Porter talk: Episode 6

• Transcript of “Porters and the Making of Modern Canada” - Episode 6

  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 presents “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 do you think the railroad has done for you?

  Raymond Lewis (RL): It was a great school of education.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  RL: Uh, as a porter I used to sit and shine the shoes… And every time I picked up a shoe, or cleaned a toilet, or washed out a spittoon, I was thinking... this was the school of hard knocks, and I did my job, did it well. I consider myself a salesman for the CPR, although they didn’t pay me accordingly, nor to the point of appreciation.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  RL: But I look back now and say, God, it was a great educator. The people I met—

  SG: Mm.

  RL: —the people I talked to…

  SG: Okay, well, I only have one more question. You told me what the railroad—the railroading did for you.

  RL: Oh yes.

  SG: What do you think that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters accomplished?

  RL: It made us men.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  RL: It made us men because we could stand up and be counted…

  Frank Collins (FC): I think it was a wonderful thing that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was the first, as far as I am concerned, the first major step that the Black people made in the Dominion of Canada to band together.

  SG: Do you think that the presence of the Bre—Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Winnipeg, uh, had any effect on the respect given to the Black community locally?

  Aurelius Leon Bennett (AB): Uh, oh yes, mm-hmm. I think, uh, uh, very-very much so. And, um, it-it, uh, it made people look at—look at us twice and made the company respect us more.

  SG: Right.

  AB: So, um, it was a good thing that-that it, um, started here.

  SG: All right now, can you, uh, can we try to evaluate the union? Uh, well, first, what-what effect did it have on the total community and-and-and, uh—

  Leonard Oscar Johnston (LJ): Oh, it uplifted—It uplifted the community.

  SG: [inaudible] A lot of the people or the Black community?

  LJ: The Black community.

  SG: Well, as you reflect, uh, since you’re retired now, what did you think of portering? Did you enjoy it on the whole? Did you find it a good experience? Or did it teach you anything?

  Harold Osburn Eastman (HE): Portering was a great experience and I have no reason—I am not sad that I was a porter because it made me a livin’ and my family a livin’, and I was able to retire as a dining car steward and have a pretty good pension, which, although, I feel the pension should be indexed, you know, with the high cost of living.

  SG: Of course. Oh, yeah.

  HE: Yes.

  RP: Before Stanley G. Grizzle ended each one of his interviews, he always made space for his narrators to share any final reflections. When Raymond Lewis said that portering was a great educator, we hear how he chose to rise above adversity and find gratitude, even enlightenment, on the job. When Frank Collins declared how important the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was for uniting Black communities across Canada, he bore witness to the ways that the union movement formalized the deep connections that had long bound himself and distant relations together. When Aurelius Leon Bennett and Leonard Oscar Johnson spoke about respect and racial uplift, they revealed how unionization helped to lay the foundations for success. And when Harold Osburn Eastman pondered his time on the rails, he shared his immense pride in being able to provide for himself and his family. Together, these narratives tell us a great deal about power and how Black men wrangled to both attain and hold it over the course of their careers.

  Helen Williams Bailey, whose husband and brothers worked as sleeping car porters, builds on the remarks made by Mr. Eastman. For her, unionization was the only way to address the unequal power dynamics that rendered porters’ labour invisible, assuring a brighter future for these men and subsequent generations.

  SG: What-what good—what good do you think the-the Brotherhood did, uh, in terms of, uh, elevating the status of the Black…

  Helen Williams Bailey (HB): Well, it—mm-hmm.

  SG: … porters and their families and Black workers, in general, in the community?

  HB: Well, it raised their standard of living because, uh, naturally, their working conditions improved as well as their, um, salaries improved. So, um, that in itself would raise the standard of living. I think men then came to even feel respect for themselves because then they had, uh, they were making a worthwhile living for their families.

  RP: Porters endured the exploitative corporate culture of Canadian railways because of the limited job opportunities they had at that time. They knew that tolerating the abuse was the only way they would be able to provide for their families. Porters dreamt of a brighter future for their children, their communities, and their nation, and worked hard to make this reality possible.

  Thankfully, the successful negotiation of new collective agreements, during and after the Second World War, made the work bearable, the pay more equitable, and their dreams possible. Judith Williams-Graham, whose father worked for the CPR’s Calgary Division for nearly thirty-three years, explains how these union gains enabled her to grow up in a financially stable household.

