise Street, a maintenance worker transporting a group of scabs to their temporary quarters noticed a pile of rocks on the track. He slowed the car and stepped out to get a better look. Before he could get to the pile, he froze. There was no mistaking what he saw. Sticking out from the pile of rocks was a single stick of dynamite that, if struck by the streetcar, would have blown the whole crew right off the tracks.

That, it would seem, was the final straw. The president of the AASEREA rushed to Hamilton to take over negotiations personally, convincing the striking workers to submit to arbitration and end the job action. After a weekend of rioting, the bosses were more than happy to meet with union leaders and figure out a way forward.

The next day, J.J. Scott and Allan Studholme were formally nominated to run for provincial parliament in Hamilton East. At the nomination meeting, Studholme and his nominators spoke to the need for labour to have their own voice at the table and that, to signal that his candidacy would be different, he would choose a distinct colour for his campaign. Rather than go with the red that people associated with leftist movements in Europe and the more labour-friendly Liberals in Canada, Studholme’s campaign would go a different route entirely; his colour would be purple. But, with the strike and the Streetcar Riots still fresh in their minds, the voters of Hamilton clearly understood the difference between the campaigns.

Two weeks later, HSR service had resumed and the electors of Hamilton East went to the polls. Studholme was elected in a landslide, winning 61% of the vote. The following day, the Cataract Company signed an agreement with the AASEREA.⁶  

The stage was set for a new kind of politics to take hold in Hamilton, in Ontario, and in Canada as a whole.

A party for working people

The HSR strike and the Streetcar Riots led to Studholme’s victory, and his success was the catalyst for the creation of a new Labour Party. While different groups across the country had been working toward this goal for a few years preceding Studholme’s victory, it was his triumph in Hamilton East that served as the driving force for reluctant and doubtful members of the movement to finally sign on to this bold new political experiment.

Rather than function as a singular political entity, the new Labour Party would actually be comprised of local branches in each municipality that would become delegates to the larger party meetings when they were necessary. The rest of the time, these local branches would be their own Independent Labour Party or “ILP”.

The Ontario-wide Labour Party was constituted in the spring of 1907 and instructions were sent to all labour organizations in the province to decide if they would form their own local ILP. Hamilton’s ILP was founded on November 25, 1907 - exactly one year after the Streetcar Riots - at the Trades and Labour Council’s Hall on John Street South. The labour leaders gathered voted to launch their party, which would adopt the platform decided upon by the national Labour Party organizing committee. The platform had a number of planks, including:

• Universal and compulsory education

• An eight-hour work day

• Government inspection and regulation of industry

• Abolishing contract gigs on public works

• Public ownership of essential utilities

• Progressive taxation

• Abolition of the Senate

• Union labels on manufactured goods

• Abolition of child labour

• Abolition of property requirements to run for office

• Voluntary submission to arbitration in contract disputes

• Abolition of prison labour

But, of course, the local ILP was a product of its time, so it also included a passionate call to ban East and South Asian immigration to Canada.⁷ It would be decades before the ILP dropped its racist policies and the contemporary labour movement has done extensive work grappling with this dark chapter in its history.

***

Almost immediately after establishing the Hamilton ILP, the group’s leadership decided to run official party candidates in the upcoming municipal election. Their efforts were hampered by the city’s move to an at-large system of voting for aldermen, meaning that voters across the city were given 21 votes to distribute among 42 nominated candidates. The at-large system was confusing, tedious, and diminished the power of working class candidates who were unable to concentrate their efforts to the parts of the city where working people formed a majority of electors. The 1908 election saw ILP candidates shut out entirely, which the blatantly partisan Spec described as a “pitiable exhibition put up by the Labour Party.”⁸

Working closely with the local Liberal Party establishment over the next few elections, the Hamilton ILP was able to put up more of a fight at the municipal level. Between 1908 and 1916, most other local branches of the ILP faded away, but Hamilton’s remained, in large part because of the presence of Studholme who was re-elected in 1908, 1911, and 1914.

It wasn’t just Studholme’s success that kept the party going; there was plenty for the local ILP to focus on in those years. An economic depression in 1913 followed by World War 1 and a period of intense inflation during the conflict hurt working people more than most, which led those in local labour circles to call for more of an effort to ensure there were working class voices around the table.

