Everything That Floats: Pat Sullivan, Hal Banks, and the Seamen's Unions of Canada

"I will soon be in the dubious position of being the top labor man in all of Canada," Hal Chamberlain Banks wrote home in April 1949, "but let me tell you that I now know that uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." Hal Banks, an ex-convict and representative of the Searfarers' International Union of North America, was by nature a boastful man, but there was more than a little truth to what he wrote. Financed by the shipping companies and assisted by the federal government, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canadian National Railways Police, Banks, along with a small army of SIU strongmen imported from the United States, had, in a matter of months, waged and won a violent battle against the long-established national Canadian Seaman's Union. With only a few companies outside the SIU's orbit, Banks controlled the collective bargaining rights of almost every seaman employed on the Canadian flag fleet and, with an iron fist, would do so for more than a decade. Eventually Banks's activities would be investigated by a commission of inquiry and, facing imprisonment, he would be forced to flee Canada in disgrace. In 1949 the situation was much different. ...How and why Banks and the SIU arrived in Canada is the first part of this story. --Author's preface

OCLC: 15507693