  Judith Williams-Graham (JWG): Well, okay, so like 1952, I was four years old, and we were living in the house by the stampede grounds. My father had rented that house when he came to Calgary as a porter. He had saved half the money to purchase it in 1938 and was rejected from having a mortgage. He took in boarders and roomers. And by the time he married my mother in 1940, you know, they owned the home, and they still saved money by having the odd boarder. But it wasn’t necessary…

  I know the stability of having the steady union job prevented my mom from having to be a domestic because she became a housewife. And so she did not have to work outside the home in order for them to make their living. My father purchased a property in southwest Calgary, on 43^rd Avenue, and we watched it built from the ground and then it was stuccoed and plastered by his brothers. And he was very proud to say that he’d never had to have a mortgage longer than three years on any property. So they did well. And then we can see from the others that were able to, you know—in the ’50s, after 1952, they bought new homes, they drove new cars, they took vacations. We had a wonderful, stable life.

  RP: Cheryl Foggo, an award-winning author, documentary film director, screenwriter, and playwright who also has deep familial connections to portering, moves us beyond the personal, exploring the significant ripple effect that improved wages had on Calgary’s Black community.

  Cheryl Foggo (CF): They also moved into other neighbourhoods in Calgary, which they had been prevented from moving to in the past. And I think that was in part because people didn’t have to rely on the systems that had prevented them from living in other neighbourhoods. They still got resistance and people still made petitions. But if you had cash to move into a neighbourhood and you didn’t have to go through the system of the bank that was getting in your way. Or if you were part of something like the credit union … in Vancouver, where Black people formed their own lending institutions and whatnot, you couldn’t necessarily be prevented from living in a different neighbourhood. So it was both a blessing and a curse … [T]he unionization of the Brotherhood created economic stability, not just for the porters and their families but other people who had ancillary businesses that were connected to the porters. And because people didn’t necessarily have to rely on racist systems that wanted to keep them from owning homes and that kind of thing, it was quite a shift in the community. And again, some of that closeness was lost because people weren’t within walking distance of each other, but it was a necessary shift.

  RP: Like Mrs. Williams-Graham and Ms. Foggo, Joseph Morris Sealy, who ran out of the CPR’s Montréal Division for forty-six years, emphasized how union gains fundamentally impacted Black experience in Canada. From his vantage point as a father, the most important shift pertained to porters’ children and the great potential for generational advancement.

  Joseph Morris Sealy (JS): Well, I have to put it this way, a lot of the Brother-of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, their children, because of the fact the father was working and bringing in the necessary money, their children benefited because opportunities were opening up. We live in a changing world and those kids were going to school, gettin’ education, and fitting into jobs away from the railroad completely. So, I believe that they did benefit the community because of a different class or ambitious young people fittin’ in the outside—into the outside world. Yeah. They did benefit the community.

  RP: Despite union gains, portering remained a difficult job. Porters sacrificed family time for long runs across Canada and into parts of the United States, dealt with the demands of rude and, at times, racist customers, and continued to cope with sleep deprivation. Many porters recognized these difficult conditions were the steep price to be paid to secure a brighter future for their children and strove to shield them from the harsh realities they endured. Mrs. Williams-Graham was one of them.

  JWG: When I was a little girl, my father, Roy Williams, was a porter working on the railway and my mom belonged also to the Ladies’ Auxiliary… When I was little, because of my placement in the family, my cousins, etc., were all older than me. So I was that little girl who was in rooms listening to adult conversations. And now that I reflect on it, because I remember the stories and how much fun it was listening to them, and there was never, ever a word of negativity. I have never in my life, from my father, from my uncle, heard a negative story about them working on the railway. It was only as an adult … that I realized exactly what they were going through … [T]he atmosphere that my uncles and my father presented in our homes, they were uplifting. They concentrated on the positive aspects of it. They didn’t burden us with what they must have gone through. I mean, you know, was this a conscious effort on their part to keep us from feeling their pain, or did they just not want to verbalize it and relive it? I just saw it as they were working very hard towards equality, to have justice, to have the right to succeed in the society, to overcome…

  RP: It was not until later in life, when conducting her own research on portering and speaking with other family members, that Mrs. Williams-Graham realized the lengths to which both her father and mother went to ensure that her childhood would be unlike theirs. They had had to struggle, and she would not.

  JWG: I remember my mom had organized the household so that everything could be calm and prepared for when my father was in town. She went to great lengths to make sure that when he got home that he was rested and that there was peace in the house. She prepared his favourite dinners when he was in town. It was always so exciting. “Dad’s coming home tomorrow” or “We’re going to go pick up Dad.” You know, I was a true daddy’s girl. He took me on the railway, on trips. I rode on a steam engine. You know, I’ve been on the Canadian. I even went on those small commuter trains from Calgary to Edmonton…

  When my father took me on the train, like, you know, he always, “This is my daughter.” And I was always like, “What’s that? What does that do?” I was curious about everything. And so, you know, he would show me all the things on the train, how it operated. And I remember watching him carefully make up the cars, you know, the sleeping car porters. It was very meticulous with how they would, you know, all of the gear was in the upper berth. And they would use a big clunky key and open that upper berth and inside would be the blankets and pillows and that. And they would—he would prepare the lower-the lower berth and make up the bed. And then there was these huge coverings that would—outer coverings for privacy that they would put up, you know, to prepare the cars.

