About this Collection
Arthur was born on 24 April 1890 in Toronto, Ontario to English and Irish immigrant parents Samuel and Mary Ann Evans (nee Bryan). Arthur left school at age 13 to support both of his parents, who were of ill health. He worked at a variety of jobs including selling newspapers, driving a team of horses, and apprenticing as a carpenter. He left Toronto in 1911, at that time a journeyman carpenter. He travelled west working on farms in Saskatchewan. He also travelled to the United States where he became involved in labour rights movements. He was arrested and jailed for three years in Kansas City for reading the Declaration of Independence at a free speech rally. In 1913, Arthur was shot in the leg by a machine gun at a coalmine strike in Ludlow, Colorado.
Ethel and Arthur met while Arthur was working in Drumheller. Ethel had four sisters and six brothers, and the family was involved in militant movements to establish a union in the coal mining community. Ethel and Arthur married on 4 August 1920 in Drumheller. They had their first child, a son named Stewart who was born on 13 April 1922 and died in 1925 during the diphtheria epidemic in Vancouver. Their daughter Jean Stewart was born on 12 February 1927.
Arthur joined the Communist Party in 1926. In 1932, he became the British Columbia organizer of the National Unemployment Association, and later leader of the Workers’ Unity League. His opinions of workers’ rights were not always popular and throughout his career, he was kidnapped, jailed, shot, and had his car demolished. Arthur Evans is most well known for leading the On-to-Ottawa Trek in 1935 during which over 1,000 unemployed men rode the rails to Ottawa to appeal to the government for better working conditions at the government organized labour relief camps. This Trek ended in Regina on 1 July 1935 when a riot broke out among Trekkers, supporters, local police, and the RCMP.
On 23 January 1944, he stepped off a streetcar and was struck by an automobile while crossing the street at Kingsway and Joyce, Vancouver. At the time of the accident, he was employed at West Coast Shipyards as the shop steward in the Amalgamated Shipwright’s Union. He died on 13 February 1944 at the age of 54.
Image source: By Unknown photographer - Glenbow Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1987280
Archival Collections
- Arthur H. Evans fondsFonds consists of legal documents, reports, publications, speeches, newspaper clippings and other material related to Evans’ labour activities, including the On-to-Ottawa Trek and resulting Regina Riot Commission, and the defence of Trek members arrested in the Regina Riot. There is also material related to the Canadian Labour Defence League, the Communist Party of Canada, and material in support of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
- Jean Sheils Research CollectionThe research collection consists of textual records, newspaper clippings, documents, photographs, printed material, photographs, audio cassettes, and a VHS video cassette relating to the life of Arthur Evans, the On-to-Ottawa Trek Committee, the On-to-Ottawa Historical Society, and the publication, Work and Wages! . Rough drafts, research notes and material, correspondence, interviews, and Regina Riot Inquiry transcripts are part of Jean Sheils' work in co-writing Work and Wages.The On-to-Ottawa Historical Society material covers the records generated by the 1992 production of the On-to-Ottawa video, which was directed by Sara Diamond and co-produced with the Women's Labour History Project. In addition, there are files and photographs created by Jean Sheils to document the lives of Arthur "Slim" Evans and his wife, Ethel Evans between 1920 and 1944.
- Lily Greene fondsLily (Steinman) Greene was born in 1916 in Toronto. In 1932, at the age of 16, she graduated as a stenographer from the Toronto Central High School of Commerce. After graduation, Greene began work in the needle trade. This period marked the beginning of her labour and social justice activism. As a dress-maker, she served on the organizing committee for her section of the Industrial Union of Needle Trades Workers. She also joined the Central Division of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1938 and worked in the head office of the Worker’s Unity League and Worker’s Educational Association during that time. As part of these activities she began an ongoing correspondence with the British Columbian socialist and labour organizer Tom McEwen which continued well into the 1970s.
- On-to-Ottawa Trek CollectionThe collection consists of records relating to the 1935 On-to-Ottawa Trek and its 50th Anniversary. Included are copied posters, newsletters, proclamations, legal documents, and photographs relating to the original Trek as well as audio tapes, clippings and itineraries from the 1985 anniversary events.
- One Big Union fondsIn 1919 delegates from most union locals in western Canada met at the Western Labour Congress in Calgary and resolved to conduct a referendum among Canadian members to determine if they would be willing to join a revolutionary industrial union to be called the One Big Union. By the end of 1919, a membership of 41,150 was reported in the 101 local units of the OBU which included large parts of the mine, transportation and logging labour force in western Canada. Although by 1923 the union was reduced to approximately 5,000, it served as a pioneering effort for future attempts at industrial unionism. The OBU eventually became a regional affiliate of the Canadian Labour Congress. The fonds consists of 1 cm of textual records and includes reports of the proceedings of the first semi-annual convention of the OBU at Winnipeg in January (1920) and the second held at Port Arthur in September (1920). Also included are the results of voting in the OBU locals throughout Canada and brochures on the goals of the organization.
