The Blyth Festival Podcast
Conversations with artists, friends and supporters of Canada's Blyth Festival - Canada's experts in telling Canada's stories.
The Blyth Festival Podcast
Sisters of '78: The Strike That Changed Canada
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Roll back the clock to the summer of 1977.
The kitchen is avocado green. Rod Stewart is on the radio. Somewhere somebody is wearing platform shoes and entirely too much Love's Baby Soft.
And a group of young women in Centralia, Ontario are about to make Canadian history.
Playwright Kristen Da Silva joins host Joanne Wallace to talk about Sisters of '78, her powerful new play inspired by what's come to be known as the Fleck strike. This was a five-month labour battle that pitted neighbour against neighbour, drew a shocking police response, and ultimately changed labour law across Canada.
Kristen shares the remarkable history behind the play, the research that brought her face-to-face with women who lived through the strike, and the challenge of turning one of Ontario's most dramatic labour disputes into compelling theatre.
Have a listen -- and fall in love with the women whose story deserves to be remembered.
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Credits:
Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace
Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park
Music: Theme: Gotta Give Me Something, River Run Dry, via Epidemic Sound; Lofi Podcast, Leberch; Whimsical Acoustic, The Mountain, both via Pixabay; Almost the Same (Instrumental Version), Peter Crosby, via Epidemic Sound.
Kristen, welcome, and thank you so much for being here.
Kristen Da Silva:Thank you, Joanne. It's lovely to be here.
Joanne Wallace:Now, you gave a really excellent talk to the Huron County Historical Society a few weeks back, and you started that talk by asking the audience to go with you on a bit of a guided meditation into the summer that this story starts, could you invite our listeners along on that same journey?
Kristen Da Silva:I'd love to. I'd love to. So, if you're listening, I invite you to close your eyes for just a moment and imagine it's 1977 you're 25 years old, you're standing in your kitchen, which is either avocado green or harvest gold. The floor is linoleum, and it's a warm summer day, so your feet stick to it. You've got lots of hair, your shoes make you four inches taller, and you're wearing some jeans that you needed your older sister to pick you up and shake you into the radio is on. It's playing tonight's the night. Rod Stewart is an international sex symbol, and his voice is making your pulse race. Yes, all of you. Somewhere, someone is dancing in a butterfly collar and a thick gold chain. Life is full of possibilities, you get ready to leave the house, and you drive to a factory in Centralia, Ontario.
Joanne Wallace:That's marvelous. I can, I think, I can hear the Bee Gees and smell the Love's Baby Soft in the air.
Kristen Da Silva:Oh, Love's Baby
Joanne Wallace:Soft. When you remember, I do. Okay, let's talk about the actual history here, and then we'll get into some specifics about your plate. So, first, tell us what happened in Centralia, Ontario, in 1977 and 1978
Kristen Da Silva:In 1977 a group of women who worked at Fleck Manufacturing in Huron Park decided to organize, so they organized at their plant under the United Auto Workers, and they signed enough union cards to become certified as a local. They then, of course, expected to negotiate with their employer, and the issues they wanted to negotiate were wages, benefits, work conditions, and protection against sexual harassment, but most of all, union security, and they found throughout the course of negotiations that they weren't going to reach this collective agreement, so they ended up on strike, and the strike lasted five months. They endured incredible pressure from the OPP, who were extremely involved in the strike, and over the course of these five months, there was violence, there was arrests, and these women persevered, ended up taking their employer to the labor board, charging them with unfair labor practices, and ultimately they, through their courage, won their first collective agreement and changed labor law in Canada.
Joanne Wallace:Okay, so it's a, it's quite a piece of history, and quite a story. And I want to ask you for some more specifics about the actual event, and then we'll start talking about the play and how you researched it and that sort of thing, for but first of all, can you remind our listeners how old most of these young women are, because this is just the thing I think that jumps out at me the most when I first read your script.
Kristen Da Silva:Yes, most of the workers at this plant, and there was only about 130 employees in total, but most of them were young women, many of them were single mothers. So, these were men in their 20s who might have graduated high school, but none of them would have had any post-secondary education, and many of them had dependents and were the sole providers at home. So, even from the very beginning, you know, if you think about them setting out to even bring a union in, it was already a high-risk situation for them.
