Category: History

Labour Day: A Brief History

As we all know, Labour Day has fallen on hard times as of late.  Canadian commerce keeps chugging along; therefore, many workers (labourers, if you will) have to work on the first Monday of September.  For the rest of us, it’s the last long weekend of the summer — time to heat up the barbeque, cool off the drinks and relax one last time – ‘cause pretty soon the great Canadian winter is going to bring us six months of Don Cherry and Hockey Night in Canada.  However, as you’re sitting with a cold one — fat, dumb and happy the kids are going back to school tomorrow – here are a few historical tidbits to chew on before the steaks are ready.

Legend has it that Labour Day is actually a Canadian invention.  It’s the result of two canny Conservative Prime Ministers and a hard-case Liberal newspaper editor.  I don’t know if the story’s exactly true or not, but I’ve heard it told this way a couple of times, so it’s mostly true.  Besides, it makes a good story.

In 1872, the Typographical Union of Toronto was on strike against The Toronto Globe newspaper – which, by the way, is the great-grandfather of today’s Globe and Mail.  The noted Liberal politician, George Brown, was none too happy about this, since he had founded the Globe in 1844, and it was his paper they were striking against.  He rooted around in his law books for a while until he found some antiquated anti-labour laws and had the strike leaders arrested for conspiracy – 24 of them!  Other labour leaders decided not to take this sitting down and organized a mass rally in Ottawa for the first Monday of September, 1873.  Remember, Canada was less than a decade old at this point, and there was great concern that the shiny new Dominion would not survive.  Socialists roaming the streets, making outrageous demands (a 54 hour work-week, for one) were seen as a serious threat to the orderly conduct of business and to the country.

Enter one, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, the wiliest politician this country has ever produced.  In 1873, Macdonald’s government was up against the wall.  (Long story short: they’d been taking bribes from railroad companies — really, really big bribes.)  So, where other people saw lawless socialists attacking the foundations of our nation, Sir John saw potential votes and a chance to slap the crap out of the Liberals.  He promised the marchers, as God was his witness, to repeal the anti-union laws.  Unfortunately, the railroad bribes were so big that Macdonald’s government didn’t survive.  Fortunately, his promise did.  The Trade Union Act of Canada was passed in 1874.  Pretty soon, everybody and his brother (pun intended) were legally demanding things like a 54 hour work-week and time to eat their lunch — and those September marches continued.

Meanwhile, in the USA and over in Europe, trade unionists were working away, trying their best to get a few decent working conditions themselves.  Internationally, labour leaders all had the same agenda.  They wanted something a little better than legalized slavery for their people.  Then, if there was any good will left over, they figured a little dignity for the working man would be nice, too.  Most union demonstrations revolved around May 1st.  The thinking was that people would come out and join spring dempnstrations after a long winter.  Plus, the trade union/radical/socialist message could tag team with May Day celebrations already in progress.  After all, May Day stuff — like music and street fairs and dancing around a pole — had always been the practice of common folk.  Obviously, the thinking was sound because the idea caught on.  Today, May 1st is universally recognized as International Worker’s Day — and it’s a legal holiday in over 80 countries!

Back in Canada, the trade union movement was growing apace and in the industrial heartland of the north eastern United States, it was exploding – almost literally.  On May 1st, 1894, labour disputes erupted in violent and deadly clashes in Cleveland, Ohio.  Then, at the end of June, the first large interstate labour action took place: railroad workers in several states staged a boycott in what came to be known as The Pullman Strike.  Just as an aside, American President Cleveland ordered federal troops to put down the strike.  Hundreds of people were injured and 13 union workers were killed.  However, this isn’t important to our main story.

Our Prime Minister at the time, John Sparrow Thompson (never heard of him have you?) saw what was happening in America and around the world and decided to defuse the situation before it got started.  As the Pullman Strike in the US was entering its fourth week, on July 23, 1894, his government declared that the first Monday in September would be a national holiday.  It would be in the tradition of those original Ottawa trade union marches — dedicated to the labour movement and appropriately called Labour Day.*  The more cynical historians say this was simply a move to draw attention away from May 1st.   Whatever Thompson’s motivation, even though Canada had its share of labour pains, it avoided most of the bloody clashes that characterized the international labour movement — situations like the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago in 1896, which started as a peaceful May Day union march and ended up scattered with corpses — over twenty dead.

Labour Day was a small concession to the early trade union movement, but it demonstrated that Canada and Canadians do recognize the importance of ordinary working people.  So, if you get a minute between long weekend activities, lift your glass to the men and women who gave us this holiday: there were a lot more of them than George Brown, John A. Macdonald and John Thompson.

*President Grover Cleveland also created an American Labor Day less than a month later.

Curses: Foiled Again!