  I was totally unaware that he wasn’t sleeping, you know, that they had to stay awake for long hours. When I went into the dining car, I remember, especially on a trip to Nelson, and my dad made such a big deal of, “Oh, we’re going to the dining car.” And I sat down, and they put that white linen napkin on your lap, and a white linen tablecloth, and all the silver service. And I remember having pancakes with maple syrup. And I was totally unaware that my father would not be allowed to eat with me because he was a porter. [laughs] You know, I was so absorbed in all of the excitement and the newness of it all and how proud he was to show me these things. And I was not aware that my father had to eat behind a closed curtain or any of those things that they went through.

  I remember when we got to Nelson, and of course, because he hadn’t slept, when they get to the city, they have to go to porters’ quarters where they can rest before their next shift. And here’s me, all excited to see the city because I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and my father had to rest. So I had to make myself busy while he rested. But they were joyous times that he presented for me…

  RP: While Mrs. Williams-Graham was unaware of the harsh realities of portering, other children were keenly aware of the incredible sacrifices their fathers made for them. Ivy Lawrence Maynier was one of them. Her father, Alexander Lawrence, was a trained engineer from Guyana who had a long, distinguished career of service and union leadership in Montréal as a CPR porter. It was his labour that made it possible for Mrs. Maynier to graduate from McGill University and law school at the University of Toronto before going on to become a member of the Inns of Court in London, where she was called to the bar in England in 1947. Listen as she recounts the moment she recognized the costs her father bore for her success.

  Ivy Lawrence Maynier (ILM): And I was then going to-to the university. And then I walked down to the—to work at the library for a while. And I walked down to the, uh, uh, station and looked for Dad’s car. And I remember one night, it was bitter, and it was a bitter night. And I-I-I myself was just so upset about this. And—But I wanted to go down ’cause I knew Daddy was going on standby. He was standing out. And I went down, went to the station, went and looked down the track for Dad, and there he was standing outside. Dad was a short man and this, you know, tight little person. And I looked down there to catch his eye. And there he was standing with snow on top of his cap, and his shoulders pushed—pulled together like this, and the wind was going down that line there, just brutally. It was just awful. And he was just standing there, and, uh—and the snow piled up on him. And, uh, I went and I sat down in the concourse outside from where-from where the trains left.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  ILM: And I just sat on a bench and cried. I’ll never forget that.

  SG: Why?

  ILM: I— that-that—What Dad had to do…

  SG: Mm.

  ILM: … in order to—what-what he was going through in order to stand there. And this quite cold and head tucked in, and this wind is blowing and-and, you know, to-to—You-you weren’t getting anything in tips that counted for anything at that time.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  ILM: If you got a quarter from somebody, you were doing well, [chuckles] you know?

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  ILM: And, um, but I always remember that. And I was—I went and sat on the bench. They didn’t have the bench for the backs. They just had the [inaudible] the benches at that time.

  SG: Mm-hmm.

  ILM: I went and sat on one of them and I just bawled. And a little old lady came over to me, and she sat down beside me, and put her arms around me, and she said, “I don’t want to ask what you’re crying about. But I just want to say, you’re gonna be all right. Everything is gonna be all right.” I always remember that old lady.

  RP: For porters, change began on the job with a push to unionize and then extended to bargaining for new, fair collective agreements. The gains that followed in the postwar period had an almost immediate effect on porters’ loved ones and their communities.

  The men quickly began using the power they gained with each incremental change to lobby against anti-Black racism beyond the rails. In this way, they helped to lay the foundation for a more modern and just Canada. Melvin Crump, Harold James Fowler, and Oliver Davis share their reflections on the profound changes they experienced as a result of these developments. The confidence they acquired through racial uplift is palpable.

  Melvin Crump (MC): … [T]he unions played-played what you may term as, um, an opening up of the door for the young Black, uh, men of Canada, uh, who became porters on, uh, the Canadian Pacific Railway. And I’m one of the ones that helped to open that door, along, uh, with being a member of the union. What I mean by that is the conditions under the next generation of porters—uh, under the conditions they had to work. We, firstly, the union. Then, secondly, we members of the union helped to pave the way for the next coming generation. We did—and uh-and uh, this I am proud to have been a part of, to make, to-to-to know that we did, helped to pave the way for my next generation coming behind me.

  Stanley: How?

  Melvin: Well, how it was because, uh, they didn’t have to go through the trials and tribulations that I had to go through, nor did they have to-did they, uh, receive the-the-the-the-the—the money that they received for the duties that they performed, uh, exceeded what I received in my duties performed, uh, uh, threefold, threefold. And-and I was one of the ones that helped make this possible for them. And it was the union that-that did the whole thing in general. It was the union…

  SG: … Can you make any concluding comments or observations or both on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters? Its effect on the you—community, uh, or any other concluding comment? The good that they, it did in the community?