Joanne Wallace:So, just for a little more historical context, what was going on in the women's movement and the labor scene at this time?
Kristen Da Silva:Yeah, the labor scene was was tough in 1977 The employment rate nationally in Canada was 8% and it was 10.4% in Ontario. Minimum wage was 265 inflation was 8% So, just as that has seen, it was a tough financial setting. At the same time, women had are in the were in the labor force in record numbers in the 70s, and it had grown massively over the preceding decades, and for greater context, it, it had only been 12 years in 1977 since women won the right to open their own bank accounts.
Joanne Wallace:Wow, yeah, that's that's kind of crazy. I mean, I myself was a young woman during this time, I. Um, and I remember it was a time of a very high unemployment and inflation, and my parents were very worried about rising interest rates, and all this sort of thing. So, you mentioned the minimum wage was two, what did you say, 260 It
Kristen Da Silva:was two 265 Wow, and so
Joanne Wallace:would these women have been making that, or were they being paid below the minimum?
Kristen Da Silva:They weren't being paid below the minimum, but they weren't being paid much above it, and ultimately, in the financial climate at the time, they weren't being paid a living wage. The women that I spoke to, and that I've read about, talked about their kids by the end of a paycheck, like stretching so thin that by the end of a paycheck, they're feeding their kids like cup of soup, two meals a day, so they were barely making ends meet.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, and
Kristen Da Silva:really tough.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, and so you said, so they decided to join the UAW. No, another thing I do remember about that time is that there was labor unrest that seemed like there were always strikes. The news was full of strikes. The posties were on strike, and I don't know, everyone seemed to be on strike. So, were there a lot of women represented in the UAW at this time?
Kristen Da Silva:Well, I think what is a more important question is, did the UAW understand before this strike what the unique conditions facing women in the workforce were, and what the unique considerations of women in the workforce were. This is really one of the first strikes where they had to look at the issues through the lens of what are the specifics, you know, are men experiencing the same things in the workforce? I mean, just to give some examples, there were at this time equal wages, rights were new, they only covered some sectors, and certainly at Fleck, the women were being paid less than the men in the plant doing maintenance roles, and there were also issues, like, you know, at this time it would be another year before it became illegal to fire an employee for becoming pregnant, for example, and sexual harassment wasn't something that had been really addressed in the labor movement up until now.
Joanne Wallace:Something that strikes me is, and that you mentioned this earlier, joining a union, any union, was a pretty brave step for a group of, you know, 22 year old women. Can you talk a little bit about your, your research and what you uncovered about what drove them to take such a drastic step?
Kristen Da Silva:Sure, yeah, I'd love to. It's such an interesting story. There had been a previous attempt to unionize at that plant. In fact, and what I've uncovered in my research was that the company was very staunchly anti-union, and you can see it in many layers. So one of them, for example, was that in the job application process prospective employees had to indicate whether or not they'd ever been part of a trade union, which is again, it's very unusual, and it sort of shows this really, we're just really not interested in having to deal with a union mindset, and during the first attempt to organize, the women describe how the suddenly, when they started to organize, the management took them seriously and pulled them all into a meeting and said, "We're really listening to you now, and listen, you don't need a union, we're going to listen to you now, we're going to come and meet with you, and will address all of your concerns, and that, and I've also heard anecdotal things about pressure. In fact, just yesterday, some of the folks at Blythe went to a luncheon and ended up sitting next to a woman who said that she was fired in 1970 because she was part of one of the attempts to organize, really. So, yes, so these women would have had a lot on this, the line personally, but also this was a company that was known to be pretty violently anti-union, so certainly they would have had the sense that what they were about to undertake could put them in the crosshairs, so to speak, for an employer who really wasn't interested in having to deal with any union,
Joanne Wallace:right, but what else? Like, you did tell a story in that talk about the nickname this plant had received, and from whom it received that nickname. Can you tell that story? The
Kristen Da Silva:plant was colloquially known as the Butcher Shop, and the person who started that nickname was the Town Doctor, and that was
Joanne Wallace:so, because he'd seen so many injuries coming in from the plant.
