Black settlement in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley, was largely due to the neighbourhood’s proximity to the Great Northern Railway station, where many of the men in the community worked as porters.
A collective bargaining agreement was signed with the CPR in May 1945, but it had taken about 3 years to get the agreement in place. It was 9 years later, in 1954, when George V. Garraway was hired as the first Black Canadian train conductor.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights states “porters tended to be highly educated men, with university degrees in science, medicine or business administration – prevailing racist attitudes held that Black people were socially inferior to whites and were meant to work in menial or subordinate vocations.”
Sleeping Car Porters in Canada
Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaque: Railway porters played a major role in the struggle for Black rights in Canada. Starting in the late 1880s, they emerged as leaders of African Canadian communities in Montréal and in other urban centres. Through their unions, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, they gained recognition for Blacks within the labour movement. After the Second World War, the porters made important contributions to the campaign for human rights, particularly through their struggle to end discrimination in railway employment. Designation Date: 1994-11-24
