The Badger Riot

by J. A. Ricketts

  On an afternoon in mid-February, Alf Elliott faced four angry men over the counter of his telegraph office.

  The night before, Joey Smallwood had finally broken his silence regarding the loggers’ strike. Every radio in Newfoundland was tuned to his speech. His venom and fury toward the IWA and the strikers was something no one was prepared for. Joey, the man who had given them Confederation, had been their idol, their god. It was unthinkable that he would attack the loggers and their union. After all, he’d formerly been a union man himself.

  But attack them he did. “The IWA strike is a failure,” he stated, “and they have failed the loggers of Newfoundland. It is not a strike they have started, but a civil war. How dare these outsiders come into this decent Christian province and try to seize control of our main industry by spreading their black poison of class hatred and prejudice?”

  Smallwood then announced that he would be forming a union of his own. He even had a name for it already: the Newfoundland Brotherhood of Wood Workers. He also announced that his new union would be headed up by Max Lane, a Liberal MHA.

  Overwrought and angry at what they considered the Premier’s betrayal, Joey’s speech was the last straw for the strikers. This was an insult. The loggers already had a union; they didn’t need another one. A group of furious strikers decided to telegraph Joey Smallwood to let him know their feelings.

  “Boys, I’m sorry,” Alf told them. “I can’t send this kind of message. Canadian National Telegraph forbids the sending of telegrams with foul language.” Alf was a slightly built man, and he knew he’d be no match for these men if they resorted to violence. But they weren’t bad men, just tormented, disappointed ones. He was anxious to help them out, if he could. “Look, reword it,” he told them. “Take out the goddamns and the fucks. State your feelings to him, and then I’ll send it. Sure I’ll even help you word it, if you want.”

  A taller, rough, unshaven guy elbowed the others out of the way and grabbed Alf by the collar, knocking off his glasses. “Buddy, I’m tellin’ you, if you don’t send that goddamn telegram, we’ll beat up every last thing in this office. We’ll break out the windows, haul out the telephone wires, throw the typewriter out in the snow and kick your cowardly arse through the door.”

  Whether he would’ve made good on his threat or not would never be known. The door opened. It was Ralph Drum and his brothers.

  “Well, Frank Jones, whattya at, me son?” Ralph clapped his hand on the shoulder of the big guy who was holding Alf captive by his collar. “You’re not givin’ the telegraph operator here a hard time, are you? Aren’t you the feller who was preachin’ to everyone else the other night about keeping a cool head and no violence?”

  Jones released Alf’s collar and straightened up. “We just want our damn message sent, right?” He looked at Alf. “I s’pose I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.” He bent over and picked up Alf’s glasses and passed them to him.

  “We’ll deal with the telegram another time,” Ralph told him. “My brothers want you fellas to go with them now, Frank b’y. The main picket line has gaps and we have to keep it up to strength, you know.”

  The irate strikers left their flaming message to Joey on the counter and obediently followed the Drum brothers out the door. Jones must have felt somewhat sheepish because, just before the door closed behind him, he looked back at Alf. “Sorry for what I said, sir.”

  Ralph stayed behind.

  “My son, I’m some glad you were passing by,” Alf said. “I think the boys there would’ve put the boots to this office in another minute.”

  “Someone told us what they were up to, Alf b’y. They’ve been drinking all afternoon; some of them do that, you know. ’Tis a hard time on the men; they’re far from home, they’re cold and tired. A drop of rum comes in handy.”

  “Yes b’y, I know everyone is having a hard time of it.” Alf looked at his watch. “Even though it’s only three o’clock, I think I’m going to close up early. I don’t want to have to deal with more of this today.”

  “Yes b’y. Proper thing. I’ll see you later,” Ralph said as he went out the door.

  His little office had become a busy place. As the strike escalated, news reporters came into town. They filed their stories back to their newspapers in St. John’s and on the mainland with long wordy telegrams sent off collect, to be paid for at the receiving end.