Kristen Da Silva:That's right, he, there was so many injuries at the plant. The machines were, they were old, they were in poor repair. One of the women I met with described how an accident would happen on a machine, it would have a health inspector come in, they would wrap it up in safety tape and. And by the time the health inspector was getting into his or her car in the parking lot, the company was taking the tape off and putting a girl back on the machines.
Joanne Wallace:Wow, some of this stuff that you've uncovered is so shocking. Another piece of the story that I was really unaware of that you mentioned in your earlier talk was the massive opp presence at this strike, can you talk about that?
Kristen Da Silva:Yeah, I mean, that was one of the most unusual things about this story, was that these women went out on strike on the first day. There was probably 80 of them on the picket line, and there was this enormous OPP presence from the very first day. Also, the OPP were making arrests on the picket line, and the OPP had been in the plant prior to the strike to speak to the women, and the union felt that that was a direct threat to the women, and made them scared that if they went out on strike, they could be subject to arrest and a criminal record, and thrown in jail for five years. The OPP's enormous involvement in this struck many people at the time as highly unusual, and started the question of who has all the, who has the power to get all these opp here, and
Joanne Wallace:just to ask, do you, for some numbers for context, like, do you know how many opp officers there were versus how many women there were on the picket line?
Kristen Da Silva:At the peak of the strike, there were reports of 400 500 officers, including police dogs, helicopters. It was an intense number of officers, and there were also reports that these officers were SWAT geared, and they would hit the women with their billy sticks,
Joanne Wallace:and there were like what, 85 of them, the women
Kristen Da Silva:to begin with. Yes, there were a pretty small number of women out on that picket line. What happened is that, you know, as soon as the opp were there in numbers, the UAW called in support from other bargaining units, and when a male picketer showed up to bolster the line, and then, of course, that made everything on the line more heated, and more and more cops were showing up.
Joanne Wallace:So, honestly, what on earth was going on,
Kristen Da Silva:that was the question everybody was asking, and as the media intensified view on the strike, as these reports were coming out, really ultimately it led to the question of who owns the company, and it was discovered that the company had prior been owned by a man who then became the Deputy of Minister, Deputy Minister of Industry and Tourism in the Ontario Provincial Government, and he had divested of his share in the, in the company when he took public office, but it was now being owned, partially owned by his wife.
Joanne Wallace:Okay, so I know you can't say this, but this is the thread running underneath this story, is that somebody had to have the power, had to have had the opp in their back pocket to make this happen. Yes,
Kristen Da Silva:well, it was certainly extremely unusual to have the opp involved in, as in the numbers they were involved in, and the financial spend they made, which was enormous at the time, it certainly was raising a lot of questions as to why were the police there.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, and you found, like, I wanted to also ask you to tell our audiences about your research process, because this wasn't just you reading dusty old archives, you actually were talking to many of the women who are still alive who experienced this, so you've got firsthand testimony. Is that right? I
Kristen Da Silva:was very fortunate to talk to some of the women in particular. I was able to talk to at length a woman who was part of the negotiating team and was there for all of the strike, and testified in the eventual labor board case, and she was phenomenal.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, and like, how these.. what are we 50 years out from this,
Kristen Da Silva:nearly?
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, what are their memories, and feel like.. how does it feel for them? Are they still describing. I don't know feelings of being overwhelmed, being frightened, but like what, when, when all of those police officers showed up.
Kristen Da Silva:Well, my main contact talked about that, and talked about the day that the police officers were there, and how she had never been more scared in her life, and she had never seen anything like it, except in the movies, and just the overwhelming visual of all of these helmeted police officers marching towards them, and then the order came that they should strike the women, and they just could not believe it was happening. Some of the women that I spoke to described having, for example, I met with a woman who had encouraged a friend of hers to talk to me, but the woman was so traumatized from what she went through, both at the plant, she was one of the women injured very badly, and then, you know, subsequently with the conflict that they really couldn't revisit it for themselves or weren't interested in revisiting it, but. Mostly the women talk about being really happy that the story is being told again, and feeling pride in what they achieved, as they should. As they should.
