A Hard Man to Beat The Story of Bill White: Labour Leader, Historian, Shipyard Worker, Raconteur

by White, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780889781313
• ISBN10: 0889781311
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1983-01-01
• Publisher: Harbour

Summary

Bill White's account of the bareknuckle days of BC labour sold out its first printing in two days. His stories of the struggle for labour and human rights in the Vancouver shipyards makes harrowing and fascinating reading. Bill White was head of the Boilermakers and Marine Workers Union in the heyday of the West Coast shipbuilding industry during WW II. He personally fought one of the first big right-to-work cases in BC history all the way to the Privy Council in Britain. He is as unrelenting - and colourful - now as he was then in his condemnation of companies and governments who don't treat their workers like human beings.

Author Biography

Howard White was born in 1945 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He was raised in a series of camps and settlements on the BC coast and never got over it. He is still to be found stuck barnacle-like to the shore at Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat (bio), The Men There Were Then (poems), Spilsbury's Coast (bio), The Accidental Airline (bio), Patrick and the Backhoe (childrens'), Writing in the Rain (anthology) and The Sunshine Coast (travel). He was awarded the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History in 1989. In 2000, he completed a ten-year project, The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. He has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and a Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has twice been runner-up in the Whisky Slough Putty Man Triathlon.