411'S BUILDING HISTORY: LABOUR'S LOVE LOST
by Gavin Hainsworth
When it first opened its doors exactly ninety years ago, the beautiful building still proudly standing at 411 Dunsmuir faced out on a very different Vancouver. A true Nonagenarian, it is only fitting that 411 Dunsmuir should now house an active seniors centre; its colourful past also suiting its communitarian present. The building's 90th birthday is also well worthy of respect and celebration, along with this year's Silver Jubilee.
Many entering this elegant edifice would immediately be struck by its Edwardian detailing and architectural design, as apparent today as when its ribbon was cut on March 9, 1912. Less obvious, except by those who know her better, is the rich and sometimes radical history that is as much a part of the building's story as its stones and stairways. The fascinating history of the 411 Seniors' Centre Society is closely linked to the history of this building: a focal point for some of the most important events in the labour history of British Columbia and Canada. 411 Dunsmuir was a labour temple, financed by union workers who invested at $1.00 a share in its construction right in the heart of Vancouver's central business district.
It was a new era, a century which according the Laurier would belong to Canada, and Vancouver's Daily Province (1912, March 9) announced the temple's arrival in the optimistic tones of a ship's maiden launch: LABOR TEMPLE IS ANOTHER SUBSTANTIAL ADDITION TO THE BIG BUSINESS DISTRICT One of the most substantial as well as ornamental buildings that have been recently finished is the Labor Temple, corner Dunsmuir and Homer streets. The structure was built for the Vancouver Labor Temple Company Limited by the Norton Griffiths Steel Construction Co. Ltd., contractors, and Mr. Thomas Hooper, architect. It is built on a lot 75 feet by 120 feet and has four storeys and a basement. The exterior finish up to the first storey is granite with pressed brick trimmings. The construction is reinforced concrete throughout. The sixteen ornamental electric lights which are set on the roof with cast iron standards add a very pleasing effect to the whole building. The entrance is faced in marble while the floors of the corridors are ceramic tile. The corridor walls are lined to a height of four feet with handsome glazed tile which is very attractive and a distinct feature of the whole structure.
There are two large assembly rooms 40 feet by 70 feet and two smaller rooms 40 feet by 40 feet. These are all decorated with a handsome interior finish. The floors are made of hardwood. There is one high-speed passenger elevator which is guaranteed to clear the building in a very short space of time. The structure is to be used by the unions and members of the unions for meetings of a more or less business nature as well as for social functions. There are a number of offices and stores which will be rented to business people. The basement is now used for a printing plant.(1)
To compare this ornate description and illustration of the 1912 building to how it is today is to think what a marvel this temple must have been to those who saw it then. With its marble and ornamental roof top lanterns, how it must have seemed like the mythic temples of old, or like the steady and unsinkable steamships at harbour and plying the open seas. Now it appears more streamlined, but still solid. It seems to have weathered the squalls and storms of history, and the capricious fates embodied in the property developer.
In 1912, Vancouver's total estimated population was not over 150,000. However, the City was in its twenty-sixth year, and had shown phenomenal growth in this short time period. Henderson's Vancouver Directory for the previous year estimates the City's total 1888 population as 6000, which "consists of 48 pages"(2) in contrast to the year "1911, which contains 1704...showing definitely and intelligently the wonderful increase in the City's population"(3). An advanced network of street car lines were now linking the city with what had been farmland and small towns. Ballooning also were the land values. This raging land speculation was fueled by the actions of the larger landholders, like the CPR and the Hudson Bay Company, which slowly released their banked land supplies to the hungry housing market. It has been said that the BC Electric Railway cars were full carrying commuters in and carpenters out. BC was booming.
This amazing growth was also measurable in other ways: company registrations grew from 900 to 4565 from 1901 to 1911(4). The same time saw a dramatic gain in the number and duration of strikes. The year 1901 saw three Vancouver strikes totaling 165 strikers/1,773 striker days, while 1911 saw six--totaling 6,046 strikers, or 257,112 strikers days(5). Within much less time everything would change for all the optimistic citizens of 1912. The unthinkables would happen and very soon. Within only a month later, the unsinkable "Titanic" would be soon beneath the waves, and within only a year, a major economic depression would begin after a major land and stock market crash. Two years later would mark the beginning of the Great War "to end all wars" (which it alas was not). In 1920, only eight years time, BC's labour movement would see the loss of its "LABOR TEMPLE" at 411 Dunsmuir. Its entinguishment due to bankruptcy and political intrigue would symbolically remove the heart of labour life from the business body politick of downtown Vancouver. No plaque to mark its passing, and its bold stone-carved Roman Font masthead would be covered over behind the current wooden entrance way.