Joanne Wallace:Was there a moment in your research where this story stopped being interesting history and became something personal for you,
Kristen Da Silva:I think, from one of the very first articles I read that did such a good job describing these women and what they were like, I started to be able to really see them as characters and people in my head, and that they reminded me of such wonderful, strong women I've known in my own life. So, it felt like from the very beginning it felt quite personal.
Joanne Wallace:Okay, this is a great place to segue into talking about the play itself, because I could sit here and talk about the history with you forever. But we're going to take a short break first. Please stay with us when we come back. Kristin is going to talk more about the play that she's written, the characters we're going to meet about the process of bringing this complicated history to life on stage, and maybe a little bit about how a job she did before becoming a playwright might have been the perfect preparation for writing this play. So, don't go away, we'll be right back. Welcome back, I'm speaking with playwright Kristen Da Silva about her new play, Sisters of 78 which is opening at the Blythe Festival on june 12 and running right through until the ninth of August. And we've had a long chat about the fascinating history behind this subject, but let's move on and talk about the play itself. Kristen, I know you have dramatized several key moments in this story. We will see the company staff ripping down the notices that the women are trying to post, inviting their fellow workers to come and hear about how a union can help them. We see scenes involving some of the dangerous and unsavory working conditions these young women were subjected to, and of course the constant threats from the opp, and so on. But when audiences come to see this play this summer, are they going to see like a docudrama on stage?
Kristen Da Silva:No. So my approach to the story was really to zoom in on the women and how I imagined this strike, this situation would have impacted them in their lives, so both at work, at home, and in their communities. So, what audiences will see is an imagining of the women's experience that does is inspired by the strike, and does cover some of the strikes events, and it draws a lot from the history, but is is dramatized.
Joanne Wallace:One thing I love about the script is that, like, these, these women are not, they're not presented as, I don't know, symbols or saints, they're they're funny, and they're messy, and they're young and they're contradictory and they're, you know, squabbling amongst themselves or going out for drinks. How important was it to you that the audiences would meet these women as real people first and labor activists second?
Kristen Da Silva:So important, I think that the story is so compelling, and the history is so rich, but at the heart of this story are real women, real Canadian women, and these were real events that happened and that shaped them, but also revealed them and revealed their strength. So I really wanted to showcase the human side of this story and take the audience on a journey where, through connecting with these characters, the history I think will feel more impactful,
Joanne Wallace:and I mean, just love a history about sort of unsung heroines too, like they, they, they took on something so meaty and so dangerous and so urgent. and, and, yeah, it's wonderful. It's wonderful that their story is getting told, and I think audiences are just going to eat it up. One thing, another thing that I recall seeing in the script is, like, strikes - the strikes don't just happen in the factory gates, right? Like, they ripple through families and friendships and whole communities. So, what did you learn about how divided this small town became during this conflict?
Kristen Da Silva:It's a great question, and one of the key dramatic through lines of the story is the way in which the women and the community were divided. This company, like many during a strike, used strike breakers, and these were people who were from a small town, and there's long histories, there's long histories that maybe go through generations of families, so in this case, and in many cases like this, it was neighbor against neighbor, you know, cousin against cousin, sister. Even divided down a line of who went out on that picket line and who felt they couldn't, and the story tries to show the point of view of all of those people with compassion, because everybody had their reasons and the pressure was immense, no matter what side you were on.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, yeah, I think you've done a wonderful job with it, because it's, you know, you have one character speaking about the need to not risk having the factory closed down, and another character talking about how, you know, they can't afford to feed their kids, and you know, both arguments are valid. So, yeah, thank you. That was
Kristen Da Silva:really important to me, that it, this isn't about women that are heroes versus women that weren't? It all of the women in this story were under incredible pressure, and all of them did what they felt they had to.
