Rally in Victoria – Joy Langan, BC Federation of Labour
Tom McGrath fonds, 82_12. UBC Rare Books and Special Collections. Interview conducted May 16, 1989.
Joy Langan (BC Federation of Labour) [00:00:00] We were so successful right from day one in terms of the size of rallies. The rally we had in Victoria, the one we referred to earlier, was so enormous that we were saying during the rally, “Anything we ever do in Victoria will be a failure in the eyes of the media and everybody else because, you know, what are the chances of getting that kind of enormous response again?” It was, it was really symptomatic of how that pile of legislation had affected everything. It wasn’t just the trade union movement and its’ vested interest. Or wasn’t just seniors and their vested interest, or whatever. It was everybody was hurt by this. And so. It was.
[00:00:48] Lots of things were wrong. Lots of things went wrong, but the ability to get all of those people with all of their agenda and their vested interests and special interests and so on, going down the same road for any length of time was really phenomenal.
Tom McGrath [00:01:08] Well and particularly, the one thing about the 27th that always strikes me. It was in the rain. People usually don’t want to try that. Yeah.
Joy Langan [00:01:19] Simple things like ensuring that there’s washrooms. Getting the legislature to provide us with access to a disabled washroom on the ground level for those people, because obviously the government wasn’t too anxious to cooperate. But we managed to embarrass them into providing washrooms that these people wheelchairs could use. So, there was a tremendous coordinating job just for something as, to ensure that the disabled people could participate, and the kinds of support that we got, even from affiliated unions, in terms of creative ideas. These spontaneous rallies aren’t always quite so spontaneous.