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editor of the labour paper The Voice, found himself appointed to the Parks Board in Feb- ruary of 1919. Then in April, as a result of the amendments to the Act, labour alderman A.
A. Heaps and E. Robinson became Parks A Board members along with three other alder- men.12 But what could have been a formida- ble labour block on the board was scuttled when Arthur Puttee, surprisingly, did not support the General Strike. As a reSult, Put- tee was the only one of these members who regularly attended Parks Board meetings during the strike and its aftermath. Heaps, in particular, had other things on his mind. He was arrested as a strike leader in June. 50 the pro-strike members never had an impact on the board’s voting patterns, but they did make their influence felt.
This was most evident when, after the strike had been crushed, a matter of great symbolic and practical importance to sup- porters of the strike came before the board in July of 1919. James Law of the Winnipeg De- fence Commi ee made a formal request to the board that his committee be allowed to use Victoria Park as a public meeting place. The committee had been created after the de— feat of the strike in order to support the lead- ers who had been charged and to raise funds for their legal defence.13 In spite of the labour members, the board was still dominated by businessmen like F. W. Drewery who had
been bitterly opposed " to the strike. After the arrest of the strike ‘ leaders in June, the board had passed a “v motion authorizing the Chief of Police to take whatever actions nec- essary to enforce the Parks Act and board ‘ by-laws in Winnipeg parks. As the by-laws gave the board wide w latitude in preventing ;. 'édisorderly behav- iour”, the police could then break up the kind of large public meet- ings that had so effectively kept up the morale of the strikers.14
Now the Defence Committee wanted the matter settled once and for all. Could public meetings be held in Winnipeg's public parks? The board did not immediately refuse the request; outright refusal might have sparked a riot during a time when the city was returning to a kind of jittery normalcy. Instead, it was decided that the Defence Committee could meet in the park, pending a reevaluation of the status of Victoria Park itself and of board policy on public meetings there. That decision came down in October
Plant. PAM N11900.
1 gh it very attractive and rectified, the fact i at t e CPR back-up track ran along the park's section of the river bank was considered a serious flaw. The striker's use of it during the 1919 General Strike put the last nail in Victoria Park's wfiiu. The park ms sold to Winnipeg Hydro in 1524 and became the site of Hydra's Amy greet Steam
when the board moved that: "during the pleasure of the Board, public speaking and public meetings be permitted in this prop- erty...”15 But the catch was that a formal ap- plication would be required which would in- clude the speakers' names and the purpose of the meeting. The Parks Board by-laws en- titled the board to clamp down on disorderly activity after it had occurred.m By the new ruling, the board set itself up azs the vetting authority on what subjects and speakers would be permissible in public parks.
The controversy seems to have put an-
other nail in the coffin of Victoria Park. Since fit
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all