Ginger Goodwin's Grave Desecrated

Horrible.

It's part of the continuous right-wing campaign to erase the history of the workers' struggle in B.C., the rest of Canada, the rest of North America and the rest of the world.

Perhaps there could be an annual repainting/rededication ceremony at Ginger's grave.  A lot of other things could be tied to that.

Pondering wrote:

This is sad, but it is a piece of rock and the desecration is an opportunity for education. What are the conditions of life of the people who desecrated it? Are they of the oligarchy? The upper middle-class? Could it be valid resentment and anger being misdirected?

Did you read the article? Thank you for suggesting it is an opportunity for education, to a community that has been involved in labour education for decades. It is one of the few places in Canada that is keeping its labour history alive and many people object to having the red flag held high but we say fuck them and the sycophants that want to pretend the problem is anything other than violent assholes desecrating a gravestone of a labour martyr. The YouTube video is from last years 100th anniversary of his funeral march after he was murdered for his activism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG-dchT0fj4&fbclid=IwAR0YMiuKIfAujPRmm3z...

Here is some further information from a local Facebook page. Robyn is a labour historian and graphic artist who is involved in putting on the Miner's Memorial event.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=cumberland%20museum%20and%20archi...

lagatta4 wrote:

Ken, here in Montréal, in the Plateau - Mile-End district just south of mine, there is a lovely mural of Léa Roback, and of late, rightwingers have been defacing it. Fortunately our late friend has buddies who ensure that the mural is restored. My fondest memories of Léal and of Madeleine Parent are on public transport. Léa above all on the no. 15 bus; Madeleine on the Mtl-Ottawa Via train.

Thank you for telling me about that.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Did you read the article? Thank you for suggesting it is an opportunity for education, to a community that has been involved in labour education for decades.

Education in the sense that people are hearing about her because it is in the news. The important part about remembering her isn't respect for a rock it's respect for her life.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Allow me to begin that education.  Albert (Ginger) Goodwin was a dude.

That said, just curious why, in the thread title, the G is accented the way it is.  I'm pretty sure it's not the French spelling.

No idea you would have to ask quizzical.  Pondering you do not understand how dismissive you are of many hard working peoples decades long year after year volunteerism to keep labour history alive. I can't help it if you are ignorant and chose to post before understanding the issues or history or apparently reading the story. Please do not turn this thread into an endless tangent.

This also extends to Breton people, though I've never heard gingembre in French. More rouquin.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Allow me to begin that education.  Albert (Ginger) Goodwin was a dude.

That said, just curious why, in the thread title, the G is accented the way it is.  I'm pretty sure it's not the French spelling.

No idea you would have to ask quizzical.  Pondering you do not understand how dismissive you are of many hard working peoples decades long year after year volunteerism to keep labour history alive. I can't help it if you are ignorant and chose to post before understanding the issues or history or apparently reading the story. Please do not turn this thread into an endless tangent.

I was not being dismissive.  That you interpret it that way doesn't make it so. If it is off tangent it is because you took the conversation there. 

I don't know Albert (Ginger) Goodwin specifically.  In my opinion activists as effective as he apparently was care more about spreading the word than being personally offended, much like Jagmeet Singh. 

The people who did this are probably the very ones who would benefit most by Goodwin's actions had they lived in the same time. 

The histrionics have no  impact on me so I hope you get something out of it other than higher blood pressure. 

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Thanks Pondering. I do not think you have ill intent its just that you make very ignorant posts. Ignorance is something that you can overcome by reading, try it some time.  I have posted many articles over the years about Miners Memorial and Ginger so I have tried to provide the education.

Thanks for your patience, krop. You're doing better than I would.

Ken Burch wrote:

It's not a big deal...Perhaps some were wondering if you'd uncovered a secret French ancestry for Comrade Goodwin.  Thanks for the response.

Since the thread drift appears to be incurable, let me be so audacious as to point out to both of you that the symbol quizzical inadvertently used (Ģ) does not exist in French.

Ginger Goodwin was (in my memory) always celebrated as a hero and a martyr, at least in western Canada. The desecration of his grave is particularly poignant during the centenary of the Winnipeg General Strike, and within a year of the centenary of the Vancouver General Strike. And yet, as one of the activists who discovered the defacement was quoted as saying: “It’s actually sort of a compliment that after over 100 years Ginger is still seen as a threat by the right wing today.”

lagatta4 wrote:

Who claimed he was of French or Francophone origin? I'd never heard any reference to that.