Labour temples were increasingly common features at this time in North America, and were generally used as a building to serve as headquarters for regional or central labour councils that might also house offices of union locals or related businesses as well. The use of the American "labor" spelling was much more widely accepted at the time, as most Canadian unions were in turn affiliated either formally or through communications channels with US unions, in particular within so-called "internationals" which we largely based in the larger labour cities of the US Northwest. The use of term "temple" has a more obscure etymology. It appears to be derived from the earliest days of the first North American unions, the Knights of Labor, which was established in 1869 as the Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, and modeled itself after medieval religious orders such as the Knights Templars.(6) Secret societies remained highly popular in the later part of the 19th century, and continuing well into the first half of the 1900s. BC's Knights of Labor began in 1883 in Nanaimo, and in 1889 they helped form the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council. When they were illegal, workers' organizations had to met secretly, whether individually over machinery and in bars, or collectively at short notice in community halls and church basements. With formal certification, and some recognized legitimacy under the law, craft unions were able to direct some of there resources to first renting, and then to building their own meeting places. These government recognized craft unions did not require the safety of society secrecy, but achieved their legitimacy by agreeing to negotiate under the law, and thereby limiting spontaneous strike actions.
The creation of Vancouver's labour temple at 411 Dunsmuir was thus begun primarily by its various craft unions. The union halls offered several benefits to its membership and leadership. They could now meet at their own convenience, and no longer be denied space by nervous or hostile building owners. A stable street address was also reassuring to both union members and to the wider community that labour unions were mature, respectable, and responsible.
These craft unions also searched for greater solidarity amongst themselves. In many cities and towns across the country tthey created local trades and labour councils to co-ordinate political campaigns, organize union drives, and petition governments. Most councils met bi-weekly in local fraternal or other rented spaces. It was the more stable, and urban councils that built the "labour temples". Labour councils also had important political roles within the community. They were able to lobby local and provincial governments about their concerns about how their communities were to be developed. Some councils entered labour candidates in elections and tried to maintain their own independent labour parties.
Concurrent to this rise of craft union legitimacy was strong movement for its rejection, and the principles upon which it all was based. The exclusion of all but the most skilled workers from the craft union movement fueled the growth of industrial unionism. These industrial unions were organizations to represent all workers, from the skilled to the labourer, and unifiy them into a single bargaining unit against the bosses. This represented a throw back to the ideals of the Knights of Labor "commonwealth of toil." In 1905, a group of socialist labour leaders gathered in Chicago to form a new industrial and revolutionary union: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or the "Wobblies." The Western Federation of Miners, based in the US Mid-West and in Southwestern BC (which had led on of BC's first strikes in Rossland), was one of the IWW's first affiliates. IWW organizers traveled through the mining, railway, and other resource industry camps in British Columbia and western Alberta. They organized the resource industry workers while radicalizing them to the ideals of industrial unionism. They made good sense in the large camps where dividing workers by what they did, or what language they spoke did not--especially among migrant resource workers, many of whom were recent immigrants to Canada. These workers were attracted to the IWW because it seemed to be more attentive to their needs. IWW literature was published in several languages and its union halls offered friendship and entertainment for these itinerant labourers. The IWW was known for its emphasis on industrial action (including sabotage) rather than electoral politics. The union also did not differentiate between legal and illegal strikes, and they even advocated the use of the general strike to achieve maximum impact if necessary. Both arms of the BC labour movement would eventually reside at 411 Dunsmuir. The battle between them would be the labour temple's undoing.
Vancouver's first labour temple (1898) was in fact an old Methodist Church on the corner of Homer and Dunsmuir Streets at 411. The Vancouver Methodist Tabernacle congregation had been established in 1865, and had been seeking a replacement for its Water Street Methodist Church. The Methodist Elders wanted an increased seating capacity to 700-1000, and a refined blend of stone exterior and rich interior wood with excellent acoustics from pulpit to balcony(7). On September 27, 1888 the Rev. Dr. Sutherland, General Secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society, laid corner stone of their new edifice, investing a costly $12,000 on an unknown and self taught architect--Thomas Hooper.
