Phil Egan
The procession of men heading westbound on Exmouth Street knew there could be trouble ahead.
On the afternoon of April 18, 1940 at exactly 5:46 p.m. a police officer on a motorcycle began to lead the small parade.
It included a bus carrying 22 hastily recruited men – sailors, desperate for work and headed for a showdown on the picket lines of striking longshoreman.
Behind the bus, a police cruiser followed, loaded with detectives and uniformed officers. They were part of a tiny force of 14 provincial officers that tried – and failed – to prevent the ensuing havoc on Sarnia’s waterfront.
At the docks, the men on the picket line were restless. They had been tipped that the strikebreakers might be coming because replacement workers had been seen leaving a downtown hotel.
Armed with sticks and clubs, and determined to enforce the four-day old strike against Canada Steamship Lines, they waited.
Reinforcements rushed to the docks and the striking workers of the Canadian Seamen’s Union swelled to 125 men.
The bus approached the picket line slowly. As it drove through, the strikers attacked, hurling invective at the shaken men within. A bus window smashed. A sailor named Jack Beatty, a cook, was badly gashed on the wrist.
The strikebreakers scampered from the bus and all hell broke loose. Fists flew and the fighting grew hot. In the dim light, it was difficult to see from where the next blow might come.
For two minutes, a battle raged on the waterfront between the striking longshoremen, the replacement workers and provincial police. Several were injured, including Captain R. Scott Misener, president of Sarnia Steamships Limited.
Eventually, police were able to help partial crews board the freighters Berryton and Matthewston. Both were en route to Toledo for coal, then to Fort William for grain.
It was the first real violence on the waterfront since 13 strikers were arrested in 1915 at the Northern Navigation Company docks, after 85 men walked off demanding higher wages.
The following day, on April 19, 1940, another attempt was made to get the new shipping season underway.
With provincial police now reinforced to 24 officers and picket lines re-established, another parade of strikebreakers and police escorts ensued. This time, the cars carrying the replacement sailors were forced off the road, and they were forced to get out and walk. Protected by police, they managed to board the steamship Hamonic without a repeat of the previous night’s violence.
In Police Court, two of the striking sailors were each sentenced to one month’s imprisonment in the county jail for striking constables and resisting arrest.