Nobody claimed that. Ever. Not here, not anywhere. Quizzical accidentally used a cedilla under the G in the thread title, and that led to the usual preposterous thread drift. 

Quote:

And thanks to Kropotkin for improving my admittedly limited knowledge of labour movements, heroes and martyrs in BC.

Yes, glad Krop gave references. We all know sadly little about the history of progressive movements in Canada, because they're not allowed to teach that dangerous stuff in schools. We need to turn that situation around. 

One thing we did learn about was the militant dockers' unions in the Pacific northwest. Otherwise more about the Prairies due to the Winnipeg General strike, the CCF and its role in the creation of public healthcare. In Québec, also a lot about Louis Riel and other protagonists in the Métis and allied First Nations struggle.

Back home, dealing with rightwing nationalists (La Meute and certain reactionary fringes of the CAQ and the PQ, as Gérald Godin rolls round in his grave) who oppose the renaming of rue Amherst, though logically they should approve the renaming a street baptised for a British general and Governor General...

Paladin1 wrote:

Unionist wrote:

I don't believe in capital punishment. But a close approximation, yes.

Like, cut their hand off witth a sickle? Hit them with a hammer?

Cheap shot.  You know perfectly well Unionist has never defended Stalinism.  He salutes the Red Army for liberating the town where his family lived during the war, but anybody whose family owed their lives to the Red Army would do so.  

I'd suggest that the replace the hammer and sickle on Ginger's grave with the Socialist Party of Canada symbol, or whatever the symbol was of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers' union in Ginger's day.  

Ken Burch wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

Unionist wrote:

I don't believe in capital punishment. But a close approximation, yes.

Like, cut their hand off witth a sickle? Hit them with a hammer?

Cheap shot.  You know perfectly well Unionist has never defended Stalinism.  He salutes the Red Army for liberating the town where his family lived during the war, but anybody whose family owed their lives to the Red Army would do so.  

I'm impressed, and grateful, that you've followed my posts enough over the years to so very accurately explain where I stand on these issues. Thank you, Ken.

Ken Burch wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

Unionist wrote:

I don't believe in capital punishment. But a close approximation, yes.

Like, cut their hand off witth a sickle? Hit them with a hammer?

I'd suggest that the replace the hammer and sickle on Ginger's grave with the Socialist Party of Canada symbol, or whatever the symbol was of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers' union in Ginger's day.  

I think that the history I posted up thread explains its origins in the dirty thirties by people who were fighting the good fight. My understanding is the socialist party Ginger would have been affiliated with became defunct when most non social democrats began using the international term communist. I think it would be a denial of the pre-war generations struggle against capital in this country to try and erase that history because of the excessses of Stalinism.

For those that like a little labour history in their music here are a couple of pieces, the Ginger song is by a Cumberland artist, I can hear myself in the chorus since I was at this show.  I've posted them in the past but who could find them now.

Also here is a piece from last years hundredth anniversary, since it is Miners Memorial weekend.

100 years after his death, Ginger Goodwin remains one of B.C. labour’s most revered figures, and one of its most controversial.

Albert Goodwin emigrated from England to Canada in 1906, arriving in Cumberland in the fall of 1910 where he worked as a mule driver in the No. 5 mine. Known by his friends as ‘Ginger’, Albert was slight, and short, with a shock of red hair.  He was quiet, but tough and smart, with a playful sense of humor. At 23, he had already laboured nine years underground, yet was still healthy enough to play soccer, swim, and take his young friend Karl Coe on fishing excursions. It was not long, however, before his health deteriorated.

The conditions for workers in the Cumberland mines were atrocious with the ever-present threat of black lung, explosions, and deadly vapours. Goodwin quickly became known as a union organizer, impassioned speaker, and labour activist fighting for better working conditions for his fellow miners.

Cumberland Museum and Archives C261-015. Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin, second from the left, front row. Circa 1910.

Following the Big Strike of 1912 – 1914, Goodwin was one of hundreds blacklisted from the mines due to his union activity. After remaining in Cumberland for a year without work, he found a position as a smelterman in Trail, B.C, where he remained politically active, speaking publicly about socialism and the fight of the working class. In 1917 Goodwin was elected treasurer to the Trade Mill and Smelters Union, and Vice-President of the BC Federation of Labour.