Hooper was born in Hatherleigh, Devon, England on March 2, 1857, were his family had been stone cutters and carvers for over two hundred years. He emigrated to Canada in 1871, settling in ondon, Ontario. Although he never received a formal education in architecture, he did train for four years as a carpenter, which is where he learned how buildings were designed and built. During his time in London working as a joiner he met and later married Rebecca Johnson. In 1878, the Hoopers moved west to Winnipeg where he found work as a contractor and architect. Four years later, the successful T. Hooper kept traveling all the way to the West Coast, arriving in Vancouver in 1886 -- just one month after the Great Fire has destroyed the City. He was in the right place at the right time, quickly landing the position of BC's supervisory architect. He soon opened architectural offices in both Vancouver and Victoria. The Methodist Church was his first major private commission, and its success established his reputation with the Elders, who would call upon his services throughout his career(8). The purity of sound projection in his churches was such that the simple human voice would resound pure throughout the chapel, and music would remain full and undistorted. Top dollar quality and his good business sense funded his successful transition to a private fortune, which he made and lost four times over. He designed of hundreds of buildings in Vancouver, Victoria and around the province. Throughout his career he worked in collaboration with other prominent architects, and developed a reputation for being both easy to work with and highly competent. He had several different business partners, opened architectural offices in both Vancouver and Victoria. By the time of the First World War, he had the largest architectural practice in Western Canada(9).
By the summer of 1889, the New Methodist Church was finished. The Vancouver Trade and Labor Council first considered securing its own hall a year later (1890)(10) by striking a search committee which after six years of failure recommended building its own hall for $10,000 after assessing the membership one day's pay and then financing the rest. The idea was rejected by the membership(11). Instead, the plan was simplified by a proposal to buy Hooper's Methodist Church from shares in the building to be sold for $2 each. A mortgage was obtained on the projected sales of the shares, and the VTLC moved into 411 Dunsmuir's Old Methodist Church in September, 1899(12). However, financial difficulties continued as less than half the shares were sold, and the rent it charged member unions did not cover the shortfalls. Squabbling amongst the established craft unions over the Methodist temple's viability, financing, and use of space helped fuel the "Wobblies" argument that craft unions had lost touch with the working man. By 1909, the VTLC had a successful argument to make that the BC labour movement had outgrown the Methodist Labor Temple, and to rebuild the house of labour at the same address, 411 Dunsmuir.
Several significant factors brought them together under one roof. Firstly, the success in IWW-based organizing had greatly increased the number of union members, and won the respect from allies and enemies alike within the craft unions. The first B.C. Federation of Labour was founded on May 2, 1910 by unions from Victoria, New Westminster and Vancouver. They represented leadership within both the craft and industrial arms of labour. 411 Dunsmuir was reconfirmed as the best location for this new expanded Temple. The same convention went on record as favoring industrial unionism. The IWW and its leadership had come in from the camps to the city and were now in control of the VTLC political direction.
This power was balanced by former craft union leadership within the Vancouver Labour Temple Co. Ltd. This company was originally formed in 1898 to organize the sale of shares to purchase the Methodist Church, but had operated more as an organizing committee for this purpose under the direct control of the elected VTLC officers. By the middle of 1909, the VTLC recreated the Vancouver Labour Temple Co. Ltd. as a formal investment company under the Joint Stock Company Act rather than the societies act(13). This allowed the new company a very high degree of independence and to run its own affairs through a formal board of directors. Vancouver Labour Temple Co. could also keep its own books, be listed in the stock exchange, build, lease, and invest. Former craft union leaders made the shift from elected to business office. It was capitalized at $100,000 in $1 shares, with half of that money to pay down the debts in the old 411, the other half to build the new(14).
It is not surprising that the Labour Temple Co.Ltd. selected Thomas Hooper as the new temple's architect. From their perspective, he had proven himself in several important ways. His strong sense of building acoustics would allow him to design a hardwood meeting hall on the top floor suitable for both formal general meetings as well as social events such as dances and concerts. Likewise, by 1910 he had also established an extensive track record in office building design including the Winch building (now a part of Sinclair Centre). He was also more clearly one of their own: a sensible craft professional, and not a flashy social climber like his main competitor, Francis Rattenbury. It was Hooper who may have come second to Rattenbury for public commissions like the Parliament Building, and Vancouver Court House--but it was Hooper who they called back later to refine and redesign(15). Like the Methodists, the craft union elders knew value for money and were willing to pay top dollar.
