International Workers’
Day in Canada

» MURDER, LABOUR, AND COMMUNISM

Luana Ross
Senior Columnist

 

nternational Workers’ Day, also known as May

Day, is celebrated on the first of May by more
than 80 countries across the globe. While May
Day may conjure images of children dancing
around a maypole with ribbons and celebrations
of spring, the date also is a time to remember the
politically-left strikes led by workers.

May Day was given this specific name to
reference the demonstrations given by American
workers that were looking to make the 8-hour
workday the standard at a time when the norm
in Canada was a 12-hour workday and a 6-day
workweek. The first of May was chosen as a day
to strike and protest in the states in 1886, and on
that day more than 300,000 workers across the
US walked out of their professions.

BLOODY PROTESTS

In continuing May demonstrations by the workers
in 1886, tensions were palpable during what was
originally a peaceful protest. During an earlier
demonstration at the McCormick Harvesting
Machine Company plant in Chicago, a protestor
was killed in a clash with police; this death was
widely seen as unjust by other protesting workers.
As the gathering was being shutdown by law
enforcement, one protestor tossed a homemade
bomb and murdered several police officers. This
quickly descended the gathering into a riot. In
total seven police officers were killed, and 60

   
 

were injured—and somewhere from four to eight
civilians were killed—and 30 to 40 were wounded.
This event is known as the Haymarket Riot.

The group of people who were accused of
committing the murders of police at the riot are
called the “Haymarket Martyrs.” For these crimes,
eight of the protestors were tried and convicted.
In the end, while seven of the men were
supposed to be hung, four were executed. The
others were sentenced to life in prison, and one
died by suicide while the others stayed in prison
for six years before being pardoned.

All of these events have since been
associated to International Workers’ Day and
have since inspired many famous socialists and
anarchists to pursue politics. The day isn’t simply
rooted in violent protest though; May Day was
in part renewed in America by work done by
the conservative American Federation of Labor
(led by anti-socialist Samuel Gompers) who
encouraged cautious demonstrations.

ANTI-COMMUNIST SENTIMENT IN
CANADA

Canada’s first celebrations of International
Workers’ Day occurred in 1906—after some
had already declared Labour Day (the official
September holiday) the unauthentic fun-and-
games and government-backed version of the
worker’s holiday. Nearly 1000 Montreal citizens
(mainly immigrant workers) gathered at the
Empire room. In 1907, the reoccurring protest

 

 

 

 

 

led to violent encounters, a dissipated gathering,
and much unease. Montreal’s demonstrations of
the yearly event were the biggest in Canada until
WW1in 1914.

The Communist Party of Canada (CPC),
founded in 1921, brought a lot of popularity
to the event until they were declared illegal in
1931. Due to strong anti-Communist sentiment,
the May Day demonstrations were repressed
by the police. The CPC was given freedom once
again in 1936 and May Day celebrations popped
up in several places in western Canada—and
dominated Labour Day in some of these areas.
Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Vancouver all
participated in International Workers’ Day events
at this point. But in 1945 and onwards, as WWII
ended and the Cold War begun, the day again
faced contempt from a population with great
disdain for communism. The pendulum shifted
again, in Quebec especially, during the 1970s.
While demonstrations occurred in western
Canadian cities like Winnipeg and Vancouver,
Quebec was experiencing a radical union
movement, so the day was celebrated on a much
more significant scale than other areas of Canada.

IS LABOUR DAY THE VANILLA
VERISON OF MAY DAY?

Labour Day is a separate event—and a statutory
holiday unlike International Workers’ Day in
Canada. (In some countries, the day is an official
holiday that workers have off.) The first Monday in

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International Workers’ Day’s

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association to communism was

even harder to shake after the

Soviet Union adopted the holiday
in hopes that the working classes
of the US and Europe would band

together against capitalism.