Porter talk: Episode 3

• Transcript of “All Aboard the Hotel on Wheels” – Episode 3

  Richard Provencher (RP): This episode contains offensive and potentially harmful language that refers to Black communities in Canada. Some of the stories that are shared also include vivid descriptions of physical and verbal violence that may be difficult for some listeners to hear.

  Discover Library and Archives Canada “Porter Talk.” This production explores the lived experiences of Black men who laboured as sleeping car porters for both the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways during the twentieth century. Their voices, along with those of their wives and children, relay stories of both hardship and resilience.

  This is the first season of Voices Revealed, a series that amplifies the voices of underrepresented and marginalized communities held within Library and Archives Canada’s vast oral history holdings. Narratives of injustice, conflict, persistence, and resolution enable us to understand how the past powerfully defines our present. They also provide compelling insights that push us to imagine new directions for our collective future. My name is Richard Provencher and, as your host of the first season of Voices Revealed, I am pleased to guide you through the stories that are at the heart of “Porter Talk.”

  Stanley G. Grizzle (SG): What did you think of the, uh practice of tipping?

  George Forray (GF): What did I think of the practice?

  SG: Did it offend you in any way or did you like receiving tips or—?

  GF: Oh, I wouldn’t say it was offensive … But sometimes you bent over backwards and did a little extras. So naturally you— it was an encouragement in order to do good.

  SG: … What did you think of the-of the practice of tipping?

  Charles Allen Milton Hog (CH): It was, as it were— It was degrading to a certain extent … we went into the field knowing that was part of what to expect. So the average person did not consider the degrading part of— um, of that, uh, attitude, because, you know, you were— a lot of us took that porter’s job just through necessity. I don’t even want— like cleaning my own shoes. I paid to clean my own shoes, but I had to clean other people’s shoes so as to be able to have a— make a decent livin’ and to maintain my family, because there wasn’t any opportunity open to me in those days. I came here with my degrees and I couldn’t get a decent job … So I had-had to go and where I could make a few dollars and maintain the standard of living that I was accustomed to uh, from home.

  SG: The next question is, what did you think of the practice of tipping?

  Leonard Oscar Johnston (LJ): … The-the tip— the practice of tipping is very demeaning. It’s part of— it’s part of slavery. House-n*** thing …

  Willis Richardson (WR): [O]ur pay was not that good that we could go around and say, “I don’t accept tips,” because tips, at the time, in the early days, was a good part of my earnings.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  WR: I needed those tips, whatever it was …

  SG: What’s your attitude towards, uh, tipping the porter, uh, receiving tips from the passenger? What was your— Did you have any feeling for or against the practice of tipping?

  Roy Williams (RW): Well, uh, as far as tipping concerned, uh, we had no alternative because that was our— part of our wages. Especially when we— before we were organized, if we hadn’t have had tips, we couldn’t have, uh, we couldn’t have survived. We had to have tips …

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  RW: Because, uh, it made us— it took-took a lot of dignity out of our-our-our thinking and our ways. We had to be more, more, a little more humble in order to come to pass— in order to get these tips, in order to survive.

  Eddie Green (EG): We used to make um, more off of tips in those days than we did in wages, ’cause the wages was very low, and um, we’d uh, we’d make a pretty good— uh, a round trip, we could make a pretty good living off it … In fact, a lot of the guys uh, bought their houses and their cars, and put their sons and daughters through college-college through this railroad. A lot of the office staff wondered how they did it, but uh, they did it, and kept their kids dressed well, fed, and um, become pretty good citizens.

  RP: Until the mid-twentieth century, portering was one of the few employment opportunities available to Black men outside of their communities in Canada. While it offered job security, wages were purposely low. The work echoed models of servitude dominant during antebellum slavery. Sleeping car porters, in particular, were part of a fantasy that allowed white customers to imagine themselves in an era when Black labour was extractive and inhumane. A heavy reliance on tips further dehumanized the men, reinforcing unequal power dynamics. But, as Dr. Saje Mathieu, Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and author of North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870–1955, asks: what other options did they have?

  Saje Mathieu (SM): … African Americans and West Indians and Canadian-born Black folk who found their way to the rails learned how to stretch a dime into a dollar, how to squeeze, you know, I forget who I heard recently say, like, you know, if someone brings lemons, gives you lemons, like find someone with tequila, and that’s pretty much what they did. And so, you know, these were never living wages. These were never— this wasn’t even assured work, but against the background of other available work to Black folks, this was worth the fight. What are the alternatives? Agricultural work, cotton farming, sugar cane farming in the Caribbean. I mean, meat packing. Back-breaking work that are long hours in harsh conditions and, to be clear, where you could easily get killed, right? And so, if you could get on the rails, it was worth finding a way to hold on to that work.

  RP: Refusals to adequately compensate the men for their service went hand in hand with the exploitative duties of which they were tasked. This reality was made possible because of the anti-Black racism that held our society together and the discriminatory institutional culture that was central to the operation of Canadian railways.

