Anti-Strike Veterans Demonstrate at Winnipeg City Hall.
The large numbers of demobilized men in Winnipeg in the spring of 1919 made their participation inevitable and their role critical. Both sides wooed them, and the strikers apparently garnered the support of the greater number. The impatience of these men prompted them to ignore the warnings of strike leaders to do nothing, and on May 30 began what soon became daily parades. These demonstrations were matched by those of a group known as the Returned Soldiers Loyalist Association (shown here) who opposed the strike. Fear that the groups might meet and clash in city streets prompted the mayor to issue his first ban on public demonstrations on June 6. (Collapsed banner reads: We will maintain constituted authority, law, etc.).
