In early July, car loads full of boxes and filing cabinets were moved from Duncan’s United Steelworkers Hall, formerly the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) Hall, on a long-term loan to the Kaatza Historical Society.
The collection began as a small collection of donated logging and sawmilling photo's but was greatly expanded by personal photo's taken by the membership. Pictures in the collection document a period spanning from the 1890's to the merger of the IWA Canada into the United Steel Workers. The single most significant addition was the purchase of the Wilmer Gold Photo Collection containing approximately 1,000 photographic negatives. Gold was a professional photographer who documented the forest industry on Vancouver Island.
Another significant portion of the collection is the Edna Brown Ladies Auxilliary papers donated by her son, Bill Brown. This collection helps to understand the important role that the Auxillary played in making many improvements both in the local community and in lobbying for positive change in provincial and federal labour laws.
The mass of materials in the IWA collection includes other photographs and
artefacts from it’s long and storied history in the Cowichan Lake area.
Local 1-80 of the IWA emerged out of the predecessor Lumber Workers Industrial
Union (LWIU) first established in Lake Cowichan at the Lake Logging camp in 1934
and the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union (LSWU) in late 1935. These
materials carry with them a great deal of local relevance.
We would like to thank the members of IWA Local 1-80 for their foresight in
maintaining the collection over the years and to the United Steelworkers for this unique and valuable
addition to our collection. We will be working closely with them to
catalogue and organize this collection so that it becomes a valuable tool to
researchers and the community at large.