by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

If a single activity defines the reason Montreal is the city we know, it's what happens down at the port where, for generations, ships have docked and men emptied cargo from the cavernous hulls and pulled it onto wheeled vehicles that would haul it to thousands of points inland.

Throughout the ages, the process developed a sacred culture of its own, and when it got to the '60s, the arrangement was well defined: large numbers of workers would be expected to put in Herculean efforts at heavy lifting, but as a perk were given the freedom to take days off when it suited them.

But as other port cities like Boston kept competing for our seafaring action, the relationship between man and ship was disrupted by technology. Goods started arriving in from the ocean in pilfer-proof giant steel containers that were grasped above by massive winches. The suits had to gently try to tell hundreds of hard-bitten waterfront workers that they were no longer needed.

In 1966, waterfront workers went on a 39-day strike. It was settled by a government commission of inquiry which ordered weekly job guarantees. "We soon realized that there were too many people for the work because of the advent of containers and modern methods of handling cargo," says Alexander C. Pathy, now a soft-spoken septuagenarian living in the Barbados, who has recently told his version of what happens next in the 328-page Waterfront Blues, a true-life labour potboiler that took him 25 years to write. The tale, part history, part labour-relations textbook, reveals the furious efforts to sell workers on a plan to take the port from manly operation to one led by machine muscle. The process involved hard-drinking labour sessions involving characters from Bryce Mackasey to Brian Mulroney (who wrote the two-page preface, which includes a remarkable sentence including the words "bruising, bitter and vivid.").

The inevitable labour unrest loomed like a tidal wave over the city. The bosses were divided and unable to counter the workers.

"Some employers were relying on a labour-intensive set-up and some were moving towards the mechanized world with the container ships and big cranes. You didn't have all the employers at the bargaining table, so a light went on over my head that we needed to create a single employer unit." So was born the Association of Maritime Employers in 1969, led by Pathy, which united shipowners and employers. "We had to bring them together, so that they could speak with one voice. When that happened it marked the beginning of management's ability to deal with the issues of modernization of the port."

The 2,400-man workforce was soothed by buyouts, and workers were only guaranteed seasonal work, a condition that led to massive strikes in '72 and '75. "There was a lot of pessimism around '75. Had the problems that I'm writing about not been solved, it could have been the end of Montreal as a deep-sea port," says Pathy.

Nowadays port workers are fewer, but paid more for their skills at operating machines. Pathy, now retired, is still delighted to report that our port has survived, "In fact, Montreal's port is going gangbusters."

WATERFRONT BLUES: LABOUR STRIFE AT THE PORT OF MONTREAL, 1960-1978 BY ALEXANDER C. PATHY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS, HC, 328PP, $50