Canada's Sleeping Car Porters Blazing The Civil Rights Trail

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The trans-Canada railway plays a huge role in Canadian history. It was Sir John A. Macdonald’s campaign promise of a train line, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, that convinced the first provinces — Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — to join Quebec and Ontario in forming a new country. It was also the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) that led to some shameful periods in Canadian history.

Many of us are familiar with the Chinese people, mostly men, that the Canadian government brought into the country to work on the most dangerous stretch of the railroad. Many more of us, however, might not know about the sleeping car porters and the important role they played in the civil rights and labour movements history.

In the 1870s, sleeping railway cars were introduced to commercial rail travel in Canada. These train cars were staffed by sleeping car porters who were predominantly Black men. Many of these porters were highly educated but because of racial discrimination at the time they were relegated to working the rails. While these porters were so important to commercial travel they toiled away under poor working conditions, were paid less than their white counterparts and were barred from more senior positions such as conductor.

The average porter shift lasted 72 hours and porters were not given places to sleep and were forced to catch short naps whenever they could. They were not allowed to make use of the dining car during hours of operation and were made to eat while patrons were sleeping, often very early in the morning.

When these Black sleeping car porters tried to improve their working conditions by joining white unions, they were rebuffed and so they began to organize their own. Early attempts were unsuccessful but in 1942 they found success and their collective bargaining agreement was finalized in 1945. This marked the first time in Canadian labour history that a Black union signed an agreement with a white employer.

The union of sleeping car porters didn’t stop there. While working conditions improved slightly they were still barred from the role of conductor, which was still reserved for white people only. The highest position Black people could hold was “in charge”, a conductor in everything but the salary and status. The union pressed and in 1954 George V. Garraway became the first Black conductor in Canada.

Through the struggle for equity on the Canadian rails we see the rise of Stanley Grizzle. Does the name ring a bell? It should. Grizzle, who died in 2016, was the first Black Canadian citizenship judge, a corporal during World War II, one of the first Black political candidates for what would become the NDP, an early leader of the Canadian civil rights movement and a labour union activist.

Grizzle, the Canadian-born son of Jamaican parents, started his career as a sleeping car porter. It was through the fight for better working conditions that Stanley Grizzle the activist was born. Grizzle would go on to do great things in the fight for Black liberation in Canada and was awarded both the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario for his tireless work.