"No Inquiry on Labor Rioting: Premier Says Subversive Elements Working at Blubber Bay," Victoria Daily Times, 21 September 1938, p. 1

Canadian Press, Vancouver, read 10 Oct 2026 in the page image: “Premier T. D. Pattullo today said his government did not intend to countenance the activities of ‘some very subversive elements at work’ at Blubber Bay, B.C., where the Pacific Lime Company’s plant has been subject of a strike for several months. The strike was called by members of the International Woodworkers of America, an affiliate of John L. Lewis’ American Committee for Industrial Organization. Several clashes have occurred between strikers and men still working in the plant… In the last clash, a dozen men were hurt and 18 were arrested. One of the injured men was a British Columbia police constable… Strikers and their supporters have charged… that British Columbia police had exceeded their authority in some cases and were working in the interests of the company. There have been requests for a commission investigation of police activities,” and, as the research brief read the rest, “no such inquiry would be held.”

Context, from the research brief’s reading of the Times, the Daily Colonist and the Labour Gazette: the strike, at the lime works on Texada Island, began on 2 June 1938; the Canadian Press called it “a strike of 21 white men and 70 Chinese”; after the riot of 17 September fifteen more provincial constables were sent in, and the Attorney General, Gordon Wismer, said he would recommend a judicial inquiry on ten affidavits against the police, before Pattullo ruled it out. In the legislature on 31 October he would not “break down the police morale, by holding an inquiry threat over their heads” (Times, 1 Nov.). A special constable was later jailed for six months for beating a striker; four strikers got six months for riot and nine more three to four months; the dispute lapsed in March 1939 “in favour of employer” (Labour Gazette). See pattullo-bloody-sunday.