Following the lead of the Hamilton ILP, branches were reconstituted in 1916 and, the following year, a provincial Labour Party was refounded. The party expanded rapidly after this rebirth and began to score impressive victories. Labour candidates won municipal seats, the party put pressure on the government at Queen’s Park, and labourites began seeking federal office across the province. Though Studholme passed away a few months before the 1919 provincial election, Labour was able to capture 9% of the vote and win seats across the province, holding both Hamilton East and Hamilton West as well as winning in Brant, London, Ottawa, Niagara Falls, Waterloo, the high north, and even select seats in Toronto. Led by Hamilton West’s Walter Rollo, the Ontario Labour Party joined Ernest Drury’s United Farmers party to form Ontario’s first and only farmer-labour government.

The provincial victory was short-lived, as the farmer-labour administration collapsed after one term and, by the mid-1920’s, Labour was back down to a single seat in the legislature. Locally, the ILP maintained a focus on contesting and winning municipal seats, which eventually began to pay off. As the ‘20’s came to a close, the Hamilton ILP often held the balance of power on council, allowing them to push for some modest improvements for Hamilton’s working people. The party scored a major coup when it was able to elect Alderman Sam Lawrence to the Board of Control, marking the first time a dedicated labour candidate would win a city-wide seat.

But, in the wake of the Canadian Labour Revolts (especially the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919) and the solidification of working class ideology, it was clear the situation as it stood would not be tenable forever. Indeed, out on the wide open prairie, new political winds were blowing. It would only be a matter of time before those winds crossed the Canadian Shield and made their way down the Great Lakes to Canada’s beating industrial heart at the end of Lake Ontario.

A commonwealth of cooperation

While the Hamilton ILP was busy with local elections and supporting Labour candidates here, other groups were doing the same across Canada. The Winnipeg ILP earned incredible success after 1919, Vancouver-based labourites were making headway, and labour-oriented municipal projects were forming majorities on councils across Alberta.

There was increasing coordination at the federal level as well. By the mid-1920’s, labour candidates were forming coherent blocks in Parliament and influencing government policy on important issues. Labour groups across the west began holding annual coordinating meetings to settle on common themes and central ideas so as to present a more united and professional front to the people come election time. After the economic crash in 1929 that led to the Great Depression, these meetings became more urgent and more optimistic.

From 1930 to 1932, more and more meetings were held with disparate groups with the goal of forming a more coherent union of progressive forces who could offer a compelling alternative to the economic system that was collapsing around everyone. In the summer of 1932, that compelling alternative was created in Calgary, adopting the name the “Cooperative Commonwealth Federation” or “CCF”. The CCF would operate as a true federation, meaning there would be no membership in a national CCF but, instead, the party would bring together “affiliates” that were able to maintain their own internal structure and their own local focus, coordinating when necessary during provincial and federal elections.⁹

The timeframe being too short to effectively organize a new political movement in time for that December’s municipal election, Hamilton’s ILP carried on as usual and presented its own slate of candidates to the electors of this city. They had closed out the year with four party members on council - including Lawrence on the Board of Control - but had their eyes on further gains. The ILP had convinced maverick alderman Charles Aitchison to join their slate and pushed hard to earn a second seat in the working class Ward 8 (the far eastern portion of the city between Ottawa Street and Strathearne Ave, north of King Street to the bay). Their efforts paid off and, at the December 5, 1932 municipal elections, the local ILP caucus expanded to six members, giving the party 29% of the seats on council.

By the summer of 1933, all the local ILP branches and various farmer and labour organizations in the city and surrounding region had affiliated to the CCF and signed on to its ambitious new program, the Regina Manifesto. Not long after, the newly united Hamilton CCF/ILP announced they would be running a joint slate in that year’s municipal election.

All incumbent ILP aldermen signed on, as did Controller Lawrence and a host of returning and new candidates. And the party’s campaign wasn’t subtle about who it was running against; in a weekend ad, just before the election, the local CCF/ILP took aim at the city’s business elites from the Hamilton Club opposing them from the right and the city’s small but vocal Communist Party contingent from the far left. “The C.C.F.-Labour candidates have a record that will go down in the history of our city in bold relief,” they wrote, encouraging the residents of Hamilton to vote “in the interest of humanity and progress.”¹⁰

Despite the Spec’s dismissal of the CCF/ILP united effort (“The C.C.F. threat proved to be a mountain made of a molehill…”), the new coalition increased its share of the vote in nearly every race it contested and Lawrence earned the most votes of all Board of Control candidates, making him the Deputy Mayor and undisputed leader of the party’s faction on council. Though their caucus remained at six, they had shown that labour unity meant increased support and a path to future victory.