  As the strike wore on, more and more men were pouring into Badger and telegrams were flying back and forth on both sides of the dispute: IWA officials were contacting their executive offices; A.N.D. Company personnel wiring for potential strikebreakers; unionized loggers from out of town sending telegrams to their families out in the bays; and their families sending messages back to them. Money was being wired back and forth.

  Alf gathered up the cash box and receipts and locked the door. As he walked up the road he thought about the delicate job he had treating the Company and the strikers, all the same. He couldn’t publicly be pro-union or pro-Company. If the Company wanted to send telegrams, he sent them; same thing for the union. He was under oath never to divulge the contents of his work. People trusted him. But no matter how neutral he tried to be, his heart was with the loggers who were out there on the picket lines, day after day, in bitter winter weather.

  20

  The church was crowded on the Sunday morning after Joey Smallwood’s speech decertifying the IWA. Father Murphy pondered his sermon. Church leaders had been pro-union, but not so much now. Should he speak out against Smallwood’s decision?

  His heart told him yes. What he saw in those camps was horrible. How could the A.N.D. Company condone living conditions like that? He stepped forward to his pulpit. Many eyes focused on him, waiting patiently for him to speak. The pews were full and some parishioners were standing along the walls. There were strangers there as well, loggers from other communities in town to support the cause. Father Murphy knew the clergy of the other two churches were facing the same dilemma.

  “My friends, I wish to speak about the current labour troubles in this town and this province. I want to advise against rash actions.

  “Outside, the streets are littered with overturned cars, and loggers patrol the picket lines armed with birch sticks. Police officers – RCMP and Constabulary – patrol our streets armed with their own weapons. Never in the history of this town has anything been known to equal this. The people of Badger have faced forest fires that have come so close that some have been forced to flee their homes. Every year the rivers flood the town, some years worse than others. Through it all we have survived. And together, we will survive this.

  “We have to remember that innocent people live here too. Do not let your rash judgments allow any of our citizens to be harmed. Remember our children. Shield our children above all else.

  “Let us pray to God to bless and protect us all.”

  Nineteen fifty-nine was a great year for twelve-year-old boys in Badger.

  On Saturdays, with no school and no homework to be done, the boys were given plenty of freedom. The hill behind the school was a great place to slide. Most youngsters didn’t have slides, but used a piece of canvas or cardboard. It didn’t matter. Anything was fun when you were young.

  They spent much of their time digging snow forts, with long, intricate tunnels. It was a wonder that no one was buried and smothered. They played not Cowboys and Indians, as they used to, but Strikers and Police. To the Badger boys, strikers were the good guys and police were the bad guys.

  The bell that announced school’s opening on Monday morning was rung by hand. Several generations of teachers had held this solid brass bell on which was engraved the words BADGER AMALGAMATED SCHOOL, PRESENTED BY THE A.N.D. COMPANY, 1921. The school was very proud of its bell. It alone had survived the fire that had burned the first school to the ground in 1941, and only because the principal, as he did occasionally, had taken it home that night to clean and polish it.

  The same bell rang on Monday, February 15, to annou
nce recess time. David Elliott and Harold Hatcher scrambled through the classroom door with the rest of the class. Rough-and-tumble boys, both twelve years old and in grade seven, they saw the whole town as their playground.

  “Harold,” yelled David, as they rushed up over the stairs from their basement classroom, “I got fifty cents. Let’s run down to Plotsky’s. I can race you. Bet I can.”

  “Fifty cents?” Harold’s freckled face and bright eyes were all interest. “Where did you get all that money? Steal it?”

  They burst out through the door into the winter air. David grabbed Harold in a hammerlock and pummelled him. “Shut up, you shithead. I don’t steal stuff. I earned it, cleaving splits for my grandfather.” David was proud of a dirty word like shithead. He knew there were even worse words that he could use, but shithead was pretty good.

