“Agenda for the 1970s”: A Genealogy of Organized Labour’s Environmental Activism in Ontario

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Papers in Canadian History and Environment, no. 6 (November 2024): 1-38

https://doi.org/10.32920/27303789

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In the fall of 1979, the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland, began preparations for “Workers’ Organisations on the Environment,” an unprecedented conference that would welcome two dozen representatives from as many countries to discuss pressing environmental issues both within and outside the workplace. Among the meeting’s invited participants was Jim MacDonald, the director of the Social and Community Programs Department (SCPD) at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), who had successfully organized the CLC’s national conference on “Jobs and Environment” in Ottawa a year and a half before. To aid the ILO staff in their preparations, the CLC’s International Affairs Department sent that conference’s lengthy report to them, which the staff “read with great interest” and, subsequently, requested all “associated papers.” In April of the next year, MacDonald called on the Canadian Labour Congress Ad Hoc Committee on Jobs and Environment to meet at the upcoming CLC convention and advise him about the specific issues listed in the ILO conference’s preliminary agenda. The next month, he was in Geneva, where conference delegates selected MacDonald to be the meeting chairman and reporter, and by summer he was editing the “Workers’ Organisations on the Environment” report. That document, along with his amendments, demonstrated the central role Canadian labour had played in shaping the conversation and recommendations, even explicitly referring to the need for an Environmental Unemployment Compensation Fund, an idea the SCPD director and the Ad Hoc Committee had first developed in 1973. Once approved by the ILO’s Governing Body in November, the Geneva meeting report was published in a special issue of their Labour Education Bulletin as well, “for general use and workers’ education,” and it helped seed trans-Atlantic “just transition” demands in the decades following.1

As this historical fragment suggests, Canadian union leaders and rank-and-file members were indeed active participants in an emergent environmental movement across the country and around the world, and they did that with a particular working-class consciousness.2 Yet, with a few exceptions, their contributions are absent in the movement’s written history. Frank Zelko’s Make it a Green Peace! The Rise of Counter Culture Environmentalism (2013) and Ryan O’Connor’s The First Green Wave: Pollution Probe and the Origins of Environmental Activism in Ontario (2014) tell separate stories of environmentalism’s origins in British Columbia and Ontario, but neither investigates the numerous ways environmental groups interacted with organized labour in their respective provinces. The Nature of Canada (2019), edited by Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn, adopts the conventional idea that environmentalism was sparked by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (1962), and although the contributing chapters add cities, gender, and other complicating elements to that often-repeated myth, they skirt mention of class, workers, and unions.3 While Laurel Sefton MacDowell does chronicle Elliot Lake uranium miners’ workplace health and safety battles in an earlier Labour/Le Travail article, she insists that labour did not link “environmental problems on the job to broader community issues” and also makes no mention of organized labour in her subsequent book-length survey, An Environmental History of Canada (2012). In another Labour/Le Travail article, published in 2014, Katrin McPhee sets out to demonstrate the existence of “a distinctly working-class environmental consciousness in Canada between 1965 and 1985,” but she relies heavily on Canadian Occupational Health and Safety News as a primary source and misses the larger scope of labour environmentalism too. More promisingly, in “Labour and Environment: Five Stories from New Brunswick Since the 1970s,” Joan McFarland acknowledges that labour and environmental activists have been working together for decades, though the five occasions she covers are exceedingly brief and deal primarily with the 1980s and 1990s, and unfortunately, she did not expand her article into a more comprehensive book-length study.4

Apart from this limited historiography, there is a recently published collection edited by Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper, Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small Green and Indigenous Organizing (2019), which deliberately concentrates on community activist campaigns to recover a narrative where “workers, women, small businesspeople, Indigenous activists, and other often marginalized groups feature more prominently.” That includes Clapperton’s chapter on British Columbia’s Society for Pollution and Environmental Control, where he points out that any social movement that wanted to gain support in the province during the 1960s and 1970s had to work with the labour movement. Additionally, John-Henry Harter has greatly advanced the literature on BC timber union conservation and environmental activism in two different Labour/Le Travail articles, one published in 2004 that focuses on Greenpeace, and another in 2022 that focuses on coalition building. In between, he completed a dissertation, “When Blue is Green: Towards a History of Workers as Environmentalists in British Columbia and Beyond” (2019), and chapter 2, “Woodworkers as Environmentalists, 1937-1957,” is particularly germane. It uses the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) newspaper, Lumber Worker, to argue that loggers developed a “worker environmentalism” long before the concept of “modern environmentalism” existed, one that was both more perceptive and cogent because it emphasized class. “In many ways,” Harter contends, “the critique that the IWA offered in the 1930s and 1940s was far more radical, in the sense of getting to the root of the problem, than the second wave environmental movement that was forming in the late ‘60s and into the 1970s.”5

Stretching over several decades, labour environmentalism in Canada was programmatically sophisticated, organizationally diverse, and geographically wide-ranging, so much so that narrating and conveying its full depth and breadth is quite challenging. One insight into its many facets is provided by a set of early conferences in Ontario, pre-dating and leading up to the ILO meeting in 1980, notably the Farmer-Teacher-Labour “Solution to Pollution” conference at the United Auto Workers (UAW) Port Elgin Education Centre in 1970, the annual Alternatives-sponsored “Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour & the Environment” at Camp Wanapitei between 1973 and 1975, and the CLC-organized “Jobs and Environment” conference in Ottawa in 1978. Separately, they function as records of the many different individuals, unions, and organizations that became involved, the assorted class-driven concerns those participants pondered, and the varied aims they hoped to (and did sometimes) achieve, including enacting provincial legislation that expanded occupational health and safety protection, bargaining pollution control into contracts, and getting federal government support for workers adversely affected by environmental standards enforcement. Together, the conferences also archive worker-centred environmental activism’s intertangled roots, in the moment of its most remarkable intensity, before a wavering in the face of industrial disinvestment, high unemployment, and escalating attacks on unions during the 1980s. Moreover, the cross-border collaboration that they display demonstrates the importance of shared initiatives by so-called “international” unions (namely, the United Auto Workers; the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers; and the United Steel Workers) as well as organized labour’s eventual engagement with trade unions, working-class activists, and political parties beyond North America.6

While a short genealogy of three conferences in one province is by no means an exhaustive accounting, chronicling the diligent and persistent efforts that generated the Ontario meetings at least begins to establish labour environmentalism’s salience and makes the case for a retooled history of Canadian environmentalism. Recovering organized labour’s very significant role in the Canadian environmental movement calls the conventional narrative into question by insisting on recognition of a whole cast of previously ignored working-class historical actors and their particular organizations as well as the unique array of experiences and ideas that motivated and defined their efforts, not the least being the connection they made between occupational hazards and environmental threats beyond the workplace. Paying attention to Ontario workers and their unions in telling the story of Canadian environmentalism also suggests the need for a recalibrated periodization, acknowledging separate initiatives and events as additional chapters, like the CLC-sponsored “Jobs and Environment” conference in 1978. Ultimately, too, this new rendering of the past is critical for those of us living in the present, as corporations persist in posing “jobs” and “environment” as an either/or proposition, claiming that workers and others have always understood it this way. Responding to that false claim with copious sources and revised narrative in hand, and bringing a new complexity and sophistication to our historical consciousness, is essential for building any truly effectual contemporary environmental movement.

