The Alberta Labour History Institute collects, preserves, and disseminates the stories of Alberta’s working people and their organizations. This website includes full transcripts, podcasts, and profiles of our interviewees. It also includes videos, booklets, themed essays, annual calendars, and a link to a book created by ALHI. To learn more about us, visit About. For help with navigating the site, visit How To Use This Site.
What’s New?
New and updated worker profiles: Orval Griggs; Graham “Brent” Gawne; May Fingler; Susan Parcels; Sheila Greckol; Bill Ferguson; Donna Wilson
New theme: Hunger March (1932)
Videos: Precarious Workers: Exploitation and Fightback
Booknotes: Reviews of: Revolution Songs by Carissa Halton
DAY OF MOURNING 2026
Recognizing workers who died in 2025 as a result of their job. Here are events in Alberta on Tuesday, April 28.
EDMONTON
Organized by the Edmonton & District Labour Council
Tuesday, April 28
11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Broken Families Obelisk, Grant Notley Park (11603 100 Ave.)
CALGARY
Organized by the Calgary & District Labour Council
Starts at noon
City of Calgary Workers Memorial in Edward Place Park
LETHBRIDGE
Local 70 of the Canadian Union of Provincial Employees is co-hosting a commemoration with the City of Lethbridge
Begins at 10 a.m.
CUPE 70 Monument in the Mountain View Cemetery
RED DEER
Organized by the Red Deer & District Labour Council
Starts at 11 a.m.
Bowers Ponds
April 28: National Day of Mourning/International Workers’ Memorial Day
By Winston Gereluk
Trade union delegates from 13 countries light the ceremonial candle in the Dag Hammarskjöld Room at the United Nations on April 28, 1996 to inaugurate the International Workers’ Memorial Day.
Photo: Judy Lederer
In 1988, over 2500 workers and family members were killed in Bhopal, India, when isocyanates leaked from a pesticide plant. Many thousands more were condemned to permanent, painful disabilities. In 1993, the Kader toy factory fire in Thailand killed 189 workers and injured 469 more, while the Zhili toy factory fire in Shenzen, China killed 87 and injured 47. The Westray mine disaster in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, in 1992, left 26 miners dead.
Such disasters speak to the daily reality of workers’ lives and the constant danger of losing one’s life or health because profits and productivity are prioritized over workers’ wellbeing. In the current pandemic, for example, thousands of frontline workers in healthcare and long-term care facilities, meatpacking plants, delivery services, and retail outlets were compelled to put their health and safety – and even their lives – on the line, by going to work every day in the face of a deadly virus.
Canadian workplaces were becoming less safe even before the pandemic struck. The 1027 deaths at work chronicled in the federal Report on Work Fatality and Injury Rates in Canada for 2018 constituted an increase of 76 from 2017. Injury rates also rose in most jurisdictions, and 360,000 were sufficiently injured to miss work for at least one day. It is estimated that over one million work-related injuries and illnesses are reported annually in Canada.
The initial idea of an annual day of remembrance for workers killed, injured, or disabled on the job, or who suffer from occupational illnesses came from the northern Ontario mining community of Sudbury. Trade union action resulted in Ontario inaugurating an annual Day of Mourning in 1984. It was fixed on April 28 to commemorate the day in 1914 when the Ontario legislature passed Canada’s first comprehensive Workers’ Compensation Act after an extended labour movement campaign.cuts and privatizations beyond those that the premier had doled out during his first two years in office.