  Settle in as Melvin Crump, a porter who worked out of the CPR’s Calgary Division for eighteen years, takes us through a typical day on the rails. Here he explains what it meant to offer luxury service aboard the hotel on wheels.

  Melvin Crump (MC): Well, uh, the conditions under which we had to work, I-I had never been through this type of- uh, of a condition on a job in-in all the days of my life. Um, we had to more or less— we were put under somewhat of a very strenuous, uh, obligation to hold your job on the CPR. Meaning that, um, as an— as-as an example, uh, when you got finished making down your night— your beds during the night for your passengers to retire, um, and you had somewhat of twenty-seven beds to make down, you had to— you had to go to work now and shine each and every one of your passengers that had shoes to shine. You had to shine these shoes, all these shoes up. And then— and then after this, you-you cleaned up your washrooms the most, both at the men’s end and at the women’s end. You’re takin’ all the soiled towels and you bag them and put them away. And you put out— After cleaning your sinks, etc., you then put out clean towels and-and soap for the next morning for your customers. Now you’re not finished yet and this now must be somewhere around one o’clock in the morning. And, uh, you’re getting awfully tired because you start at seven o’clock in the morning, previous morning. Now you’re getting awfully tired and you’re not allowed to go to bed until such time or lie down to have a rest until such time that your time period came up. And-and with some of us, our time period came up at twelve, some came up at one, but if you— if you- if your time was to go down at twelve o’clock to have a rest, you had to be up again in about two and a half hours, two and a half hours sleep, so that you would be back on watch again. Now, the watch, everybody’s sleeping but you, and so you had to watch to see that nobody got up during the night or to cause any, uh, disturbance among the passengers that were sleeping, or anyone from the other cars that’s coming through that would cause any disturbance. It-it was your job to see that this— that this didn’t happen. Even if you were practically asleep on your feet walking through your car checking and testing, you were half asleep doing this, but there was not too much that, uh, you could do about that, because that was part of your duties and part of your job.

  RP: Dr. Mathieu adds another responsibility to the list of tasks laid out by Mr. Crump:

  SM: This is hard for people to imagine, but people literally would just buy a ticket for, like, their five-year-old and entrust them on an eight-hour train to get to Grandma in Calgary. And they got on, I don’t know, somewhere in Saskatchewan, and it was the porter’s job. Imagine, right? They can’t discipline these children. These children may be scared. They would probably be scared. They could be excited. And like he had to help, like, little girls go to the bathroom. The minefield, right? And it’s not your job ….

  RP: But childcare and caregiving, especially for elderly or inebriated passengers, were implicit parts of their job. Roy Williams, who devoted thirty years of his life to portering and, like Mr. Crump, ran out of the CPR’s Calgary Division, explains the demands placed on porters succinctly:

  RW: … [W]ell, he had to be a jack— most likely, a jack of all trades …

  RP: And of course, as he notes, the days were never ending.

  RW: Well, the-the-the-the hours wasn’t counted, we just worked that’s all, was— uh, twent-four hours a day was—

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  RW: —when we were on-on duty, we-we could be called on any-any hour. There was no— there was no time limit.

  SG: I see.

  RW: It was full-time day.

  RP: As you can imagine, these long days took their toll on porters. Sleep deprivation was fundamental to the oppressive labour practices instituted by Canadian railways at this time. Listen as Eddie Green recounts his first, highly disorienting cross-country trip to an interviewer named Kay. This is a woman about whom we know little but whose conversations with porters are also part of Stanley G. Grizzle’s collection at Library and Archives Canada.

  EG: …What we didn’t get most of all was enough sleep, because they give you three hours sleep during the day. And you ran from, like, Montréal, Toronto to Vancouver, and the new men, that’s the only jobs they could get ’cause the older fellas they’d run local.

  Kay: Mm.

  EG: So we’d, uh, leave Toronto or Montréal and go four nights, four days on the road to Vancouver. And it was pretty rough.

  Kay: Mm.

  EG: That first-first time I went to uh, Vancouver, I thought I was in China by the time I got there—

  Kay: Is that right?

  EG: It seemed so long.

  Kay: Mm-hmm.

  EG: I think I got to bed about uh, ten o’clock in the morning when I got in Vancouver, and I turned over at ten o’clock at night, and I got up ten o’clock the next day.

  Kay: Mm-hmm. And then would you come right back or—?

  EG: We had a-a day in Vancouver, then, uh, started back.

  Kay: Mm. But was on the- on the— It was while you were on the road that you got very little sleep, is that it?

  EG: Yes. Mm-hmm you get your— They allotted you uh, three hours out of the twenty-four.

  Kay: Mm.

  EG: And uh, that was it.

  Kay: Mm-hmm.

  EG: When you got up, you were supposed to stay awake all day long. And look after your people.

  Kay: Did they not have relief men? Like, it was just one man to a car? No—?

  EG: One man to a car all the way.

  RP: Demerit points, or brownies as some referred to them, regulated porters’ behaviour on CPR trains. This system of punishment reprimanded the men for all kinds of offences, fair or not. Anything from missing linens, to complaints about service (perceived or real), to intoxication on the job, to uniform violations counted. As did falling asleep. If a man attained sixty demerit points, then the company fired him. There was no appeal process.