  Harold James Fowler (HF): Oh, I think it-I think it had a great deal on—Because it raised, lifted the standards of the porters, and as quiet as it’s kept, porters did a lot for this-this country. Uh, educational-wise, uh, in the family, through the families and that, and, uh, some of ’em not so much for themselves, ’cause they’s too busy to take up anything else, you know. I’ll tell you the biggest thing that the union did, you know. The union made people buy houses more and-and maybe take chances on sendin’ their kids to school further than any other thing, because it gives security. Any time before, the man could fire you and-and-and tell you-tell you it was none of your business what he fired you for. Why, that’s— [chuckles] That don’t-that don’t help you to, uh, go out and take a chance on somethin’ like buyin’ a house or, uh, you know.

  Oliver Davis: Well, if nothing else, it certainly gave us a feeling of dignity and independence, and I don’t know whether you can measure the benefits, but if you could there-there were-there were many, Stan, in that it-it-it brought us together. It created an awareness in most of us. We developed confidence. We felt that we were doing something for ourselves and our-our, uh, uh, coworkers and their families. And I don’t know how you can measure that kind of thing. It was just enormous. It was, uh, uh, uh, a tremendous uplifting.

  RP: Porters long recognized that their advocacy had to extend beyond the rail cars they serviced. There was still much more work to be done to ensure a better future for their children. These Black men were just getting started.

  Many continued to push for change in the places they lived, targeting racist practices pertaining to housing and segregation. Others, who were leaders in the railway unions and various community organizations with provincial and national mandates, leveraged their experiences to lobby against unfair hiring and employment practices as well as discriminatory treatment. The Fair Employment Practices Act, legislated by the federal government in 1953, was a new tool that helped them get that work done. Still others rose in the ranks of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, renamed the Canadian Labour Congress in 1956, creating a more inclusive labour movement that would address the needs of diverse Canadians.

  As Charles Allen Milton Hog tells us, social activism was a natural extension of union participation for many, paving a clear path for targeting the challenges that Black citizens, and those from other marginalized groups, encountered in the postwar period.

  SG: I got the impression that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, some of the members formed the economic groups, investment groups, and they came out of the inspiration from the union.

  Charles Allen Milton Hog (CH): Well, I know members of the Brotherhood, they took active part because, don’t forget in those days, the Black community or leaders in the Black community were all men that worked on the roads. And they-they themselves, that took part in the-in the, um, the welfare of local conditions and local individuals… But they do it, but it’s not through the efforts of the-the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood had a—I-I took part, I-I—In fact when I came up from Jamaica and so on, several of us here, they-they didn’t have a decent, uh, Black organization in Montréal going. And we got together and we form-formed a group and everything with the help of some friends, some white friends, and we formed a group: NCA.

  SG: What does the NCA stand for?

  CH: Negro Citizenship Association.

  RP: As Mr. Hog points out, porters had long been leaders in their communities, sparking change through the organizations that they, their wives, and their loved ones helped to found and sustain. Progress was personal and local.

  Dr. Cecil Foster, Chairman of the Department of Transnational Studies at the University of Buffalo and author of They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada, builds on this point. He explains how organizations like the Negro Citizenship Association served as important Black activist spaces that went on to effect change nationally.

  Dr. Cecil Foster (CF) [57:46]: Well, if you think of such associations that Black people have always established in North America, where they rally together for civil rights and to protect their interests, you can think of the NAACP in the United States.

  Well, the NCA in Canada was one of the many groups that over time that Black people had established to look after their interests… So NCA, the Negro Citizenship Association, was in fact filled with some of the top activists and others in the Black communities across Canada with the headquarters in Toronto. And they put the emphasis on the word citizenship, which was to gain full citizenship rights for all members. And then they extended that to fighting for full citizenship for all subjects and citizens who did not have full citizenship rights. So that they formed allyships with the Japanese, with the Chinese, with the Jewish groups and others, and formed a wider umbrella of brotherhood groups. So, the NCA was the latest iteration at that time in the 1940s, 1950s of having a strong voice to represent the Black communities across Canada.

  RP: The Negro Citizenship Association was founded in Toronto in 1951, and two years later a chapter was established in Montréal. The central purpose of this coalition of labour, church, and fraternal groups was to fight discrimination. Like those involved in the labour movement, Black men also recognized the power inherent in aligning with communities beyond the boundaries of those they typically nurtured. Allyship and solidarity became vital components of the social activism they fostered.

