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File consists of video interviews with Lil Godfrey and June Olson. Subjects include: How their mothers supported them as children; seasonal employment; IWA Women’s Auxiliary and the 1946 strike; red baiting; forming a community co-op grocery and credit union; organizing between communities.

Biographical sketches of Lil Godfrey and June Olson can be found in the descriptions for files containing their individual interviews.

File consists of video interviews with Masue Tagashira. Subjects include: Village life in 1920s Japan; immigration experience; logging camp at Stave Lake; domestic work; language challenges for immigrant women; exploitation of women’s labour; Vancouver’s “Japantown”.

Masue (1908-1992) was one of nine children born to a farming family in the village of Mitsuse Kanazaki, Saga-Ken, Japan. Masue married her first husband, Shigeo, there in 1927, following him to Stave Falls, B.C., where he had been working as a logger and shingle maker. They had two children: Donald (Masayuki) born in the camp, and daughter, Aiko, born Vancouver. They had moved to the city in 1930 after Shigeo suffered serious work injury resulting in the loss of an eye . Unable to support his family and deeply depressed, Shigeo was admitted to Essondale Hospital where he committed suicide in 1931. Masue, without much English and only rudimentary skills, placed her children in a Victoria church-run orphanage. She struggled in subsistence jobs and married twice more: the first short-lived, and then finally, in 1938, to Rinkichi Tagashira (1887-1973) owner of Heatley Trading Co. Ltd. Masue’ children came to live with them near Rinkichi’s warehouse in “Japantown”, Vancouver’s east side immigrant neighbourhood. In 1942, the Tagashiras, like 20,000 other Japanese Canadians in B.C., had their assets seized and were interned in the province interior: Rinkichi to Tashme and Masue, Donald and Aiko to Slocan. They eventually returned to their old neighbourhood in 1949 where they operated a rooming house. Masue was an active member of the JCCA Redress Committee.

File consists of video interviews with Eileen Sufrin. Subjects include: WWII attitudes towards unions; Cooperative Commonwealth Federation; moving from Ontario to BC; labour movement factionalization; unions and women’s issues; white collar unionism; organizing Eatons.

Born Blanche Eileen Tallman in Montreal, Quebec (1913-1999). She was raised in Toronto where her father worked as a travelling salesman. After graduating head of her class from Vaughan Road Collegiate, she eschewed university, instead joining other unemployed activists in the Co-operative Commonwealth Youth Movement. When her father died in 1938, her mother took an underpaid job at Eaton’s to raise her three children. That experience would inform her organizing effort on behalf of Eaton workers (1948-1952), one of the longest organizing campaigns in Canadian labour history. Eileen spent 19 years organizing women in union movements in Ontario and BC, unionizing 15,000 women. She met her husband, Bernard “Bert” Sufrin (1916-1995) while working at the Saskatchewan government finance office. Bert was an economist and fellow CCF worker. They moved to Ottawa in 1964 where Bert worked for the Labour Department of the Women’s Bureau. They retired to White Rock, BC, by 1972, where she was active in the NDP and founded a local branch of the Choice of Dying Society. Eileen received many honours over her lifetime including a Governor-General’s medal on the 50th anniversary of women winning the right to vote.

File consists of video interviews with Marjorie Storm. Subjects include: Fraser Mills; sexual harassment; National Selective Service; Pacific Veneer, Canadian Forest Products; equa pay and access; New Democratic Party; domestic challenges; IWA Women’s Auxiliary; 1970’s women’s movement.

Marjorie Cynthia Storm nee Smart (1921-2007) was born in Glamorgan, Wales. She joined her father in Canada in 1931, living for a short time in Calgary, then moving to Vancouver by 1932. She married salesman William Storm. In 1942, when her daughter was nine-months-old and after her husband had enlisted, she joined the workforce. She subsequently worked 37 years in the forestry industry taking on many roles including shop steward, secretary of the grievance committee, plant chairperson, safety committee member, recording secretary on the women’s committee of the BC Federation of Labour, and member of the human rights branch. In the 1970’s became politically active and rose to Vice-President of the BC NDP in 1973.

File consists of video interviews with Jean Shiels. Subjects include: Relief in the 1930’s; Women’s Unity League; the single unemployed; On to Ottawa trek; Mother’s Council; peace movement; League Against the War on Fascism; support for Spain in the 1930’s; Young Pioneers.

Jean Stewart Evans (1927-1995) was born in Vancouver, BC, second child of Ethel, and well-known labour rights organizer, Arthur “Slim” Evans. She recalls a childhood home always open to organizers and labourers in need, and impacted by her father’s arrests and short-term imprisonments. After high school, Jean took a variety of jobs including as an attendant on Canadian Pacific Railroad steamships, server, sales clerk, and bakeries manager for a grocery chain. In 1944, her father died three weeks after being struck by a car while crossing the street. Jean married Seaman Leslie Arthur Sheils of Hornby Island in 1947 and they had two children. Les became a Master of deep-sea towing vessels and worked internationally, and in later years, worked for BC Ferries. Jean devoted her adult life to fighting for fair work and wages; was a founding member of the On-to-Ottawa Trek Committee (1985); and co-wrote an account of her father’s life (1977). She volunteered in the Hornby Island community; serving on the Co-op and ratepayer boards, and with the Hornby Recycling Depot. Jean passed away in Comox in 1995.

