Labour Day has just passed; it is an important statutory holiday that means more than the back-to-school transition and the pending end of summer.
Always on the way to somewhere else on the back roads I am ashamed to say, over decades, I have passed by this roadside monument far too many times. That misplaced streak ended recently.
At this location Highway 11 North is straight as an arrow. You can see the overgrown derelict farmsteads of “broken promises and shattered dreams,” along the way.
From a distance, at 100 kph you see the 10 m high white monument, set back on the south side of the railway line, it contrasts the green grove of conifers. And those trees are so important to this story.
Just two kilometres to the west on the highway there has always been that green sign there with the white letters – Chemin – Reesor – Road.
The name symbolizes more than what most of us know. It remains Canada’s bloodiest labour conflict. Very few people know of the Reesor Siding incident. There are two songs written about this though.
More to tell
As well there is an Ontario Heritage Trust roadside plaque at the site.
“This is the site of one of the bloodiest clashes in Canadian labour history. In January 1963, a contract dispute led to a strike by members of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers' Union who cut pulpwood for the paper mill in Kapuskasing. They tried to shut down the mill by blockading pulpwood shipments from independent contractors. Just after midnight on February 11, over 400 strikers arrived at Reesor Siding to dump logs stockpiled by a local woodcutters' cooperative. As they approached the woodpiles, 20 armed woodcutters began shooting. Three of the strikers were killed, another eight wounded. The tragedy prompted the provincial government to intervene and settle the strike by arbitration.”
These roadside signs try and capture just the facts of the story. In this case, it was a triangle of frustration leading to anger and then violence.
New book
There’s a new narrative that digs deeper into the Reesor Siding incident written by Charles (Andy) Beaudoin, born and raised in Iroquois Falls. It uncovers the emotions.
“After completing high school, I went to work - in the mill, then for a finance company in Timmins (I was interviewed for the job in Hearst) then worked as a sportscaster for CFCL radio and television Left there to work in the mill - more money, fewer expenses. From weekends and summers from age 16 on. I worked in most departments in the mill. As a 20-year-old, I went to Camp 29 where I worked for three years. Met my wife who was a school teacher and decided to attend university.” He is a former school board Superintendent.
Andy said, “I was never interested in writing a book but fell into this project when my brother, a retired police officer, shared a legal brief he had kept for 56 years with me. The more I read, the more convinced I became that the story had to be told, remembered, and produced in book form as a document for future study.”
My brother Ron was at the Reesor gate the night of the shooting and one of the 12 officers was overrun by the mob of strikers. He never spoke of the incident to anyone that I know of. My interviews with him gave me little information but the legal brief he kept all those years did. He kept no records of other police events although there were many.”
Andy outlines the setting during the winter of 1963. Weeks of violence and rising tension, mob mentality, and failures in leadership culminated in the Reesor Siding Tragedy: a shooting that took the lives of three strikers from the Spruce Falls Pulp and Paper Company and left eight wounded. “In the political and legal aftermath, the details of the event were quickly covered up, leaving Canadians to forget about it."
He unmasks “the mishandling by the provincial government, police leadership, and union and Spruce Falls management that led to the lives of hardworking men who just wanted to earn a fair income being changed forever.”
The book comes back to a familiar theme. “A tragedy of this magnitude does not occur without a massive collective leadership failure. Union leaders, company owners and their managers, political and government officials, the leadership of the farmers’ cooperative and the police top brass all the appropriate actions to restore peace and settle the issues, but only after the needless loss of life. The quick and effective action by those executives highlights their earlier failures inaction, and poor decisions. “
Background
The events that led to the Reesor Siding Incident had begun on 14 January 1963 when more than 1,000 employees of the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company in Kapuskasing staged an illegal walkout. While the men stopped producing any pulpwood, the mill could manage without them as the only lumber it needed for its production at the time was already negotiated by private contracts with local farmers.
Cooperatives have been present in Canada since Confederation at least. French Canadians who migrated to northern Ontario brought with them an appreciation for the idea of cooperatives. Andy said, “It was a natural shift for farmers who had benefited from membership in a farm cooperative to join a lumber cooperative. They were already members of a Caisse Populaire which was a cooperative banking system. The Catholic Church actively promoted this concept.”
In the case of Spruce Falls, the unionized bush workers went on strike causing a slowdown and layoffs for those who worked in the paper mill. (trades, office workers, paper makers ). “These strikes were divisive and are responsible for a lot of hard feelings.”