On January 29, 1910, Thomas Hooper registered his plans for "a $70,000 5-story brick & steel labour temple"(16). The Hooper name allowed the Labour Temple Co. to finance this increased amount through sales of the new stock to union men, and through public tender of stocks -- which allowed further improvements to the building's design to a total cost of $125,000. Work was started in April 1911, and scheduled to be completed by March 15, 1912. Hooper had the good sense to employ unionized contractors, such as Norton Griffiths Steel Construction Company, and employed union men to build their own temple. Its was finished ahead of schedule, and right on budget(17).
The 411 Labor Temple quickly filled local union offices. The 1913 BC Directory provides an extensive and fascinating cross-section of the range of craft unions all residing at 411 at this time, including: Bakers' Union; Barbers' Union; Bartenders' Union; Boilermakers' Union; Bookbinders' Union; Bricklayers' Union; Carmens' Railway Union; Carpenters' Amalgamated Unions (No.1,No.2, No.4 & No. 5); Carpenters' Brotherhood; Cement Workers' Union; Cigarmakers' Union; Civic Employees' Union; Cooks' Union; Firemen and Engineers' (Locomotive) Union; Floorlayers' Union; Garment Workers' Union; Glass Workers' Union; Granite Cutters' Union; Horseshoers' Union; Laborers' (Building) Union; Lathers' Union; Letter Carriers' Union; Machinists' Union; Maintenance of Way Employees' Union; Marble Cutters' Union; Metal Trades Council; Moulders' Union; Moving Picture Operators' Union; Painters' Union; Painters' (Sign) Union; Patternmakers' Union; Photo Engravers' Union; Plumbers' Union; Pressmens' (Printing) Union; Sheet Metal Workers' Union; Shinglers' Union; Ship Carpenters' and Caulkers' Union; Stage Employees' Union; Stereotypers' Union; Stonecutters' Union; Street Railwaymens' Union; Structural Ironworkers' Union; Tailors' Union; Telegraphers' (Commercial) Union; Teamsters' Union; Tile Layers' Union; Typographic Union (No.226); Upholsterers' Union; and the Waitresses' Union. (18)
The Directory also lists that the Labor Temple Company rented street level space as business space in the 411 Dunsmuir's Labor Temple Block at this time to: WC Thomson Co. Ltd, building supplies; Industrial Trust Co; St. Ann's Academy; John McMillan, cigars; WW LeFeaux, real estate; John Dodd; Eugene T Kingsley, printer; Fred Perry. tailor; Co-operative Stores, Ltd; Cown & Brookhouse, printers; Stets Hat Works; Fagan Bros, tea & coffee wholesalers; Church of Our Lady Rosary; Ravey & Johnson, printers; Louis Epstein, cleaners; Oscar Burnett, confections; and Alf Herod, shoemaker.(19)
In the offices of the Labor Temple Co.Ltd. and the Vancouver Trades & Labour Council, 411 Dunsmuir's Labor Temple was all that they could have been dreamed of and more. The Temple basement was also its printing press, and where it produced the labour newspaper BC Federationist to compete with the commercial dailies. Most impressive of all was its top floor Hall, which would serve host to dances, dinners, chamber music performances, organizing drives, protest events, and provincial and national conventions. Unfortunately, the next eight years would be amongst the rockiest in BC and Canadian labour history, and the dream would become labour's nightmare.
1912 began with January 28th "Bloody Sunday" -- the arrest of "Wobblie" speakers and the beating of their peaceful audience by club wielding mounted police in Powell Street Park. The gathering was their attempt to organize the unemployed from city street corners, as they had in the camps, but their arrest became Vancouver's contribution to the "Free Speech Fight" which had begun in the winter of 1911, and was part of a North America-wide campaign. The new Labor Temple organized their support campaign while also providing safe meeting places. The year also marked the beginning of the latest and most serious fightback against Vancouver coal mines in Cumberland and Ladysmith. The VTLC organized tag day sales, and solidarity and sympathy events that raised support for the miners, and even elected one of their own as Vice President, Ginger Goodwin.