Goodwin was a known Conscientious Objector and anti-war advocate, however it was his ill health caused by life as a miner and smelterman that allowed Goodwin to avoid conscription for WWI. His first prominent act after being declared unfit for active duty was his leadership in a Trail Mill and Smeltermen’s Union strike. Eleven days into the strike Goodwin was instructed to appear for conscription re-examination where his status was then changed to ‘fit for combat’.

Following a series of un-successful appeals, Goodwin returned to Cumberland in April 1918 to live beyond Comox Lake with a small group of like-minded war resistors. These men were able to survive for months in the wilderness due in large part to the support and generosity of local labour activists and Cumberland businesses who brought food and supplies to their camp.

In July of that year a special force of Dominion police was sent to Cumberland to bring in the draft evaders. One of these officers was Constable Dan Campbell, who tracked, shot, and killed Goodwin at the young age of 31 years. Although Campbell claimed the shooting of Goodwin was an act of self-defence, the Labour community always considered it to be an act of cold blooded murder; a sentiment that remains to this day.

The shock and anger around Goodwin’s death was felt not only in Cumberland, where his funeral procession was over a mile long, but throughout the Province. Goodwin’s death sparked Canada’s first general strike in Vancouver on August 2, 1918, the day of his burial. This strike was the precursor to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 – a defining moment in Canadian labour history.

Although those who knew Goodwin personally have now passed, his legacy has far from died. Albert Goodwin is honored each year at a graveside vigil during Miners Memorial, presented by the Cumberland Museum and Archives. His story has caught the attention of academics and artists alike, sparking fiction, creative non-fiction, film, songs, poetry, visual arts, films, documentaries, and theatre productions locally and internationally. He remains one of the most well-known labour activists in the history of our country.

In 2018 we marked the hundred-year anniversary of the death of Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin, one of the most well-known labour activists in the history of our country.

The Cumberland Museum & Archives paid tribute through participatory art and music projects, an exhibit ‘Goodwin’s Reach’, an arts symposium, the re-enactment of Goodwin’s funeral procession and other engaging programming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXBcSsQJ4uE

Here is what happened to the trade union movement in North America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uav9rHk_Lk0

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

Unionist wrote:

I don't believe in capital punishment. But a close approximation, yes.

Like, cut their hand off witth a sickle? Hit them with a hammer?

I'd suggest that the replace the hammer and sickle on Ginger's grave with the Socialist Party of Canada symbol, or whatever the symbol was of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers' union in Ginger's day.  

I think that the history I posted up thread explains its origins in the dirty thirties by people who were fighting the good fight. My understanding is the socialist party Ginger would have been affiliated with became defunct when most non social democrats began using the international term communist. I think it would be a denial of the pre-war generations struggle against capital in this country to try and erase that history because of the excessses of Stalinism.

For those that like a little labour history in their music here are a couple of pieces, the Ginger song is by a Cumberland artist, I can hear myself in the chorus since I was at this show.  I've posted them in the past but who could find them now.

Also here is a piece from last years hundredth anniversary, since it is Miners Memorial weekend.

100 years after his death, Ginger Goodwin remains one of B.C. labour’s most revered figures, and one of its most controversial.

Albert Goodwin emigrated from England to Canada in 1906, arriving in Cumberland in the fall of 1910 where he worked as a mule driver in the No. 5 mine. Known by his friends as ‘Ginger’, Albert was slight, and short, with a shock of red hair.  He was quiet, but tough and smart, with a playful sense of humor. At 23, he had already laboured nine years underground, yet was still healthy enough to play soccer, swim, and take his young friend Karl Coe on fishing excursions. It was not long, however, before his health deteriorated.

The conditions for workers in the Cumberland mines were atrocious with the ever-present threat of black lung, explosions, and deadly vapours. Goodwin quickly became known as a union organizer, impassioned speaker, and labour activist fighting for better working conditions for his fellow miners.

Cumberland Museum and Archives C261-015. Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin, second from the left, front row. Circa 1910.

