Year: 2002
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Orval Griggs was a long-time provincial government worker whose childhood poverty radicalized him sufficiently to join the Hunger March of 1932. His accession to a government job in 1937, when such jobs were scarce, persuaded him to focus on being an excellent, apolitical employee. He was a member of the Civil Service Association (CSA), predecessor to AUPE. CSA was essentially a company union.
Born in 1916, Griggs was a lifelong Edmonton resident. Coming of age during the Great Depression, Griggs was initially supported by his father’s union wages as a sheet metal worker. But the union went bankrupt in the 1930s and his father depended on part-time, paid municipal work relief and support from family, neighbours, and the city for food and clothing. At age 16, Griggs attended the Edmonton Hunger March on 20 December 1932 and witnessed the police violence used to suppress the march.
Educated in court stenography at vocational school, Griggs struggled to find work in the field upon graduation. After years of precarious employment, he became a provincial government employee in 1937. There he remained for 40 years in the Provincial Highways Department, the Motor Vehicles Department, and the Highway Traffic Board before retiring in 1976.
Keywords: Alberta provincial government; Civil Service Association; Communist Party of Canada (CPC); Edmonton Hunger March; Great Depression; Municipal relief; Unemployment.
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See also: Alberta Union of Provincial Employees; Hunger March (1932)