- Susan Mayse fondsSusan Mayse, daughter of Arthur Mayse, has written several books during her writing career: Merlin's Web (1987), Ginger: the life and death of Albert Goodwin (1990), Earthquake: surviving the big one (1992), and Awen (1997). The fonds consists of her photocopies of archival and printed material that she gathered in writing her book about Ginger Goodwin, British Columbia's legendary labour leader who was shot on Vancouver Island during World War I while evading the draft.
- Tom McEwen fondsThomas McEwen was born in Scotland and moved to Canada in 1912. A blacksmith by trade, he was active throughout his life in the labour movement and as a member of the Socialist Party of Canada and its successor, the Communist Party of Canada. He was also Secretary-General of the Workers' Unity League before its demise in 1936. Between 1931 and 1944, he was imprisoned for seven years for his communist activities. In 1944, McEwen began his career as a newspaper editor, first with the Yukoner and later with the Pacific Tribune in British Columbia. He also ran unsuccessfully in the 1945 federal election as a labour candidate in the Yukon.
- Vancouver and District Labour Council fondsIn 1889 the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters called union representatives together in Vancouver to discuss the formation of a central council to organize and represent workers. Formally constituted in 1890, the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council was funded through fees levied against its affiliate union members. In 1919 the VTLC supported the formation of the One Big Union (OBU), a full-scale industrial union based on socialist policies. The backlash against radical labour organizations after the Winnipeg General Strike (1919) resulted in the revocation of the Council's charter by the Trades and Labour Congress. Following the decline of the OBU the Council was reconstituted in 1920. In 1956 the VTLC merged with the Vancouver Labour Congress to form the Vancouver, Lower Mainland Trades and Labour Council. In the same year, it was renamed the Vancouver and District Labour Council (VDLC), which is as it is known today.
Supplementary Material
Work and Wages! Semi-documentary account of the life and times of Arthur H. (Slim) Evans by Call Number: FC541.E93 S54 1977Publication Date: 1977
Soviet Princeton by Call Number: HD6515.W6 L45 1984ISBN: 9781554201099Publication Date: 2015Soviet Princeton is the first published account of the 1932-33 clash between striking miners and mine owners in Princeton, BC, a small mining town a few hundred kilometres east of Vancouver. The authors scoured newspapers and court records from local and provincial archives to piece together the story of how the town's business interests and newspaper editor joined forces against striking coal miners led by Slim Evans, a notorious labour organizer who would later lead the On to Ottawa Trek. Evans was summoned to Princeton from Vancouver and swiftly organized the miners, who were joined by unemployed men and relief camp inmates, in their protest against mine owners' attempts to cut wages. The local paper then began a long propaganda campaign denouncing the strike and even portraying the miners as agents of Soviet invaders. Despite a dramatic and violent winter of confrontation--miners were attacked on picket lines by police and in the streets by thugs; the KKK threatened the miners; Evans was kidnapped and put on a train west--the miners prevailed.
Recollections of the on to Ottawa Trek by Call Number: HD9764.C33 B752 2006ISBN: 9780771097669Publication Date: 1973-01-15The author experienced the Depression with the deprivations of unemployment and life in the workcamps. He helped organize the B.C. Relief Camp strike, and later participated in the On to Ottawa Trek,which ended in a confrontation with the federal police in Regina.
We Were the Salt of the Earth by Call Number: MICROLOG 86-00272ISBN: 0889770379Publication Date: 1985-06-07
All Hell Can't Stop Us by Call Number: FC578.R44 W34 2003ISBN: 1894004884Publication Date: 2003-07-29Scorn to take the crumbs they drop us; All is ours by right! Onward, men, all hell can't stop us; Crush the parasites! -- Trekker's protest song The Great Depression of the 1930s brought drought, unemployment, and poverty to the West, and the token wages from the government's "make work" projects only fanned the flames of unrest. In 1935, this unrest took on a purpose: to march on Ottawa and demand a solution from Prime Minister R. B. Bennett. Thus was born the On-to-Ottawa trek, which culminated in the Regina Riot, where the protestes and RCMP clashed in one of Canada's most significant historic events.- On-to-Ottawa [video recording] byCall Number: FC577 .O568 1992 VideoPublication Date: 1992Documents the social conditions and political activism of unemployed Canadian workers during the Great Depression, culminating in the relief camp strike on the On To Ottawa Trek originating in Vancouver.