The “Solution to Pollution” Conference of 1970

Writing to the heads of local bargaining units from his Toronto office in February 1970, UAW Canadian director Dennis McDermott noted that the national United Auto Workers Council had recently adopted “a resolution to make the fight against pollution one of the issues in our collective bargaining demands.” To aid that expanded bargaining, International president Walter Reuther was sending a questionnaire “regarding the whole matter,” McDermott explained, and he encouraged them to complete it expeditiously. In late April, Reuther attended events for the first Earth Day, which the UAW had generously financed and widely promoted, and shortly after, McDermott joined him at the United Auto Workers 22nd constitutional convention in Atlantic City, where delegates called for an “environmental bill of rights” and the full international union officially resolved to bring “the problem of pollution” into upcoming contract negotiations with auto manufacturing companies. “We must recognize that in our kind of society, in the complex technological world in which we are fighting for the very survival of our environment,” the labour icon declared in his presidential address, “we cannot reply upon the selfish, socially irresponsible blind forces of the market-place, and the auto industry is one of the worst culprits and it has failed to meet its public responsibility.” Weeks later, however, Reuther flew with his wife and several others to Black Lake, in northern Michigan, where the UAW had recently finished building a new recreation and education centre, and their plane crashed while landing, killing everyone on board and leaving a large hole in the labour movement. The lauded president was “one of the most progressive and articulate union leaders of the last two decades,” Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) political education director Morden Lazarus wrote to Detroit-based UAW international vice president and Conservation and Resource Development Department director Olga Madar, and “his views were respected as much in Canada as in the United States.”7

Reuther had established his environmentalist credentials five years before by hosting a “United Action for Clean Water” conference at the UAW’s Solidarity House, drawing more than 1000 representatives from conservation groups, sportsmen’s clubs, civic organizations, government officials, and unions on both sides of the border, making it the largest of its kind to date. “The water crisis in America and Canada is essentially the reflection of a much deeper crisis in our value system,” he told participants, but he was hopeful that the meeting “can be the beginning of a massive mobilization of citizens; the beginning of a popular crusade not only for clean water, but for cleaning up the atmosphere, the highways, the junkyards and the slums and for creating a total living environment worthy of free men.”8 This inspired Canadians to hold their own “United Action for Clean Water” conference the next spring, in Windsor, Ontario, hosted by UAW Local 200 and with a welcome address from then United Auto Workers Canadian director George Burt as well as a water quality “progress report” from Olga Madar. A month later, in June, St. Catharines UAW Local 199 organized yet another “Water Pollution” conference, also featuring the two labour leaders as well as local, provincial, and federal government officials. “The problems of water pollution in Canada,” Burt declared at the meeting, “will only be solved if we, the citizens and government of our country, are dedicated to the principle that the pollution of any body of water by anyone, individual, community or industry is morally, aesthetically and economically indefensible.” Media coverage for the event was “excellent,” Madar acknowledged in a follow-up letter to local union staff, “and I think this reinforces our position that pollution is a popular item with all citizens.” Subsequently, during the next few years, labour activists in the UAW and other unions around Ontario built on the momentum and stoked public support by organizing smaller seminars, coordinating legislative lobbying, collaborating with environmental groups, and leading campaigns against major polluters.9

Encouraged by growing public attention to environmental issues in the spring of 1970, when even Pollution Probe, one of the first environmental groups, was barely a year old, the OFL began planning the “Solution to Pollution: Matter of Life and Death” conference for mid-June at the UAW Education Centre in Port Elgin. This was in combination with the National Farmers’ Union, the CLC, and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, the 11th in a series of annual “Farmer-Labour-Teacher” gatherings on designated themes but with much heavier attendance than any previous meetings. On the first day, OFL president David Archer welcomed the 175 delegates, followed by a keynote address from University of Toronto scientist Dr. Ian Burton focused on overpopulation, and over the next two days panel discussions covered pesticide exposure, industrial pollution, and resource conservation, as well as the “economic and social costs” of environmental policy. In her remarks, Olga Madar singled out UAW Canadian Director Dennis McDermott for first proposing the need to bring pollution control to the bargaining table, while Sudbury United Steelworkers (USW) assistant director of education Ken Valentine and Montreal Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers representative and Canadian Pulp and Paper editor Neville Hamilton related the challenges they faced making representations to companies and government alike. CLC Public Relations Director Jack Williams avowed that the “solution to pollution” was not without a price, in unemployment, expense, and inconvenience, but he insisted that there was no other choice and laid out a detailed program of action that ranged from forming “ban pollution” committees and demanding “comprehensive pollution control and prevention legislation” to publicizing “good results of anti-pollution efforts” and addressing “jurisdictional buck-passing by federal, provincial, and municipal authorities.” In his formal talk, “Our Jobs: Pollution and Economic Growth,” University of Toronto professor Dr. Leonard Waverman directly confronted the thorny problem of environmentalism’s impact on working people as well, and he stridently maintained that governments could implement “positive macroeconomic policies” to minimize or reverse adverse effects. That was an idea that would continue to resonate quite strongly with organized labour throughout the rest of the decade and beyond.10

Figure 1. Morden Lazarus to Olga Madar, May 11, 1970, UAW Conservation and Recreation Department Records, Wayne State University Reuther Archives.
Figure 2. Solution to Pollution Pamphlet (1970), UAW Conservation and Recreation Department Records, Wayne State University Reuther Archives.

As Madar mentioned at Port Elgin, despite Reuther’s untimely death, the week before the Farmer-Labour-Teacher conference the UAW had held its very first meeting at the Black Lake Education Centre to start preparations for the United Nations Environmental Conference in Stockholm two years away and newly installed president Leonard Woodcock opened the event with a lengthy address on “The Crisis of Our Environment.” Additionally, a month after the “Solution to Pollution” gathering, in mid-July, 250 labour and student participants met at Black Lake again, for a conference arranged by Environmental Action, the organization responsible for Earth Day, and Walter’s brother Victor Reuther delivered a rousing closing speech counselling the different groups to be on guard against efforts to divide them.11 This buzz of activity was matched in Ontario, beginning with a meeting of labour leaders and community college

representatives at the end of June at the OFL Labour Centre in Don Mills to plan events for “Survival Day” in mid-October. The Federation pledged $10,000 to support the endeavour and together local organizing committees successfully hosted one-day teach-in sessions in thirty-four different communities around the province.12 Likewise, in November Morden Lazarus alerted Ontario union locals and labour councils that the annual citizenship month conference the next year would focus on the theme “Our Environment.” That gathering, held at Don Mills near the end of January, drew 150 delegates and sparked lively discussion, particularly during the “Pollution and Jobs” session. In one debate, CLC research director Russell Bell argued with Brock University economist Rosalind Blauer, the former emphasizing the need to maintain “economic growth” simultaneous with implementing “anti-pollution” measures, and the latter dismissing growth as a “fetish” that did not carry an assurance of jobs yet did cause harm to the environment. Organized labour “should use its collective bargaining strength to combat pollution conditions,” Blauer insisted, and “at the same time governments should be pressured into assuring compensation for workers whose jobs disappeared in the battle against pollution.” Exhibiting less of a difference of opinion, Neville Hamilton shared the stage with OFL research director John Eleen, and both discussed the challenges of using collective bargaining to address pollution as well as the need for an enhanced public education programme. “The costs are going to be high both in money and in changing our way of life,” Eleen warned, and “society must be prepared to pay the price.”13

The “Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour & the Environment,” 1973–75

Although various representatives from Ontario conservation and environmental groups were regular participants in conferences and meetings convened by organized labour in the early 1970s, the most engaged group of those activists was associated with Alternatives: Perspectives on Society, Technology and Environment, a quarterly journal founded in 1971 and based at Trent University in Peterborough. Edited by Robert Paehlke, a freshly minted political science professor, throughout the decade the journal was the most reflective and consistent movement publication advocating for an environmentalism infused with attention to class, not only in the province but also perhaps anywhere else in Canada. “Given the range and implications of the changes in our economy and society that will be necessary,” Paehlke explained in a winter 1973 article titled “Industrial Workers and the Environment,” “we cannot afford the luxury of alienating those who do not immediately share our concerns.” Toward this end, he noted, environmentalists needed to “avoid expressing our demands for reductions or changes in material production in … unprogressive ways.” Any calls for “restricting economic growth” must be matched by proposals for “redistribution of income,” or in specific cases like shutting down a pulp mill, activists “cannot leave any doubt about where they stand with regard to compensation, relocation, and retraining.” Moreover, Paehlke insisted, “we should quickly and decisively increase our concern with work-place pollution,” starting with an awareness that exposure levels for hazards allowed in factories and mines were generally “five or ten times as high” as those allowed outside the workplace, as well as more frequently violated. “What kind of society is it,” he rhetorically asked readers, “that forces men and women to risk their lives in order to earn a decent living?”14