Joanne Wallace:I want to talk a little bit about, about you yourself, Kristen, as a playwright, and about the writing process that you've been through as you develop this work. I know that you've written quite a number of plays, and in fact, you're one of this country's most produced playwrights. But this is your first show at Blythe, and I know we commissioned it through our new play development program. Can you talk about what inspired you to approach Blythe with this particular story?
Kristen Da Silva:Blythe is a theater I greatly admire, and had for a long time, and when I found this story and knew I wanted to write about it, I immediately thought this is perfect for Blythe, and that Blythe would be the perfect place to bring it and develop it, because they are known for bringing Canadian stories to the stage, and this story takes place in their region, so it just felt like a match made in heaven from the beginning. So I pitched it to Gil, and he immediately believed in this story, and we started to work together. And it took us from then till now has been, I think, a four year process.
Joanne Wallace:Oh, wow, yeah, that's a long process.
Kristen Da Silva:A lot of that time was research.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, I I've personally have read two drafts of the script, and I know it's changed yet again, so I'm not sure if I'm going to recognize it when we get to our opening night, but particularly the story of the main character, Maeve, and her, or Maeve, how do you pronounce it
Kristen Da Silva:Maeve,
Joanne Wallace:Maeve, okay? And her family, so can you tell about how this happens? Like, do you go into the rehearsal hall with a story that you think is going to turn out one way, and then what happens? Like, how does just.. what happens?
Kristen Da Silva:Yeah, what happens? I'm not sure what's happened. It's been such a whirlwind of activity, and as you say, we're still fine-tuning the script as we speak. What happens is that there's the challenge with a play like this is you could approach it in many different ways. So, I really, you know, in the beginning of the process was like, how do I want to get into this story, and what angle do I want to take, and really, you know, my wheelhouse as a writer, I think, is is relationship, so that made it clear that what I really wanted to focus on, and Gil gave this guidance as well, is you know, the history is there and it's great, but we really care about the human story, so this is really about finding those dramatic moments, and the arc is not just about the strike, but it's about how does it impact the relationships, and how do we make it through the other side of that. So that's been our focus, and we just keep narrowing in on that and making sure that the forefront of this story is the women, and I can tell you with the cast we have that every time they're on stage together, you just never want them to leave. They're so compelling.
Joanne Wallace:I guess this is what happens, right? You hand the scripts out to the actresses in the rehearsal hall, and then all of a sudden these characters that you've been imagining and living with in your head for, I don't know, four years suddenly come to life. What's that like?
Kristen Da Silva:It's so wonderful. I write out loud, so when I'm, you know, scripting something often. I'm playing 30 characters, in this case, so many characters, and I have these really rich visions in my head of their voices, but then actors come in and really embody them and their different sensibilities and the different, their own different experiences that they imbue into their characters. They come to life in such a rich way, which has been a really special part of the process, and getting the right combination of those people in this piece has been such a cool thing to watch, and we've really got the perfect cast.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, you've got some really fantastic actors in this cast. I, and a great director too, and I wanted to mention this, this show is being directed by Mary Frances Moore, who is also the artistic director at Theater Aquarius in Hamilton, and the reason I'm mentioning that is because we at Bly, they're all very excited that this production with this cast, this amazing cast that you've mentioned, will be touring to. To Hamilton to play at Theater Aquarius this fall, later this fall, and it's, it's a wonderful way for us to get Blythe's work outside of our village, so that more people can see it, but I know that both you and Mary Frances live in Hamilton, so How do you think this show is going to play there,
Kristen Da Silva:I I want to first say that I feel so grateful and fortunate to have Mary Frances on. She's the right director for this piece. She has contributed in the rehearsal room so many great insights. I'm so excited to be working with her, and she read the script independent of sort of the conversation I was having with Blythe, and she really immediately knew that Hamilton would receive this story, because Hamilton is an industrial town, and some of the themes in this are really going to resonate with the audiences in Hamilton.