But there would be no future victories because that unity would last mere months.

Seeing red

Albert Smith was, by the time he helped upend Hamilton’s municipal politics in 1934, a rather unorthodox Christian minister in his early 60’s. A son of Guelph, he had travelled around Canada working for various left-wing causes, starting his own “people’s” church, and briefly serving as a Labour representative in the Manitoba legislature. After relocating to Ontario, he bounced between Toronto, Hamilton, and Thunder Bay, raising awareness about the labour movement and drifting further and further to the left. In 1926, he was able to earn the Labour nomination to run for provincial parliament in Hamilton Centre, only to earn an abysmal 3.2% of the vote.

By the time the CCF was being formed in Calgary, Smith was travelling around the Soviet Union, absorbing gratuitous quantities of Stalinist propaganda. When he returned to Canada, he began preaching the gospel of Stalin, determined to set Canada on the path to Soviet-style rule.

On February 18, 1934, a mass meeting of Toronto-area labour affiliates was held at Massey Hall. The original speaker, a labour leader from New York, was unable to cross the Canadian border and so, in his place, Smith made his way to the podium. In a blistering rant, Smith attacked both the province’s governing Progressive Conservatives and the entire CCF, focusing his most vicious verbal assaults for party leader J.S. Woodsworth and Canada’s first female MP, Agnes Macphail. He whipped the crowd into such a lather that speakers who followed him, including members of the CCF, followed in his criticism of the then two-year-old party.

Smith’s speech at Massey Hall ripped through the CCF like a lightening bolt. Party members began to turn on one another, a wholesale purge of suspected Communists kicked off, and the Ontario farmer movement announced it would disaffiliate from the CCF in response to their allowing in extremists in the first place.¹¹

The storm broke over Hamilton in early March. The West Hamilton ILP - still a distinct entity, as the Village of West Hamilton (today’s Ainslie Wood) had only joined Hamilton in 1930 - set up a meeting to discuss their affiliation with the CCF, though party leaders told the Spec: “No matter what happens…the I.L.P. will carry on.”¹²

By April, the party infighting had spilled into Hamilton proper, with local activists on either side attempting to wrest control of the party apparatus from one another. Further changes to the CCF constitution, which would have diminished the power of local ILP branches, deepened the crisis.¹³ On April 16, the Hamilton Centre ILP announced it would break from the CCF and carry on its activities by itself.¹⁴ The decision by the Hamilton CCF to run candidates in all four provincial ridings during that June’s election enraged the ILP, which felt it had been pushed aside and its concerns about the party’s actions around Smith had gone unaddressed.¹⁵ The only CCF candidate to win - and, indeed, the only CCFer elected province-wide - was Sam Lawrence, who became the party’s first representative at the Ontario legislature. Rather than being able to celebrate his success, it became clear that departure from the municipal scene at a time of such intense infighting had only further enflamed tensions. That August, the Hamilton Centre ILP had banned CCF supporters from participating in their activities.¹⁶

As the city’s municipal elections drew nearer, the rift deepened. When it came time to prepare for the December 3, 1934 municipal contest, both sides dug in and refused to budge.

On nomination day, both the CCF and the ILP ran candidates - in some instances, directly against one another. The aldermen for Wards 5 and 6 - labour stalwarts Charles Aitchison and Archie Pollock - carried the ILP banner into battle for seats on the Board of Control while the Ward 8 aldermen - John Mitchell and J. Fred Reed - did so for the CCF. In their nomination day speeches, the men targeted each other with abandon. “All true labour men are in the CCF movement,” said Reed, while Mitchell said he was proud to stand as a candidate of the CCF and labour movement (with some exceptions). Aitchison spoke about needing a balance between labour and property owners saying “Between the two I perceive no conflict or reason for any,” while Pollock noted that, in his time as aldermen, he had not been guided by party, “but in the best interest of the city in general”.¹⁷

While the CCF had more candidates than the ILP - 12 to 6 - many incumbents bowed out, leaving a whole new crop of candidates for voters to chose from.