Here are the salient details surrounding the context of the incident.
The management of the mill implacably refused to negotiate with the strikers.
During the preceding weeks, cords of wood stored at Reesor Siding and bound for the mill had been rampaged on two occasions by the strikers. The first time this occurred; four hundred cords had been unpiled and the second time, seven hundred cords. The farmers started to guard the cords of wood.
On the evening of February 10/11, 1963, the strike broke out. About 400 strikers travelled to Reesor Siding to dismantle the ropes of wood piled up by farmers.
Arriving at the scene, the strikers faced police warning them not to set foot on the property.
It was tense, the men advanced on the police. A farmer fired a warning shot in the air, trying to ward them off. But the strikers quickly besieged the police line. It was at this point that the fearing farmers fired shots at the strikers. In the end, 11 strikers were shot in the shooting, three of them fatally.
About 20 farmers were arrested and charged with attempted murder, but after an intensive three-day trial, they were found not guilty as their lives were in danger. “The shooters were not convicted of any serious charges but did spend some time in prison awaiting trial for murder and they had to live with this horrible memory.”
During the judgment, more than 200 strikers were arrested for their participation in the riot. They were held for two weeks at the Monteith Prison Center near Iroquois Falls. Of these, 137 were found guilty of unlawful assembly and fined a total of $ 27,000, which the union paid.
Ironically, the strike ended before February 17, when the provincial government imposed compulsory arbitration.
Takeaways
Post-COVID labour disputes have escalated. Most recently Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) have been negotiating since November 2023 to reach new collective agreements. There are pending disputes with the railway companies and Air Canada pilots. WestJet mechanics, Quebec hotel workers, hydro workers in Manitoba, Canada Border Services… the list goes on. Beaudoin says, “This book asks us to consider what happens when things go wrong—and how we can do better.”
After writing the book his takeaways include, “Our society's serious thought regarding the terms of engagement for police in these tense incidents involving emotionally charged conflicts and the role of government in nipping such conflicts in the bud.”
Also, “The character and personality of chief negotiators in labour conflicts and the ability of citizens to identify and reject the people who attempt to manipulate and incite them. And the role of the multi-national company in our lives and the clash of their corporate culture and our national culture.”
The Reesor monument and Reesor sideroad is about halfway between Kapuskasing-Opasatika and Hearst-Mattice here is the map situated on the CN line at mileage point 101.
The local union erected the monument despite the dismay of some people. Dissensions still exist today on this subject. “The 1966 monument was paid for by the union and they brought in family members of the dead strikers for the official unveiling of the monument. The union never admitted any wrongdoing by the strikers. They were heralded as martyrs.” The cost was then $215,000, this would be more than two million in 2024 dollars. Atop the monolith are three statues depicting an axe-carrying logger and his family. The monument was refurbished in 1987.
On to the next sideroad west, safely walk across Highway 11 to the commemorative Mennonite cemetery and understand why Reesor is there. In the 1920s, a small store, a sawmill, a church, a school and even a tennis court. About 100 people lived here mostly Mennonites and French Canadians spread out along the side road going north and south.
Most businesses and institutions closed in the 1940s following the Great Depression. By the end of the 1940s, most of the land had been abandoned, and by the time of the tragic incident of 1963, a handful of farms remained in the area.
Drive the side roads on both sides of the highway, and you will see the outline of the once-village of Reesor and the abandoned farmsteads.
Labour dispute in song
Have a listen to the two songs written about the Reesor Siding incident. Stompin’ Tom Connors received threats after he sang his song while living in Timmins. And more recently the Grievous Angels retold the story. MP Charlie Angus, and band member, has written extensively about labour disputes.
“The labour history of the north is very radical and important,” he said.
The 115-page book with some coloured photos is self-published by Friesen Press and can be found for sale on the Internet. The author will be speaking at various libraries - Oct. 2, Cochrane; Oct. 3, Kapuskasing and Mattice and Oct. 9, Wasaga Beach. Contact him at [email protected] .
Organized labour has worked towards giving us many benefits. Reforms, fair and safe labour acts, and standards, pensions, vacations and the five-day, 40-hour work week so far. Reesor was not an incident but a tragedy in the making.
How many times have we driven past a sign identifying a historic site and said to ourselves, “I'll stop next time." Things do happen on the back roads that matter. Don’t drive by.