Seven Oaks Magazine.

In a couple of weeks, British Columbians interested in issues of working people’s rights have an important opportunity. For the third year in a row, on January 23 in Ladysmith, people with a belief in the struggle for social justice, past and present, will join together to remember and celebrate the life of Joseph Mairs, Jr. Although he died more than 90 years ago, Mairs remains a powerful symbol of the sacrifices working people have made in BC’s history.

Mairs is not what many would call a working class hero (neither of the Lennon nor the Lenin variety). Instead, he was a young miner, who lived on Vancouver Island during one of its most tumultuous periods. There is little evidence that he was especially politically active, until he, his father and thousands of other miners struck the mines on Vancouver Island in 1912. These miners struck for the most basic of rights – a living wage, an eight hour workday, reasonable safety conditions underground, and the recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers of America, as their legitimate representative. To many unionists today, these seem like simple demands. But for Mairs and his peers they were revolutionary – making these simple gains would have forever changed the realities of their working lives.

Mairs joined the strike in 1912, when the miners of Extension and Ladysmith, where he lived, went on strike to protest the firing of two safety inspectors who had reported unsafe gas levels. After more than a year, which included being kicked out of their company housing and having their demands renounced as unreasonable by media and employer alike, the miners became restless. In August 1913, Mairs joined his fellow miners in protesting the importation of scabs. What started as peaceful, if raucous protests escalated when the police facilitated the scabs entrance into the mine. A three-day riot ensued, in which a pithead was burned and a scab was badly injured. In the aftermath, more than fifty miners were arrested. Among these was Joseph, then only 21.

After being railroaded into a 16-month sentence, Mairs was sent to Oakalla Prison farm, a hard labour prison. Only a few months after arriving he complained of stomach pains. After a week in which he was not able to get access to medical care, Mairs died of tubercular peritonitis, or a rupture of his small intestine. The response on the part of the left in the province was immediate, as the Miners’ Liberation League (set up to free the imprisoned miners) immediately demanded an investigation, and Parker Williams, a labourist member of the legislature, spoke movingly about the plight of the miners. In the years that followed, Mairs became an important symbol to the UMWA and other workers in the province. He had defended his union, and his right to be organized and treated with respect and human dignity, to the fullest. Ultimately, he had gone to jail for it, and died. To commemorate his sacrifice, and the sacrifices of thousands of other nameless workers around the continent, the UMWA local erected a monument on his gravesite, that today still stands.

It is the memory that this monument embodies that people will be gathering to recognize on January 23. Although he led no major revolts, and while he was never elected to political or union office, he represents the best of political action. Remembering Joseph offers the opportunity to remember all the women and men who have suffered to build a better life for themselves and their children. It also offers the opportunity to remind ourselves that people have always believed a better world was possible, to remind ourselves of the continuity between our personal and political struggles and those of the past. As the inscription on Joseph’s monument reminds, Joseph was “A martyr to a noble cause - The emancipation of his fellow man.” As long as the struggle for this emancipation continues, Joseph’s memory is worth praising.