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OTTAWA – The temperature inside and outside of Parliament was unusually hot for August. The minority Trudeau government was scrambling to table back-to-work legislation to put an end to the strike of thousands of railway employees, hundreds of which were priming to storm Parliament.
The date was Aug. 30, 1973, and the striking non-operations railway workers’ union members were about to storm Ottawa’s Centre Block in the most “explosive,” alcohol-fuelled “rampage” on Parliament Hill in Canada’s then-centennial history.
“Mounties and cameramen bear brunt of rampage in Parliament building,” recounted the Aug. 31, 1973, edition of the Ottawa Citizen in one of many stories on the previous day’s events. “Non-ops Rampage on Parliament Hill. Mountie Pummelled As Building Rushed,” headlined the Nanaimo Daily Free Press on the same day.
“Window-smashing strikers storm into Parliament,” screamed The Toronto Star’s front page at the time, as the Globe and Mail published stories about the riot and pictures of the “invading strikers” over three pages.
Fifty-one years nearly to the day after the largely forgotten storming of Parliament, operating workers from both Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) are on the brink of locking out thousands of workers simultaneously, a first in Canadian history.
The main point of contention between the companies and the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) involves proposed changes to scheduling. The TCRC said the proposed changes would compromise safety, while the railways say the changes are in line with current federal regulations regarding rest periods.
Though there is no indication that the looming massive railroad work stoppage could degenerate into a violent rampage in Centre Block (namely because the building is under renovation for another decade or so), the similarities between the context then and today are uncanny.
On Aug. 30, 1973, the minority Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau recalled Parliament to debate urgent back-to-work legislation. The Liberals were under fire mainly by the Progressive Conservative Opposition for ballooning inflation and for their management of the strike that impacted 56,000 non-operational railway workers.
As MPs shuffled into the Commons, over 1,000 strikers from all over the country had convened on Parliament Hill to loudly protest the bill, which was supported by all parties. At the same time, Trudeau was meeting with his cabinet before the House convened.
According to multiple reports at the time, many of the protesters had been drinking much of the day as the temperature approached 30 degrees Celsius.
Alcohol, heat and anger over a weeklong strike without pay are a dangerous mix, and tensions quickly boiled over on the lawn on Parliament Hill. “Demonstrators on Parliament Hill yesterday were in a mood to fight, even if it was among themselves,” the Globe and Mail noted on Aug. 31.
A Communist Party of Canada member who showed up to back strikers may have been a tad less inclined to redistribute wealth to railway workers after his support was “rewarded with a fist” by two strikers, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
Strikers also pulled a banner supporting their cause from other Marxist-Leninist members amid chants of “we don’t need you, we don’t want you,” according to Canadian Press reporter Ken Pole.
But all hell broke loose just before 1 p.m. as MPs were about to begin debate the Maintenance of Railway Operations Act.
“Oppressive heat and too much booze proved too volatile a mixture for about 200 pent up striking railwaymen Thursday, turning them into a rampaging mob with stormed the Centre Block smashing everything in their path,” wrote the Ottawa Citizen’s Dennis Foley.
A “vanguard” of about 25 “French-Canadian strikers” from CP’s Montreal operations led the charge as they overwhelmed RCMP members and broke into the building.
“Using elbows, feet and placards, the strikers smashed eight panes of the west doors and surged into the rotunda separating the Commons from the Senate,” Globe and Mail reporter Terrence Belford reported at the time.
That allowed a total of 200 strikers to storm the building before RCMP were able to shut the doors behind them, trapping them inside.
Terrified tourists scurried into corners of the building’s entrance as rioters, many reeking of alcohol, screamed slogans and ran down the Hall of Honour searching for the House of Commons to disrupt proceedings.
One protester even screamed about Justin Trudeau, then only an infant, according to a story by the Times News Services published in the Victoria Times.
“‘They called their baby Justin,’ screamed one demonstrator in a reference to Prime Minister (Pierre Elliott Trudeau) and his wife. ‘So let’s have some bloody justice now,’” the reporter wrote.
Had rioters taken the time to ask for the directions, they would have known that the Hall of Honour leads to the library of Parliament and its “inch-thick steel fire doors,” so sturdy that they saved that portion of the building from the 1916 fire that destroyed the rest of Centre Block.
As the irate and inebriated mob’s movement stalled, reporters say strikers turned their aggression towards RCMP agents and media cameramen, all the while yelling invective about Trudeau senior.
The Ottawa Citizen described an RCMP corporal who attempted to turn the mob around and was swiftly “pummelled to the floor and kicked.” That earned “wild cheers” from strikers, wrote Pole for The Canadian Press.
At the same time, a CTV camera crew filming the beating was “itself turned upon and beaten,” namely by “repeated blows from a placard stick.” CTV newscaster Mike McCourt’s efforts to try to save the broadcaster’s $7,500 camera were rewarded with a punch in the stomach.
“Fists” and “brute force” by RCMP agents and Parliamentary security staff mixed with the strikers’ exertion and “too much drinking” eventually allowed police to kettle the rioters and kick them out of the building two hours later.
What was reportedly the largest yet storming of Centre Block ended with minor injuries, cuts and bruises, over a dozen broken windows and likely more than a handful of painful hangovers.
The following day, the government would pass the back-to-work legislation, effectively ending the strike.
Unbeknownst to the Centre Block rioters at the time, Prime Minister Trudeau had come out of the cabinet room on the second floor to briefly watch the rampage.
Asked for his reaction, Trudeau smiled and said, “seems like a noisy one.”
National Post, with additional reporting by Financial Post
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