Joanne Wallace:I think it's just so fantastic that this particular story is going to be touring to Hamilton, which is about as opposite to Blythe as you can find in Canada, and as a festival we are famous for telling rural stories, the stories that go largely untold in the rest of the country, yet in this instance, even though Centralia is in our Cashman area, and was not a particularly urban place for this small factory to be, but we have, with this work that you have done with all these amazing artists, created a piece of theater that is going to be profoundly relevant outside of Blythe, and particularly I think in Hamilton. So, yes, very excited that that's happening.
Kristen Da Silva:While this story is set in, in a rural setting, and in Centralia, the most interesting thing about it is that it went on to impact all of Canada, because this strike changed labor law.
Joanne Wallace:Can you tell about that without going into the weeds about the Rand formula?
Kristen Da Silva:This strike resulted in the Rand formula becoming law in Canada. The Rand formula, very simply, is a clause that says everybody who is in a workplace where there's union benefits from the actions of the union, so everybody pays into the union.
Joanne Wallace:But can you just explain why that matters?
Kristen Da Silva:It's, it's integral to union security. When a, when a company like this can divide employees by allowing employees to opt in or out of a union, it weakens the security of the union overall. So, it's vitally important.
Joanne Wallace:So, after this action that became.. no, it was, it was, it was a rule before, but it wasn't codified in law. Is that what I understand?
Kristen Da Silva:That's right. It was very common practice, and it came out of the Windsor strikes in the 30s, but it was not yet law, and in this case, the employer was not going to include it, and really the strike forced them to do that, and and highlighted the need for this to be codified into law.
Joanne Wallace:Yeah, so the for that reason alone, I guess the strike is even more important,
Kristen Da Silva:extremely important. Yeah,
Joanne Wallace:but this is actually a great way for me to run into my next question, which is about you personally and your evolution as an artist, and why it is that you know so much about the red formula, because in that presentation I mentioned you said that you yourself had studied labor history during your post-secondary studies, and that you'd worked in labor relations for some years before you became an artist. So I wanted to ask you, first of all, How does that happen? Like, how? How are you an industrial relations specialist one minute, and then a playwright and an actress next?
Kristen Da Silva:Well, I would say that I was an artist who became a labor relations specialist, as opposed to the other way around. I did my degree in political science and labor studies at York University, I'd always been involved in the arts. It was my true passion, but at the time I was making a practical choice for myself about my future employment prospects, and decided to do that instead. And throughout my time working, I still kept always one foot into the arts, but in this case, you know, this is a really neat way for me to merge those worlds. I worked in IR for a number of years. I have a personal experience at the bargaining table, but on the other side,
Joanne Wallace:right? But on the other side, which is
Kristen Da Silva:interesting, I have - I did a co-op placement while I was in my program with a union, so I've been on both sides, but yes, my career really took me on the management side, but I led negotiation, so I've had this in-person experience with that, and I got to meld those two worlds together to tell this story.
Joanne Wallace:That's wonderful, and it's probably one of the reasons why this is such a strong story and a wonderful script, and I know everybody's going to enjoy it. Yeah, I know that you are very busy as a writer, and you had. Show up in Stratford at Here for Now Theater last year, and now Sisters at both Blythe and Hamilton. What's next for you?
Kristen Da Silva:Well, it's really hard for me to answer that, because I'm so absorbed in this right now. What's next after this? It's a great question. We'll find out. I think I'm going to take a little time off, and then I, you know, I've got quite a lot of shows up around Canada this summer, which is always so great, and I try to see as many as I can, and then sometime in the fall, when I have had a little rest, I think I might think about what my next project is going to be as a writer.
Joanne Wallace:Oh, well, we'll all be looking forward to finding out what that is. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Is there anything else you want to tell me about the story, or the script, or the process, or anything before we wrap up?
Kristen Da Silva:Just that I'm having such a wonderful time. The Blythe Festival has been an incredible partner throughout this, and I'm super excited for audiences to see this story on stage.
Joanne Wallace:Let me ask you one last question. Then, after living with this story for so long, what do you hope our audiences are going to carry home with them after the lights go down?
Kristen Da Silva:An appreciation for these incredible women, whose story has not been told enough.
Joanne Wallace:Fantastic. Thanks, Kristen.
Kristen Da Silva:Thank you.