The new BC Federation of Labour's successes were met by a stiffening resolve among corporate leaders to resist and, indeed, reverse trade union gains. As World War I approached, employers launched anti-union "open shop" campaigns. Once again, union activists found themselves the targets of firings, blacklistings, and, all too often, physical beatings. But it took the severe depression that began in 1913 to halt completely the advance of the craft and union movement. It quickly threw thousands of workers out of work, and spelled the end of many of the local unions listed earlier. 1914's 60th Biennial Convention of Federated Association of Letter Carriers, and the 1915 National Convention of the Trade & Labor Congress (Canada's highest labour body), both held at the 411 Labor Temple represent the last glories of the temple dream. The illustration photograph of the 1915 Convention held at the Labor Temple shows the leadership of the 1915 Trade and Labour Congress with craft and IWW unionists alike relaxing in the Vancouver sun -- including a young Ginger Goodwin in the back row near the number 419. Too soon this summer of solidarity would become shattered for good.
World War 1 divided the labour movement between the more conservative craft unions who supported the war through patriotism and as paid labour in the war industries for its members, from the more radical industrial unions who saw it as ordinary men killing each other for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Within the 411 Labor Temple, WW 1 radicalized the political leadership of the VTLC, while simultaneously entrenching the Board of Directors of the Labor Temple Company Ltd.
When former VTLC Vice President, Ginger Goodwin (who had stepped down to help organize the miner workers fight on Vancouver Island) was shot and killed outside Cumberland as an alleged draft dodger in 1918, the Metal Trades Council called for a 24 hour "holiday" (General Strike) to protest this killing starting at noon of August 2, 1918. The general strike call was endorsed by the VTLC Executive, under the presidency of Ernie Winch (in a vote of 17 to 1) held at 411 Dunsmuir. August 2 saw both a BC general strike, and a mass funeral procession in Cumberland for Goodwin that stretched more than a mile long. The press widely denounced the action, and according to several sources (most notably Paul Phillip's fine account in No Power Greater, 1967)(20). Here is a composite account of what happened. At about 3:30 pm in the afternoon the Vancouver Labour Temple learned that a raid was being planned by 300 returned soldiers, and organized by some city businessmen. The leak had come from a returned veteran who was a patient at Shaughnessy hospital. The building was almost emptied when they arrived, but the mob managed to break in and smashed windows and doors, and destroyed books and records. The most serious incident involved the VTLC secretary, Vic Midgley, who was forced out a second story window onto the outside ledge onto a window coping. When he tried to come back in, the mob tried to push him to his death, and he was only saved by a Francis Foxcroft, a female unionist telephone operator who stood up to the crowd. Instead they force Midgley and a longshoreman to kiss the flag before they were beaten, and the police finally arrived.
Despite the fact that membership in both the Vancouver Trade and Labour Council and the BC Federation of Labour were at all time high in 1918, the craft unionist leadership in the East, and the members of the Labour Temple Co. Ltd both distrusted the judgment of the radical VTLC leadership, and resented the increased costs resulting from the sacking of the 411 Labor Temple. Solidarity was broken at 411, not just windows and doors.
1919 things got even hotter in Canada's labour history, and at 411. The radical VTLC was re-elected by acclimation in January, and had lead the BC Federation to a Western Labour Conference in revolt against the national Trade and Labour Congress by March. This conference called for the formation of a rival labour body to the Trades and Labour Congress to be called the "One Big Union" or OBU. This was to be new national industrial union which would call a national general strike by June 1, 1919. The VTLC executive, BC Federation of Labour, and the leadership of the 411 Labor Temple were its founding members. Before the OBU could be fully established, the Winnipeg General Strike began. OBU members, endorsed and lead by the radical VLTC executive, struck in sympathy on June 3, and even voted to prolong their support strike until July 4th. This was well beyond the ending date of the Winnipeg General Strike's crushing by armed police on June 26th, but was both unsuccessful attempt to lobby for the release of the Winnipeg leadership, and to keep the momentum rolling for the OBU.
Either way, 1919 spelled the beginning of the end for the labour movement's ownership of 411 Dunsmuir. Organizing the OBU put great strains on the resources of the VTLC and the BC Federation of Labor. Likewise, economic recession, coupled with business investor hostility, put greater strain on the finances of the Labour Temple Co. Ltd. The minutes of both the VTLC and the Labour Temple Co. Ltd show increased financial needs for both, and decreased trust in each other. In the fall of 1920, the Vancouver Labour Temple Co. Ltd, had "liquidated" its property at 411 and gone out of business(21) ..The building and land were assessed at $165,000. Under provision of the bankruptcy act the company was ordered "to be wound up" 20 July 1920, with William Thomas Stein of the City of Vancouver appointed its permanent provincial liquidator(22). He was authorized to sell and execute proper conveyance of the lands and premises "to His Majesty the King in the right of the province of British Columbia" according to the indenture signed 16 September 1920, and "to have and to hold unto...for his sole and only use forever".(23) The Board of Directors cleared $20,000, and the labour movement cleared the building. The first BC Federation of Labour was also disbanded, and the splits within the BC labour movement lasted for a generation(24).
