Year: 2003
Location: Burnaby
Profile: Ben Swankey was born in Steinbach, Saskatchewan in 1913. After graduating from high school he attended an anti-war demonstration in Vancouver that police violently repressed. In 1932 Swankey moved to Edmonton and joined the Young Communist League, where he was instrumental in organizing the 12,000-strong Hunger March that was similarly repressed. Swankey also organized support for On-to-Ottawa trekkers as they passed through Calgary in 1935, and aided anti-fascist volunteers during the Spanish Civil War. Arrested as an enemy alien on trumped-up charges of anti-war activism in 1940, Swankey was first interned in the Kananaskis internment camp, and then the Petawawa camp in Ontario and the Hull camp in Quebec.
Upon release in 1943, Swankey joined the Canadian Army where he rose to the rank of sergeant, and was briefly deployed to England. Upon return to Canada, he ran as a provincial candidate with the Labour Progressive Party (LPP), the temporarily renamed Communist Party of Canada (CPC) during a period when the CPC was banned. Swankey eventually served as Alberta LPP leader until 1957. Swankey, the LPP, and the CPC helped create the Alberta Farmers Union and lent invaluable support to striking farmers seeking price parity during the 1947 Farmers’ Strike.
Keywords: Alberta Farmers Union (AFU); Communist Party of Canada (CPC); Farmers’ Strike, 1947; Hunger March (1932); Labour Progressive Party (LPP); On-to-Ottawa Trek; Spanish Civil War; Wartime internment; Young Communist League (YCL).
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Hunger March (1932)