  In spring 1954, a delegation of porters, former porters, and allies, who belonged to the Toronto chapter of the Negro Citizenship Association, chartered a sleeping car to travel to Ottawa. Here they planned to meet with members of the St. Laurent government to share their views on broadening the definition of Canadian citizenship and the need to open up immigration policies. While the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1946 created a Canadian citizenship distinct from British subject status, it still gave preference to those with British lineage. The Immigration Act of 1952 was racially selective in its approach as well.

  The porter delegation did not see themselves, their communities, or those from other minority or stigmatized groups reflected in this legislation. The recent creation of the United Nations and its Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 had also given them a language with which to lobby politicians. Their dreams for the creation of a universal brotherhood that applied to all citizens equally was an early articulation of multiculturalism, a policy that continues to define our nation.

  Dr. Foster continues here, discussing the connections members of the porter delegation made between Canadian identity, belonging, and the impact that immigration ought to have on shaping the nation. In particular, he puts forth the notions articulated by one of the delegates: Stanley G. Grizzle.

  CF: … [T]hey went primarily to talk about immigration to Canada. And remember that immigration is a fancy way of talking about how do you choose future citizens. And his argument was that Canada should be very pragmatic in how it chose citizens. And that this pragmatism should go, first of all, that it should be within the law and the common understanding of what it was to be a British subject, so that all British subjects were to be treated equally. And also that Canada should move away from what he called the iron curtain of racism, where across the world, somewhat similar to the iron curtain between the East and the West at that time, where there was a division between the socialists and the capitalists, he saw an iron curtain between the white people of the world and the non-whites. And he said, “You can’t keep doing that when 90% of the world is non-white, and Canada needs workers and it needs citizens. Open the door to greater immigration.”

  RP: This lobbying by Black activists, led by those within the Negro Citizenship Association, coupled with pressure from various Caribbean governments, helped pave the way for a new direction for Canadian immigration policy. In 1955, after the federal government signed bilateral agreements with Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados, it established the West Indian Domestic Scheme, an immigration program that enabled Caribbean women to enter Canada as domestic servants. Dr. Foster tells us how this development served as a stepping stone for other changes.

  CF: And the domestic workers program was the one thing that really blew the door open on Canada’s immigration policy because with the arrival of those first early batches of Black women from the West Indies, the doors were open to greater immigration from around the world, because soon after we had similar domestic workers programs from the Philippines, from Mexico, you had au pair programs.

  And they were all predicated on the notion that Canada should allow Black citizens, and particularly Black women, to come into Canada and to live, to vote, to give the children Canadian citizenship, and to live the good life. And that they should be treated fairly in all respects. They should have fair employment. They should have fair accommodation. They should have all the rights and privileges of being a Canadian.

  RP: In many cases, Black women who immigrated to Canada under this program had to retrain in domestic service because many were from urban middle classes and had been educated for clerical, teaching, and nursing positions. Like the porters before them, these Black women experienced downward mobility and invisibility within Canadian society.

  While fewer than 3000 women came to Canada under the program, the arrival of hundreds of their relatives and friends led to the expansion of Black communities and the growth of Caribbean culture, particularly in Montréal and Toronto. It was not until 1962 that the Diefenbaker government began to remove racial criteria from Canada’s immigration policy, leading eventually to the implementation of a “points system” in 1967 (Williams 105–106; Whitaker).

  In addition to addressing inequities in labour, citizenship, and immigration practices and policies, Black activists with deep connections to portering reshaped the language and approach to human rights in Canada. They recognized the diversity inherent in Canadian identity early on, and their advocacy work went on to impact Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s policy on multiculturalism as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms enacted by his government in 1982.

  The American civil rights movement surely impacted Black activism in Canada, but Dr. Dorothy Williams, author of the seminal texts Blacks in Montreal: 1628–1986 and The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, is careful to draw a distinction between what was happening here and south of the border.

  Dr. Dorothy Williams (DW): … I’m always sort of reticent to call it a civil rights struggle. It really was a human rights struggle, here in this country. Blacks, I won’t say were never divorced from the ability to vote. I mean it was the same restrictions as if you had that property, if you were a man, and then things changed, it broadened to women in the twentieth century. I see it more as the right for social interactions, to be in the social sphere without fear, without restriction, and it’s a subtle difference, but it’s still a difference between a civil right and a human right, right?

  RP: While 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, uses the language of civil and human rights interchangeably, her comments speak to the deeply rooted reasons why many porters were particularly well placed to fight for social justice.

  Dr. Saje Mathieu (SM): They are clearly a consistent voice for human rights in Canada, especially as of the 1950s when that becomes the dominant language for talking about desegregation or stopping anti-Black practices. And I have found some really wonderful records of sleeping car porters who, on the few days off that they had, you know, they would be spending them in immigration courts, or they would be spending them writing letters to government reps or travelling to Ottawa with the hope of meeting them. In other words, like exercising the practice of citizenship.