  As a result, the men did anything they could to hold on to their jobs, trying their best to avoid being written up. In another conversation led by Kay, a former porter named Philip reveals the fine line he walked to avoid demerits, especially in regards to sleep:

  Philip: I cheated a little.

  Kay: Okay.

  Philip: I kept one eye open and closed the other and tapped my foot, you know. [laughs]

  RP: Railway companies in Canada had little regard for the health and welfare of porters. They viewed Black bodies as property that could be disposed of on a whim. There were always others standing by, willing to make the serious sacrifices this job demanded so as to have a chance at upward mobility. In addition to sleep deprivation, back injuries due to the manipulation of heavy berths and the carrying of large pieces of luggage, exposure to passengers’ cigarette smoke and the heavy dust that poured in through the windows, burns from carrying hot food and drinks, confrontations with drunk and disorderly passengers, and train derailments contributed to the risks associated with this job.

  To make matters worse, there was often little downtime, usually less than twenty-four hours, between runs. For those who worked for the CPR, the company put porters up in hotels, company-run boarding houses, or private homes. Raymond Coker tells us what hospitality looked like in some of these spaces:

  Raymond Coker (RC): … We used to stay in private homes or, uh, uh, some places, uh, the YMCA, and, uh, [laughs] they left much to be desired, believe me, they— the-the quarters and private homes were really bad, really bad. You know, they had one bathroom, you know, maybe fifteen, fifteen, twenty men, they with one bathroom, so you know what that entails …

  RP: In addition to the physical risks associated with these extractive labour practices, deeply troubling encounters between porters and their passengers further exacerbated the difficulties Black men faced on the rails. Harry Gairey Sr. tells us about a confrontation he had with an elderly lady, whose son had entrusted her care to him:

  Harry Gairey Sr (HG): … Now, with me, and while I was on the job, money didn’t mean a thing. I needed money … but I-I put the human concept to work. And, uh, I take her in a room. We start off and, uh, everything went well until we get to Kenora. That’s about ten o’clock the following night, our next stop, probably Winnipeg. So now it was in the morning at Kenora. She wanted me to send a telegram. She gave me the telegram at Fort William and, uh, she gave me $20 bill, $20 bill. I always take a note of— I call her attention to it, but she was always says, “There’s $20, Madam, okay.” And, uh, I went out and send a telegram and the telegram was sixty-five cents. And, uh, I brought back her change, $19.35. I checked it out, $19.35. So, when we get into Winnipeg, I went to the diner to get her breakfast because she couldn’t leave her room. I get her breakfast … and the waiter brought it back, order her breakfast, the waiter brought it, by taking it to her room. Now, apparently, she couldn’t find enough money. She couldn’t find how much— she had hid it away and probably she forget where she put it, you know? And, uh, so I take the empties, because the dining car were busy, I take the empties— dishes up to the diner. When I get up there, the steward says to me, he says, “The lady accused you of stealing her money. She says she had no money to pay for that.” I said, “What?” I get really angry. I says, “What?” Oh, I was— I was terribly upset.

  Kay: Mm-hmm.

  RP: It is unclear whether Mr. Gairey faced a formal reprimand from his superior for this incident. There is a click in the audio file, which suggests that the rest of the story continued to be told off the record. In any regard, this incident drives home the power white folks held over porters, the ease with which such accusations could be made, and the lasting harm these words could have on a man and his otherwise stellar reputation.

  But it is important to remember that porters were not always powerless in these types of situations. While risky, some, like Thomas Lawrence Williams, took it back when necessary, unwilling to sustain the abuse directed at them.

  Thomas Lawrence Williams (TW): Another lady I had on there, she’s from the States, this American tourist. So, she asked me to make her bed down. So I made her bed down and while she going to the washroom. When she come back, she said I stole her watch. And I said, “No, I-I haven’t seen your watch.” So, we had a- a very nice, uh, Pullman connector on this, we were running from Vancouver to Chicago at that time. And, uh, I went and got him. So, he said, “Me, look, look at you, look, I know this man. I know he didn’t took your watch.” “Oh yes, he did. I left it right on the bed here.” He said, “Look at me, when you look in your bag.” She said, “No, no.” And he said, “I’m gonna look in there anyway. And in your purse, if you don’t open it, I will open it for you ’cause I’ll go get the train conductor.” So he went and got the train conductor. They came back. And they opened her bag up and her watch is right there.

  RP: Talking back to a passenger, as Mr. Williams just did, was both daring and dangerous. Had the watch not been found, it is likely that he would have been fired for his behaviour. While he refused to remain silent and take this abuse, it is important to point out that he drew on white men—the Pullman connector and the train conductor—for help. His ability to maintain power in this situation, particularly if the train was on American soil, was limited, and could put him in physical peril. Much of the mob violence and lynchings that occurred there throughout the twentieth century began with false accusations such as the one Mr. Williams describes. White witnesses who could be trusted were absolutely essential to escalating this incident and resolving it.

