Pier into the past

Pretty, eh? But this rustic sketch of backlogged cargo on the Donaldson Line Pier at the Port of Montreal back in 1907 is the result of a strike -- bravely held when a walkout was as likely to earn you a bust head as a raise. After dropping their sacks, which met with strangely little reaction from cops, the workers were being offered by the CP Railway about 2.5 cents more an hour to keep loading, but Irishmen and Scotsmen, Joe Strummer, and some of the new village arrivals were blessedly stubborn. The whole thing was front-page news, of course. Now the port is a sirk-tent-blighted, concrete Disneyland. If you can't make it a port, make it a beach.