The election was bruising. The ILP candidates mainly campaigned alone while the CCF campaign was apparent in its focus. “In our own interests” was the party’s slogan and ads said that “[Sam] Lawrence, M.L.A., endorses…Alderman John Mitchell and Alderman Fred Reed only for the Board of Control.”¹⁸

The results were devastating. The labour caucus, splintered by internal division, was utterly destroyed. Mitchell and Reed, Pollock and Aitchison were all defeated in their bid for seats on the Board of Control. Had their vote totals been combined with either the CCF or the ILP candidates running, the united slate would have earned two seats. Instead, they handed control of the city’s financial decision-making body to a group of right-wing fiscal hawks.

All the way down the ballot, CCFers and ILP candidates lost. The only place labour prevailed was in Ward 8, where Agnes Sharpe of the CCF and Bill Harrison of the ILP won seats. From a united caucus of six to single representatives each, labour had been effectively removed from Hamilton’s municipal politics, in large part, by its own hand.

The Spec reported, with only a hint of gloating:

Even after the election, both groups blamed each other for the loss, throwing barbs around in the local press, leading the Spec to take the unusual step of responding to the Letters to the Editor each group had been submitting to the paper by saying “neither the ILP nor the CCF seems anxious to heal the split which occurred in the last municipal elections…”¹⁹

***

The local ILP would fade away over the next few years as the CCF solidified its position as the party of the city’s workers. But the Spec’s assessment from the day after the 1934 election was actually incorrect. The cause of labour had not need set back a decade by the debacle; it was set back three decades. The local CCF would never have more than three representatives on council from 1934 until the party merged with the Canadian Labour Congress to become the NDP in 1961. Only after Hamilton’s 1964 municipal election did labour begin to put up a fight, this time as a distinct political grouping - “Labour’s Voice” - and eventually reaching the point where they rivalled the early ILP in terms of seat count. That success was, once again, undone by an internal schism in 1970 that finally ended the official involvement of organized labour-affiliated groups in Hamilton’s local politics.

Labour’s division in 1934 paved the way for years of marginalization. Through the 1940’s, the CCF was relentlessly attacked by the Spectator and members of the city’s political establishment as a threat more dangerous than communism to this city. In the years after the war, the party’s support slipped consistently and, with the resignation of Sam Lawrence from the office of mayor in 1949, the party was pushed further off the political map.

In their place, the city instead got municipal politicians like Lloyd Jackson, Jack MacDonald, Johnny Munro, Vic Copps, and Jim Campbell, who pursued aggressive and devastating urban renewal schemes, barely regulated expansion of massive corporations and heavy industry, wasteful highway and freeway plans, a heavy-handed approach to labour negotiations, and a pivot toward car-centric suburban development.

In many ways, all of us today are still living with the consequences of 1934. Those consequences are all around us, etched into our landscape, or buried beneath our feet, ground into rubble to make way for a city built by the victors.

The centre

Tomorrow evening, the ballots will be counted in Hamilton Centre. The battle between Sarah Jama’s independent campaign and the city’s progressive establishment will wrap up and we’ll know who will speak for Hamilton Centre in the 44th Parliament of Ontario.

This was a battle that didn’t need to happen. Just like in 1934, a huge issue of global concern ripped through the fragile coalition built between Jama’s activist supporters and the moribund remnants of the Ontario NDP in Hamilton Centre. A lack of legacy building by the previous person who held the seat (I wonder who that was…), a party establishment and MPP that took steps which heightened tensions, and an effort at reconciliation that was far from transparent has put us in this situation.

When this incident first occurred, I was angry. It seemed wrong that Jama should be booted from the party because of a misunderstanding over the text of a speech about an international conflict. But, as the days turned into weeks, weeks into months, more and more information trickled out. By anger turned to confusion, which turned to sadness, which turned to…well, where I am today: quieter than I want to be, less involved than I should be, doing what I can, where I can, to help inch our democracy forward.

I know many of you support Sarah Jama. I know many of you support the NDP and the party’s other candidates across Hamilton. I know many of you are too tired or too cautious or too torn to publicly side with either camp. I know many of you have opted to support other parties this time. There are many, many opinions - strong opinions - in this community. And that’s okay. I respect people’s firmly held beliefs and positions. I hope I am afforded the same respect for casting my ballot for the candidate and the party that I think would be best for Hamilton Centre.