  And I certainly argue that having, for those who were immigrants, having come from places where those were not halls of power of access to them, it becomes all the more important to practice, to utilize those spaces in Canada. So where you have, for example, someone coming from Mississippi or Alabama, where fewer than five percent of people could even register to vote, I promise you that if you’re travelling all the way to Canada to set up a new life, you’re making sure that you’re voting and your elected statesman is listening to you when you get to Canada. And that is the language that they are marshalling in their letters. And they’ll say, “Look, I’m writing as a constituent. This is important to me. I expect you to respond, as my representative. I read Hansard on a regular basis and I will be looking for a response to this.” I thought that was pretty incredible.

  So, they are-they are the first, for me, in my work, they are that vanguard of a civil rights movement in Canada. They, and it makes sense that they are, they’re the ones who see the whole country. They’re the ones who connect different parts of the country, different Black communities. They’re the ones who hear what’s happening in Vancouver and then are repeating that all the way to Halifax, right? They have the most national sense of what carbonates Black life in Canada, what brings joy, what rounds out Black life. But they are also the ones who hear most consistently what worries African Canadians.

  RP: As Black activists rooted in the world of portering continued to advocate against anti-Black racism in society at large, the rail industry was undergoing massive changes that led to the rapid decline of passenger service in Canada. In many respects, as Dr. Williams tells us, unionization came too late for many of these men.

  DW: … [B]y the time they win, the railway industry is kaputs, right? Because the private individual, the homeowner individual, car is now taking over as the conveyance of the average person. So what would have been and might have had more of an effect prior to the Second World War—particularly in the ’30s, lives would have been a lot easier for the men through unionization. But by the time that it all starts to come together, you’ve got the huge explosion of the suburban, suburbs being developed right across North America, which means people have to buy cars to get into the city, back into the city to work.

  That means the convenience of that and the immediacy of that, not having to go to a train station. See, the number of routes start to shrink and it’s no longer fashionable for that catering on the train, right, except for long-distance travel. And so, at the same time as the Black man finally starts to move up to the level of where the white unionists are, then their job, a Black porter’s, becomes a—it’s a lure for white men to want to be porters. And so that the whole idea of the Black porter becomes less and less of a—it’s sort of, over time it becomes a job as opposed to a segregated part of the labour force, right? Black men use it as an opportunity, as the explosion and the postwar explosion opens up all kinds of opportunities. They use it as an opportunity to move on to other things as well.

  RP: While new collective agreements ended the segregated job classification and seniority systems long upheld by Canadian railways, this advancement had two results. They opened doors for Black porters by making promotion possible. They also removed the colour barriers applied to hiring policies, which allowed white men to compete for the same jobs. This development, coupled with access to automobiles and the cutting of routes, led many Black porters to lose their jobs. Homes that were once stable now lacked a breadwinner. Portering became out of reach for the next generation.

  Many turned to long-distance bus travel and the taxi industry to find work. Airports, as Dr. Steven High, Professor of History at Concordia University and author of Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence and Class, tells us, also served as a major employer for these men, particularly in Montréal.

  Dr. Steven High (SH): And so Montréal’s airport becomes a major employer of Black labour starting in the 1950s and ’60s. And so that connection to transportation is still there. And there’s also a history of, a trade union history, especially at the airport, where civil rights struggles and so on are happening there. And so you can see it in the family generationally, you know, the era of the porters coming to a close by the early ’60s. Um, but [that] doesn’t mean they’re not, you know, they’re not—those families aren’t working in transportation. They’re just moving to new technologies.

  RP: Dr. High continues, revealing how the creation of VIA Rail in 1977 coupled with new provincial language laws further complicated the employment opportunities available to these Black men.

  SH: You know, in the seventies we see the CPR and the CNR abandon their passenger trains, right, and the creation of the VIA Rail. And so the merging of those two networks into one led to a lot of job loss. But we also see new legislation in Quebec around language at work, which has an impact on anglophone Black families who are less likely to be bilingual at that time. And so you started seeing barriers perhaps for them to work in that field, in sort of public-facing jobs. And so people talk about that a little bit, as one of the reasons why you see that shift away, right. And so when they’re getting jobs, say at the airport, they’re not public-facing jobs, right. They’re baggage handling and so on. And so it’s less of an issue.

  RP: Raymond Coker, who worked for the CNR’s Toronto Division as both a sleeping car and buffet porter before being promoted to conductor as a result of the Fair Employment Practices Act, summed up the realities that Dr. High just mentioned.

  Raymond Coker (RC): … [B]ut like I say, it’s-it’s come a long way, long, long way. Things are a lot better. Mind you, the, uh, prejudice is still there. It’s not as prevalent. It’s not as blatant, but, uh, it’s there. We have in Canada, uh, not only in the railroad industry but all industry, we have what you call economic strangulation as far as the Black man is concerned. He’s the last to be hired and the first to be fired, you know what I mean…

  Kay: It still holds true today?

