1938:

“Violence and Gas Bombs in Sunday Affray” reads the front page of The Vancouver Province, reporting on a large-scale riot that occurred the previous morning, in which hundreds of downtown store windows were smashed, and more than $35,000 in property damage was caused, in a fracas that will become known as Bloody Sunday.

“What we in Vancouver have said for weeks would happen, has happened,” reads a Province editorial. “The unemployed ‘sitdowners’ have been evicted from the Post Office and the Art Gallery, and the sequel has been $30,000 damage to Vancouver citizens’ property.”

The root of the trouble was a month-long, “sit-down” protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the main Post Office at Granville and Hastings Streets, attended by more than 1,000 jobless protestors. The protestors, hit hard by nine years of economic depression, and angered by the apparent insensitivity of government to the plight of the unemployed, had been occupying both premises since the 20th of May. The violence began in the small hours of Sunday morning, when VPD officers assembled outside of the Art Gallery and the Post Office, and, in what would quickly become a notorious example of police brutality, used tear gas and truncheons to evacuate both buildings. Forty protestors (none of them armed) were sent to hospital, including protest organizer Steve Brodie, who was brutally beaten, and Arthur Redseth, whose eye was knocked from its socket by a police baton.

In retaliation for the police eviction, hundreds of protestors (along with a number of spectators along for the ride) streamed along Cordova Street, smashing windows and destroying whatever property they could find along the way.

“They heaved stones, planks, bottles,” The Province reports, “anything they had. Some used their feet.”

By afternoon, close to 15,000 people had gathered at Oppenheimer Park to protest the brutality of police. However, despite the destruction, and widespread public support for the protestors, neither the federal nor provincial governments will agree to offer any further aid to the unemployed, and the Depression will continue largely unabated until the onset of World War II.

“The real blame for this regrettable situation that has been allowed to develop in Vancouver must be placed squarely on the shoulders of the institution of the government of Canada” The Province editorial continues. “First of all these men must eat. Next, they must be given opportunity to become self-supporting. These unemployed men want work and they want pay — surely they have a right to both.”

 

IMAGE: Rioters returning to East Vancouver after the Bloody Sunday riots. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library online archives.