B.C. Federation of Labour President and Operation Solidarity co-Chairman Art Kube is pictured on Oct. 31, 1983.In the summer of 1983, Art Kube emerged from labour’s backrooms to galvanize one of the largest, most broad-based and protracted protest movements in Canadian history.
Record crowds showed up at protests and demonstrations across B.C., there were work-site occupations and in November, when the government didn’t buckle, Operation Solidarity launched its public-sector action plan. With 40,000 government employees already on strike, 33,000 teachers walked out, followed by thousands of other education workers and employees of Crown corporations.
After the war, Mr. Kube’s father, who had stayed in Poland, was sent to Siberia, leaving Art and his brother to be raised in Vienna by their mother, whose support for unions and social democracy had a profound influence on her younger son. Apprenticed as a sheet-metal fabricator, Mr. Kube was hired on a Canadian Pacific passenger liner that journeyed between Bremerhaven, Germany, and Quebec City. On a whim, he wandered into the Canadian city’s immigration office. Mr.