  Historians Michele A. Johnson and Funké Aladejebi remind us of the importance of moving beyond the “… myth of benign [w]hiteness that has been deeply implanted into our country’s imaginary.” While Canada never instituted Jim Crow laws, like those in the United States which enforced racial segregation, it is patently false to believe that our country has been a place of equity and racial and cultural tolerance.

  Porters’ stories about life both on and off the rails, like this one shared by Oliver Charles Davis, reveal the deeply engrained and often invisible nature of Canadian racism.

  SG: Tell me about, uh— about the meals. Uh, I seem to recall that when we were away from home, I recall— I seem to recall being in Vancouver and having— not being able to eat in the restaurant, had to eat in the commissary. Do you recall that?

  Oliver Charles Davis (OD): Oh, of course. My first experience was with that would be in Calgary.

  SG: Yeah.

  OD: My first trip into Calgary, of course, never-never had been there before. We, uh, finally found the-the-the-the sign-out office. And we asked when we got through there, where we could have breakfast, and we were told to go into the basement, and we’ll find a-a kitchen down there, where we could eat. And that’s exactly what we had to do. It was— we were segregated.

  SG: Right.

  OD: And, uh, we couldn’t— we couldn’t eat in the— in the restaurants upstairs on the— in the main restaurants in-in-in the C- in the CPR station in-in Calgary.

  SG: On the train—

  OD: And then another experience was in-in-in-in-in Regina. You couldn’t even— I can recall being refused— uh, uh, uh, being refused a chance to eat in-in, uh, restaurants in-in Regina.

  SG: What— where did you eat in Regina?

  OD: Didn’t eat— we— until the following morning.

  SG: Really?

  OD: — Uh, that’s a fact. We— My-my-my first trip into Regina— I’d been through Regina many, many times, of course, but Regina was not a stopping point, as you know—

  SG: Mm.

  OD: —for any of our carriers from the east. But on this particular trip we’d been to— we-we-we’d gone to New York, and we had picked up troops in New York, and went from New York direct to-to, uh, Regina. And we got in there ten o’clock at night. And of course, we porters wanted to have something to eat before we went to bed.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  OD: There was no facilities there for us. No-no quarters for-for-for porters in Regina, so we would have to sleep on the cars. And when we went up into the town. We were told this [unintelligible 00:46:55] that you can’t eat your meal. We don’t serve Blacks here.

  SG: Mm-hmm. [silence]

  RP: Finding a middle ground between both the perceptions and the realities that have long defined Canada has always been integral to the ways that Black Canadians and Black migrants have experienced this place. As Cheryl Foggo, an award-winning Canadian author, documentary film director, screenwriter, and playwright with a deep familial connection to portering, notes, sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.

  Cheryl Foggo (CF): … Canada figured quite prominently in the narrative of the promised land, which was so prominent in our musical, in the canon of our music. And although Canada specifically wasn’t named usually in those songs, all those references to the promised land, even to heaven, crossing the River Jordan, Canaan land, were connected to people’s belief that there was safety further north and sometimes even specifically in Canada … And yet, they knew with every fibre of their being that they were not allowed in certain spaces and that they would face challenges and that when they were taking their crops to market, they were being cheated. They knew these things. And when it’s explicit as it was in the society that they had left behind, it’s sometimes easier to figure out how to work around it than when it is unspoken.

  Background Music: Unnamed Black Women’s Quartet, “Peace in the Valley.”

  RP: It is important to point out that Black Canadians, like Mr. Davis, who experienced oppressive instances of segregation did not face these injustices alone. As Cheryl Foggo explains:

  CF: … [T]here was solidarity between Black people and other racialized communities as well … [B]efore Black people established their own restaurants in Calgary, they had tremendous community with Chinese people who had restaurants already, and they knew they could go there in safety and get a meal and not be prevented from coming in or not sit there and wait for service that never came. So that solidarity also existed between Black and Chinese people, Chinese immigrants. And also … Sikhs. Same thing. There were many people who intermarried with Sikh communities that were already here as well and have been here for generations. And I think a lot of people think of Black history as a binary between Black and white people, but we don’t often get the opportunity to talk about the fact that there was a tremendous community and solidarity between different immigrant and racialized communities and Black people. And sometimes some of our best supports came from those interconnected relationships.

  RP: Resilience, as Cheryl Foggo continues, was also deeply rooted in the relationships that Black Canadians forged and have long sustained with Indigenous peoples.

  CF: In terms of Black and Indigenous solidarity, you know, it is a very complex relationship. And I almost never know how to answer that question when it comes to Black life on the prairies, because there is almost no Black family I can think of that doesn’t have Indigenous members. There was so much intermarriage and friendship between Black and Indigenous people that it’s almost like talking about was there air that people breathed … [T]here was tremendous support and skills that were learned about how to survive in this place specifically, but it wasn’t necessarily, you’re over there and we’re over here and we’ll come over and show you this. It was in some cases true community that led to marriage … And those relationships are ongoing into our lives today.