Following the Big Strike of 1912 – 1914, Goodwin was one of hundreds blacklisted from the mines due to his union activity. After remaining in Cumberland for a year without work, he found a position as a smelterman in Trail, B.C, where he remained politically active, speaking publicly about socialism and the fight of the working class. In 1917 Goodwin was elected treasurer to the Trade Mill and Smelters Union, and Vice-President of the BC Federation of Labour.

Goodwin was a known Conscientious Objector and anti-war advocate, however it was his ill health caused by life as a miner and smelterman that allowed Goodwin to avoid conscription for WWI. His first prominent act after being declared unfit for active duty was his leadership in a Trail Mill and Smeltermen’s Union strike. Eleven days into the strike Goodwin was instructed to appear for conscription re-examination where his status was then changed to ‘fit for combat’.

Following a series of un-successful appeals, Goodwin returned to Cumberland in April 1918 to live beyond Comox Lake with a small group of like-minded war resistors. These men were able to survive for months in the wilderness due in large part to the support and generosity of local labour activists and Cumberland businesses who brought food and supplies to their camp.

In July of that year a special force of Dominion police was sent to Cumberland to bring in the draft evaders. One of these officers was Constable Dan Campbell, who tracked, shot, and killed Goodwin at the young age of 31 years. Although Campbell claimed the shooting of Goodwin was an act of self-defence, the Labour community always considered it to be an act of cold blooded murder; a sentiment that remains to this day.

The shock and anger around Goodwin’s death was felt not only in Cumberland, where his funeral procession was over a mile long, but throughout the Province. Goodwin’s death sparked Canada’s first general strike in Vancouver on August 2, 1918, the day of his burial. This strike was the precursor to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 – a defining moment in Canadian labour history.

Although those who knew Goodwin personally have now passed, his legacy has far from died. Albert Goodwin is honored each year at a graveside vigil during Miners Memorial, presented by the Cumberland Museum and Archives. His story has caught the attention of academics and artists alike, sparking fiction, creative non-fiction, film, songs, poetry, visual arts, films, documentaries, and theatre productions locally and internationally. He remains one of the most well-known labour activists in the history of our country.

In 2018 we marked the hundred-year anniversary of the death of Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin, one of the most well-known labour activists in the history of our country.

The Cumberland Museum & Archives paid tribute through participatory art and music projects, an exhibit ‘Goodwin’s Reach’, an arts symposium, the re-enactment of Goodwin’s funeral procession and other engaging programming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXBcSsQJ4uE

Here is what happened to the trade union movement in North America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uav9rHk_Lk0

Thank you for all of that.

I can't speak to what "close to the death penalty punishment" means, but as to the symbol on Ginger's tombstone:  Ginger was never a member of the Communist Party-in fact, he actually couldn't have been, since it didn't exist in Canada during his lifetime-and it goes without saying that Ginger himself did not support anything remotely similiar to the ways the Soviet Union was run after 1920 0r so-between 1918 and 1919, the USSR was the least repressive government the history of Russia or any of the former Tsarist colonies which would become part of it-and neither Ginger, being dead when the symbols were painted on, nor Unionist, who wasn't yet born when they were-was responsible for their being placed there.  The symbols were placed there by CP members in the Thirties, people who were good, decent, honorable activists for social and economic justice in Canada and the world.  They saw the CP as a means to work for what they wanted, and it's likely they had no idea what Stalin was doing.  When the word did get out, most party members did quit-they'd likely have quit in the early Forties had it not been for Hitler invading the USSR and the feeling that inspired-I feeling I would hope you and any other decent person would agree with-that nothing could possibly be worse than the Soviet Union being subject to a Nazi takeover, since such an outcome would have meant permanent Nazi control of the planet-and that therefore they had to stay in the CP as a means of saving the world from both fascism and the likely extermination of anyone who wasn't a white Nordic heterosexual berserker.                                                                    

To clarify, there was no relationship to the Socialist Party of Canada symbol I referenced and the hammer and sickle-they were parts of separate left traditions.  I suggested trading out the symbols in the hopes it might discourage vandalism, and now believe I was foolish to even propose the idea.

My response to what you posted was to call out what sure as hell looked like redbaiting on your part.  Most people reading what you wrote there would assume you were accusing Unionist of defending Stalin and his works.  You've been on this board for years.  You know he's never defended the purges, the famines, the censorship, any of the various campaigns of slaughter "Uncle Joe" started.   

