TRIVIA EVENT CANCELLED!

Please be advised that tonight's Trivia fundraising event has been cancelled due to a lack of ticket sales.

We are very sorry for those who purchased their tickets in advance and were looking forward to tonight's event. 

If you purchased a ticket and have not yet been contacted for a refund, please email info@workershistorymuseum.ca

Calling all Trivia Buffs

Think you know it all?

 Get a team of 4 to 6 players together and prove it!

  

The Workers’ History Museum is hosting a Trivia Night as a fundraiser for the museum. All are welcomed.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

7:30 p.m.

at the Glen Scottish Restaurant & Pub

1010 Stittsville Main St., Stittsville, ON

Tickets are $10  

 

Come early for dinner.

Contact The Glen Restaurant at 613-836-5622 or 613-831-2738 to reserve your team table, and mention “Fundraiser Quiz for the Worker's Museum”

Prizes will be raffled during the evening.

Tickets are available from Museum Board and Committee members or send us an email at: info@workershistorymuseum.ca

Almonte Train Wreck 1942

On a snowy December night in 1942, the town of Almonte, Ontario's Christmas celebrations were cut short when a train transporting Canadian troops rear-ended an Ottawa-bound passenger train that was waiting at the station platform. The collision killed 36 people and injured more than 200. It is considered one of the worst train wrecks in Canadian history.

Tickets are now on sale for our upcoming event Trolley Cars & Steam Whistles in the Park featuring the Ottawa Storytellers who will present us with a live re-telling of this great tragedy.  

Join us on November 29 at 7:30 p.m.  at the Ron Kolbus Centre located in Ottawa's beautiful Britannia Park. 
To order tickets email: info@workershistorymuseum.ca


Watch this short video of eye witness accounts of the wreck created for the Canadian Cultural Video Library.

Yesterday and Today: The Almonte Train Wreck. Copyright:1987 for the MTREX 11 Collection:

 

Follow this event on Twitter @WorkersHistory #Almonte1942

Under the Red Star Film Showing in Ottawa

Film Showing: Under the Red Star

Thursday, March 8, 7:00 PM

Avant Garde Bar and Gift Shop

135 ½ Besserer St. Ottawa

The Workers History Museum is pleased to co-sponsor, with Socialist Project, this feature length docu-drama chronicling the fascinating cultural and political ferment associated with the Finnish Labour Temple of Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay).

Opened in March 1910, it was the largest of Canadian labour centres and served as the heart of the activities of Finnish immigrants in the Lakehead area. This radical immigrant community is largely forgotten as part of the story of Canadian labour movement history. Yet these courageous women and men, often facing brutal repression from government, police and anti-union bosses, were critical in shaping events in the union, women’s suffrage and socialist movements in the early decades of the 20^th Century.

Under the Red Star combines fictionalized scenes with archival footage to vividly paint the moving personal lives and the struggles of these early activists.

Ian MacKay, one of Canada’s leading historians, describes Under the Red Star as “a beautifully crafted and utterly absorbing recreation of one of North America’s most extraordinary working class movements”.

The film’s producers and the director (Kelly Saxberg) will be in attendance to take questions from the audience.

WHM Celebrates Person's Day and Women's History Month

You could have heard a pin drop during the Winnipeg General Strike storytelling evening
by Ottawa storytellers Donna Stewart and Sherri Yasbani, at Carleton University’s Minto
Centre, October 18th. The audience of more than thirty people was captivated by the
realities of life in the early 1900s leading up to the 1919 strike.

Ruth Stewart-Verger, also a storyteller was there assisting as she was unable to talk due
to illness. Donna and Sherri told the story of Elizabeth Coulter and Helen Armstrong, two
women with very differing views whose families were involved in the Winnipeg Strike.
Our thanks to Sherri for stepping in at the last minute and doing an incredible job telling
Helen’s story.

What made this especially interesting is that Elizabeth was Donna’s grandmother, so it is
a personal recollection of events at the time.

The event to celebrate Person’s Day and Women’s History Month was co-sponsored
by Carleton University’s Centre for Public History and Department of History and the
Workers’ History Museum, and supported with a donation from the Public Service
Alliance of Canada’s Ottawa Regional Women’s Committee

We had a panel discussion afterwards with Donna Stewart, Barb Byers the Executive
Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress and Robyn Benson the PSAC’s
Regional Executive Vice-President for the Prairies. They spoke about the gains from the
strike to today and the struggles that everyone, not just women, face to keep these gains,
given the current government’s attitude towards human and social rights.

Thanks for Your Generosity

To the delegates, observers, staff and guests at the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) National Capital Region (NCR) Convention held from June 3 to 5, 2011

On behalf of the Worker's History Museum, we want to thank you for your generosity that you showed by participating in our fundraising at your convention. We also want to thank the Union of National Defence Employees for helping us out by raffling off two shirts. Through the efforts of everyone, we were able to raise $1,002.00 which will be most beneficial to us in our first year of operation.

Phil Ochs Documentary

Last night at the Mayfair Theatre there was a screening of the new documentary about Phil Ochs, There But For Fortune.  It was a fundraiser for the WHM, generously arranged by the Ottawa Folk Festival, RavenLaw, and the Ottawa Folklore Centre, and the place was pretty much full.

Phil Ochs, if you don't know, was an American singer-songwriter-activist in the 1960s and 70s.  He was one of the early and on-going voices against the Vietnam War and many of his songs - Draft Dodger's Rag, I Ain't Marching Anymore, to name two - reflect this.  His songs were earnest, irreverent, biting, and absurd.  He was far more politically active than, say, Dylan but perhaps as a result not exactly mainstream.  Still, he was incredibly active and influential. 

The film is a good mix footage from the period and contemporary interviews with family, friends, activists, and musicians and it covers the whole range, from Ochs' childhood up to his suicide in 1976.  The screening at the Mayfair was a one night affair but I'd encourage you to be on the look out for it.  Trailers can be seen at this website:http://www.philochsthemovie.com/

After the screening, most folks headed down to Patty's Pub for a sing-a-long led by Arthur McGregor.  As a bonus, Phil Ochs's sister Sonny was there and was able to shed more light on the fascinating and tragic figure of her brother.

Thanks for all who helped make this a great evening!