  RP: In addition to interracial solidarity, the community that porters built amongst themselves helped them move past the abject racism they faced both on and off the job. Stanley Grizzle’s interviews tell us time and again about the bonds each one of his interviewees formed with fellow porters and how those friendships remained strong throughout their lives. These men had nicknames for each other, which were often more inappropriate than not. Their friendly banter kept the environment in which they worked light, while reminding them of the lives they led outside the sleeping cars they serviced. The families and extended communities these men left behind for long stretches of time were never far from their minds. Porters also took great pride in reading their passengers. Appearances and subsequent exchanges inspired more nicknames as well as fantastical stories. It was gossip, about the good and the bad, that got them through their long treks across the country. And it was this gossip about their difficult and extractive workspaces that connected them to one another, spreading ideas that created the conditions for transnational solidarity and ultimately unionization. Their stories demonstrate that they were, like all of us, human.

  And so, it is important that we also shine a light on the ways these men made space for other exploits, beyond the rails. They were so much greater than the abuse they suffered. Their lives were so much more than the hotel on wheels they served. Taking back power meant paving their own paths through the choices they made in their time off. Some chose to leave portering early on in their careers. The demands of the job were just too much. For others willing to take risks, portering, as Dr. Saje Mathieu notes, served merely as a stepping stone to accomplishing the dreams these men had long shelved.

  SM: [P]ortering and the different ways in which they supplemented their income from portering, which, again, sometimes people only want to hear the cute parts of the story, right? The sort of flattering parts of the story. But some sleeping car porters very much ran booze, or bootlegging, and wrote about it and bragged about how, especially, Montréal was wonderful for making that extra money, and that contributed to that mobility. It also contributed to their ability to sort of stick their thumb in the eye of the low wages and other forms of exploitation that they experienced while working on the rails.

  RP: While Montréal’s Black community, situated within the city’s St. Antoine district, has often been characterized by its impoverished conditions, this label does a disservice to the rich and vibrant culture that developed there.

  The Prohibition era, which ran from 1920 to 1933 in the United States, helped foster this growth. Given that Quebec was the last Canadian province to adopt similar legislation in 1918, and the first to repeal it a year later, Montréal’s proximity to the American border made it attractive to many, especially those who bootlegged or moved booze between the two countries.

  Stories about how rum-running and bootlegging worked in Montréal are notably absent from Stanley Grizzle’s interview collection, but this one, told by Bill Overton, a thirty-five-year veteran out of the CPR’s Toronto Division, provides an important first-hand perspective on the railway’s role in the unlawful but highly lucrative business ventures that led to the opening up of significant creative spaces for Black talent in the St. Antoine district, and Montréal more generally.

  Bill Overton (BO): … And, uh, I remember two of the— some of the [chuckles] bootleggin’ days. There was a-a man in Windsor area, who was, um, as a boy goin’ along, he was a newsboy on the train. And then, uh, of course, that’s a really a hustlin’ position. And then when it’d come to liquor, he branched out and he became a bootlegger. He got quite a clientele of, uh, customers for his liquor, which he would buy in Montréal and ship through by train. There wasn’t cars in the early days, you must remember, and trucks was very slow. The highways wasn’t fit for trucks. But he would, uh, ship it through by train, the porters mostly, and then sometimes, uh, dining car stewards would, uh, handle it for him … Everybody was paid off, but it got, uh, so some of the big-time over there didn’t like it, so they put a crimp in it and knocked him off several times. Well, then he got mad and he went over there and tried to hone in on the numbers racket, in Detroit, and, uh, the word come out, [clears throat] there’s a contract out on him, that is, there was somebody scheduled to kill him.

  Interviewer: Is-is this a Black man or white man?

  BO: He was a white man.

  Interviewer: Hmm.

  BO: But here’s the point, he came back, and on the train, we knew him.

  Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

  BO: He was one of our good customers.

  Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

  BO: Good because he would always give us a dolla’, always give us a pint of whiskey. Whether you drank it or not, it didn’t matter … He left to go to England and never made it ’cause they threw him overboard on the ocean … It was a really known fact that it was because he was healthy going in, and of course the report went out he committed suicide, but they got him. So— He was tryin’ to escape.

  Interviewer: Mm-hmm.

  BO: But, uh, with him, why he had, uh, control of the bootleggin’ up there, and of course, many of our men going back and forth were bootleggin’ … There was a lot of boys made plenty of money bootleggin’. And, uh, but I I never made an awful lot. I never made an awful lot. I-I got maybe, oh, all told, oh, $40 $50 … ’cause they were just givin’ me something to just go look the other way and that’s all there was. I-I-I-I-I didn’t get into it. I-I wasn’t lucky. I couldn’t feel myself lucky to do it. That’s why I got nothing today because some of them got plenty of money because they did, yes um.