Acknowledgling the fact that, were it not for the Red Army, the Third Reich would have won that war and the world might still be living under Naziism and that the extermination campaigns of the Reich would have finished with the absolute extermination of all those Hitler targeted-extermination which would likely been extended to African peoples or the Indigenous populations of the Americas and the Antipodes, as well as to the non-Japanese communities of Asia as part of the despicable work of carrying the Nazi project to the conclusion its despicable, soulless logic would inevitably have led it to-is simply an acknowledgment of reality.

Stalin was a monster, but the Red Army saved the world from Hitler.  

That's the facts. 

Thanks for the indept post Ken.

Quote:

You've been on this board for years.  You know he's never defended the purges, the famines, the censorship, any of the various campaigns of slaughter "Uncle Joe" started.  

Fair enough, no argument here. I 100% believe he hasn't.

That said I have seen some members of this board defend people like Che Guvara but that's another topic.

As for Russia and the Red Army, they also secretly trained and armed german soldiers and airmen inside Russia pre-ww2. Would WW2 had been so devastating if the Russians didn't secretly train and make deals with Germany? Yup they helped stop Nazi Germany's world domination, but they also had a big hand in starting it so I'm not ready to laud them as saviors.

The workers party of Canada actually makes a really interesting read and I'm enjoying going down different rabit holes on the internet about it. Thanks for peaking my interest.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Paladin1 wrote:

As for Russia and the Red Army, they also secretly trained and armed german soldiers and airmen inside Russia pre-ww2. Would WW2 had been so devastating if the Russians didn't secretly train and make deals with Germany? Yup they helped stop Nazi Germany's world domination, but they also had a big hand in starting it so I'm not ready to laud them as saviors.

Please leave your right wing fake news out of this. Like all fake news a germ of the truth is conflated to hide or obfuscate the real truth.

Here is the first pick of a quick search on the topic. I liked Ken's post and mostly just disagree that the fascists lost. Like a bacteria that is reduced but not wiped out the real fascists merely grew stronger for thirty years after the war and are now in control of the world.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-history-the-u-s-supported-and-inspi...

https://11points.com/11-companies-surprisingly-collaborated-nazis/

The way I see it, Krop, is not that "the fascists lost", but "the fascists lost THAT round".  The fight against fascism never ended.

As Brecht put it at the end of his play "The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui"-in which the rise of Hitler is depicted as a low-budget 1930s movie about gangland Chicago-the actor who has been playing Ui, the character who's the equivalent of Hitler, takes of his fake Hitlerstache, drops character, and says these words to the audience:

Therefore, learn to see and not to gape,                                                                                                                                                  to act instead of talking all day long;                                                                                                                                                       The world was almost won by such an ape,                                                                                                                                              The nations put him where his kind belong.                                                                                                                                             But don't rejoice too soon at your escape-                                                                                                                                                 The womb he crawled from is still going strong.

La Lucha Continua!

kropotkin1951 wrote:

 

Please leave your right wing fake news out of this. Like all fake news a germ of the truth is conflated to hide or obfuscate the real truth.

Really interesting reads Kropotkin. I was tracking some companies worked with the Nazis but not to that depth and some of the names  surprised me. Over all I'm not surprised (nor surprised by shit like Operation Paperclip) that American companies did that.

Nothing in those links however refutes the fact that Russia secretly trained and armed German soldiers and Airmen pre-WW2. Did training pilot and tank crews impact the German war machine more than what the American comapnies did? Maybe. (I'd say maybe yes but then again Standard Oil providing oil is pretty huge!).

I'll settle on saying neither the Red Army(Russian government) or American companies were heros. Shitty move by both of them.

It is very much true that the Germans were allowed to use the USSR as a training and experiment/research site in the 1930s. Soviet factories also produced some German military equipment, so that Germans could equipped themselves in secret.   

There are sources that indicates that some of modern German war theory can be trace to joint training/observing the Soviets preparing for war in the 1930s.

We must remember that the Red Army co-invaded Poland in 1939 thus helping the Germans take over the Poland in a much-increased timeline.

The Soviets also invaded Finland in 1939 in another expansionist land grab, however, they were not that successful in that adventure.

As for the opening post, I think defacing/destroying gravesites and monumnets is a horrible crime and should be punished more severely in Canada.  

I have enjoyed reading about the history of Albert Goodwin, a very interesting person.