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Chapter Thirteen
They Chose Not to Fight: Socialists, Pacifists and Deserters
For those facing unemployment or a difficult life in the backwoods of British Columbia, the army meant a steady paycheque and regular meals. But for some socialists and pacifists it was better to face hardship than to betray one’s convictions. Sometimes it took as much courage to endure the taunts and disdain and stay out of the fighting. When conscription was introduced in 1917, that choice became even more difficult. Enlistment posters reminded men who chose not to fight that they were out of step with the mood of the country.
Contents
The Socialists Oppose the War
Conscription and Crackdown
The Goodwin Grave in Cumberland—Labour Place of Pilgrimage
The Doukhobors—Toil and the Peaceful Life
Some Did Serve
Shot at Dawn
Sidebar: From Our Listeners
The Socialists Oppose the War
The platform of the Socialist Party of Canada was published in every issue of its official newspaper, the Western Clarion:
The irrepressible conflict of interest between the capitalist and the worker is rapidly culminating in a struggle for possession of the reins of government—the capitalist to hold, the worker to secure it by political action. This is the class struggle.
The Western Clarion was published in Vancouver, even then a hotbed for utopian ideas. The paper followed national affairs before the war and warned its readers to be wary of growing militarism. In March 1913, commentator John Amos “Jack” McDonald wrote that Prime Minister Borden’s plan to give the Imperial Navy a gift of warships was imperialism at its worst:
Borden has launched his naval policy in a lengthy address in which he reviewed the reasons for making an emergency contribution of three great battleships of the dreadnought type, to be used in defending the shores of “our glorious empire”...It must appear humorous indeed to all class-conscious workers, who are neither the owners of property or the possessors of steady jobs, to be told over and over again by Cabinet aspirants and ministers of the Crown that “those dreadful Germans” are watching every opportunity to land on the soil of Britain, and that we must be ready to risk our lives to protect those shores with a strong military and naval force.
The provincial election of 1916 provided a bigger soapbox for the Socialist Party. Jack McDonald ran as a candidate and wrote about the prospects for success in the Clarion:
Once again, the workers of British Columbia are given an opportunity to decide whether they want a continuation of capitalist rule. One would be inclined to think that the workers of this province have experienced enough misery and starvation to cause them to wake up and decide on taking a line of action in accord with their own interests at the present time. But again, will they? I think not!
The party ran McDonald in Fernie and union organizer Ginger Goodwin in Ymir. Both men were opposed to the war and made no bones about it. The election was held on September 14 and McDonald’s prediction proved true. Every Socialist was defeated. The voters were more concerned about booting out the once-mighty Conservative Party of Richard McBride (now in disgrace and unsalvageable even under a new leader). But McDonald thought the Socialist Party had done pretty well:
In the Ymir riding a clean and vigorous fight was put up by Comrade Goodwin who, for the first time, entered a campaign as a representative of the Socialist Party of Canada...Much credit is due to Com. Goodwin for the manner in which he conducted the fight.
Conscription and Crackdown
Freedom of speech was great. But with more and more BC boys on the front lines, anti-war sentiments weren’t going to be popular. In May 1917, Prime Minister Borden introduced the Military Service Act—conscription. The days of publicly challenging the war effort were coming to an end for McDonald, Goodwin and other conscientious objectors.
In labour circles, Goodwin became a bit of a star after his election campaign. He got a job as a full-time secretary of the Mill and Smeltermen’s Union in Trail. Then in 1917, he was elected a vice-president of the BC Federation of Labour. The Military Service Act became law in late August, but Goodwin was given an exemption for health reasons. He was a poor physical specimen because of bad teeth and lung disease, and anybody who looked at him could see that.
Goodwin’s health issues did not slow down his labour organizing. In November 1917 he led a strike by smeltermen that lasted five weeks and put Kootenay miners out of work as well. Goodwin was earning a reputation as a troublemaker and a lot of people wanted him out of the way. In late November, the local conscription review board decided to revisit his exemption on health grounds and in a surprising reversal found him fit for service. Goodwin filed an appeal and just to be safe, headed for the coast.
In April, the Central Appeal Tribunal turned down his bid for exemption from military service. In May he was ordered to appear for duty in Victoria. He never showed.
