The Holmes Foundry Riot

Working at Holmes Foundry was hot, dirty, low-paying, unsanitary and dangerous. As long as jobs were available and the economy was prospering, a job there had little appeal to most Canadian-born workers. But that situation changed markedly with the arrival of the Great Depression, when any job was a valued commodity. In 1937, Holmes Foundry employees worked two nine-hour shifts with a half hour for lunch. Ventilation in the plant was sufficiently poor to create a stifling atmosphere. The men finished their shifts covered in grime, but the company provided no showers. The plant had no sanitary toilets and the men were forced to eat in the same room in which the toilets were located. The production line was unsafe, with electrical short circuits happening regularly.

The union demanded reforms. When these were rejected, men dropped their tools. A sit-down strike by 58 foreign workers followed and eventually, management closed the plant, throwing 300 predominantly Canadian-born men out of work. Fistfights broke out between the two parties. Punches flew throughout every section of the foundry.At one time, some 30 men were brawling on the foundry roof. The riot spun out of control, with many injured before peace was restored.

It has been described as “one of the bloodiest dramas in the history of Sarnia. The year 1937 was one in which labour agitation would reach a peak and antipathy towards foreigners” would graduate from personally-held prejudice to the front pages of the national news.

The Holmes Foundry Riot revealed a community which harboured a fear of radical unionization and a suspicion of foreigners. Nobody felt sympathy for the strikers. Months later, the resistance to poor working conditions and low wages that prompted the Holmes Foundry Riot would explode at General Motors in Oshawa and help to give birth to the modern era of labour reform, collective bargaining and union solidarity.