  “Okay, okay,” cried Harold. “Ow! Let me go!” David released his grip. They could see the Catholic boys, who were out for recess too, coming down the road. Their friend, Bernie Sullivan, stood out among them with his bright red hair, a mark of all the Sullivan family.

  “Hey Bernie.” Harold ran forward. “We’re going to Plotsky’s. David got fifty cents.”

  “Yeah, sure, we might see some friggin’ strikers while we’re down there,” said Bernie. Friggin’ was his latest safe-around-school swear word. Everything was friggin’: friggin’ school, friggin’ recess, friggin’ books, friggin’ strike, friggin’ winter.

  All together, from both schools, there were about fifteen kids on the road that Monday morning. Three or four were girls, although most girls didn’t go out for recess in the wintertime unless they planned to go sliding on the hill out back. Then they came prepared with snowpants under their skirts.

  The Badger children were in a continual state of excitement over the IWA strike that had taken over their town. They all imagined themselves to be strikers too. The sons of loggers and their friends spent as much time as they could mooching around the fringes of the picket lines, listening to the men, watching them.

  Harold’s father was employed with Mr. Anderson in the logging camps and Bernie’s worked on the drive. David’s dad was the telegraph operator.

  “Come on guys, let’s go,” said David. “We haven’t got much time.” The three lads streamed down the road toward Plotsky’s. Their only objective was to get fifty cents worth of jawbreakers. They never made it.

  School Road joined with Church Road, the main street. Just before they reached the town hall the children came upon a group of strikers and two cars.

  Harold, out in front, skidded to a stop. “Geez, there’s me father.”

  His father, Bill Hatcher, was to the front of the strikers involved in a scuffle with scabs. The children crowded around, all thoughts of Plotsky’s and jawbreakers evaporated.

  Two cars were upside down on the road, tires sticking up like the legs of a turtle on its back. Around the car was a bunch of angry men, cursing and yelling. If ever the boys wanted to add to their list of swear words, this was the place to be.

  David remembered his dad telling him to stay away from anything associated with the strike. Other kids had had the same warning, but, like the jawbreakers, it too was forgotten. This was a big happening, exciting and scary at the same time.

  “That’s scabs,” Bernie informed them. “I heard my father say that the A.N.D. Company was sneaking them through to Millertown.”

  No one had to ask Bernie to explain scabs. They all knew that it had nothing to do with a cut on your finger. Every man, woman and child in Badger now knew the meaning of the word scab as well as they knew the meaning of strike, picket line, union, trashing, jailed, decertified. A year ago, even six months ago, none of those words meant anything to them.

  “Look. Look.” David’s voice cracked. That happened lately, especially when he was excited. He pointed toward the cars, his hand shaking slightly. “They’re crawling out through the windows.”

  No one could predict what might happen. Perhaps it would turn to violence with Newfoundlander fighting Newfoundlander. Maybe not. Around the corner came a police car.

  “Watch out, the police are coming,” someone yelled.

  Five Mounties piled out. “Stand back! Stand back,” they shouted, moving forward to separate the loggers from the men who were crawling out of the cars.

  “Goddammit,” muttered Bernie. “My father is missing this. Hold on till I tells him.”

  David and Harold looked at him in admiration. Bernie had dared to use a Big Swear Word.

  Far up the road, the school bell could be heard faintly, announcing the end of recess. Like a flock of sparrows, the children turned as one and flew up the road toward the school.

  Loggers, scabs, and police were left to deal with life’s adult problems.

  Sacred Heart! Would that Sister Mary Agnes ever shut up? She’d been wailing for the past half-hour. Not even Mother Superior could get a word in edgeways. At times, the nuns were a big responsibility for the priest. Mother Superior oversaw them and she deferred to him in matters of household expenses. Things normally ran along smoothly, but from time to time there were bumps in the road that were hard to know just how to deal with.