File consists of video interviews with Irene Seed. Subjects include: Youbou, BC; 1930s; nursing; life with a child in rural Vancouver Island; racial segregation in the forestry industry; Women’s Auxiliary; mill safety; Youbou loggers; widow’s pension.

Irene Isabel Seed, nee Powell, (1909-2004) was born in Vancouver, BC, the eldest of five sisters. Her father worked as a foundry moulder. She graduated a nurse from Vancouver General Hospital in 1931. She met her husband Frank (1907-1963), a salesman, at a United Church Young People’s Church meeting. They married in 1934. By 1939, they had moved to a Vancouver Island mill town, Youbou, on Lake Cowichan, where they raised five children. Frank worked as a millwright for Industrial Timber Mills and Irene was active in the Women’s Auxiliary.

File consists of video interviews with Jean Scott. Subjects include: Prairie life; domestic work; country hospital work; WWII; domestic abuse; Canadian Air Force; CCF; Political Action Committee; Canadian Congress of Labour; International Woodworkers Association; the International.

Born Dorothy Jean Mathie (1912-2015) in Brandon, Manitoba. Her father was a retail grocer. Jean spent several years nursing her mother and helping with her siblings. At 20 she moved to Saskatchewan, married, and lived on her in-law’s farm. She left her husband early on because he was physically abusive; an experience that influenced her future activism. She worked as a domestic and nurse to survive the separation, eventually joining her married brother in Calgary around 1940. Determined to be self-sufficient, she continued housekeeping while attending business school. Jean took an office job at No 2 Wireless & Gunner School during the war. By the mid-40’s Jean and other family members relocated to Vancouver. She used her secretarial skills at a number of trade unions including the I.W.A and United Steel Workers of America. Later she married widower Francis Baldwin Scott (1911-2000). Jean remained an activist and earned numerous honours from their Chilliwack community. She was 90-years old when she received a doctorate from the University of the Fraser Valley. She was awarded a Governor General Person Case Medal (1990) and wrote her biography “Brown Sugar and a Bone In The Throat” (2005). Jean lived to be 102.

File consists of video interviews with Jonnie Rankin. Subjects include: Vancouver during the Great Depression; WWII shipyard work; status of women in the Boilermakers Union; child care; equal pay; restaurant work; Labour Theatre Guild; Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union.

Born Jeannette Tonge (1916-2004) in Sausalito, California. She married Ontario-born Jack S.F. Ottewell (1915-1992) in 1938 in California. They had three children by the time they moved to Vancouver, BC. They later divorced and Jonnie married Vancouver labour activist, controversial city councillor, and a C.O.P.E. founder, Harry Rankin (1920-2002), in 1948. The Rankins had two children. The couple separated in 1985. From the time of her working years in the Vancouver shipyards, Jonnie supported trade union issues, the peace movement, community concerns, and the advance of socialism.

File consists of video interviews with Alice Person. Subjects include: Arrival in BC; family living on welfare; working conditions and segregation on hop farms; domestic work; women’s rights; changes in employment with the outbreak of WWII.

Alice Person was raised on a family farm in Alberta. When it was foreclosed on in the Depression, her parents separated. Alice, her siblings, and mother came to BC to make a living fruit farming; an occupation being promoted by governments at the time just as homesteading had been on the Prairies two decades earlier. They settled near Websters Corners in Haney, 50km east of Vancouver, but had little luck being self-sufficient. Their mother fought for the right to collect welfare and the children helped with odd jobs. When the war started Alice found employment in the forestry industry. She and her sister were in the first group of women to be hired on at Hammond Cedar in 1942. Equal pay as a woman’s right was her primary motivation to join the union. Mrs. Person served as a steward and a warden on the executive.

File consists of video interviews with June Olson. Subjects include: History of Lake Cowichan mill town; growing up in a logging family; forestry industry conditions during the Great Depression and war years; forestry industry safety issues; IWA Women’s Auxiliary.

June Isobel Olson, nee Eckert, (1927-2006) became a lifelong resident of Lake Cowichan, Vancouver Island, at 3 months old. Her father worked in the logging industry there. In 1945, she married Nels Olson (1927-2018) on his return from service in the RCAF. His parents had emigrated to Canada around 1924; moving to Lake Cowichan shortly after Nels’ birth. Nels spent many years working as a tree feller. June was an active member of the IWA Women’s Auxiliary and raised their four children. Between 1961 and 1974, June and Nels were co-owners of the Castaway Resort.

Contains one spiral bound notebook

Contains notes, publications, and correspondence related to Diamond's appointment to the National Advisory Committee on the Status of the Artist in 1987.

File consists of video interviews with Emily Nuttall. Subjects include: Waitressing in 1930’s Winnipeg; sexual harassment; union organizing; hotel and restaurant workers unions; hostility to feminism; purging “Reds” within trade unions (Vancouver); 1946 Milwaukee Convention.

Emily Mae Johnston (1913-1996) was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, daughter of a Teamster. She attended college for two years intending to be a dietitian, but finances forced her to discontinue her education. She worked as a waitress in Winnipeg throughout the 1930s. In 1939, she attended business college and began work in hotel and restaurant workers trade union locals in Winnipeg, Toronto (by 1942), and Vancouver (by 1944). She married John Nuttall (-1969), a welder, in 1946. Around 1949, John stopped working due to worsening TB symptoms. Emily became the primary wage-earner. Emily lost her union position in 1946 when she and others resisted to a move to push progressives out of the union. She worked for another 30 years as a financial controller in the pulp and paper industry.