It's odd where reading will take you.
I started with Bock's A Communist's Daughter and then dissatisfied with its portrait of Jean Ewen, I moved on to Ewen's autobiography, China Nurse. From there, I went to her communist father Tom McEwen's autobiography, The Forge Glows Red. And from there I ended up reading an uneven biography of Annie Buller.
Buller died thirty-four years ago today. Most of the photos I've seen of her are, like this one, very unflattering. (Photo source)
A founding member of the Canadian Communist Party, she was an union organizer who seems to have moved between Ontario and Manitoba in order to organize the needle trades. Like many of labour activists of the period, she spent time in jail. She did two stints--for a year after the Estevan Coal Miners Strike and for two years during the early WWII crackdown on the CPC party. (Her husband was interned at the same time.) After that, more CPC work, including a run in a federal election.
She must have been a woman with a great deal of energy.
Heather
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