As Campaigner-In-Chief, Barack Obama, fights for his political life, his strategy is simple.  He gets off the Darth Vader Bus of Despair with a clear message for the American people: “Folks, let’s all hitch ourselves to the Blame Bush Bandwagon ‘cause it’s all his fault.”  Little does he know that he is maligning the single most accomplished president in the history of America!  Dubya was the one guy who stood tough against both the stars that govern us and metaphysical forces that we cannot yet hope to understand — and triumphed.  No other president — not Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy or even the great Ronnie Reagan — can stand in the hall of greatness where Dubya resides.  He is solitary in his achievement, a true American hero, who lifted his country out of a morass of hopelessness.

It all started 200 years ago, in 1811, when resident bully William Henry Harrison and an American militia army kicked the crap out of Tecumseh’s little brother Tenskwatawa and a bunch of his Native American buddies at the Battle of Tippecanoe.  However, don’t throw the racist stone just yet, because the Native Americans involved had been swindled out of their land — fair and square — a couple of years before at the Treaty of Fort Wayne.  Moreover, they had surrounded Harrison’s militia with intent to do bodily harm and (all sides agree) threw the first punch (or spear as it were.)

The problem was Tenskwatawa was a bit of a part-time spiritualist, and he had foreseen the battle in a dream.  He told his followers that the American bullets would not harm them, and there would be a great victory.  Unfortunately, hot steel very seldom obeys the laws of the spirit world, and when the dust settled, the great victory was somebody else’s.  The result was an end to a mighty Native Confederation (and a lot of name calling around the council fires that winter.)

Click all you want there's nothing there

At this point, the tale gets really interesting and the evidence gets really sketchy.  In fact, the only hard proof we have that any of the rest of this ever happened comes from a 1930s Ripley’s Believe it or Not cartoon.  However, in my day, most people who never made it out of History 12 (and some who did) believed it.  The story goes that because of Harrison’s actions at Tippecanoe, Tecumseh or his brother Tenskwatawa (who, given the evidence, had the hilarious nickname, “The Prophet”) placed a curse on the American Presidency.  Either Tecumseh, as he lay dying, or Tenskwatawa many years later, essentially said that Harrison would be elected President, but he would die in office.  Not only that, but one of them (???) went on to say that every twenty years, forever after, no president, elected in a year ending in zero, would make it out of the White House alive.  Apparently, the Shawnee know how to hold a grudge.

Meanwhile, back at the facts, for the next 140 years Tecumseh’s Curse kept ticking away like a top-end Rolex.  Harrison, was indeed, elected President in 1840, at his second kick at the can.  He caught a cold giving the most boring inaugural speech in American history and died a month later.  In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president and although he survived his first term, was re-elected in 1864 and assassinated by John Wilkes Booth less than a year later.  Next, James Garfield, elected in 1880, was shot by Charles Guiteau in July of 1881 and died that September.  However, to be fair, this may have had more to do with the presidential medical staff than a Native American curse.  Apparently, Garfield’s wound was not life threatening, but his doctors were and that’s what finished him off.  In 1896, William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryant to become the 25th president of the United States, and rather than quit while he was ahead, he ran for re-election in 1900.  He beat Bryant again, but the next year, while touring the World’s Fair in Buffalo, was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz and died within days.  In 1920, Warren Harding was elected to the Oval office.  He lasted long enough (3 years) to preside over one of the most corrupt administration ever and be considered one of the worst presidents.  He died in San Francisco in 1923.  The jury’s still out on the cause of death; opinions range from stroke to food poisoning to suicide.  There’s even one theory that he was murdered by Mrs. Harding (who oddly enough burned all his papers when she got back to Washington.)  Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to work very hard, indeed, to fulfill Tecumseh’s Curse.  He was elected president in 1932, 1936, the magical 1940 and 1944.  He finally died of exhaustion and a cerebral haemorrhage in April, 1945.  John Kennedy was elected in 1960 and died in Dallas in 1963.  I’m not going to go into the wherefores and the whys of JFK’s death because if you ask any four people their thoughts about it you’ll get six different conspiracy theories.

Of course, many people do not believe in NativeAmerican curses.  Unable to accept the metaphysical power which surrounds us every day and only primitive people possess, they pooh-pooh the idea.  Many prominent astrologers maintain that the regularity of presidential death has nothing to do with Tecumseh, his brother or anyone else.  It is, in reality, controlled by the stars and the evidence is available to anyone who wants to open their eyes.  There is an astrological cycle which occurs every 19.8 years when Jupiter, the faster orbiting planet, crosses paths with Saturn, the slower planet.  Since Jupiter rules politicians and Saturn rules death, something catastrophic is bound to happen.  Luckily, however, the stars are only concerned with American politicians or we’d have others world leaders popping off with the same annoying regularity.

