William Wasbrough Foster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major General William Wasbrough Foster, DSO, CMG, VD, (October 1, 1875 - December 2, 1954) was a noted mountaineer, Conservative Party politician, business man, and chief constable in British Columbia, Canada in addition to his distinguished military career.

Contents 1 Early life and accomplishments 2 Industrial Relations 3 Chief Constable 4 Battle of Ballantyne Pier 5 References

[edit] Early life and accomplishments

Known as Billy to friends and family, Foster was born in Bristol, England. He received a degree in engineering from Wycliffe College before emigrating to British Columbia in 1894, where he became involved in the lucrative lumber business. He served with the Canadian Pacific Railway as a superintendent and police magistrate in Revelstoke, a manager for the Globe Lumber Company on Vancouver Island, and served a term as President of the Conservative Party of British Columbia, provincial Member of the Legislative Assemby and Minister of Public Works prior to the Great War.^[1] Foster was an avid mountaineer, and was on the first expeditions to climb Mount Robson and Canada's highest peak, Mount Logan. Foster served as the president of the Alpine Club of Canada and has a mountain on Vancouver Island named in his honour, Mount Colonel Foster. In World War I, he fought in the Somme and Vimy Ridge battles, and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and awarded the DSO. He was twice wounded and mentioned in despatches five times. From 1938 - 1940, Colonel Foster was the president of the Royal Canadian Legion.

[edit] Industrial Relations

Foster worked as the managing director of Evans, Coleman and Evans, a timber exporting company on Vancouver's waterfront after the war. This company was a constituent member of the Shipping Federation of British Columbia, a large corporation established by railway, stevedoring, and storage companies to manage commercial operations on the Port of Vancouver. In 1923, Foster headed the Shipping Federation's Protection Committee, and organized a group of 144 special constables, who were sworn in and given badges and guns by the Vancouver Police Department. Their job was to protect over 1000 strikebreakers composed mainly of high school and University of British Columbia students to break a longshoremen's strike and crush the Vancouver local of the International Longshoremen's Association. The strike and union were broken, and the longshormen were organized into a new company union, the Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers' Association. Within a decade, however, communist organizers would transform this union into a militant union, which again would come into conflict with Colonel Foster.

[edit] Chief Constable

Foster probably gained his greatest local notoriety in Vancouver when he was appointed Chief Constable of the Vancouver Police on January 3, 1935. He came in during a shake-up and purge of the police in order to prepare the civic government forces for a showdown with the local communist movemement. The Communist Party's trade union umbrella, the Workers' Unity League, was planning a general strike for May, 1935, and the local big business interests claimed that it was to be the beginning of a Bolshevik revolution in Canada. The general strike and revolution never happened, but the city was flooded in the spring of 1935 with striking relief camp workers, which metamorphised into the On-to-Ottawa Trek that left Vancouver on the top of train boxcars in early June. Colonel Foster restructured the police department significantly, and led an effort to eradicate crime and vice from the city. He initiated the first training of Vancouver police officers, updated police uniforms, added tear gas to the police arsenal, and established a "Communist Activities Branch" to gather intelligence. On one occasion, he used his influence to have a bylaw passed banning white women from working in Chinatown restaurants on the assumption that they were being lured into prostitution, or "white slavery" as it was known at the time, with Chinese clients. The move sparked a backlash from Chinese businessmen and from women who had lost their jobs from restaurants that had their business licenses revoked. Business licenses were restored only when the owners agreed to no longer employ white women, and at least thirty women were forced to seek other employment.

[edit] Battle of Ballantyne Pier

Colonel Foster did have somewhat of a showdown with Communism, however, in the Battle of Ballantyne Pier on June 18, 1935 when a group of about 1000 longshoremen and supporters marched behind a contingent of war veterans carrying the Union Jack headed towards the waterfront to where strikebreakers were unloading ships. Colonel Foster and contingents from the city, provincial, and federal police forces drove the protesters back with truncheons and tear gas. Protestors fought back, and for three hours police and protestors clashed in the streets of Vancouver's East End. One youth was shot in the back of his legs by a police shot gun, and many protesters and police required hospital treatment after the riot.

Foster's career as chief constable was cut short when he was called off to war in 1939. He remained active in veteran affairs during peacetime and was the president of the Canadian Legion at the onset of the war. During World War II, he was promoted to Major General. After the war, Foster was appointed the head of British Columbia Hydro, where he again attempted to fight off the forces of unionization. W. W. Foster died December 2, 1954.

[edit] References

1. ^ [1] Colonel Foster was elected MLA The Islands electoral district in a by-election held 6 December 1913, following A. E. McPhillips' resignation upon an appointment to the Court of Appeal.

Kay J. Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991.

BC Hydro Power Pioneers, "The Hungry Thirties," http://www.powerpioneers.com/BC_Hydro_History/1929-1945/Stories/history1929-1945_01140401.aspx

S. M. Carter, Who's Who in British Columbia: 1937-38-39: A Record of British Columbia Men and Women of Today.' Vancouver: S. M. Carter, 1939.

Lindsay Elms, "William (Billy) Washborough Foster, 1875-1954", http://members.shaw.ca/beyondnootka/biographies/w_foster.html

Victor Howard, We Were the Salt of the Earth: A Narrative of the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 1985.

Andrew Parnaby, “On the Hook: Welfare Capitalism on the Vancouver Waterfront, 1919-1939,” PhD thesis, Memorial University, 2001.

John Stanton, Never Say Die!: The Life and Times of a Pioneer Labour Lawyer, Vancouver, Steel Rail Publishing, 1987.

Joe Swan, A Century of Service: The Vancouver Police 1886-1986, Vancouver: Vancouver Police Historical Society and Centennial Museum, 1986.