  RC: Oh, yeah, still holds true. You’ve got to fight every bit of the way. Mind you, like I say, times are a little better, much better than when I came up, you know, but they’re still there, still there. And, uh, the jobs that we have, the higher supervisory jobs, are, uh, sort of, uh, a token thing so that people can’t point their finger and say, “Well, you haven’t got any Black people in a, you know, uh, supervisory capacity or higher supervisory capacity.” But, um, when the opening presents itself for a big promotion, hmm, Black man’s just not there, that’s all.

  RP: Like Mr. Coker, Dr. Williams warns us to temper our enthusiasm around the fight porters waged against anti-Black racism.

  DW: … Five generations later, we’re still scrambling. Even today, you know, Blacks still suffer from being on the bottom of the economic rung and have in Montréal double the unemployment level of any group. And that’s been since I was a child, so it persists. And that’s not to say we don’t have our stars. There are people that have, and we tend to celebrate them because they’re CEOs of corporations, they’re leading in certain sectors, they’re the bright stars. But generally speaking, the income level in the city, the average Black is not making more than $20,000, generally speaking. And so I think, depending on the statistic and the year and the sample, Blacks are usually second to last of the labour rung or second to last, meaning First Nations are usually underneath, or we’re last and the First Nations are just above. And that kind of, I can’t call it a dance, but it has not changed.

  RP: Dr. Williams’ remarks force us to ask some hard questions about our country and the inequities that still exist. The narratives we have shared from Stanley G. Grizzle’s recordings throughout “Porter Talk” connect us to the injustices of the past that continue to this day. There is hope, however. William C. Kingfish Wright leaves us with reassuring insight into what may have helped porters overcome crushing adversity to effect positive change in both the railways and Canadian society—the power of human connection.

  SG: All right, did you enjoy the job of sleeping car porter?

  William C. Kingfish Wright (WW): Very much. Very much. I really enjoyed my trip on that railroad. And if I had to do it over again, I would do the same thing over again. I enjoyed it, enjoyed it so much.

  SG: What did you enjoy about the job?

  WW: The fellowship of the men.

  SG: Oh yes.

  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: Cheryl Foggo, Dr. Cecil Foster, Dr. Steven High, Dr. Saje Mathieu, Dr. Dorothy Williams, and Judith Williams-Graham. 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.

  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.”

  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.

  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.

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

Featuring the voices of: Helen Williams-Bailey, Aurelius Leon Bennett, Raymond Coker, Frank Collins, Melvin Crump, Oliver Charles Davis, Harold Osburn Eastman, Harold James Fowler, Charles Allen Milton Hog, Leonard Oscar Johnston, Raymond Lewis, Ivy Lawrence Maynier, Joseph Morris Sealy, and William C. Kingfish Wright

Guests: Cheryl Foggo, Dr. Cecil Foster, Dr. Steven High, Dr. Saje Mathieu, Dr. Dorothy Williams, and Judith Williams-Graham

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

Interviewers

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

Helen Williams-Bailey was born on a farm about fifty kilometres outside North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1919. Her brothers, two of whom later became porters, included Tom, Roy, Lee, and Carl Williams. She moved to Winnipeg in 1942 and quickly became involved in the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to support the work that her brothers Tom and Roy did on the rails. She served as the Auxiliary’s first president prior to marrying her husband, a Canadian National Railway (CNR) porter, in 1944. (Source: 417401 [part 1]; 417400 [part 2])

Aurelius Leon Bennett was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1925. Escaping racial violence and discrimination, he took a job with the CPR in 1944. Initially based in Toronto, he was later relocated to Winnipeg where he laboured as a sleeping car porter until his retirement in 1986. During his career, Bennett served as secretary-treasurer of the Winnipeg Division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP). (Source: 417400)

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 (1953), enabled him to be appointed to the position of conductor. (Source: 417381)

Frank Collins was born in Vancouver in 1915. He became a CPR sleeping car porter in 1933, working out of the division located in Vancouver until he resigned in 1956. Along with Ernie Lawrence, he worked hard to organize the Vancouver Division’s BSCP, beginning in 1939 through to its certification in 1944 and the signing of its first contract in 1945. He and Lawrence managed to recruit 96% of the city’s CPR porters into the union, despite the risks associated with joining. (Source: 417402)

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)

Harold Osburn Eastman was born in Barbados in 1922. He came to Canada in 1942 to join the Canadian Army but was rejected from service due to a medical condition. He worked at Canadian Tube and Steel until he was hired by the CPR’s Montreal Division as a sleeping car porter in 1944. After VIA Rail took over operation of both the CPR and CNR in 1978, he was promoted to dining car steward. Eastman retired in 1984, with forty years of service. (Source: 417405)