Fortunately, in the 21st century, George W. Bush came along and put a stop to both 19th century Native American cursery and ancient Americo-centric astrology.  He was elected in 2000 and served two full terms in office.  (There was a moment there when the pretzels nearly got him, but in the end, he prevailed.)  When his presidency was over, he packed his bags, waved good-bye, and went back to Texas, hale and hearty.  Barack Obama, the Democrats, Jon Stewart and the girls from The View can continue to blame him for everything from the National Debt to obesity in preschoolers, if they want to.  However, even they have to admit that when George W. Bush stepped away from the White House, he’d lifted the curse that had plagued America for a century and a half — and even realigned the stars.  Not bad for a straight C student from Yale!

But, wait a minute, you might ask.  What about Ronnie Reagan?  Reagan was a great president who won the Cold War and gave us “trickle-down” economics.   However, as any supporter of either the Tecumseh Curse or the Jupiter/Saturn theory will tell you, Reagan was elected in 1980, and he died from Alzheimer’s, which was already very apparent during his last days at the White House, when Nancy and Frank Sinatra were running the country.

South Sudan: A Short History

If I was even a minor official in the government of South Sudan right now, I’d be just a little bit pissed off.   A couple of days ago, July 9th, the Republic of South Sudan became the newest nation on the planet.  There was wall-to-wall media coverage.  Juba, the capital, was full of cameramen, reporters and dignitaries — Obama’s grandma was there, for God’s sake!  Even the bimbos at CNN were pronouncing Salva Kiir Mayardit properly.  Everybody and his friend was trying to grab a piece of history.  Today, less than a week later, you can’t find enough news about South Sudan to fill up a good-sized Tweet.  I’ll grant you Mia Farrow and George Clooney have a lot of things to do, and the Western media is busy eating its own over the Rupert Murdoch debacle, but this has got to be one of the fastest kiss-offs in history.

The people of South Sudan have been at this nation-building business for quite some time.  This is because they are totally different people from the folks in the north.  There’s been a lot of rhetoric about Moslems and Christians lately, but don’t take that to the bank; it isn’t worth much.  The fact is the northern Sudanese are Arabs, and the southern Sudanese are Africans.  The only reason they were ever in the same country in the first place is the British wanted to save money in the late 40s when Sudan was still a colony – except it wasn’t.  It’s all rather confusing, but here’s a decaffeinated account.

The entire British Empire was an administrative mess for most of its history, and Africa was particularly complicated.  In the case of South Sudan, first of all, Egypt and Sudan were never actually British colonies.  In the 19th century, Sudan was part of Egypt (although their legal writ didn’t go very far up the Nile.)  Egypt, on the other hand (and therefore Sudan) was, legally, an independent province of the Ottoman Empire.  Of course, the reality was different.  The British were running the show in Cairo.  There was a huge British presence in Egypt because the Brits owned the Suez Canal and they were going to protect it, come hell or high water.  Therefore, they basically told the Khedive of Egypt (the local dictator) he could either do as he was told or Britain would find a new Khedive with better hearing.  The Khedive listened the first time — every time — and it was a good arrangement.  Egypt was independent (wink, wink) and the Brits wandered around as if they owned the place.  Britain extended its formal authority into Sudan only after Herbert Kitchener put a stop to the 19th century’s version of Al Qaeda (with maxim guns) at the slaughter of Omdurman in 1898.  After that, Sudan was considered (get this) a condominium under Anglo Egyptian control, but South Sudan was always administered as a separate province.  Again, it was a good arrangement.  However, after World War II, in a wave of postwar austerity, the Brits decided to save some money and combine the two colonial administrations.  It didn’t really matter who was what in 1947 because the Colonial Office ran the country without a whole lot of input from the local folks – so nobody cared.

Unfortunately, when it came time for independence, it mattered a great deal.  The British screwed up.  They were in such a rush to feel the “winds of change,” they forgot that what they’d been calling Sudan for less than a decade was actually two different countries — and had been for thirteen centuries before they got there.  So, in 1956, when the British said, “You’re all Sudanese now.  Have fun.  Be good.  See you around!” and packed their packs and left, the result was civil war.  It ran hot and cold for the next fifty years.

To the South Sudanese, this week must look like déjà vu all over again.   Here they are trying their best to join the family of nations, and the family seems to have disappeared, just like it did in 1956.  I’m sure there are tons of things going on, but I’m seriously perplexed that none of it is making its way into the media.  It’s like the world’s newest nation dropped off the face of the earth.  Celebrities and the media played a huge role in getting these people a negotiated independence.  They can’t just walk away now.  As of Saturday,

the South Sudanese automatically qualify as one of the poorest nations on earth.  They need everything.  We’ve heard a lot of hot air in the last ten years about nation building; South Sudan is a perfect opportunity for the world to help some pretty diligent people build theirs.  Here is a chance for the rest of us to do it right.  I’m just worried that now that it’s no longer “trendy,” we’re not going to even try it.