THIS DAY IN HISTORY: JUNE 19, 1938
Seventy- five years ago, a 30- day occupation of the Vancouver Post Office by 600 of the city’s unemployed ended in a bloodbath.
But the Post Office Riot wasn’t sparked by the unemployed “sit- down” strikers of the Relief Project Workers Union. It was the result of a police action. Police fired tear gas into the building, then clubbed protesters as they emerged choking for air. Some fought back, smashing windows and tangling with authorities.
Thirty- seven strikers wound up in hospital, as well as five officers. Canada had suffered from chronic unemployment throughout the 1930s, and many felt the federal and provincial governments could do more to relieve the problem. So the Relief Project Workers Union decided to stage sit- down strikes at the post office and the Vancouver Art Gallery to press their demands.
After a month, B. C. Premier Duff Pattullo asked the federal government to end the sit- downs. The feds sent the RCMP to evict people from the post office, while the Vancouver police were assigned the art gallery. Tear gas was used at both locations, but the police chose not to use force at the art gallery, and that protest
ended peacefully. The RCMP took a different approach at the post office. Sun reporter James Dyer wrote that shortly before 5 a. m., postmaster G. W. Clarke and four RCMP officers (“in khaki and blue, swinging riding crops”) met unemployed leaders at the Hastings Street door to the building ( today’s Sinclair Centre). He gave them 20 minutes to leave.
Protest leader Steve Brodie asked the strikers if they would rather be arrested inside or outside. “Inside!” they roared, and they sat down, waiting for a confrontation.
A dozen Mounties lined up with tear gas canisters, and the strikers began to sing songs. At 5: 40 a. m., the tear gas was launched, and “a wave of humanity, frantic, screaming, tears streaming from their
eyes … poured out in one mass onto the street.”
Some strikers smashed the post office windows from inside, then battled police. One of the last strikers to leave was Brodie, who was attacked by several officers and beaten senseless.
“Four of the khaki- clad constables, holding him firmly, swung at him,” wrote Dyer. “He went down, his familiar orange sweater almost ripped off his back, his flesh a mass of bruises.
“Brodie struggled to his feet and a superior officer of the RCMP stepped in between him and his assailants. The jobless leader had hardly staggered more than a few feet when he was in trouble again, fighting bare- handed against a plain- clothes city detective whose long flexible club played a lightning tattoo on his head.”
Strikers were able to bring Brodie across the street, where he was loaded into a car and taken to hospital. “As Brodie’s friends watched the car racing away, a police sergeant and constable approached them,” Dyer wrote.
“‘ Get out of here, before I cut your head off,’ the sergeant shouted.”