  RP: From the 1920s through to the 1950s, the money made as a result of this illicit behaviour helped to catapult Montréal to international repute as a wide-open city with a lively nightlife culture. But, as Nancy Marrelli points out in her book Stepping Out: The Golden Age of Montreal Night Clubs, the racial geography of Montréal’s club scene was

  one of complex race, class, and language relations, as well as territorial boundaries. The “downtown” clubs were on Saint Antoine Street, where many [B]lacks lived because it was close to the railways where many of the men worked as porters. There was an active music scene in the [B]lack community, although there was a long history of discrimination in the unions until the early 1940s, and mixed [B]lack and white bands were not common. At various times it was trendy to have [B]lack musicians and [B]lack shows, particularly in east-end clubs, but all-white policies were the rule in hotels, and were common for uptown clubs in the early years. The downtown clubs usually had [B]lack musicians and entertainers, and their patron policies were wide open. That’s where you could almost always find great music, and it was where other musicians went to jam after their shows in theatres or clubs in other parts of town.

  Some of the “downtown” clubs Marrelli refers to included Rockhead’s Paradise and Café St-Michel, in the heart of Montréal’s Black community. Both clubs, which were owned by former porters, ensured that Black musicians, from not only Canada but elsewhere, had safe stages on which to perform. Rumour has it that these proprietors had the capital needed to initiate these ventures because of the rum-running they did during the Prohibition era.

  Montréal soon offered a Canadian version of New York City’s Harlem jazz scene, paving the way for great Black Canadian talents, the likes of which included Oscar Peterson and Daisy Peterson Sweeney, Steep Wade, Oliver Jones, Joe Sealy, and Milton Sealy. Incidentally, all of these artists were the children of railway employees. Creating the conditions for a more just world for the next generation made the lived realities porters faced, as well as the risks they took, a little easier to tolerate.

  Those who embedded themselves in the era’s criminal underworld, and walked away unscathed, were able to free themselves from the exploitative labour conditions they faced on the rails. That said, the vast majority of men did not participate in these risky ventures. The stakes were just too high; the costs too great. For most, unionization was the only way to improve working conditions, pay, and ultimately porters’ quality of life. As Leonard Oscar Johnston tells us, porters’ elevated social status within their communities and the contributions they made to them led to the solidarity which made change possible.

  SG: Did the porters and their union have any status in-in the overall community?

  LJ: Oh, yes. Yeah

  SG: [inaudible 00:02:37]

  LJ: Oh, sure. Because at that time, uh, the only— the centre, the whole centre of the community were— the elites of the community were the porters. Because even during the Depression, it was the porters who were-were bringing home the food, you know? Uh, so they-they held a very important part in the community. They were not looked down on uh, you know?

  SG: What percentage of the households, Black households do you- do you think were fed by porters, uh, wages precisely?

  LJ: Oh, I’d say porters’ wages fed about 90% ...

  RP: Coming up in the fourth episode of “Porter Talk,” we’ll explore porters’ long fight to gain rights and respect on the job and how their collective efforts created the conditions for a unionized workforce.

  SG: I think that one of the best lessons that can be learned from the-the presence of sleeping car porters, uh, all Black men, is that um, they can do it themselves. We organized a union, without a government grant. On our paltry income, we were able to do for ourselves, organize a union … So the lessons that the porters can give to the community, and it’s important that the-the history of porters be documented, is that uh— you have the ability if you wish, to-to throw off the shackles of uh, of-of slavery and uh, free yourself.

  RP: If you’re interested in hearing more from Stanley Grizzle and other sleeping car porters, subscribe to Discover Library and Archives Canada. You’ll receive episodes as they are released, which introduce you to these men as well as their wives and children. Together, they give voice to Black life on and off the rails during the twentieth century. Leading Black scholars and historians help us contextualize porters’ experiences, enabling us to understand the myriad ways these citizens faced obstacles and persisted nevertheless.

  Background Music: Unnamed Black Women’s Quartet, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

  Thank you for being with us. I’m Richard Provencher, your host. You’ve been listening to “Porter Talk,” the first season of Voices Revealed.

  Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Saje Mathieu and Cheryl Foggo. You can find biographies of each person who participated in this episode in the show notes. There you will also find an episode transcript with embedded timestamps that link you to the original interview content in the Grizzle collection. Feel free to explore and share these stories widely!

  We also acknowledge those who have done French voiceovers for this episode: Roldson Dieudonné, Gérard-Hubert Étienne, Gbidi Coco Alfred, Lerntz Joseph, Euphrasie Mujawamungu, Frédéric Pierre, and Christelle Tchako Womassom.

  Acclaimed musician and producer, Paul Novotny, composed “Jazz Dance,” the theme song for “Porter Talk.” Joe Sealy, famed jazz pianist who is the son of a porter, is also featured on the recording.

  All other music in this episode is from the audio library at BlueDotSessions.com.

  This episode was produced, written, engineered, and edited by Tom Thompson, Jennifer Woodley, and Stacey Zembrzycki.

  If you’re interested in listening to the French equivalent of our podcast episodes, you can find them on our website or your favourite podcast app. Simply search for “Découvrez Bibliothèque et Archives Canada.”

  For more information on our podcasts, go to Library and Archives Canada’s homepage, type “podcast” in the search bar in the top right corner, and click on the first link. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, reach out to the podcast team at the email address located at the bottom of the episode page.

