On This Day
1918 – The first general strike in Canadian history takes place in Vancouver.
The 1918 Vancouver General Strike was the first general strike in Canadian history[1] and was held 2 August 1918. It was organized as a one-day political protest against the killing of draft evader and labour activist Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who had called for a general strike in the event that any worker was drafted against their will.
The strike was met with violence from returned soldiers who had been mobilized and supplied with vehicles to storm the Labour Temple at 411 Dunsmuir Street (the present-day 411 Seniors Centre). Three hundred men ransacked the offices of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC), twice attempted to defenestrate VTLC secretary Victor Midgely and forced him and a longshoreman to kiss the Union Jack. A woman working in the office was also badly bruised when she prevented Midgely from being thrown out the window. Labour activist and suffragette Helena Gutteridge was also at the scene, but was unscathed.
In response to virulent opposition from business and the middle class, strike leaders could point to the vote by VTLC delegates that supported the strike 117 to 1. After the strike, all the strike leaders resigned and nearly all were re-elected, demonstrating widespread support for the action amongst organized workers and that it was not the product of a Bolshevik conspiracy.
Although the strike call was province-wide, it was only in the city that it took general strike proportions. Numerous other strikes took place in the city that year, and the general strike was as much a show of labour strength as much as it was a political protest over Goodwin’s death. War-time inflation reduced real income profoundly. Other factors such as the Bolshevik Revolution the previous year and the realization that capital profited immensely from the First World War while workers were cannon fodder fuelled the belief that labour deserved more than what employers were voluntarily willing to give. Although only one day in duration, the 1918 strike was thus an important marker in the Canadian labour revolt that peaked with the Winnipeg General Strike the following year. A 1919 Vancouver strike in sympathy with Winnipeg would be the longest general strike in Canadian history.
Born On This Day
1870 – Marianne Weber, German sociologist and suffragist (d. 1954)
Marianne Weber (born Marianne Schnitger, 2 August 1870 – 12 March 1954) was a German sociologist, women’s rights activist and the wife of Max Weber.
Life
Childhood, 1870–1893
Marianne Schnitger was born on 2 August 1870 in Oerlinghausen to medical doctor Eduard Schnitger and his wife, Anna Weber, daughter of a prominent Oerlinghausen businessman Karl Weber.[1] After the death of her mother in 1873, she moved to Lemgo and was raised for the next fourteen years by her grandmother and aunt. During this time, both her father and his two brothers went mad and were institutionalized.[2] When Marianne turned 16, Karl Weber sent her off to fashionable finishing schools in Lemgo and Hanover, from which she graduated when she was 19. After the death of her grandmother in 1889, she lived several years with her mother’s sister, Alwine, in Oerlinghausen.
In 1891, Marianne began to spend time with the Charlottenburg Webers, Max Jr. and his mother, Helene, in particular. She became very close to Helene, who she would refer to as being “unaware of her own inner beauty”.[3] In 1893, she and Max Weber married in Oerlinghausen and moved into their own apartment in Berlin.
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- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for June 18 June 18, 2026Picture of the day Red-headed weaver (Anaplectes rubriceps leuconotus) male building nest in the Soysambu Conservancy, Kenya.
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