  The six teaching nuns taught religion, history, music, literature, algebra, geometry, arithmetic, geography and social studies. They had all been at it a good many years. All except Sister Mary Agnes. She was new. Their old history teacher, Sister Mary Augustus, had recently passed away.

  From the first day they brought in the new nun, Father Murphy had an uneasy feeling about her. Call it the Irish in him, but he could sense something unstable about the woman. She was the Bishop’s niece, sent there by the Bishop himself, so he couldn’t put up any objections.

  The school had children from grades one to eleven, with twelve to fifteen students in a class. Sister Mary Agnes took over the grade sevens. There were several big boys in her class, rowdy rambunctious young fellows whose last thought was to learn anything.

  Since the strike had consumed Badger, the Catholic boys, like the boys from the Protestant school, played hooky more often than not. No matter how much Father Murphy preached to them all, it didn’t matter. As far as they were concerned, they were loggers too, and had to be in the thick of what was going on. They couldn’t understand the danger of being youngsters among angry, desperate men. They had never known fear and they refused to recognize it now.

  Sister Mary Agnes, being from Grand Falls, the headquarters of the A.N.D. Company, had no sympathy for the loggers, and was no match for the boys whose fathers were strikers. They refused to do their homework, didn’t listen to what she said, and left her in tears every day.

  One morning, totally frazzled, she dared to speak out. Father Murphy wasn’t present when it happened. He sat in on the nuns’ classes occasionally, but he had other responsibilities as well. He heard all about it afterward from several sources, however, including from Sister herself.

  She’d told Phonse Sullivan’s boy, Bernie, that he looked like a ragamuffin, just like the fellows on the picket line. Bernie, all twelve years of him, said that was because he belonged on the picket line with his father. Sister Mary Agnes told him those men ought to be ashamed of themselves, leaving their good jobs because they were too lazy to work, and standing around all day doing nothing.

  That did it. The boys went crazy. Threw their books at her. Terrified, she crouched down behind her desk so she wouldn’t be struck. Then the whole class just got up and left, with Sister running behind, ordering them to come back.

  When Mother Superior had finally taken Sister Mary Agnes away, Father Murphy was faced with the task of pacifying a mob of angry parents.

  “Excuse me, Father, my daughter came home from school today because everyone walked out of class. She says they had to follow the strikers’ sons or else.”

  “I’m sure it’s a mistake, Father. The nun was within her rights, I’m sure.”

  “Listen here, Father, my boy is a good learner. He’s not
mixed up with that crowd that chases around after the strikers.”

  “By the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father, those men on the picket line are not lazy! No sir! They’re fightin’ for their rights. How dare she – that relative of the Bishop’s – speak to the youngsters like that? What’s the world comin’ to?”

  Phonse Sullivan also had his say. “Now listen here, Father, what kind of stuff is that to teach our children, huh? Here I am out there all winter, freezin’ me arse off with the police breathin’ down our necks. And now a teacher, and a nun to boot, goes and says things like that to our youngsters. ’Tis enough to turn you, Father. Enough to turn you.”

  It went on and on and got louder and louder. The priest told them that Sister Mary Agnes would be leaving. That quieted them down somewhat. What he didn’t tell them was that all the nuns were leaving and the school would immediately close down until the unrest was over. The orders had come from the Bishop himself.

  What would be the end of this? Only God knew. Father Murphy went to his church to pray for the people of Badger and for the loggers.

  21

  Alf Elliott’s daughter, Amanda, was fourteen and in grade nine during the autumn of 1958. She heard her parents talking about a union being organized to help the loggers get better pay and better living conditions in the woods camps and it didn’t interest her at first. But some of her friends’ fathers were loggers, and the young girls talked among themselves. Those in the know said the men were going on strike, but others weren’t quite sure what it meant to be on strike.

  There were many things happening in Amanda’s own world. She was becoming a woman and her childhood was being left behind. Her mother talked to her about strange new things, like sanitary napkins and what they were used for. She even sent away to Eaton’s catalogue for a brassiere for Amanda.