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)

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]; 417394 [part 2])

Raymond Lewis was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1910. He worked as a sleeping car porter for the CPR’s Toronto Division between 1930 and 1952 and was chairman of the Porters’ Mutual Benefit Association prior to the creation of the BSCP. Lewis was also an exceptional runner. Having been denied leave by the CPR, he gave up one month’s salary to compete in the Canadian Olympic trials in 1932, where he earned a spot on the team. He became the first Canadian-born Black athlete to win an Olympic medal—a bronze, for his performance in the 4 x 400-metre relay. (Source: 417395)

Ivy Lawrence Maynier was born in Montreal in 1921 to Guyanese parents. Her father, Alexander Lawrence, was trained as an engineer and had a long, distinguished career as a CPR sleeping car porter. He also served as the president and vice-president of the BSCP Montréal Division. Awarded numerous scholarships, Maynier graduated from McGill University and went on to attend law school at the University of Toronto. She was the first Black Canadian woman to graduate from this school. Anti-Black racism made it difficult for her to practice in Canada, so she became a member of the Inns of Court in London, which enabled her to be called to the bar in England in 1947. After a five-year appointment with the United States Information Service in Paris, Maynier moved to Trinidad and Tobago. Here, she pioneered programs to make adult education accessible, especially for marginalized community members. In 1959, Maynier married a diplomat and moved to Jamaica where she continued her career in education at the University of the West Indies. (Source: 417387)

Joseph Morris Sealy was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1910. He became a CPR sleeping car porter in 1928 and laboured for the company for 46 years. Sealy was a proud union man, serving as the president and vice-president of the BSCP’s Montréal Division. (Source: 417386)

William C. Kingfish Wright was born in Toronto in 1915. He was a talented musician who played in the only coloured orchestra in the city. As a teenager, he travelled on weekends to various locations in southern Ontario where he and fellow members of the Harlem Aces played at different tourist resorts. Racism in the music industry and a lack of jobs led him to portering. The CPR hired him in 1936, and he worked out of its Toronto Division for the next thirty years. He was a founding member of the BSCP there and actively supported its fight for improved working conditions. (Source: 417394)

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. Cecil Foster is a prolific writer and journalist who holds a PhD from York University. Currently, he serves as Chairman of the Department of Transnational Studies at the University of Buffalo. Dr. Foster’s work has long focused on multiculturalism in Canada and the role of race in this policy. His most recent book, They Called Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada, tells the story of the first delegation of Black Canadians to meet with members of the federal Cabinet to discuss Canada’s discriminatory immigration practices. This trip, rooted in a long history of porter activism, paved the way for changes to the nation’s immigration policies, as well as those related to labour and human rights.

Dr. Steven High is a Full Professor of History at Concordia University; he also founded the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling there. He holds a PhD in Canadian History from the University of Ottawa. Dr. High’s most recent award-winning book, Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class, tells the story of two neighbourhoods, one predominantly white and the other black, situated in Montreal’s southwest district.

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.

Dr. Dorothy Williams holds a PhD in Library and Information Sciences from McGill University and currently works as a researcher at Concordia University within its Quebec English-Speaking Communities Research Network. She was bestowed a CBC Black Changemaker Award in 2022 and a Library and Archives Canada Scholar Award in 2023. In spring 2024, she was accorded the Ordre de Montréal, the city’s highest honour for outstanding contributions made to the city’s development and renown, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Dr. Williams’ books, Blacks in Montreal: 1628–1986 and The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal, are classics in the fields of Black studies and Black history in Canada. Dr. Williams is also a pedagogical pioneer who has long contributed to the development of curriculum pertaining to Black history in Canada, as well as a community knowledge keeper. The archival collection she cares for in her home is one of the most extensive existing archives to document Black experience in Montreal.

Judith Williams-Graham is descended from the Williams and Carruthers families. The Williams family originated in Texas before moving to Oklahoma to pick cotton, while the Carruthers had deep roots in Oklahoma. Both families fled racial violence in the United States between 1910 and 1914, taking part in the Great Migration that brought African American migrants to Canada. The Williams family settled in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, before moving to a homestead in Hillside. The Carruthers moved to Amber Valley, Alberta, where they established a homestead. Williams-Graham’s father, Roy, began to work for the CPR as a sleeping car porter in Winnipeg in 1936. He was later transferred to Calgary, where he met Williams-Graham’s mother, Cordie. They married in 1940. Both were involved in the fight to unionize CPR porters, a battle to which Williams-Graham was exposed at an early age. Many extended members of Williams-Graham’s family were also implicated in railway work. She has been a lifelong activist and organizer within western Canada’s Black community and remains steadfast in her desire to share this history with others. She is currently writing a memoir that documents her family’s story and Black experience more generally.

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