To start acting on this programme, in the spring of 1973 Paehlke and other Alternatives staff decided to host a week-long “Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour & the Environment” later in August at Camp Wanapitei. Operated by Bruce Hodgins, whose parents had bought the camp and who was a founding member of the Trent University History Department and a member of the journal’s editorial board, Wanapitei was located at the distant end of Lake Temagami and was meant to be a retreat from the nuisances and hazards of daily urban industrial life that would be the conference focus. In fact, the invitation to prospective labour participants began with a reference to UAW Washington Report editor Frank Wallick’s exposé on workplace pollution published the year before, The American Worker: An Endangered Species, and an admission by Paehlke that environmentalists had not sufficiently engaged with the problem in the United States or Canada. “Alternatives, Inc. has planned a conference which we hope will be a beginning at removing that (likely class-based) oversight,” he explained, and “we hope that union activists and environmentalists can come together to learn from each other about how the whole range of environmental issues affect working Canadians.” Exposing the lack of any existing significant relationship between Alternatives and organized labour, the initial agenda that came with the invitation included only one union representative—UAW Conservation and Recreation Department assistant director Andy Paulick, from Windsor—although after outreach efforts in the months following the final speaker and attendance list was more balanced. The actual conference started with a Sunday evening fireside welcome from Hodgins and Paehlke and a screening of a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary film about asbestosis. The next day there were presentations by the UAW’s Frank Wallick and Sir George Williams University professor Fred Knelman, with sessions the rest of the week featuring other key figures in the labour and environmental movements as well as government agencies and universities. Those included Andy Paulick, John Eleen, and Ken Valentine representing unions, along with Monte Hummel and Brian Kelly from Pollution Probe and Barry Stuart from the Canadian Environmental Law Research Foundation (CELA).15

“They were unlikely bedfellows,” The Financial Post reported, “a dozen solid, middle-aged unionists, toughened by years of hard contract negotiations and a like number of intense young bearded and blue-jeaned intellectuals.” The sessions “worked” well, “remarkably enough,” with the different sides listening to and learning from one another, in some cases detailing ways they were already collaborating and in others arriving at new common ground.16 “I think the most important thing I and most of the environmentalists came away from the conference with,” Paehlke noted in his own report a few months later, “was the realization of the importance of making full employment a major concern of the environmental movement.” Job security was key for empowering workers to cooperate with environmentalists, he noted, and to aid this Andy Paulick had suggested a campaign for “a national environmental unemployment and retraining insurance,” a public fund that would support workers adversely affected by environmental enforcement, including paying for their relocation to new jobs. “Participation in such a campaign,” Paehlke explained, “is the sort of initiative environmentalists must take if their demands are to be taken seriously and their motives trusted by Canadian workers and unions.” And with that agreed as the “first priority,” he noted, “we also agreed that workplace pollution was a near second.” Organizing around this issue would entail ongoing research, advancing labour legislation and improving enforcement, and training workers themselves to do their own workplace monitoring, which Wallick had covered in his book and conference presentation as well. To supplement that, Paehlke closed his report with a recommendation for another book, Work is Dangerous to Your Health: A Handbook of Health Hazards in the Workplace and What You Can Do About Them. This practical guide had just been published in October and was written by Dr. Jeanne Stellman and Dr. Susan Daum as part of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers workplace health and safety campaign launched by Legislative and Citizenship director Anthony (“Tony”) Mazzocchi, and it further extended the cross-border influences among activists in the United States and Canada.17

Drawing in part on what had transpired at the first Experiential Wilderness conference, in the fall of 1973 the Ontario Federation of Labour’s Conservation and Pollution Control (C&PC) committee organized an environmental seminar at McMaster University, in Hamilton. “We need to do practical things,” OFL vice president, C&PC member, and Steelworker representative Stewart Cooke declared to the mix of more than eighty labour activists and environmentalists who attended, “not just talk.” At the outset, one specific aim of the seminar was to intensify efforts by unions to submit “environmental clauses into bargaining sessions,” yet the committee also wanted to push more Ontario district councils to establish their own environmental committees (beyond the twenty that already existed) as well as motivate the Federation’s 750,000 rank-and-file members “to get more active in local citizens groups concerned with the environment.” By the meeting’s end, C&PC secretary and USW representative Ken Valentine had distilled the lively discussion into a “blueprint for action,” one that spoke directly to the various facets beginning to define labour environmentalism. This included lobbying for “drastic legislative changes” to strengthen existing pollution control and prevention laws and creating a “retraining and relocation mechanism to protect workers who are displaced by plant shutdowns for environmental reasons.” Additionally, the blueprint embraced a combination of citizen science and radical cultural change, demanding public access to government information and recommending the creation of independent tribunals to evaluate the environmental impact of proposed new development projects as well as calling for a “new society less wedded to the growth and work ethics” and confronting the fact that “we can’t destroy nature without destroying ourselves.”18

The next year, in May, the Alternatives staff prepared for the second “Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour and the Environment” by sending Bruce Hodgins and the journal’s managing editor and conference coordinator Ted Schrecker to an OFL Conservation & Pollution Control committee meeting. Among those present, John Eleen and Ken Valentine spoke to the value of the previous Wanapitei gathering, and they helped get a commitment from the Federation to cover labour delegates’ attendance and transportation fees as well as lost time. Subsequently, at the conference, held again in August, there were eighteen union participants and a dozen others from environmental groups, universities, and government, several of them new.19 The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) union was represented by occupational health and safety research associate Janet Bertinuson from Denver, for example, besides Ivan Hillier and Bill Findlater, who were waging a battle against Dow for polluting the St. Clair River with mercury in Sarnia. Likewise, Pollution Probe sent two different delegates, Bill Peden and David Wood, and CELA was represented by their general counsel, David Estren.20 For the most part, however, the format and focus were the same, with a consensus around the main idea that “workers should not have to bear the costs of controlling industrial pollution” as well as a shared concern with enacting and enforcing provincial occupational health and safety laws.21 And, on the whole, an OFL report later declared, the sessions were “interesting,” with “topics that varied enough to make for well satisfied group discussion.” Beyond the knowledge and experience shared, there was also a “clear mandate” to continue the joint conferences and make them more frequent, including a specific proposal for a two-day meeting in February at Trent University, in Peterborough, to allow an even larger “number of people from union locals to engage in the same sort of dialogue that took place at Wanapitei.”22

This “Politics of Pollution” conference in the winter of 1975 was officially co-sponsored by Alternatives and the Ontario Federation of Labor, yet the OFL took a far more prominent role organizing, promoting, and coordinating it, largely through the C&PC committee. By January, they had twenty-six union delegates registered (with more expected), a formal pledge from the Peterborough Labour Council to assist with arrangements, and a commitment by OCAW’s Tony Mazzocchi to be a guest speaker. Given his standing in the labour movement, Mazzocchi opened the conference with a keynote address on a Friday evening, and the following day featured four different panels, separately chaired by C&PC members Andy Paulick, Ken Valentine, Stu Sullivan, and Ralph Ortlieb, before the spirited meeting adjourned.23 For many, the event’s success convincingly demonstrated that shorter and easily reachable meetings were more practical, and in May C&PC committee chairman and Toronto Steelworkers’ member Stu Cooke wrote to Paehlke letting him know that the Federation did not plan to be involved in that summer’s third Experiential Wilderness conference. Instead, they had decided to organize another weekend gathering in mid-September, at Sarnia, again with the hope “to have more rank and file participation.” Calling it the “People Can Manage the Environment” conference, the C&PC organizing committee had arranged for the event at Lambton College, along with a bus tour to the municipal sewage treatment and Shell Oil plants and a boat tour of the Sinclair River, and they expected the city would cover transportation costs. They also envisaged a diverse set of participants, ranging from “Sarnia plant environmentalists” and

Figure 3. First Annual Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour and Environment Hodgins letter to participants (1973) Trent University Archives.
Figure 4. Alternatives, Second Annual Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour and Environment Program cover (1974) Trent University Archives.

