Bloody Sunday

Bloody Sunday was the conclusion of a month-long "sitdowners' strike" by unemployed men at the main post office in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was Depression-era Vancouver's final violent clash between unemployed protesters and police that provoked widespread criticism of police brutality. Background The Relief Project Workers' Union (RCPU) was the successor to the Relief Camp Workers' Union, which had led the 1935 strike that culminated in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and Regina Riot. After the earlier strike, the maligned federal relief camps run by the Department of National Defence were replaced by "relief projects" operated by the provinces and funded by both levels of government. The pay rate was similar to the earlier camps, five dollars a month, compared to the twenty cents per day offered by the "slave camps." The work was primarily seasonal work on farms. As in 1935, unemployed men from across the country drifted to British Columbia because of the milder climate and because relief projects in forestry camps paid as much as three times that of equivalent farm placements. From the perspective of the government, the main difference between the earlier camps established under R. B. "Iron Heel" Bennett and the relief projects under William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals was that the men were comparatively isolated from one another, making it more difficult to organize. In both cases, the throngs of disaffected unemployed men were kept out of urban centres. In early 1938, the federal government cut grants in aid to the provinces, effectively killing the relief project scheme. Premier Thomas Dufferin Pattullo closed the projects in April, claiming that British Columbia could not shoulder the burden alone. Unemployed men again flocked to Vancouver to protest government insensitivity and intransigence to their plight. The RCPU organized demonstrations and tin-canning (organized begging) in the city. Under the guidance of 26-year-old Steve Brodie, a member of the Communist Party of Canada and the leader of the Youth Division who had cut his activist teeth during the 1935 relief camp strike, protesters occupied Hotel Georgia, the Vancouver Art Gallery (then located at 1145 West Georgia Street), and the main post office (now the Sinclair Centre).