But as the global situation becomes more frightening with each passing day, there will come a time where we will need to set aside our differences and work together to achieve our common goals.

The CCF and the ILP back in 1934 couldn’t do that. The result is a city that, in many instances, doesn’t work for everyday people.

But we aren’t just talking about one city here. What we’re talking about here is our province. Universities and colleges are cutting programs and, in some cases, are preparing to shut down entirely. Hospitals are at their breaking point and the only solution being offered is more for-profit service. Our highways are clogged and, when they are expanded, will only become more clogged. Our schools are overcrowded, our homes are unaffordable, our farms are being paved to help multimillionaire developers make more money…it seems like nothing is working and the current government’s answer is to make it worse.

We can’t let the lessons of the past go unlearned. We can’t fight ourselves with such vigour and such intensity that we destroy ourselves. We can’t keep going on like this.

No matter who wins tomorrow evening, we will need to make some big changes, and fast, if we are going to survive. Not just as a political movement or as partisan actors, but as a community. I’m not going to let this city or this province or this country be remade in the image of people who take advantage of our inability on the left to work together. We deserve better than that.

And no matter who you support or how you vote, let’s be clear: the hard work starts after the ballots are counted. Let’s look forward to rebuilding and let’s set our sights on winning. Not just one riding or one fight, but the whole province.

Because if we don’t win, we don’t get the chance to build the world we want - one that works for everyone - or advance the policies we know will make life better for so many.

If we unite, we win. And if we win, we get to govern. In our own interests.

1  _{Martin Robin. Radical Politics and Canadian Labour. 1968. Kingston: Queen’s University Industrial Relations Centre, p. 2 - 3.}

2  _{“Agree upon a third arbitrator to-day” Hamilton Spectator, September 4, 1906 (Spec archive link)}

3  _{“Will not stand” Hamilton Spectator, October 25, 1906 (Spec archive link)}

4  _{“Another company of strike breakers now in the city” Hamilton Spectator, November 9, 1906 (Spec archive link)}

5  _{“Scott endorsed” and “A labor leader” Hamilton Spectator, November 23, 1906 (Spec archive link)}

6  _{“Wild mob was in complete control”, Hamilton Spectator, November 24, 1906 (Spec archive link); “An appeal made to Washington” Hamilton Spectator, November 26, 1906 (Spec archive link); “Three names were up before the electors” Hamilton Spectator, November 27, 1906 (Spec archive link); “East Hamilton went solid for Studholme” Hamilton Spectator, December 5, 1906 (Spec archive link); “The 1906 Hamilton Streetcar Strike and Riot” Hamilton Transit History, 2016 (Link).}

7  _{“New labour party was formed here” Hamilton Spectator, November 26, 1907 (Spec archive link)}

8  _{“Six new faces on the council board” Hamilton Spectator, January 7, 1908 (Spec archive link)}

9  _{James Naylor. “The Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation in the 1930s” in Roberta Lexier, Stephanie Bangarth, and Jon Weier [eds.] Party of Conscience: The CCF, The NDP, and Social Democracy in Canada. 2018. Toronto: Between the Lines.}

10  _{“C.C.F.-I.L.P. Reply (Advertisement)” Hamilton Spectator, December 2, 1933 (Spec Archive Link)}

11  _{Margaret Stewart and Doris French. Ask no quarter: a biography of Agnes Macphail. 1959. Toronto : Longmans, Green and Co. (Internet Archive Link to full book)}

12  _{“Will discuss CCF crisis” Hamilton Spectator, March 12, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

13  _{“Rift seen in the ranks of labour group” Hamilton Spectator, April 7, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

14  _{“I.L.P. and C.C.F.” Hamilton Spectator, April 16, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

15  _{“C.C.F. decides to contest all local ridings” Hamilton Spectator, April 23, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

16  _{“C.C.F. link is under ban by labour party” Hamilton Spectator, August 25, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

17  _{“Candidates appeal to electors as nominations are held” Hamilton Spectator, November 23, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

18  _{“C.C.F. - In Our Own Interests (Ad)” Hamilton Spectator, December 1, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}

19  _{“Reed replies to remarks of Harry Penton” Hamilton Spectator, December 12, 1934 (Spec Archive Link)}