“concerned staff” from the college to Environment Ministry representatives and activists from local “conservation groups,” including Ontario Conservation Council executive secretary Clive Goodwin to do a “wind-up at the end of the Sunday session.”24

In fact, the Wanapitei conference’s timing, as well as the “awkwardness of the camp’s location,” as the C&PC committee members tactfully put it, had always been problems, making it especially difficult for workers (who were usually taking time off) to attend. Some labour participants complained about the “filthy” and “neglected” condition of the “wilderness” camp’s primitive facilities too, bad enough that the OFL’s report after the 1974 conference plainly stated that “most adults that visit there are not likely to return for a second visit.” One participant, C&PC committee secretary Maurice Punshon, minced no words in a personal letter to Ted Schrecker, describing the “beer and pop cans laying in the river, the dirty smelly out-houses, buildings that have fallen down but have not been dismantled, [and] the disgrace of the ‘cottages’.” Compounding this, a few labour delegates also objected to the “shortcomings of the academics,” whose presentations not infrequently displayed little knowledge of unions and were too specialized and overly long. “Most Academics have a tendency to make their presentations as if they were addressing the graduating class of a Law School,” the Federation report noted, casually employing undefined acronyms like “T.L.V.” and molecular terms like “COH,” and typically they do not adhere to session time limits. “In the past, despite our best efforts, it seemed too often that academics were sometimes talking at, rather than with, labour people,” the Alternatives staff acknowledged in an early promotional flier for the 1975 summer conference, and “we are trying to change that this year by asking more unionists to speak and to lead discussions.” But they were not proposing to shorten or relocate the gathering, and the pledge to be more inclusive was insufficient to reassure workers and their unions at that point. So, after weeks of deliberation among the staff—including a proposal by Bruce Hodgins to host a “Wilderness Conference on the Municipality and the Environment”—at the end of July Paehlke wrote to the camp director to let him know they had to cancel.25

The “Jobs and Environment” Conference of 1978

Although the Experiential Wilderness Conference did not last into the second half of the 1970s, the call for government support of workers adversely affected by environmental standards enforcement central to that gathering had been and continued to be a primary demand by organized labour, particularly the UAW. International president Leonard Woodcock made the plea a key point in testimony before a United States Senate Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution hearing in June 1971, for example, insisting that air and water pollution could not be adequately addressed if “we tolerate an industrial strategy of playing on the economic fears of workers and communities.” The next year, at a “Jobs v. Environment” conference sponsored by the Berkley University of California Institute of Industrial Relations in San Francisco, he reiterated the point and proposed a government program “where the displaced worker is protected against loss of income [and] given relocation and retraining benefits when adversely affected by environmental adjustments.” By mid-decade, this was an actual bill in the US Congress, the National Employment Priorities Act, and Woodcock emphasized the legislation’s importance for confronting escalating corporate attempts at “environmental blackmail” in his keynote speech for the union’s “Working for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jobs” conference at the Black Lake Education Centre in May 1976. In fact, that meeting drew hundreds of participants from the United States as well as Canada, including labour representatives John Eleen and Andy Paulick and Alternatives editor Robert Paehlke, and it reinforced their common cause on both sides of the border.26

The groundwork for a Canadian conference organized around a proposal to assist workers was laid at the very start of the decade when the Canadian Labour Congress gathered in May 1970 for its 8th constitutional convention. In his opening address to the more than 1500 delegates there, CLC president Donald MacDonald outlined an “agenda for the 1970s,” one that expanded “labour’s social responsibilities” and involved “greater social action by unions” on a full range of issues, including air and water pollution. To enable this, in October the Congress established the Social and Community Programs Department, directed by Jim MacDonald, who was assisted by Pat Kerwin, and over the next few years they elevated the environment above other areas of engagement.27 In the fall of 1972, in response to a request from the Canadian Council of Resource and Environmental Ministers to arrange labour participation in their Man and Resources (M&R) program, MacDonald assembled a group of union leaders and they met at the CLC office in Ottawa. For the preliminary M&R workshop in Montebello, Québec, this ad hoc Labour Committee selected OCAW International representative Henri Gauthier as their delegate and instructed him to emphasize three priorities. The first was “the impact of job elimination resulting from environmental concerns,” the second was the impact on Native Peoples “from development and resource use,” and the third was environmental and economic impact of US resource exploitation. On his return from the workshop, however, Gauthier explained that he had been the only official labour participant among the 125 delegates and the CLC would be allowed only one member on one of the twelve task forces established for the main “Man and Resources” Conference in Toronto the following November. The Labour Committee members protested this to the M&R secretariat and increased the number to four (among sixty spots across all the task forces, thirty of which were designated for representatives from industry), but still profoundly frustrated by the under-representation in March they began discussing the possibility of hosting their own conference on “Jobs and Environment” in Ottawa.28

By the summer of 1973, the Labour Committee had been renamed the Jobs and Environment (J&E) committee and was developing a budget for their conference, tentatively proposed for the following January, and in mid-September Jim MacDonald crafted a “Draft Working Paper” that he and Pat Kerwin developed further. It began with a listing of “jobs threatened by environmental controls” in various parts of Canada, covering a range of industries, and linked this to the need for an “Environmental Compensation Board.” This would work much like the Workers Compensation Board, with members from government, industry, and labour administering a fund from a tax on companies to cover lost wages and pension contributions. Meanwhile, the Department of Manpower would take care of retraining and relocation, as it did for the Transitional Assistance Benefits package the UAW negotiated under the US-Canada Auto Pact. “If workers are protected financially,” MacDonald mused, “they will be able to view more objectively environmental evidence against their industry.”29 Unfortunately, though, by the time the J&E committee received word from the federal Department of Environment that it would provide financial support and meeting space for the conference, unemployment had increased substantially, along with inflation, and unions became preoccupied with protecting existing jobs, alongside resisting Prime Minister Trudeau’s proposal to impose wage controls. Consequently, they postponed the event indefinitely. “To have done otherwise” organizers explained, “may well have jeopardized the support we wanted to encourage for environmental concerns.” Yet the crisis did start to abate and by the latter part of 1977 the committee returned to their plan, soliciting funding from several federal government departments, lining up guest speakers as well as workshop leaders, and promoting the event with a pamphlet that listed each of the workshops. First among those would be one focused on an “Environmental Unemployment Compensation Fund,” with others addressing “Victims of Environmental Pollution,” “Coordinating Government Policies,” “Jobs and Energy,” “Energy Conservation,” and “Lifestyle Changes.”30

The “Jobs and Environment” conference finally took place over three days in mid-February the next year, at the Government Conference Centre, drawing more than 200 delegates representing labour unions, conservation and environmental groups, First Nations organizations, private companies and industry trade groups, provincial and federal government departments, and churches, as well as several foreign embassies. In many ways, it was a culmination of the work over several preceding years, not only for the diverse array of participants and the varying topics and themes they entertained at length and in a sophisticated fashion but also for the fact that they had enough clarity to centre the proceedings around one primary consideration. The CLC and affiliated unions “have encountered numerous situations where proposed measures to protect the environment placed many jobs at risk,” the final report explained, drawing on the opening remarks by conference chairman and CLC executive vice president Julien Major, and “to our dismay, these situations were presented as jobs OR the environment.” But organized labour “never accepted the proposition that protection of jobs AND of the environment were mutually exclusive objectives,” the report continued, and “it became apparent that more precise policies had to be developed to enable the labour movement to cope with these situations – to reconcile the livelihood of workers faced with environmentally induced unemployment.”31 Similarly, in the conference’s keynote address, Environment Minister Len Marchand insisted that there was “no conflict between preserving our environment and preserving Canadian jobs,” although he acknowledged that “many Canadians think that we can only have one at the expense of the other.” In fact, he ventured, “I know of no case in Canada where environmental controls have been the main reason for a plant having to close its doors”—challenging his audience to provide an example otherwise—and, he argued, more routinely environmental protection was creating jobs across the country, namely through the labour-intensive design, construction, and installation of pollution control and waste treatment technology.32

Figures 5 and 6. Report of the Conference on Jobs and Environment/Rapport de la Conference sur Les Emplois et L’Environnement (1978), Michigan State University.