Instead, Ginger Goodwin headed for the backwoods around Cumberland, where a fugitive could count on labour support and protection. He was camped out in the bush near Comox Lake on July 27, 1918, when a police search party looking for evaders caught up with him. It is unclear exactly what happened, but Goodwin had a rifle and when Constable Daniel Campbell of the Dominion Police spotted him, Campbell opened fire. Goodwin was hit in the neck and killed. Campbell claimed he shot in self-defence and there was talk of manslaughter charges. But a grand jury decided not to commit him for trial.
Labour leader Jack Kavanagh told the Vancouver Province that trade unionists didn’t believe Campbell’s claim that he killed Goodwin to save himself. “Goodwin saw fit to evade the draft,” said Kavanagh. “The question is, was it a killing in self-defense, or was it murder? We think it was murder.”
Goodwin’s funeral was held on August 2 in Cumberland and his death triggered mass demonstrations. In Vancouver on the same day, trade unionists called British Columbia’s first general strike.
The Vancouver newspapers condemned the walkout. Under the headline “British or German—Which?” the Vancouver Sun declared:
Every man who desires to be considered a good citizen will continue to work today. Every man who lays off in obedience to the infamous recommendations of extremists without honor or conscience will stain himself with something that can hardly be distinguished from deliberate treason.
The Vancouver Province agreed:
Hundreds of union labor men from British Columbia have died bravely fighting for empire in France and Flanders. For none of these have organized workers been asked to pay such honor as they have been called upon to offer to the man who was killed with a rifle in his hand resisting the law of the country.
There was a strike, but it lasted only ten hours. Returning soldiers attacked union offices and the Vancouver Province reported that some strike leaders were forced to kiss the flag. Under the heading, “Yesterday’s Lesson,” the Province concluded:
No Canadian city has given an exhibition so shocking to loyal sentiment as that which was forced upon the community by order of the authorities of the Labor Temple...It is time now for the union workers to consider their relations to the community and decide whether they can afford to remain any longer subject to the present direction and control.
Conscription also put newspaperman Jack McDonald on the run. He headed first for Seattle. But on June 5, 1917, all men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one were ordered to register for the US draft. Jack complied but quickly headed back to Canada. In October, he was called for a medical examination under the Military Service Act and placed in category A—fit for service. He managed to keep a low profile for the rest of the war and the authorities tried various measures like amnesties to get more voluntary compliance. Maybe as a writer, McDonald was not considered a serious threat to the public peace.
McDonald ended up in the United States after the war and ran a socialist bookstore in San Francisco for many years. He was killed in a car accident in 1968. His daughter Mary came back to Canada and was active in the bookstore business and the Raging Grannies.
The Goodwin Grave in Cumberland—Labour Place of Pilgrimage
Ginger Goodwin’s grave at the Cumberland Cemetery is still an important landmark for the labour movement. Trade unionists and politicians looking for the labour vote still visit. NDP leader Jack Layton laid a wreath there in 2003. He told the crowd:
It sends a chill up your spine. You feel like you’re in the presence of some great tap root of resistance in the struggle for justice and equality. And I find myself thinking of Ginger Goodwin in the hills being hunted down in our country because he refused to go off and take up weapons...to shoot down other working people in a far off land. What a lonely moment that must have been for him and what a struggle that must have been.
The headstone is rather unusual, displaying a hammer and sickle, a bit of artistic licence that Goodwin would not necessarily have chosen. But it is impressive and there is now a stop of interest and commemorative historical plaque along the cemetery road as well.
The Doukhobors—Toil and the Peaceful Life
The Doukhobors came to Canada in the late 1800s to escape religious persecution in Russia. They were settled first in Saskatchewan (then the Northwest Territories) where they were granted land. When the new provincial government tried to break up their communal holdings, about five thousand under direction from leader Peter the Lordly Verigin moved to British Columbia, mostly to communities in the west Kootenay and Boundary country.
It was always understood that the sect was pacifist. This was one of the key reasons they left Russia. An extract from a Minute of Canada’s Privy Council on December 6, 1898, read:
The Minister is of the opinion that it is expedient to give them the fullest assurance of absolute immunity from Military Service in the event of their settling in this country. The Minister recommends that under the power vested in Your Excellency in council by the above provision, the Doukhobors, settling permanently in Canada, be exempted unconditionally from service in the Militia upon the production from the proper authorities of their community.