  References

  Michele A. Johnson and Funké Aladejebi, “Introduction,” in Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History eds. Michele A. Johnson and Funké Aladejebi (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), 3–27.

  Cheryl Foggo, John Ware Reclaimed (National Film Board of Canada, 2020).

  Cecil Foster, “They call me George”: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2019).

  Steven High, Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence and Class (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).

  Nancy Marrelli, Stepping Out: The Golden Age of Montreal Night Clubs (Montréal: Véhicule, 2004).

  Saje Mathieu, North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

  Dorothy W. Williams, Blacks in Montreal, 1628-1986, An Urban Demography (Montreal: Les Éditions Yvon Blais Inc, 1989).

  Dorothy W. Williams, The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1997).

Host: Richard Provencher, Chief, Media Relations, Communications and Policy Branch

Featuring the voices of: Raymond Coker, Melvin Crump, Oliver Charles Davis, George Forray, Harold James Folwer, Harry Gairey Sr., Eddie Green, Stanley G. Grizzle, Charles Allen Milton Hog, Leonard Oscar Johnston, Bill Overton, Willis Richardson, Thomas Lawrence Williams, and Roy Williams

Guests: Cheryl Foggo and Dr. Saje Mathieu

Voiceover for the French version of this podcast: Roldson Dieudonné, Gérard-Hubert Étienne, Gbidi Coco Alfred, Lerntz Joseph, Euphrasie Mujawamungu, Frédéric Pierre, and Christelle Tchako Womassom

Narrator biographies

Interviewer

Stanley G. Grizzle, the eldest of seven children, was born in Toronto in 1918. His parents, both of whom immigrated from Jamaica in 1911, worked in the service sector: his mother as a domestic servant and his father as a chef for the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). Poverty and a lack of opportunities led Grizzle to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1940, where he began a 20-year career as a sleeping car porter. In 1942, he was conscripted by the Canadian Government, attaining corporal status while he served as a medic in Holland. In 1962, Grizzle left the CPR and became the first Black Canadian to be employed by the Ontario Ministry of Labour. He ran unsuccessfully for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation before being appointed by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau as a judge in the court of Canadian citizenship in 1978. A devoted activist, Grizzle campaigned tirelessly for reforms in Canadian labour, immigration, and human rights policies. He was also an avid historian dedicated to documenting and preserving Black History in Canada. His collection is held at Library and Archives Canada.

Narrators

Raymond Coker was an industrial chemist as well as a talented musician. Racism made it impossible for him to gain steady employment in either field, leading him to the Toronto Division of the Canadian National Railway (CNR). Here he laboured as a sleeping car porter and a buffet porter until changes in the collective agreement, made possible with the implementation of the Fair Employment Practices Act (1951), enabled him to be appointed to the position of conductor. (Source: 417381)

Melvin Crump was born in Edmonton in 1916 to a family that immigrated to Keystone, Alberta, from Oklahoma in 1911 under the Homestead Act. Uninterested in farming, he became a CPR sleeping car porter in 1936, at the height of the Great Depression. He worked out of the Calgary Division until 1954, where he served as chairman of the BSCP Safety Committee. (Source: 417403)

Oliver Charles Davis was born in 1917 and began portering for the CPR in 1939, just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. (Source: 417387)

George Forray was born in Montréal in 1911 to immigrant parents from Grenada and Guadalupe. In 1937, while travelling home from Mount Allison University, the CPR recruited him to work as a sleeping car porter for the summer. Forray never returned to school and remained with the company for 40 years. He was a proud member of the BSCP throughout his service on the rails. (Source: 417383)

Harold James Fowler was born in Dover Township in Kent County, about 10 kilometres from the city of Chatham. He made his first trip as a CPR sleeping car porter in June 1939, running out of the company’s Toronto Division to Vancouver. Fowler was a chartered member of the BSCP, serving as chairman of its Entertainment Committee for a period. He also took great pride in providing sound advice and counselling to fellow porters while they were in transit. Fowler was forced to retire from his job in 1976 due to severe arthritis in his back. Luckily, he had worked enough years to qualify for a full pension. (Source: 417393)

Harry Gairey Sr. was born in Jamaica in 1898. His father died when he was just five years old, leading his mother to move him and his seven siblings to Cuba. Gairey worked in a sugar mill there as a teenager before moving to Toronto in 1914 where he obtained a job with the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) as a dishwasher, cook, and waiter. He worked with the company until 1932. In 1936, Gairey returned to the rails as a sleeping car porter for the CPR’s Toronto Division, to support his young family; he was later promoted to the position of Porter Instructor. Gairey was a founding member of the division’s BSCP, taking on leadership roles in the organization throughout his career, as well as a celebrated community activist. In particular, he was a formative member of both the Toronto Branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Negro Citizenship Association. (Source: 417384)

Eddie Green was part of a large, close-knit family, composed of eight children. Taking after their father, he and his siblings were talented amateur artists who regularly competed against each other in friendly competitions judged by their mother. None, however, could make ends meet with their craft. To support the family, Green’s father worked as a cook for the CPR, a job with connections that led to his son’s hiring as a sleeping car porter for the company’s Montreal Division during the Depression, in 1937. (Source: 417379)

