New book recalls riot that changed the face of Newfoundland labour

A haunting image of a body lying still and dark in pristine white snow, blood pooling out around the head.

From a distance, it could be a bear, a caribou, or a seal.

Or even a man.

It's an image that stayed with the 14-year-old Judy Day as she stood on a Badger snowbank with other children, pint-sized observers watching a spool of human tragedy unravel and not really understanding until much later the meaning of what they had seen.

And the image is now on a book written about one of the turning points in modern Newfoundland history.

"There was kids as young as seven who watched it and we never got over it, the horror of seeing such a thing in a small community like this overrun with loggers and police," the author said. "It was terrible for children and for everybody."

As many successful writers will say, the art of dealing with horrors and bad memories is to capture them dead-on in a metaphorical cage and then put those horrors to work on your behalf.

Thus it was with Judy Day, who is now Judy Ricketts and living in Mount Pearl, who came to terms with an entire town's memories of the infamous IWA strike in 1959 and now has chronicled in a novel called The Badger Riot.

About 70 people showed up in Badger for her book launch, where she signed copies and exchanged memories with residents who remember which ultimately resulted in the death of Constable William Moss of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary - who had been sent in to quell the riot in question - and the decertification of a union.

It was an event in a small rural town that ended up changing the face of the labour movement in Newfoundland forever - and even showed the people of this province a negative side of Joey Smallwood that eventually led to his downfall.

Like many close-knit cultures, Newfoundlanders have long collective memories, and this is particularly evident in a place like Badger.

The people in the little town on the Exploits River have seen and survived their shares of tragedies, both natural and man-made, from major forest fires to the latest, the major flood of 2003 which caught even international attention as the entire froze into a giant hockey rink.

Dividing people

But the event in question that divided people, invoked the wrath of the A.N.D. Company and the loggers it employed in 1959 was the bitter strike the bitter strike led by the International Woodworkers of America (IWA).

"This is a book primarily about the people of a small town who get caught up in events bigger than they are," stated Ms. Ricketts. "Many characters, such as Ralph, Jennie, Tom, and Vern are completely fictitious, although the events are true and accurate as I witnessed and as many others have related to me during conversations. As well, you will find mention of historical figures such as J. R. Smallwood, then premier of Newfound-land, H. Landon Ladd, IWA organizer, and of course Constable William Moss of the RNC."

Ms. Ricketts' father was observant of the events as they unfolded, as he was not only a telegraph operator but was Badger's social correspondent for the Advertiser.

"My book is based on actual history," she said.

"The A.N.D. Company refused to sign a contract, the workers strung out for two and a half months and then Joey stepped in and formed his own union and decided to put the IWA out. Then loggers gathered in this community, five or six hundred of them, and made their last stand and caused a riot in which a constable was killed.

"We saw him down in the snow, we never saw his face, but there was blood around his head, and that what the cover represents."

Though 50 years have practically gone by, Ms. Ricketts said she knew somehow that she would write a book.

"When I decided I was going to try it, I came out and talked to people in the community, and if they had said 'look Judy, let that lie, forget that,' I wouldn't have written it. But everyone I talked to were 100 per cent, all I had to is lightly scratch the surface of people's memories and then just poured out."

It's ironic that her book about a group of loggers' battle with a pulp and paper company is coming out the same time that workers are having their own disputes with AbitbiBowater.

"I think that no matter what name you put on that pulp and paper company, no matter if it's the A.N.D. Company, Abitibi-Price or AbitibiBowater, it's the same thing," she said. "The workers don't come first. It's all about profit. Nothing has changed."

At least the working conditions are different: in the early days of the A.N.D. Company, the Harmsworth brothers enjoyed fine gourmet meals and expensive wines, while the loggers who felled the timber for their paper machines slept on boughs and later old army cots, fought off lice and vermin and battled poor nutrition as they ate nothing but beans every day.

And the pay was very low, despite the working conditions and months away from families on end.

"Right involved"

Earle Penney, who still lives in Badger, says he was "right involved" in the strike, as he was working with the company.

"I was doing transportation for the A.N.D. Company and I will always remember. They were going to block me from going to my lunch, But I was stubborn like my dad and I walked through the 80 people that were there in my way."

Glynis Noseworthy says she can remember events as clear as they were yesterday.

"I remember, all right, what some going-on it was," she said.

Badger Mayor Bill Foley, who was at the book launch, wasn't born during the days of the IWA strike, but he is familiar with the stories shared by older residents.

"It is ironic for me to see how much has changed and then to see what's going on with the mill today," he said. "Workers still have to fight for everything they have and everything they deserve."

The IWA strike began on Dec. 31, 1958 when hundreds of loggers walked off the job to demand higher wages and better living conditions at the woods camps.

The IWA was led by H. Landon Ladd. The union had been invited to Newfoundland in 1956 by loggers who wanted it to replace the Newfoundland Loggers' Association (NLA).

The company, the NLA and local media - which at the time included the Advertiser - opposed the IWA and depicted the organizers as violent radicals.

For six weeks, the strike was a normal labour dispute, but public opposition to the IWA reached such a pitch that on Feb. 12, 1959. Then Premier Smallwood intervened. He declared he would drive the IWA out of Newfoundland and had the legislature pass a law stripping the IWA of its legal bargaining rights.

This government intervention was strongly condemned by the labour movement and the national media as an attempt by Smallwood to destroy free trade unionism.

Public support for the legislation grew when on March 10 when Const. Moss was killed in a confrontation with pickets at Badger.

Premier Smallwood replaced the IWA with the government-sponsored Newfoundland Brotherhood of Wood Workers. The loggers then signed a contract with the A.N.D. almost identical to the one proposed by the IWA, thus ending the strike. Smallwood introduced emergency labour laws in 1959, which immediately decertified the IWA, empowered the cabinet to dissolve trade unions, prohibited secondary picketing, and made unions liable for illegal acts committed on their behalf.

The International Labour Organization, Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the provincial federation of labour quickly condemned the legislation, and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker refused to provide the province with additional police to implement Small-wood's plan; even Lester B. Pearson, leader of the national Liberal party and Smallwood ally, publicly expressed concerns about the excessive measures.

Running out of food and money, loggers eventually abandoned the strike and joined Premier Smallwood's newly created Newfoundland Brotherhood of Wood Workers and negotiated a settlement with the logging companies, ending the strike and effectively undermining the IWA.