- CA OHCUW 22TH-CMGS-01PA
- File
- 2016-09-13
Part of Janis Thiessen fonds
Oral history interview with Tom Paulley (00h 32mmm 17ss), conducted by Janis Thiessen in 2016. The interview is indexed and fully transcribed. The Related Interview Documents file contains all documentation contributed by Tom Paulley, including: 2 digital photographs (pdf format), correspondence, a news page (1969), and an unpublished account of the 1919 General Strike: “The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 (Rough draft by Les. Paulley).”
Tom Paulley was born in 1952. His grandfather, Les Paulley, was a participant in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Les Paulley was 17 years old at the time, and employed as a telegraph courier. Tom was a high school student and learned about the 1918 strike that preceded the 1919 general strike. Tom asked his grandfather about that time period, which prompted him to share his memories of the 1919 strike with him. These memories were very general, in the form of lessons that “the struggle never really ends for better working conditions, better pay, better everything for working men and women” and the awareness that the 1919 strike was not a Bolshevik conspiracy. Those conversations may have prompted Les Paulley to write a brief, impersonal account of the strike for his family. After the 1919 strike, Les Paulley worked as a car man with the Canadian National Railway and unsuccessfully ran as a CCF candidate in the 1958 federal and 1959 Manitoba provincial elections. Tom Paulley worked briefly in the Northwest Territories for Arctic Cooperatives Ltd. before a career in government with the Community Services and Corrections Department and as a correctional officer at the Headingley Correctional Institution. Tom ran unsuccessfully for the NDP in the 2011 and 2015 federal elections.
Thiessen, Janis