John Eleen and Robert Paehlke formally presented at the conference too, as part of the same panel, and their remarks demonstrated the influence of both the Wanapitei and Black Lake conferences they had attended together. “Labour is concerned with the environment, economic justice, and jobs,” Eleen explained, and “we must be vigilant to see that the cost of conservation and pollution control is not borne alone by the workers of the industries involved but is borne firstly by the industry from its profits and by society as a whole.” Not surprisingly, Paehlke agreed, describing the idea that environmental protection costs jobs as simply a “popular mythology” sustained by wildly wrong stereotypes about prosperous, self-interested trade unionists and over-educated, impractical environmentalists. The “avowed hard-core environmentalist,” as the Globe and Mail described him, reiterated the points made by Marchand, saying that he knew of no plant closings due to environmental demands and that instead those demands had created jobs. “What is good for the environment is generally also good for employment,” he noted. “This obviously is not true in every single instance,” he admitted, “but in net terms sound environmental planning will tend to reduce unemployment.”33 And these points came up in other segments of the conference as well, including the “Energy and Jobs” workshop chaired by Andy Paulick and featuring a talk by Washington University of St. Louis scientist Barry Commoner (who had been at Black Lake in 1976 too) as well as comments from OCAW Canadian director Neil Reimer. “[T]he only way to meet the fundamental needs of labor—to reduce unemployment and inflation and reverse the present economic decline,” Commoner noted, “is to adopt a policy that would at the same time make sense out of the energy crisis and reduce pollution,” and “the only sound energy and environmental policy—a policy that can best give the nation a stable energy supply and a clean environment—is one that serves these needs of labor.” Moreover, since energy was so basic to the operation of the economy, the workshop discussion notes said, government plans for energy conservation and the shift to renewable energy sources had to be matched by government support for “workers likely to be adversely affected.”34

Where Do We Go From Here?

In the wake of the 1978 “Jobs and Environment” conference, SCPD director Jim MacDonald contacted leaders at the various federations of labour to encourage them to arrange their own provincial conference on the same theme. From the Atlantic Federation of Labour he faced outright refusal—blaming that on the region’s chronic unemployment, jurisdictional fragmentation, and high energy costs, besides the fact it was a “pollution haven”—although on the other coast British Columbia Federation of Labour officials heartily endorsed the idea. The Alberta Federation of Labour’s Environment Committee also made “Environment, Health, and Jobs” its theme for their May 1978 Health & Safety conference and welcomed MacDonald as a featured speaker, allowing him to explain again the concept of and need for the “Environmental Unemployment Compensation Fund.” Additionally, by the fall of 1979 the OFL’s renamed Energy, Conservation and Pollution Control Committee was planning a “Conference on Energy.” This would take place the next March, in Toronto, and “deal with the relationship among three key concerns—energy, employment, and the environment in an Ontario context,” with a full line-up of panels and speakers, including Norman Reuben from Energy Probe and Neil Reimer from the OCAW. And of course, later that spring, MacDonald called on the ad hoc committee that had organized the CLC J&E conference to gather at the Congress’ 12th constitutional convention, in preparation for his attending the ILO “Workers Organisations on the Environment” conference in Geneva.35

At the same constitutional convention, however, there were at least a few troubling signs for organized labour’s broader support for environmentalism. UAW Canadian director Dennis McDermott had been tapped to be the CLC president two years before and despite his long-standing involvement with environmental issues and organizing, his address to delegates made no mention of this. To be sure, the Energy Committee’s policy statement (heavily influenced by committee chair Neil Reimer) called attention to “environmental impact, health and safety of both workers and the general public, and the rights of native peoples,” besides a “transition from non-renewable to renewable energy sources” and the “equitable distribution of benefits.” But the Legislative Committee’s policy statement on workplace health and safety highlighted gathering resistance to organized labour’s commitment to a whole array of “social” concerns, what CLC president Donald MacDonald earlier had called their “agenda for the 1970s.” The progress made to date, it read, was threatened “by an emerging counter-attack lead [sic] by conservative elements among employers and governments,” particularly “a resurgence of strident calls for ‘less government regulation’, ‘defence of management rights’, and ‘economic cost-benefits analysis’.” Such policies were “false and misleading,” the statement insisted, but they “may be used increasingly in coming years to block the efforts of the labour movement.”36

By the 1990s, when organized labour had better-established its footing in the face of neo-liberal attacks, attention to environmentalism and other “social” issues was resurgent. As was the case in preceding decades, the environmental concern had a working-class cast, though it was certainly much more than narrow self-interest with occupational health and safety. In the fall of 1990, the Canadian Labour Congress hosted an “Environment Conference” in Edmonton, and subsequently the CLC established a new Department of Health, Safety and Environment. Under the direction of David Bennett, the department prepared (quite lengthy) instructor manuals for two different day-long courses that local leaders could do with rank-and-file members, Union Environmental Activism and Workers and the Environment. “Environmentalism,” the latter’s introduction explained, “is our issue, along with pensions, medicare, workers’ compensation, and unemployment insurance—the sorts of things which workers have secured for the community in the past.” Toward that end, the manual stated, it was imperative for workers to negotiate contracts and press provincial and national governments to protect workers rights to refuse to pollute, to have all relevant information and training, to participate in workplace environmental audits, as well as to receive “compensation and retraining in the event of environmental lay-off or erosion of working conditions.” Aligned with this, the CLC prepared for another conference, “Organizing for Environmental Change,” in January 1994, at the Westbury Hotel in Toronto. That program began with opening remarks by Canadian Labour Congress secretary-treasurer Dick Martin and British Columbia Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council leader George Watts, followed by workshops on “Workplace Environmental Activism,” “Green Industrial Strategies,” “International Policies on the Environment,” and “How to Work in Coalitions,” and it ended with discussion of the question “Where Do We Go From Here?”37

During the latter part of the twentieth century, the political and economic terrain was indeed shifting, and that could and did put workers and their unions on the defensive. Yet it is important to remember just how profoundly attuned Canadian unions were with environmental issues before the neo-liberal onslaught of the 1980s, as well as how quickly they began to recover that engagement in the 1990s. Whether unwittingly or willfully, most academic and lay observers alike overlook this and paint workers and their unions as villains (or at least passive enablers) in an epic moral tale about Canadian environmentalism’s origins and subsequent evolution. But that is possible only by holding to a specious set of actors and events, making light of the challenges organized labour faced and continues to face, and, just as importantly, ignoring the dwindling (or non-existent) concern mainstream environmental organizations showed and show to understanding how class matters in people’s lives. Captured by the very corporate interests they are often battling, many professional environmentalists are more inclined to wonder why workers were not aiding “their” efforts instead of pondering how they could aid the efforts of working people. To facilitate Canadian workers choosing both jobs and environment, environmental-minded folks outside the labour movement have to dedicate themselves to making and maintaining a hospitable context for it. And as we face the prospects of a planet made uninhabitable by rapidly accelerating climate change, we would be wise to appreciate the foresight organized labour in Canada showed a full half-century ago.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank the PiCHE editors, Jennifer Bonnell, Claire Campbell, and Sean Kheraj, as well as several anonymous readers, and copy-editor Stacey Berquist.

