"The Police Beat Them up Just to Keep Warm": A Finnish-Canadian Communist Comments on Environmental Depredation and Capitalist Exploitation in Early 20th-Century British Columbia

Born on 12 July 1863 in southwestern Finland near Turku, Augusti Bernhard Makela had established a reputation for himself as a radical and supporter of working-class causes before leaving Finland to join [Matti Kurikka] in Canada.(f.5) Like his friend Kurikka, Makela attended gymnasium and then Helsinki University where he studied history and linguistics. He wanted to become a lawyer, but his studies were interrupted by his father's death in 1887. To support the family he agreed to take his father's place as an elementary school teacher near Kuopio in eastern Finland. Here he became associated with the salon of Minna Canth, an early Finnish feminist and playwright. She had a considerable influence on the young man. One scholar even credits Canth with leading Makela to accept socialism.(f.6) There is no denying Canth's early influence, for the same year she arrived in Kuopio, Makela published with her a Tolstoyist magazine entitled Free Ideas (Vapaita Aatteita).(f.7) In 1889 he joined the Kuopio Workers' Association. Three years later he moved to Viipuri in south-eastern Finland near the Russian border (now part of Russia) where he joined Kurikka on the editorial board of Viipurin Sanomat (Viipuri News). In 1897 he returned briefly to teaching, but finding it lacking in stimulation, he left for Helsinki where he joined forces once again with his friend Kurikka on the staff of Tyomies, the workers' daily. When Kurikka left for Australia in 1899, Makela took over as editor until his departure for Sointula in 1901 at Kurikka's invitation. On his return to Finland, Makela first settled in Turku near his birthplace, expecting to settle into happiness. He later explained, "I felt myself completely estranged from the city."(f.15) He never found his feet again in the Finnish labour movement. It seems events had bypassed him.(f.16) The Social Democratic Party founded in 1899 just before Makela left for Canada scored a stunning triumph in the 1907 elections. Proclaiming its adherence to Marxist ideology, the party won 80 seats in the first Finnish Parliament. Such success marked the start of a new era for socialism in Finland and seemed eons removed from the first struggling days with which Kurikka and Makela were most familiar. The new Social Democratic leaders were unknown to Makela.(f.17) At the 1909 party convention in Kotka, he criticized the party for getting bogged down in parliamentarism. He defiantly declared he belonged "to the generation which set its task