Instead, mass meetings were held at nearby Victoria Park, located south of Pacific Avenue along the Red River. Victoria Park and the James Street Labor Temple were the heartbeat of the General Strike. Labour’s most crucial decisions on the strike were made at these sites. Ideals of participatory democracy permeated the city’s working classes in the spring of 1919.

On May 25, at Victoria Park, 5,000 strikers rejected the federal government’s ultimatum ordering telephone, post office, and fire department workers to return to their jobs. Two weeks later, Mayor Gray addressed a crowd at the park and “got a good hearing” when he informed the strikers that parades <--caption--> through the city streets had to stop. Gray’s declaration was not unwelcome by the strike leaders. They implored the strikers and veterans not to hold large gatherings other than those at Victoria Park. Strike leaders feared anti-strike groups would use these demonstrations as an opportunity to provoke violence. These warnings presaged the events of Bloody Saturday.

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The newly organized Labor Church was an integral part of the Victoria Park scene. Williams Ivens, a Methodist minister popular in the labour movement for his pacificism and anti-conscription campaigns <--caption--> during the war, championed the Labor Church. An advocate of radical Christian socialism, Ivens was so well-respected by labour that he was appointed editor of the Western Labor News, labour’s voice during the strike. Ivens, AE Smith of Brandon and several somewhat more cautious ministers like JS Wordsworth called for a people’s church.

Workers renamed Victoria Park “Liberty Park” in their conviction that their goals reached beyond the immediate issues of the day to dreams of equality, social justice, and a people’s democracy.

* The Strikers Own History, p 70