So when the war broke out, Doukhobors again sought assurances they would be free from military service and that was given. But their farming neighbours who sent their own boys to war resented the exemption given to the Doukhobors that allowed them to continue to farm and prosper as they had done before the war.
Peter Verigin sensed there was trouble and took steps to show his people were prepared to support the war effort in other ways. In December 1916, he announced that the Doukhobors would donate cash and a carload of their famous jam to the local Patriotic Fund. The Grand Forks Sun reported:
Mr. Verigin agreed to give, commencing on the 1st of January next, $100 per month during the coming year. In addition to this cash subscription, he stated the Society would ship a carload of jam, valued at $5,000 to the military authorities at the coast.
Things calmed for a time. But in May 1918, when the war was at its hottest, local farmers met again and demanded conscription of Doukhobors into a farm labour force. The Sun reported that a resolution to that effect was unanimously passed by the delegates:
Whereas the Doukhobors made a compact with the former government releasing them from all combatant service, and owing to the above condition, all our young able-bodied men have been taken away from our farms and necessary industries for the successful carrying on of the war, and the Doukhobors and other aliens are taking advantage of the scarcity of labor and are retarding the work of the country by holding out for exorbitant wages, be it resolved that this meeting request the provincial government to urge the federal government the necessity of immediately conscripting all Doukhobors of military age...and to set wages for different industries, the government to take all wages over $1.10 a day and board, the same as our men at the front are receiving.
In April 1919 when the war was over, there was more agitation, this time for the government to purchase the Doukhobor lands, close the colony and set up a settlement for returning soldiers in its place.
Nothing came of that, but the communal way of life was collapsing due to internal conflicts and other pressures. On October 29, 1924, somebody blew up the train car Peter Verigin was travelling in, killing him and eight others. The crime has never been solved.
Some Did Serve
While pacifism was the official doctrine of the Doukhobors, there are some indications that leader Peter Verigin advised the federal government in 1914 that Independent Doukhobors who left the communal way of life did not deserve the military service exemption. Some did end up serving, including two men from the community of Thrums near Castlegar.
John Nevacshonoff enlisted in June 1916 and served with the 232nd Battalion in France. He later told his children he was just fifteen when he signed up to fight the Germans. It was a bitter experience that he later came to regret. A family obituary quoted him as saying he “had given three years of his life to the devil by participating in the First World War.”
Another Thrums man, Demitri Kolesnikoff, is also listed among those who served. His military records indicate he was thirty-six years old when he was conscripted in June of 1918 into the 1st Depot Battalion at Calgary. His military records indicate that he initially failed to appear under the Military Service Act. Because he was conscripted late in the war, it is not clear whether he ever went overseas.
In December 1919 there was a general amnesty for all those who avoided conscription. For those who did serve and deserted, the stakes were even higher.
Shot at Dawn
Desertion could result in execution, and in most cases, these executions resulted from ongoing disciplinary issues. During the Great War, over twenty Canadian soldiers were executed for military offences between 1916 and 1918. Two served with BC regiments.
Private Thomas Moles was from Somerset but served with the 54th Kootenay Battalion. He was absent without leave on at least four occasions and was also disciplined for drunkenness.
In October 1917, he was charged with desertion. At 05:30 on October 22, 1917, Moles was executed by firing squad. His remains are located in Ypres Reservoir Cemetery.
Private Henry Hesey Kerr was from Montreal but served with the 7th British Columbia Battalion in France. He was disciplined for being absent without leave on at least two occasions. In November 1916 he was charged with desertion after failing to report during the Somme offensive. At 06:45 on November 21, 1916, Kerr was executed by firing squad. Private Kerr’s remains are now located in Quatre-Vents Military Cemetery.
The government of Canada has offered an apology and formally announced its regret for these executions. On December 11, 2001, Minister of Veterans Affairs Dr. Ron Duhamel rose in the House of Commons and read into the parliamentary record the names of twenty-three Canadians who were executed, and then announced their names would be written into Parliament Hill’s Book of Remembrance
From Our Readers
Ghost in the Barn: Officially, my mother’s brother, Private William Henry Wallington, died at Vimy Ridge in France. My aunt Lena’s husband, James Ackley, told us how Henry had returned from the dead to the family homestead in March 1917 with his horrific story. [Read more]