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The Local Labour Council Throughout The Years

A couple of years after this the Peterborough and District Labour Council, C.C.L., was formed. This organization served a very useful function as a central labour body for the Canadian Congress of Labour, C.I.0., unions in the Peterborough area.

It is very interesting to look back and see that the trade unionists of seventy-five years ago, the trade unionists of fifty years ago and those of more recent vintage all have some common aims. One of those aims seems to be to have a place that organized labour can call its own in the community. This was true of the Peterborough and District Labour Council, C.C.L.

A report of the January 9th, 1951, Peterborough and District Labour Council, C.C.L., in the Peterborough Examiner states that "the Peterborough and District Labour Council, C.C.L., has given its Executive power to investigate the prospects of building a 'Labour Hall' in Peterborough. This would entail setting up a trust fund. The Council presently meets in a room at 168-1/2 George Street but this room will not accommodate more than twenty people.

"President Alf Barber indicated that a local businessman had offered the Council a lot on McDonald if it decided to build."

Names associated with the Peterborough and District Labour Council and familiar to many trade unionists were Alf Barber, Ed Humphries, Ed Silvester, Tommy Cupoli, Jack Benstead, George Logan, Bill Triggs and Orville Martin.

The Labour Council and the eventually leased headquarters of the Labour Council on Water Street above the Bank of Commerce became a centre for organizing activity. Many people who have become prominent in the Canadian Labour movement spent a considerable period of their apprenticeship working out of one of the various offices of the Labour Council building. The present Director of Organization of the Canadian Labour Congress, Mr. Joe Mackenzie, was one of them; Mr. Murray Cotterill was another. I believe Jack Williams and Howard Conquergood were others.

I believe that Alf Barber was President of the Peterborough and District Labour Council through most of the years if not all the years of its existence.

The unions affiliated to the Trades and Labour Council of Canada, who had been without a local central forum after the demise of the Allied Labour Council, organized the Peterborough Trades and Labour Council in 1951.

Mr. Glenn Price was the first President, Mr. John McPhee was the Vice-President, Mr. Cameron Wasson was the Treasurer and the writer was the Corresponding and Recording Secretary. Others associated were the late Dick Martin, the late George Degan, Gus Siegal, Merv Williamson, Henry O'Rourke and Bill Given.

This Council was a vigorous and active group and represented the A.F.L.-T.L.C. unions of Peterborough in municipal and organizational matters in a lively manner. It was primarily responsible for a great building of the union organization that took place in the early forties.

The two central labour bodies in Peterborough continued to co-operate fully to the greatest extent. A poster proclaiming a meeting is attached which in some degree demonstrates the kind of co-operation that took place, This was particularly true of municipal efforts. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as there were indications that the two national labour centres in Canada, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour, might merge, a merger committee was set up by the Peterborough Trades and Labour Council and the Peterborough and District Labour Council, C.C.L. The culmination of this effort was that the Peterborough and District Labour Council, C.L.C., was the first merged Labour Council in Canada.

As could be expected initially the merged Council was heavily involved in many areas of community activity. Organized labour was faring slightly better with respect to representation on City Council and was represented by two trade unionists who earned the respect of all sections of the community - Mr. William Triggs, an active member of the Labour Council and a past president of Local 293, U.P.W.A., at the Quaker Oats Company, and another U.P.W.A. representative who came out of the same union and later became a Staff Representative of the U.P.W.A., Mr. William Beggs, also a former officer of Local 293.

The first time the possibility of a post-secondary educational institution being located in Peterborough was raised was at the Peterborough Labour Council meeting on February 13th, 1957.