"When one reads other accounts of the history of British Columbia since the Second World War," says scholar and life-long trade unionist Mark Warrior, "the role of unions generally receives short shrift." So he's done something about it. Mark Warrior's history of the Labourers' International Union of North America in British Columbia since its first local was chartered in 1937 is Building the Power: The Labourers' Union in British Columbia (LiUNA! Local 1611).

Born (in 1952) and educated in England, Mark Warrior, formerly of Ladysmith, has published in several anthologies, both in Canada and abroad. He first wrote a chapbook entitled Quitting Time (Vancouver: MacLeod Books 1978) published by antiquarian bookseller Don Stewart. He worked for ten years in the forest industry during which he was an IWA job steward, a logging Camp Chairman and a member of IWA Haney Local 1-367's Executive Board. This was followed by twenty years as a commercial fisherman as a member of the United Fishermen & Allied Worker's Union, during which he was Secretary-Treasurer its 1,000-member Vancouver Fishermen's Local 1 and Fishermen's Strike Captain during UFAWU's 1989 industry-wide "Free Trade" strike. He has also worked as an environmental campaigner and as the Executive Director of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate on Vancouver Island.

With endorsements by Tom Wayman, Kate Braid and Howard White, Mark Warrior's Disappearing Minglewood Blues (Mother Tongue 2020 $19.95 978-1-896949-78-9), according to White, is a reminder of "a whole world of experience out there that seldom makes it into books, a vivid world of whipping cables, bleeding alders, physical exhaustion and the blessed relief of a quitting time whistle."

BOOKS

Building the Power (2016) can be downloaded without charge at: http://www.cswu1611.org/book/

Disappearing Minglewood Blues (Mother Tongue 2020) $19.95 978-1-896949-78-9

[BCBW 2020]