1 Harold Dunning (consultant, Working Conditions and Environment Department, International Labour Organisation) to Bruce Gillies (International Affairs, Canadian Labour Congress), received December 20, 1979, Folder 14, Volume no. 673, “Environment – Jobs versus the Environment, 1973-1980,” Jim MacDonald (Social and Community Programs), Canadian Labour Congress fonds, Library and Archives of Canada (Ottawa) [hereafter cited as “JM LAC”]; J. de Givry (chief, Working Conditions and Environment Department, ILO) to Jim MacDonald (director, Social and Community Programmes Department, CLC), received March 18 1980, Folder 14, Volume no. 673, “Environment – Jobs versus the Environment, 1973-1980,” JM LAC; Jim MacDonald to Members of CLC Ad Hoc Committee on Jobs and Environment, April 2, 1980, Folder 8, Volume no. 672, “Environment – Man and Resources Program,” JM LAC; J. de Givry to Jim MacDonald, June 12, 1980, Folder 6, Volume no. 672, “Environment – 1980 Conference on Trade Unions and the Environment,” JM LAC; “Report of the Meeting of Workers’ Organizations on the Environment,” pp. 1-8, Folder 6, Volume no. 672, “Environment – 1980 Conference on Trade Unions and the Environment,” JM LAC.
2 Canadian Labour/Le Travailleur Canadien 15, no. 4 (April 1970) : 7; Canadian Labour/Le Travailleur Canadien 15, no. 6, (June 1970): 3.  These articles report on the May 1970 CLC conference where delegates considered « Labour’s Social Responsibilities » and drafted an « Agenda for the 1970s » along those lines.  For more on this, see sections in the text below.
3 Frank Zelko, Make it a Green Peace! The Rise of Counter Culture Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Ryan O’Connor, The First Green Wave: Pollution Probe and the Origins of Environmental Activism in Ontario (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014); Graeme Wynn, “Painting the Map Red,” in The Nature of Canada, eds.Colin M. Coates and Graeme Wynn (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019), 71; On the question of Silent Spring launching the American environmental movement see Chad Montrie, The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018).
4 See Laurel Sefton MacDowell, “Greening the Workplace: Unions and the Environment,” in Sustainability, The Challenge: People, Power, and the Environment, ed. L. Anders Sandberg and Sverker Sorlen (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998), 167–74; Laurel Sefton MacDowell, “The Elliot Lake Uranium Miners’ Battle to Gain Occupational Health and Safety Improvements, 1950-1980,” Labour/Le Travail, 69 (Spring 2012): 91–118; Laurel Sefton MacDowell, An Environmental History of Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012); Katrin MacPhee, “Canadian Working-Class Environmentalism, 1965-1985,” Labour/Le Travail 74 (Fall 2014): 123; Joan McFarland, “Labour and the Environment: Five Stories from New Brunswick Since the 1970s,” Labour/Le Travail 74 (Fall 2014): 249–66.
5 Jonathan Clapperton, “The Ebb and Flow of Local Environmentalist Activism: The Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (SPEC), British Columbia,” in Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small Green and Indigenous Organizing, eds. Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2019), 261–88; John-Henry Harter, “Environmental Justice for Whom? Class, New Social Movements, and the Environment: A Case Study of Greenpeace Canada, 1971-2000,” Labour/Le Travail 53 (2004): 83–119; John-Henry Harter, “When Blue is Green: Towards a History of Workers as Environmentalists in British Columbia and Beyond” (Ph.D. diss., Simon Fraser University, 2019), 43; John-Henry Harter, New Social Movements, Class, and the Environment: A Case Study of Greenpeace Canada (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011); John-Henry Harter, “Histories of Environmental Coalition Building in British Columbia: Using History to Build Working-Class Environmentalism,” Labour/Le Travail 90 (Fall 2022): 203–22.
6 Historians have done a lot more to recover and interpret organized labour’s role in the American environmental movement and much of their scholarship has centred on the United Auto Workers, the United Farm Workers, and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers. For early articles see Scott Dewey, “Working for the Environment: Organized Labor and the Origins of Environmentalism in the United States, 1948–1970,” Environmental History 3 (January 1998): 45–63, and Robert Gordon, “‘Shell No!’: OCAW and the Labor-Environmental Alliance,” Environmental History 3, no. 4 (October 1998): 460–87, as well as “Poisons in the Fields: The United Farm Workers, Pesticides, and Environmental Politics,” Pacific Historical Review 68, no. 1 (February 1999): 51–77; For more on the role the UAW, UFW, and OCAW played in environmentalism’s origins, see also Chad Montrie, Making a Living: Work and the Environment in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008) and The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018), and for an examination that features the United Mine Workers see his book, To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
7 Dennis McDermott to Presidents and Chairman of Bargaining Unites, February 24, 1970, Folder 14, “Canadian Environment and Labor, 1970-71, 1973,” Box 1, United Auto Workers Conservation and Recreation Department Records, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) [hereafter cited as “UAW/CRD WRL”]; Excerpt from Resolution on Collective Bargaining in 1970, “End Pollution of Man’s Living Environment,” Folder 8, “Environment – Nuclear Energy,” Volume no. 674, JM LAC. Despite the folder’s name, it contains this and other documents that do not refer to nuclear energy; Walter P. Reuther, “Two-Ton Gadgets,” 22nd UAW Constitutional Convention, April 20, 1970, p. 1, Folder 8, “Environment – Nuclear Energy,” Vol. 674, JM LAC.
8 “Remarks of Walter P. Reuther,” p. 3, “United Action of Clear Water, Report of Papers Presented at Conference Held at Cobo Hall, Nov. 6, 1965,” File 7, “United Auto Workers (UAW): United Action for Clean Water Conference, Windsor, Ontario: conference presentations, correspondence, 1966,” Vol. 476, National Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implements Union Fonds, Library and Archives of Canada (Ottawa, Ontario) [hereafter cited as “UAW LAC”]. Different documents refer to the 1965 meeting as both the “Clear Water” and “Clean Water” conference.
9 “United Action for Clear Water Conference, Cleary Auditorium, Windsor, Ontario, May 7th, 1966, Programme,” File 7, “United Auto Workers (UAW): United Action for Clean Water Conference, Windsor, Ontario: conference presentations, correspondence, 1966,” Vol. 476, UAW LAC; Olga Madar to Eric Cooper (financial secretary, UAW Local 199), n.d., and Peter Ranich (assistant to Olga Madar) to Eric Cooper (financial secretary, Local 199 UAW), May 27, 1966, File 7, “United Auto Workers (UAW): United Action for Clean Water Conference, Windsor, Ontario: conference presentations, correspondence, 1966,” Vol. 476, UAW LAC; Dennis McDermott, “Air and Water Pollution of Our Natural Resources,” Report to Canadian UAW Council, Port Elgin, Ont., September 13-14, 1969, p. 1, Folder 8, “Environment – Nuclear Energy,” Volume no. 674, JM LAC.
10 Among the other labour delegates were Jean Beaudry (CLC executive vice president), John Eleen (OFL research director), Morden Lazarus (OFL public relations director and secretary), Terry Meagher (OFL secretary treasurer), and Allen Schroeder (UAW education director, Windsor). See “Forward” (inside cover) and pp. 4–10, 19–22, 33–4, and 39–44, “Solution to Pollution: Matter of Life and Death,” Farmer, Labour, Teacher Conference 1970, File 149, “Pollution 71,” Box 14, CLC: Calgary Office Files (1955-1977), Glenbow Archives, University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta) [hereafter cited as “CLC GA”].
