Black railway porters and their decades-long fight for fair wages and a safe working environment
Formed the first Black railway union in North America against Canadian train companies
The railway, as many Canadians learn in their social studies class, is part of this country's founding narrative. The stories of building a transcontinental railway from sea to sea, names like Sandford Fleming, or books like The Last Spike are regularly taught to young people and are familiar to millions.
But what of the names John A. Robinson, J.W. Barber, B.F. Jones, or P. White?
As we celebrate Black History Month, CBC Radio's The Cost of Living took a closer look at the porters who worked the sleeping cars on the trains, most of whom were Black men.
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These men eventually formed the first Black railway union in North America, and fought for many of the employment rights and standards that Canadians take for granted today.
"One of the things we love, as Canadians, is the train," said University of Minnesota history professor Saje Mathieu. "It has such a romantic place in our national imagination."
Mathieu's book, North of the Colour Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870 to 1955 is a history of Black porters in Canada.
"If you ask people who took the train more regularly up until the 1960s or 1970s, they would usually have a story about porters, about someone who'd been very kind to them or someone who'd been welcoming or comforting or fill-in any number of other blanks," said Mathieu.
According to Mathieu, it's important for Canadians to understand the role Black porters played in history.
"As is so often the case, we stop seeing that which is directly in front of us," said Mathieu.
"So that's a good reason for us to start asking questions about these men, [about] what they did and their determination to protect their communities against the backdrop of an economic Great Depression, that savaged Canadian lives, much like the turmoil that we are witnessing and experiencing now due to COVID-19."
Saje Mathieu spoke with Cost of Living producer Tracy Fuller about the legacy of Canada's Black sleeping car porters. Here is part of their conversation.
Why is now a good time for Canadians who might not be aware of the history of Black railway porters in Canada to find out more?
I think this is a really opportune time for Canadians to really consider the deep roots of Black citizenship in Canada and what that citizenship has meant. So against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter and the kinds of concerns that are being raised across the country, it's really important to know where that started. And in many ways, it starts with the sleeping car porters, around World War One, who in their own way are also saying, "our lives matter."
How did the porters' working conditions compare to other men employed by the railway?
Most porters did earn a wage, but it was so much less than the other men, [who were] all white, who were also working sometimes in the very same sleeping cars. So the conductor or the waiters in the dining cars, they made decidedly more and had more job security than the sleeping car porters. These guys and their families had to learn quickly how to stretch a dime into a dollar. How to make what little money they did earn last through the month [and] buy what the family needed, without knowing if whatever [railway] run they had just finished might be their last [run] for a good long time.
That kind of job insecurity is something that people can really resonate with today. We have a social [safety] net now. There was no social net at all a hundred years ago, and [the Black sleeping car porters] were a part of building it.
- WATCH | Sleeping car porters and black immigration to Manitoba:
When did the porters' fight for better wages and better opportunities begin?
By the late 19th century and even more so in the 20th century, Black workers, in this case, men who worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway, really tried to make the case for a fair wage, a safe working environment, respect for their families — and by that I mean immigration laws that made it possible for their spouses and children to also joined them here in Canada. None of those things were given, it took decades of fighting and decades of pushing for unionization — individually as a railway porter union, but also integration of the broader national Canadian unions. And from the first, those unions had white only membership policies.
Is it true the porters had to fight their own unions to get the same opportunities and protections provided to their white colleagues, many of whom had less seniority and better pay?
Correct. We see this from the very beginning of the century and even more so by the World War One era. White union men in Canada understood, or at least framed, their ability to succeed at unionization as very much linked to keeping Black workers out of these major Canadian unions.
In other words, race became a bargaining chip between white workers seeking a union and their employers, and in this case: the Canadian Pacific Railway. To put it in blunt terms, [the white union workers] forfeit a raise and other benefits in favour of keeping Black men from joining the union. And that is something that … scores of porters fought for the entirety of their careers.
This history wasn't taught in our Canadian history textbooks. Many people are just learning about the Porters' fight. Would you call the story of the Black sleeping car porters a forgotten chapter of Canadian history?
I can see how that would be the perception, but the reality is that these stories were never forgotten. They were always known in the Black communities across Canada.
I found this to be the case when I, as a young 20-something, basically hitchhiked across Canada looking for the sleeping car porters and interviewing them [for North of the Colour Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870 to 1955.]
I was amazed at how often Black families, especially in the West, had recorded their loved ones' stories, whether they had written them down or actually recorded them on old tapes, many of them I have in my house. So I think that what we're seeing is finally an awakening by archives, by bigger platforms to the pearls that these stories represent.
When Canadians think about the state of our labour unions today, and the state of the rights and securities that we see in the modern workplace, where can we see the legacy of the Black sleeping car porters?
One of the most important ones for me is the demand by the sleeping car porters for a safe workplace. The ability to survive your shift. Derailments were a huge problem. These guys were not given a place to sleep during their long cross-country runs. So they cat-napped in the smoke room when they could.
The importance of creating a humane and safe working condition for everyday workers is something that was at the heart of what porters fought for and something that remains at the heart of what workers today understand.
You can think of Uber drivers and how there are no meaningful protections for them in this whole gig economy way of thinking that workers are take-and-toss pool.
That's how people thought about porters and they said, "No way! We are we are an essential part of this workplace and of this workforce. And we would like to see it improve in ways that keep us alive."
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
Written and produced by Tracy Fuller. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Click "listen" at the top of the page to hear this segment, or download the Cost of Living podcast.