C. Regent Hotel (Fisherman's Union)

Category: Sites from the 'Labour, Work and Working People' booklet

Before acquiring the Fishermen's Hall at 138 East Cordova, fishing industry unions had their office at this hotel. The BC Fishermen's Union formed in 1900 to combat the price fixing arrangements of local canneries. It replaced the Fraser River Fishermen's Protective and Benevolent Association (1893-1896), which denied membership to more than 1000 Japanese fishermen on the Fraser River. The Fishermen's Union led the 1900 Fraser River strike, the first major strike in BC outside of the mining industry. The 2-month strike was led by 2 prominent socialists and union activists: Will McCain, a machinist at the Canadian Pacific Railway, who was fired for his role in the strike, and fisherman and longshore worker Frank Rogers. Rogers was jailed for his role in a second Fraser River strike in 1901. Although white, Japanese and First Nations fishermen united to force the cannery owners to raise the price pad for fish, racial antagonism prevented true solidarity in the 1900 strike and many later disputes. The union's leaders called for enrollment on a class rather than ethnic basis but white and Japanese fishermen were not co-operative. White racism discourage non-whites from joining. Some Aboriginal fishers did join the Fishermen's Union but the Japanese decided to form their own Independent Japanese Fishermen's Union. Today, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers' Union, part of the CAW, organizes fishermen and fishplant workers in a single industrial union.

Some nice photographs and postcards of the Regent can be found here