Charles Allen Milton Hog was born in Montreal in 1921. His family left Canada when he was three years old and settled in Jamaica, the birthplace of his parents. Searching for adventure, Hog returned to Canada in 1946 and got a job one year later as a CPR sleeping car porter in Montreal. He spent the next 18 years of his life on the rails. Inspired by the work that had been done by Jamaica’s People’s National Party to unionize sugar cane workers, he quickly joined the Montreal Division’s BSCP when it was just starting. He served as a local member of its Grievance Committee and routinely counselled Arthur Robinson Blanchette, who conducted all Canadian BSCP business and reported directly to A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the American BSCP and its first president. Hog also served as the BSCP representative for the Quebec Labour Council. In his later years, he was heavily involved in human rights activism, serving as a founding member of the Negro Citizenship Association in Montreal. (Source: 417405)

Leonard Oscar Johnston was born in Toronto in 1918. Like other Black men, abject racism limited his early employment options, leading him to the CPR, where he began working as a sleeping car porter for the Toronto Division in 1940. His career was cut short at the thirty-seven-year mark as a result of the chronic back problems that he developed on the job; thankfully, he was able to access a disability pension, however meagre. While Johnston was a rank-and-file member of the BSCP throughout his tenure with the CPR, his Communist Party of Canada affiliation complicated his belonging. The BSCP distrusted him; for his part, he maintained distance from its actions. Johnston’s worldview was grounded in both ideology and lived experiences, pushing him to understand his labour exploitation as part of a greater race and class struggle. (Source: 417394 [part 1]; 417396 [part 2])

Bill Overton was born in Massachusetts, where he trained as a stenographer. Unable to gain employment in his field, he took to the rails as a Pullman porter for the Central Vermont Railway. After marrying, he relocated to Toronto in 1909 to join his wife and her family, taking on jobs in a factory paint shop, with the Toronto Steamship Company and at the Grand Union Hotel. Despite gaining full-time employment with the CPR’s Toronto Division as a sleeping car porter in 1910, he returned to the United States where he continued to find himself in menial jobs until the end of the First World War. When Overton came back to Toronto in 1919, he committed to the CPR, working there until his retirement in 1954. (Source: 417382; 417391; 417397)

Willis Richardson was born in Strathmore, Alberta, in 1913. He grew up and laboured on farms and ranches until 1940, when he made his first trip as a CPR sleeping car porter, running out of its Calgary Division. Richardson took great pride in his position, recognizing the benefits of steady employment and the status it accorded him within his community. He remained a rank-and-file BSCP member throughout his thirty-five-year tenure, helping to grieve and improve unfair labour conditions. (Source: 417389)

Thomas Lawrence Williams was born in Oklahoma in 1906. He came to Canada with his family four years later, settling in Battleford, Saskatchewan. Building rail lines for the GTR enabled his father to purchase a homestead in 1912; the family stayed there until his death in 1924. Like his father, Williams tapped ties to build a freight line for the CPR north of Battleford before he obtained a job, working summers as a sleeping car porter with the company in 1931. He did not gain full-time employment until after the difficult years of the Depression. (Source: 417401)

Roy Williams was born in 1903 in Waco, Texas. His large family, which included twelve children, immigrated to Canada in stages. Williams himself came in 1910 as part of the Black Migration movement, settling with his family members in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, before moving to a homestead in Hillside. Seasonal jobs in construction and farming occupied his youth until the job crisis caused by the Depression led him to Winnipeg in 1936 to work as a sleeping car porter for the CPR. One year later, the company transferred Williams to Calgary, where he remained on the job 32 more years. Williams played an integral role in organizing the BSCP in Calgary and later served as Secretary-Treasurer of the union local for sixteen years. His wife, Cordie Williams, was also involved in the union movement, through her participation in the BSCP Ladies’ Auxiliary. (Source: 417402 [part 1]; 417389 [part 2])

*There is not enough information in the interview conducted with Philip to create a biography about him. (Source: 417379 [part 2])

Scholars, Storytellers and Community Knowledge Keepers

Cheryl Foggo is an award-winning Black Canadian storyteller who was awarded the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2022. She is an author, documentary film director, screenwriter and playwright whose work focuses on Black history, with a particular emphasis on the prairies. Some of her notable works include Pourin’ Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West (finalist for the Alberta Culture Non-Fiction Award); One Thing That’s True (finalist for the Governor General’s Award); and John Ware Reclaimed (nominated for the Writer’s Guild of Canada Award). Foggo is descended from the Black Migration of 1910, which saw her maternal great-grandparents leave Oklahoma to settle near Maidstone, Alberta. Her grandfather was a porter, as were several of her uncles.

Dr. Saje Mathieu is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She holds a joint PhD in History and African American Studies from Yale University and has been a fellow at the Warren Center and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, the Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her first book, North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955, details the history of African American and West Indian sleeping car porters in Canada and the social, cultural, legal and political impacts of their employment. Dr. Mathieu’s current work is focused on the global experiences of Black soldiers during World War I.

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