Territories | The first October crisis

Every corner of Quebec is full of stories that are as incredible as they are little-known. Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin takes advantage of the beautiful weather to explore some of them. Today, he looks back at a tragic workers’ conflict from the beginning of the 20th century^e century.

Two people were murdered by strike breakers, the army occupied Buckingham (today a district of Gatineau), the assassins were not worried, the workers were convicted of rioting, a blacklist of unionists was established and, due to lack of work, part of the village had to go into exile. No, this is not a movie script, it is the true story of the first Quebec and Canadian workers’ conflict to cause death. Today, in the heart of the district, a monument commemorates the tragedy of October 8, 1906.^⁠1. Let’s travel a little into the past.^⁠2.

At the turn of the 20th century^e century, with a population of just over 4,000 people, Buckingham is an important industrial centre in the Outaouais. However, the James MacLaren Company holds an almost absolute monopoly on the economic life of the municipality and that of the entire Lièvre Valley. The company has exclusive privileges, probably unique in Quebec, on access to the river (the river is almost privatized), on its hydraulic development – ​​without regard to the damage that could be caused by changes in water levels –, on a possible railway development in the valley and it owns almost all the forest concessions in the Lièvre basin (6,700 km^⁠2 – 14 times the island of Montreal).

When he died in 1892, James MacLaren, founder of the company of the same name and of the Bank of Ottawa (now Scotiabank), was one of the wealthiest men in Canada. Both Quebec Premier Simon-Napoléon Parent and Canadian Premier Wilfrid Laurier were close friends. The family owned three “chateaux” in Buckingham, including Alexander’s, which had 14 fireplaces and a ballroom.³.

Over the years, the company would succeed in countering almost all forms of economic competition. Under the MacLarens, the Lièvre Valley was padlocked.

Symbol of this total domination, at the time of the events of 1906, the mayor of the city, John Edward Vallillee, was also the manager of the company. As a result of this total domination, the wages paid to MacLaren were the lowest in the industry in Quebec, and therefore probably the lowest in North America. The MacLaren monopoly is in line with the large Anglo-Canadian companies, such as the Robins in Gaspésie, which would keep many Quebecers in a state of extreme poverty.

In the summer of 1906, faced with their inability to support their families because of their starvation wages, the MacLaren workers mobilized. On August 15, they filed four demands: recognition of the union, a reduction in working hours from 11 to 10 hours per day, and a wage increase of 2.5 cents per hour. Workers at comparable companies in Hull and Ottawa had obtained some of these conditions 15 years earlier.

The reaction was swift. The company fired the main workers’ leaders and declared a lockout. More than 400 families were affected. The workers appealed to the Quebec government, which sent a mediator. The MacLarens refused again. The workers reduced their demands; the wage increases would only apply to the lowest wage earners. RM Kenny, the MacLarens’ brother-in-law, also a company executive, had said that “grass would grow in the streets of Buckingham” before he accepted the arrival of a union. So it was still no. Total intransigence.

On October 8, the workers learned that strikebreakers were at work under the direction of the MacLaren brothers themselves. They went to the scene and negotiated with the bosses who still refused to negotiate.

They approach the strike breakers to convince them to stop work. Lying nearby, some tough guys hired by the company wait for an order, it rings out: ” Shoot them! »

Several workers were injured. Thomas Bélanger, president of the union, and François Thériault, a member of the board of directors, were killed. Bélanger alone was hit by five bullets: this was no accident. We learned that the shooters had a photo of Bélanger; it was an assassination.

Bélanger’s wife, Marie-Louise McGregor⁴was four months pregnant. Thériault was survived by his wife, Élizabeth Chauvin, and five children, the oldest of whom was 15 (the latter’s daughter would tell me in 2006 that her grandfather’s murder had broken the whole family apart).

All of Quebec is moved by the events. “This is the first time, we believe, in the history of the Province of Quebec, that a strike has led to such bloody results,” wrote The Press. Workers’ associations from all over Quebec, and even from New York State, organized benefit evenings for the victims’ widows. More than a thousand people showed up for the funerals.

While the workers buried their dead, the MacLarens called in the army to protect their facilities: 117 soldiers from the Royal Canadian Dragoons occupied Buckingham. They would remain there until October 22, the day when, broken, the workers returned to work.

After a travesty of justice that deserves a book of its own, the MacLarens were exonerated and the unionists were sentenced to two months in prison for participating in a riot. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Albert MacLaren will have a very official blacklist drawn up that will henceforth prohibit 262 workers, their children and even their grandchildren from working at MacLaren. It will have the force of law until the arrival of a first union, almost 40 years later. It is estimated that at least 600 people out of a population of 4425 had to go into exile, for lack of work. The workers were literally crushed.

In 1934, they would try again to unionize. The 51 workers involved in the movement would, again, be immediately dismissed. They would even be refused direct relief, the social assistance of the time, administered by a municipality still under the control of the company.

It would take the deaths of the MacLaren brothers, RM Kenny and laws protecting workers for a union to finally be established in Buckingham. A powerful symbol, RM Kenny was laid to rest on April 26, 1945 and the first collective agreement at MacLaren was signed five days later, on April 1.^er May 1945, Workers’ Day.

In today’s Buckingham, several traces of the tragedy remain visible. In addition to the monument to the victims, a cycle path runs along the river at the very spot where the workers marched to their deaths. The immense house of the mayor-foreman still stands imposingly in the centre of the neighbourhood and the McCallum-Lahaie block, where the first meeting of the workers was held, is still standing.

But no, you won’t see the MacLaren castles anymore. In the 1940s, during a political confrontation that I won’t go into details about, Buckingham City Council raised the property taxes on all three castles. In order to avoid paying taxes, and perhaps to avoid giving in to people they despised, the MacLarens destroyed their own castles. Nothing remains of them.

1. Consult the City of Gatineau page about this monument

2. The content of this text was taken from: The Valley under Siege, Buckingham and Lower Lièvre under the MacLarens, 1895-1945Pierre-Louis Lapointe, Vents d’Ouest, 2006, 278 pages.

3. See pictures of the three castles

4. Read the text “The three Marie-Louise de la Lièvre”