11 Leonard Woodcock, “The Crisis of Our Environment,” United Nations Symposium on Environment at the Walter and May Reuther UAW Family Education Center, June 15, 1970, Folder 15, “Canadian Conservation/Recreation Conference at Port Elgin, 1971,” Box 1, UAW/CRD WRL; New York Times, “Earth Day Group Zeros in on Autos: Students and Union Leaders See Air Pollution Peril,” July 20, 1970, 52.
12 Representing organized labour at the June meeting were OFL president David B. Archer, OFL secretary-treasurer Terry Meagher, UAW Canadian recreation director Andy Paulick, and OFL education director Henry Weisbach, who was the overall coordinator. “Ont Fed to Hold Pollution Sit-In,” Canadian Labour/Le Travailleur Canadien, July-August 1970 15, no. 7-8: 66; CLC Political Education Department, “Citizenship Month – February 1971,” p. 2, File 149, “Pollution 71,” Box 14, CLC GA.
13 Morden Lazarus to PEC Chairmen, Locals and Labour Councils, Staff Reps, Labour Council Secretaries &c, November 30, 1970, and Morden Lazarus to PEC Chairmen, Locals and Labour Councils, Staff Reps, Labour Council Secretaries &c, December 4, 1970, microfilm reel number: H-720, file number: 18, Canadian Labour Congress Fonds, Library and Archives of Canada (Ottawa) [hereafter cited as “CLC LAC”]; “The Muddied Waters of Pollution,” Canadian Labour/Le Travailleur Canadien 16, no. 2 (February 1971): 10-11, 14.
14 Robert Paehlke, “Industrial Workers and the Environment,” Alternatives: Perspectives on Society, Technology and Environment 4, no. 2 (Winter 1973): 2–3.
15 Robert Paehlke, early draft of invitation letter, not on letterhead, March 7, 1973, p. 1, Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, Alternatives Fonds (1971-1985), Trent University Archives (Peterborough, Ontario) [hereafter cited as “AF TUA”]; “Conference Invitation,” pp. 1–3, Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; “Programme: Experiential Wilderness Conference on the Environment and Canadian Labour,” pp. 1–2, Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; Pollution Probe was Ontario’s main environmental group, established at the University of Toronto in 1969. See Ryan O’Connor, The First Green Wave: Pollution Probe and the Origins of Environmental Activism in Ontario (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).
16 The Financial Post, “Wanted: Proof of Doomsday,” September 15, 1973, p. 5, Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA.
17 Robert Paehlke, “Labour and Environmentalists: Some Reflections on the Conference,” n.d., though references are to 1973 conference, pp. 1–3, Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 19, AF TUA; Mazzocchi had recruited Stellman in New Jersey to be the OCAW’s first occupational health and safety officer and Daum was an internist in New York at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. The pair also collaborated with Ray Davidson, the editor of OCAW News, who had interviewed workers in the US and Canada and published his own book, Perils on the Job: A Study of Hazards in the Chemical Industries, in 1971. On Stellman see Amanda Lauren Walter and Elizabeth Faue, “In the Shadow of Tragedy: Jeanne M. Stellman and the Work of the Women’s Occupational Health Resource Center,” Journal of Women’s History 34, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 93–114.
18 The Financial Post, “UAW Makes Environment Talks Issue,” October 6, 1973, in Folder 14, “Canadian Environment and Labor, 1970-71, 1973,” Box 1, UAW/CRD WRL; the OFL established its Conservation & Pollution Control Committee in November 1967 at its annual conference with the purpose of campaigning for control legislation that would make pollution “an offence under the criminal code,” with fines and jail terms as penalties. See Windsor Star, “Plea by OFL: ‘Stiffen Pollution Penalties’,” November 9, 1967,  3.
19 “Minutes of the OFL Conservation & Pollution Control Sub-Committee Meeting, May 27, 1974,” p. 1, Folder 20, “Wanapitei Conference, 1974,” Box 13, AF TUA; “Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour & the Environment: 1974 Financial Statement,” mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; Ted Schrecker invited Neville Hamilton but he was unable to attend. Neville S. Hamilton to Ted Schrecker, July 26, 1974, p. 1, Folder 20, “Wanapitei Conference, 1974,” Box 13, AF TUA.
20 Ted Schrecker, “Report and Analysis of the Second Annual Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour and the Environment,” pp. 4–5, and “Appendix II: List of Participants,” pp. 1–4, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA.
21 Ted Schrecker, “Labour and Environment: Alternatives Conference Report,” Alternatives 4, no. 2, (Winter 1975): 35–36, 41; “Report and Analysis of the Second Annual Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour and the Environment,” n.a., September 10, 1974, pp. 1–2, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; By mid-decade, Saskatchewan had passed the first provincial occupational health and safety legislation in 1972, Alberta had set up an Industrial Health and Safety Commission (the Gale Commission) that would lead to similar legislation in the early part of 1976, and Ontario established the Ham Commission (under James Ham) primarily to study illness and death among uranium miners and their families at Elliot Lake, which led to the Employee Health and Safety Act in the latter part of 1976 and an Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1978. Globe and Mail, “Recommendations from Ham Report: Bill is Introduced Giving Miners the Right to Refuse Unsafe Work,” October 27, 1976, 4; Globe and Mail, “Workplace-Safety Bill is Near Final Approval,” December 15, 1978, 5.
22 “Report on the 1974 Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour, Camp Wanapitei, Sponsored by Alternatives, the Federal Government, and the Ontario Federation of Labour,” p. 1, mistakenly filed in Folder 21, “Wanapitei Conference, 1975,” Box 13, AF TUA; “Appendix I: A Note from the Ontario Federation of Labour,” p. 1, “Report and Analysis of the Second Annual Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour and the Environment,”, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; Ted Schrecker, “Labour and Environment: Alternatives Conference Report,” Alternatives 4, no. 2 (Winter 1975): 38.
23 “Minutes of the OFL Conservation & Pollution Control Committee Meeting, Held Tuesday, January 7, 1975,” p. 1, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA.
24 “1975 Wilderness Conference on Labour & the Environment,” draft cover letter, n.d., pp. 1–2, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; Professor R.C. Paehlke to Mr. Stu Cooke, April 7, 1975, p. 1, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; F. Stewart Cooke to Professor R. C. Paehlke, May 5, 1975, Folder 21, “Wanapitei Conference, 1975,” Box 13, AF TUA; “Conservation & Pollution Control Committee Report to the OFL Executive Council Meeting,” June 18, 1975,” p. 1, Folder 21, “Wanapitei Conference, 1975,” Box 13, AF TUA.
25 “Minutes of the OFL Conservation & Pollution Control Sub-Committee Meeting, May 27, 1974,” p. 1, Folder 20, “Wanapitei Conference, 1974,” Box 13, AF TUA; Wanapitei was only reachable by a 10-minute charter flight or 17-mile hired boat ride from a landing at the other end of Lake Temagami. “Report on the 1974 Experiential Wilderness Conference on Labour, Camp Wanapitei [sic], Sponsored by Alternatives, the Federal Government, and the Ontario Federation of Labour,” n.d., pp. 1–3, Folder 21, “Wanapitei Conference, 1975,” Box 13, AF TUA; Maurice Punshon to Mr. Ted Schrecker, June 25, 1975, Folder 21, “Wanapitei Conference, 1975,” Box 13, AF TUA; “1975 Wilderness Conference on the Municipality and the Environment,” n.d., on Alternatives letterhead, signed by “Bruce H.”, p. 1, mistakenly filed in Folder 19, “Summer Union Leaders Environmental Workshop, 1973,” Box 13, AF TUA; Bruce [Hodgins] to Bob [Robert Paehlke], August 10, 1975, Folder 21, “Wanapitei Conference, 1975,” Box 13, AF TUA.
