Hey, George! The Story of Canada’s Porters

At some or other second-hand store I picked up a print of the old Ottawa Union Station. It caught my eye because this was the old Union Station where I disembarked in September, 1965 to begin training at Ottawa Teachers’ College.

Given that the station in the picture appeared very much in use, and also that Canada’s “new” maple leaf flag can be seen flying, the date of the photograph has to be between February 15, 1965, when our flag was adopted, and July 31, 1966, when the Union Station was replaced by the more functional but much more boring Ottawa Station.

If you study the photograph carefully, you’ll note that a uniformed figure is standing at the door of each passenger car, and on more careful examination, you’ll note that every one of these individuals is male, and black. These were Canada’s railroad porters, men who would carry your baggage for you, make sure you were comfortably seated, serve you tea or coffee, and generally fuss over you to ensure your journey was pleasant. One porter said that their job was “… to be babysitters, not just for the kids, but the adults as well.”

They were, if you like, your servants for the voyage. And by and large, they were paid a fraction of what their white counterparts earned. On typical journeys of 72 hours they got to sleep three or four hours a night, long after the passengers had settled in and awakening to be at service long before they rose. They would sleep wherever they could find a quiet corner such as the gentlemen’s smoking lounge. And mostly, whatever their real names, they were summoned by, “Hey, George!” (after George Pullman, inventor of the sleeping car), and even, “Hey, boy!”

Given that blacks were excluded from most professions and many trades, this was one of the few steady jobs available, even to those with university degrees. As one said, “It doesn’t pay much, but it’s better than starving to death.” With a bit of luck, a few tips were received, and most porters packed shoe polish and a brush to make a nickel or two on the side shining shoes.

Porters came from such places as Halifax’s Africville and Montreal’s Little Burgundy, and when more were needed, they came from the US and the Caribbean, showing a railway business card at the border so that the guards would look the other way, winking at Canada’s then “Whites Only” immigration policy. Canadian business has always been pragmatic.

One would think that Canada’s unions, particularly the railway brotherhoods, would have stood up for the porters. But they did not. The Canadian Brotherhood of Railroad Employees explicitly denied “non-whites” membership. It was up to the porters to organize their own, and in 1917 John A. Robinson, B.F. Jones, J.W. Barber, and P. White did just that, organizing the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black porter’s organization in North America. This was not well-received by the railways, and in 1920 three dozen porters, some of whom had been with the railroad for decades, were summarily fired. Still, the porters persisted.

It was a delegation of thirty-five porters meeting the Minister of Immigration in May, 1954 who first officially challenged Canada’s “Whites Only” immigration policy. Although they received the brush-off, the challenge was made, and thereafter, ever so slowly, the policy began to ease.

Today Canada’s population is one of the most cosmopolitan on the planet, and most of us take great pride in that. The least we could do is say, “Thank you, George”.