Riding the rails

>> Montreal's black railway porters finally get some recognition

by PHILIP PREVILLE

He didn't have much choice in the matter. "You couldn't even drive a taxi back then," Mendez, now 62, recalls. "There was only one cab company that would hire black men. You could work as a shipper for a downtown department store, but they kept the black employees at the back of the store. Fact is, there weren't too many jobs available in Montreal if you were black."

Railway work, in comparison to the city's other meagre opportunities, at least offered the chance to get tips on top of wages. For Mendez, who had come from Jamaica to get an education at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) and who had tuition to pay, it was the best job available.

He wasn't alone. In those days, Canadian Pacific made a habit of hiring blacks for its yes-sir, right-away-sir service jobs: as sleeping car porters who made beds and shined shoes for passengers on the train, or as "red cap" porters, the men who worked in the station carrying luggage from the train to the taxi. And while the CPR was happy to hire blacks as porters, they did not offer them promotions. They could not be conductors or managers.

As part of this year's Black History Month celebrations, Heritage Canada and Canadian Pacific will unveil a plaque commemorating Montreal's black porters at Windsor Station on February 15. The plaque will be mounted beside the station's back doors, the entrance the porters were required to use and the one which looks down towards Griffintown, where Montreal's black community was located earlier this century.

No apologies

It may seem like the apex of political correctness, to erect a monument in memory of menial labour and discriminatory hiring practices. But Canadian Pacific has no apology to offer for giving black men the best jobs they could get. And the porters who are still alive aren't interested in an apology anyway.

"I don't have any bad memories of that time, any horror stories to tell about how poorly I was treated," says Mendez, who worked on the sleeping cars for three summers in a row. "We were treated all right. For me, it was like going into the army: I earned a living, I got to see the country, I paid for my education."

Owen Rowe, a former red cap porter now in his seventies, says the plaque's unveiling will be a moment of pride. "Society honours PhDs and poet laureates all the time," Rowe says. "These were hard-working men. They were men of dignity and intelligence. I am so very glad to know they are being honoured."

Rowe, like Mendez, didn't see the railway as a career--he came to Montreal from Barbados to get a university education. After graduating from McGill, he went on to work as an ambassador for the now-defunct Federation of the West Indies.

Rowe says many people today make too big a deal about the negative side of the work. "Sure, at times is was rough. Men with families would carry bags and make beds and and shine shoes, and they would get called 'boy.' Today people ask, 'You put up with that? What kind of man were you?' But these men raised families and built communities through those jobs.

"I'm not one of those people who says that the white man is the root of all evil. But I'm no Uncle Tom either. The fact is, Montreal's black community is now the offspring of the railway porters. They are doctors and lawyers."

Canadian Pacific has not kept any official record of the number of black Montrealers hired as porters. In preparation for the plaque's unveiling, Heritage Canada has identified about 30 former porters who are still alive and living in Montreal today.

A plaque commemorating the Canadian Pacific Railway's black porters will be unveiled at 10 am on Monday, Febrary 15 at Windsor Station (Peel & de la Gauchetière)