26 “Statement of Leonard Woodcock … Before Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution of the Committee on Public Works, United States Senate,” pp. 1–2, Hearings on Economic Impact of Environmental Control Requirements, June 28, 1971, Folder 15, “Canadian Conservation/Recreation Conference at Port Elgin, 1971,” Box 1, UAW/CRD WRL; Inter-Office Communication, December 4, 1972, “Subject: Jobs vs Environment Conference – Nov 28, 1972,” Folder 35, “Jobs and Environmental Protection Conference; corres., background material, 1971-74,” Box 8, UAW/CRD WRL; Leonard Woodcock, Keynote Address, p. 5, “Summary of Conference Proceedings: Working for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jobs, A National Action Conference, May 2-6, 1976, Walter and May Reuther UAW Family Education Center,” Folder 21, “Working for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jobs Conference, proceedings, 1976,” Box 10, UAW/CRD WRL; See R.C. Paehlke, “Labour, Environment and Community: 12 Ways to Start Working Together,” Alternatives 6, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 26–30; See also Josiah Rector, “The Spirit of Black Lake: Full Employment, Civil Rights, and the Forgotten Early History of Environmental Justice,” Modern American History 1, no. 1 (March 2018): 45–66.
27 Canadian Labour/Le Travailleur Canadien 15, no. 4 (April 1970): 7; Canadian Labour/Le Travailleur Canadien 15, no. 6, (June 1970): 3, 6–7; Pat Kerwin (Representative) to CLC Officers, Departmental Directors and Assistant Directors, Regional Directors of Organization & Education, Representatives of the Social & Community Programs Dept., General Representatives, May 5, 1971, File 176, “Social + Community Programs (1) 70-71,” Box 17, CLC GA; “Labour and Social Involvement: The Role of the Social & Community Programs Department of the Canadian Labour Congress,” File 177, “Social + Community Programs (2) 72-7,” Box 17, CLC GA.
28 “Labour Committee on M&R Program,” October 18, 1972, Folder 8, Volume no. 672, “Environment – Man and Resources Program,” JM LAC; Henri Gauthier to Jim MacDonald, November 5, 1972, p. 1, Folder 18, Volume no. 671, “Environment – Canadian Council of Resource Ministers, 1971-1974, JM LAC; Jim MacDonald to Donald MacDonald, January 12, 1973, Folder 9, Volume no. 672, “Environment – Man and Resources Program,” JM LAC; Present at this fourth meeting were Jim MacDonald, Pat Kerwin, Jim Brassington, Andy Paulick, Ken Valentine, Jim Dowell, Richard Vanderberg, and Neville Hamilton. Labour Committee on Man and Resources, March 5, 1973, Folder 8, Volume no. 672, “Environment – Man and Resources Program,” JM LAC.
29 Jim MacDonald to Pat Kerwin, handwritten notes and referral slip, September 14, 1973, Folder 1, Volume no. 674, “Environment – Jobs versus the Environment, 1973-1980,” JM LAC.
30 Canadian Labour Congress, Report of the Conference on Jobs and the Environment (Government Conference Centre, Ottawa, February 19-21, 1978): 4; Notes for Meeting with Representatives of Federal Government Departments Which are Hosting the CLC’s Jobs and Environment Conference, July 21, 1977, Folder 9, Volume no. 637, “Education Department Files, CLC Jobs & Environment Conference,” JM LAC; Conference on Jobs and the Environment, Government Conference Centre, Ottawa, February 19-21, 1978, pamphlet, File 240, “Environment 77-80,” Box 24, CLC GA.
31 Canadian Labour Congress, Report of the Conference on Jobs and the Environment (1978): 3, 10.
32 Globe and Mail, “Marchand to Environment in Surprise Cabinet Switch,” January 23, 1976, 2; “Notes for Minister of Environment Len Marchand’s address to CLC Jobs and Environment conference Feb 20, 1978,” pp. 1, 4, and 6–7, Folder 9, Volume no. 637, “Education Department Files, CLC Jobs & Environment Conference,” JM LAC.
33 The panel was titled “The Nature and Extent of the Problem,” and it was introduced by Pat Kerwin, who by then was director of the CLC’s Political Education Department. Report of the Conference on Jobs and the Environment (1978), pp. 5–7; John Eleen, “Jobs and the Environment: Labour’s Concerns,” p. 1, Jobs and Environment Conference, February 20, 1978, Folder 9, Volume no. 637, “Education Department Files, CLC Jobs & Environment Conference,” JM LAC; Provoking widespread objections among organized labour’s ranks, some of the Canadian media mis-reported on the conference by highlighting one part of one speech by CLC secretary treasurer Donald Montgomery, suggesting he argued for focusing on maintaining employment to the exclusion of addressing environmental problems. See Globe and Mail, “Jobs Rank Ahead of Environment, CLC Official Says,” February 8, 1978, 8, and Calgary Herald, “CLC Job Concern: Environment ‘No Excuse,’” February 21, 1978, 27. But also see Ottawa Citizen, “Jobs and the Environment: CLC Proposes Compensation,” February 21, 1978, 9, and Toronto Star, “Environmental Blackmail? Anti-Pollution Laws Kills Jobs, Politicians Say but Environment Ministry Says it isn’t So,” July 17, 1978.
34 Report of the Conference on Jobs and the Environment (1978), pp. 6, 25; Barry Commoner, “Energy and Labor: Job Implications of Energy Development or Shortage,” p. 5, Folder 9, Volume no. 637, “Education Department Files, CLC Jobs & Environment Conference,” JM LAC.
35 Jim MacDonald to Julien Major, memo, November 14, 1978, “re: Refusal of Atlantic Federation to sponsor follow-up conf on J&E, not for circulation,” p. 1, Folder 2, Volume no. 674, “Department Files, Environment – Jobs & the Environment Conferences – Provincial, 1978-1979,” JM LAC; Jim MacDonald to John Eleen, December 7, 1978, p. 1, Folder 2, Volume no. 674, “Department Files, Environment – Jobs & the Environment Conferences – Provincial, 1978-1979,” JM LAC; At this point the committee was chaired by C.S. Sullivan, with Bill Reno as secretary, and members Norman Paxton (CPU), Ralph Ortlieb (CLC), Paul Falkowski (USWA), Jack MacDonald (CUPE), Doug Sword and Ken Valentine (USWA), Andy Paulick (UAW), Ed Chmielewski (ex officio), and John Eleen (OFL). Two of these members, Falkowski and Reno, also served as the Federation’s delegates to the Ontario Conservation Council. Report of the OFL Energy, Conservation and Pollution Control Committee to the OFL Executive Board Meeting, September 12, 1979, Folder 3, Volume no. 674, “Environment – Environment – Energy – General,” JM LAC.
36 Dennis McDermott “Presidential Address,” pp. 2–6; Energy Policy Committee, “Energy Policy Statement,” pp. 26–31; and Legislative Committee, “Statement on Workplace Health and Safety,” p. 68, in Canadian Labour Congress, 13th Constitutional Convention, May 5-9, 1980, Winnipeg, Man., Proceedings (Canadian Labour Congress, 1980).
37 The course manuals also came with a CLC video, “Only One Earth.” “Workers and the Environment, Instructors’ Manual, ‘Draft,’ Canadian Labour Congress, Department of Health, Safety, and Environment, January 1994,” Folder 15, “Environment Committee, 1991-93,” Box 1, pp. 2, 1/1–1/4, and 2/1–2/8, Alberta Federation of Labour fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta); Dick Martin to Members of the Executive Council, Ranking Officers, Representatives and Local Unions of Affiliated Organizations, Federations of Labour, Labour Councils, and Directly Chartered Local Unions, November 8, 1993, and “Provisional Program, Canadian Labour Congress, Environment Conference, Organizing for Environmental Change,” Folder 15, “Environment Committee, 1991-93,” Box 1, Alberta Federation of Labour fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta).

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Chad Montrie

Chad Montrie is a professor in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is also a Fulbright Canada Research Chair for 2022-2023 at the University of Calgary, participating in the Energy in Society working group at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities and researching the role workers played in making Canada’s environmental movement.

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