Guest Blog - First hand impressions of the 1919 General Strike

Guest Blog – First hand impressions of the 1919 General Strike

By Jessica Adam, Practicum student, Master of Arts in Cultural Studies/Curatorial Practices, University of Winnipeg

 

In 2019, it will be the one hundredth anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike, a movement that had major social and political repercussions across Canada. To commemorate this dramatic episode in Winnipeg’s history, The Manitoba Museum is researching a potential exhibition about the strike, and specifically, the experience of what it was like to be there – on the streets, in the crowds, part of the events. My role in this, as a student researcher working towards my MA in Curatorial Practices, has focused on first-hand accounts, archival photographs and materials from the Archives of Manitoba, as well as The Manitoba Museum’s collection of recorded oral histories. The recollections of people who personally witnessed these events add an extra dimension to the colourful history of Winnipeg, as they create a tangible link to the past. As I have worked my way through this research, I have become acutely aware of how connected we are to the past, overall. In many ways, this is part of what museums do –facilitate this connection for everyone through exhibitions and education.

A young adult posing for a photo while leaning against the bar of the Urban Gallery cafe in the Manitoba Museum.

Researching and listening to oral histories, especially, has furthered my appreciation for Winnipeg’s local history, and placed it into the larger context of Canadian history. The importance of these kinds of historical accounts, as well, cannot be overstated. They are exciting, original, and engaging, and they can make us feel like we are sharing the experience of being there, as it’s all happening. This kind of primary source research can be slow and time-consuming, but is well worth it. I’ve heard stories I never thought I’d get to hear, read sensational accounts, and admired amazing pictures taken during incredibly important moments. As a history nerd, I feel like this has been a bit of a dream come true.

 

Image: Master’s student Jessica Adam in the Urban Gallery café. The gallery represents Winnipeg in 1920, one year after the events of the General Strike.

Finally, I’ll end with an example. While there are many compelling stories in The Manitoba Museum’s oral history collection, I found Mr. Leslie Paulley’s description of the infamous Bloody Saturday very thrilling. In this brief segment, he discusses the violence that erupted on the streets of Winnipeg between the strikers and the Mounted Police:

They turned around and they recharged the crowd, this time with revolvers drawn. Previously, as I recall, they were only swinging batons. They swept down upon the crowd, and as they approached the gathering in front of the City Hall, they fired shots at it. One man dropped dead with a bullet through the heart on William Avenue, quite close to Main Street. Another man was shot through the head. And a third man died later in hospital of wounds to the chest. There were scores of people injured, some of them, of course, being the mounted men engaged in the charge. (Paulley, Leslie 110 – 38:45-39:34)

The Botany of Valentine’s Day: If people reproduced like plants

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, flower sales are set to soar. Men give flowers to women to increase the chances that they’ll get some lovin’ but they don’t typically think about the fact that in doing so they’ve already helped something reproduce-namely the plant. Flowers are the sexual organs of plants and their methods of reproduction are both fascinating and bizarre. However, plants can be complicated so to make this easier to understand, I’m going to describe how people would have babies if we were like plants.

Close-up on a stalk of Buffalograss, a single stalk splits into two, with either end having a fan of stamens.

If people were like plants most of us would be hermaphrodites (both male and female). Very few plant species have separate males and females; buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) is one of the only ones in Manitoba. Most plants (~90%) have both male (stamens) and female (pistils) organs either on the same flower or the same plant. Hermaphroditic plants are either receptive to receiving pollen or actively releasing pollen but not usually doing both at the same time to prevent inbreeding. Some plant species can even switch from being male to female part way through their lives.

 

Image: Buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) is one of the few Canadian species that has separate male and female plants.

Close up on a bumble bee on a plant with a bunch of small purple flowers at the top.

If people were like plants, in-vitro fertilization would be the norm. Most plants rely on a third party, such as an insect or bird, to help them reproduce. The animal removes pollen from the stamens of one flower and transfers it to the pistil of another flower. Humans also sometimes fill this role, hand pollinating crop plants like vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) when insect pollinators are not available.

If you couldn’t find a mate and really wanted to have a baby, you could just fertilize yourself! The baby would be a clone that is genetically identical to the mother. Many plants can fertilize themselves in case they are not visited by pollinators. Self-fertilization isn’t ideal as inbreeding can produce individuals that are less healthy but at least all the effort spent producing eggs and pollen is not completely wasted.

 

Image: This bumblebee (Bombus) is fertilizing a breadroot (Pediomelum esculentum) plant. The bee gets paid with a delicious drink of nectar.

Close-up on three orange lilies.

If you wanted a child but didn’t want to give birth, you could just grow a little doppelganger of yourself on your foot. Once the baby was big enough, it would fall off and start running around. Hooray! No 16-hour labour to go through! This type of reproduction (asexual) is quite common in perennial plants. Some plants produce bulbs or tubers which eventually break away from their parents, forming separate but genetically identical new plants. Other species, such as sod grasses and aspen (Populus) trees produce long underground stems from which new plants emerge. This strategy can be very successful if there is no suitable habitat for a seed to germinate in.

 

Image: Many lilies, such as this prairie lily (Lilium philadelphicum) reproduce asexually by creating bulbs.

A palm tree weighed down by large bunches of red dates.

If people were like plants everyone would have several thousand children every year. Unfortunately, about half of them would be eaten by lions; seed predation is high in plants with 40-50% losses to birds, rodents, and insects being common. The seeds that do survive might spend decades living in a vegetative state before resuming a normal life and reproducing; this is sort of like having teenager who does nothing but play video games all day. The oldest seed ever successfully grown was a Judean date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) that was about 2,000 years old. Talk about a failure to launch!

So when you’re purchasing or appreciating your Valentine’s Day flowers this year remember that at the very least, the plant has gotten lucky!

Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson

Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson

Curator of Botany

Dr. Bizecki Robson obtained a Master’s Degree in Plant Ecology at the University of Saskatchewan studying rare plants of the mixed grass prairies. After working as an environmental consultant and sessional lecturer…
Meet Dr. Bizecki Robson