The 411 Dunsmuir building was placed in receivership and now the provincial government took over, which still manages the building through the BC Building Corporation. New tenants were needed quickly. Amongst its first was the Vancouver Technical School. The "school" began as a teaching department instituted at King Edward High School in 1916. It was the brain child of John George Lister to fill the need he saw "for a course of technical study designed with the view to fitting students who are going to take up technical work in after life, to equip themselves more efficiently for such work than is general in high schools"(25). The course work included English, Latin, Mathematics with an eye to "supplying a need which is felt in the dominion--of meeting in a practical way the needs of a practical country"(26). An entertaining account of the schools remarkable arrival at their new home and time spent at the temple is described as follows:
The time came when the King Edward High School could no longer afford living room for its growing offspring, and on a bright sunny morning in 1921, the three hundred Technical boys assembled by classes on the campus, gave three rousing cheers for their mother school, and then in a column of fours set out for their new home in the old Labor Temple on Dunsmuir Street. The route led along Broadway to the old Cambie Bridge, and then across Connaught Bridge[....]Once inside their own school the boys developed a very remarkable school spirit, and this was evinced by their general attitude around town. There was no play ground, except the alleyway and the business section of the city, but the police visited the school only twice; once because a bold boy cycled on the sidewalk, and the school time when a window pane was broken by a football. Twice the boys hired special B.C.E.R street cars to convey their teams and themselves to the combat fields of sport, and glorious was their enthusiasm. The Labor Temple was not ideal for a school, but some of the best years in the school's history were spent there. The boys still had the pioneer spirit, had a splendid attitude toward study, and were healthy young beings, enjoying life to the full, and yet with a canny eye to the future.(27)
Prior to the leading the Vancouver Technical School march to its new home at the Labor Temple, John George Lister, in his capacity as president of the Vancouver Teachers' Association, had in October 28, 1916 at the Dawson School in Vancouver called a planning meeting of local teacher association representatives from Vancouver, Point Grey, South and North Vancouver as well as Victoria. This group than planned the first annual general meeting of the fledgling teacher organization. This first AGM took place at the King Edward High School on January 4, 1917, and lead to the incorporation as a benevolent society on July 12, 1919 to be called The BC Teachers' Federation. J.G. Lister was elected the BCTF's second president, and the BCTF's executive still meets monthly in its "Lister Boardroom" at the new BCTF Building at 6th Avenue and Ash.
In 1929, 411 Dunsmuir Street became an office building for the Provincial Government, housing predominantly the various initiatives associated with the Department of Labour. During the Great Depression, the building was the relief headquarters for single men who reported for work in the relief camps at 20 cents a day. The irony of this was not missed among those workers who had built or worked in the previous Labor Temple. Over the following years the provincial government has also used 411 Dunsmuir for the Workers' Compensation Board, the BC Hospital Association, among other government departments. In 1971, the Ministry of Human Resources started operating a cafeteria with the help of volunteers.
Of course, there are many other stories associated with this building. Of these, perhaps the most peculiar was the City Police Department's use of 411 Dunsmuir Street. At one point in the 1920s when Vancouver faced one of its periodical problems with prostitutes, the police would gather the "street workers" and house them right here, until the Courts decided their fates(28). In 1972, Premier Bennett approved the project for seniors at 411. The 411 Volunteer Centre Society was formed in 1977 as a non-profit organization, and the Centre have been the guests of the provincial government ever since. The walls and pillars of 411 Dunsmuir have many tales they could tell, of events they have witnessed and contained. No plaque inside or out tells its story . However, beneath the new wood and drywall beats the proud heart of Hooper's Labor Temple that started 90 years ago on that Spring day in 1912.
Gavin Hainsworth is a BC director of the Pacific Northwest Labour History Association's Board of Directors, a freelance writer, and BC secondary school teacher. The PNLHA website is located at <www.pnlha.org>.
