13) "THEY FOUGHT TIRELESSLY FOR WORKING PEOPLE"
As part of a People's Voice tribute to this year's 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of Canada, this is a brief sketch of the unique lives of William (Bill) and Mary Kardash, long-time elected officials in Winnipeg, who combined electoral and extra-parliamentary struggles for a better world for over seven decades.
Born in 1912 in Hafford, Saskatchewan, Bill Kardash joined the Communist Party during the terrible years of the Great Depression. This area, north of Saskatoon and east of the Battlefords, was a hotbed of radical activity, and Kardash became an organizer for the left-wing Farmers' Unity League.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, serving in the tank corps of the anti-fascist International Brigades. Wounded at the battle of Fuentes de Ebro (October 1937), Kardash lost a leg and returned to Canada. Back home he began a speaking tour to build solidarity with Republican Spain.
Touring the prairies at the same time was Mary Kostaniuk, on behalf of the Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association, the left-wing organization in the Ukrainian-Canadian community. The paths of the two sometimes crossed, and on occasion Mary's meetings were cancelled due to the tremendous interest in Kardash's tour. But they never met until both were in Winnipeg, in the spring of 1939. Later they joked about "who had chased whom" across the country! They married in March 1940, and had two children, Ted and Nancy.
In that period, Manitoba combined single-member rural constituencies with multi-member urban ridings. Using a transferable vote system, Winnipeg voters elected ten MLAs in 1941, including Bill Kardash, on the ballot as a Workers Party candidate, since the CPC was banned. He was re-elected in 1945 for the Labour Progressive Party, as the Communist Party was renamed to function legally. Kardash was victorious again in 1949 and 1953, campaigns in which Winnipeg North elected four MLAs. In 1953, he had the first-ballot support of over 18% of the riding's voters.
Then Manitoba moved to a single-member first-past-the-post system for all ridings, and boundaries were manipulated in Winnipeg to split up Kardash's support. Running in the Burrows riding, he took 22% of the total, but finished second to the CCF candidate.
During his 17 years as a Communist MLA, Bill Kardash was a determined and relentless fighter for the interests of the working class in Winnipeg and internationally. When U.S. imperialism turned up the Cold War heat, he never flinched in his advocacy of socialism and world peace.
One episode from 1947 illustrates the tenor of Cold War politics. Berry Richards, a radical CCF MLA who was once suspended from his party for urging a coalition with other left‑wing parties, rose in the Legislature to warn that "Canada is being sucked into United States' ... militarism and is in grave danger of losing her sovereignty." Noting that a US plane had been "stunting" only 60 feet over houses in The Pas, he demanded that American troops at the Fort Churchill military base be forced to leave. A few days later, Bill Kardash seconded the motion. The daily Winnipeg Tribune asked where Richards and Kardash were getting their ideas. "Maybe," wrote the Tribune, "it's something they ate - probably caviar."
An MLA salary in those days was not enough to support a family, and Bill Kardash also worked at the People's Co-op Dairy, serving as general manager from 1948 until 1982 when he retired. Throughout his life, he remained active in the Ukrainian community and in campaigns for peace and on behalf of veterans of the Mackenzie‑Papineau Battalion.
Born in Winnipeg in 1913, Mary Kardash was equally involved in progressive movements and struggles, particularly the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, and the Congress of Canadian Women, affiliated to the Women's International Democratic Federation.
During the post-war years, Communists were a leading force in Winnipeg's Labour Election Committee (LEC), which ran progressive candidates for city council and school board. Many LEC candidates were elected, including communists such as Andrew Bileski and Joe Zuken.
In 1950, Mary Kardash ran her first campaign for School Board, trying several times until winning in 1960. She was re-elected until 1970, and then again from 1977 to 1986, topping the polls three times. As a school trustee, Mary was a tireless fighter for a high-quality education for all children, especially those from low-income families. She was on the cutting edge of struggles for school breakfast programs, better child care, and many other reforms. Her efforts focused particularly on working with Aboriginal groups to tackle the poverty faced by thousands of Aboriginal children in Winnipeg. The St. Cross Child Care Centre of Winnipeg was renamed the Mary Kardash Child Care Centre in her honour in 1995.
One of the final political contributions of this remarkable couple came in the early 1990s, when the Communist Party of Canada faced an attempt by the leadership of that time to liquidate the Party. Bill and Mary stood by their comrades across the country, successfully resisting this attack and then helping to begin rebuilding the Party in Winnipeg.
Even political rivals of the Kardash's had to acknowledge their huge contributions to the lives of working people in Winnipeg. One was MLA (and later Manitoba Premier) Gary Doer, who expressed his condolences in the Legislature when Bill Kardash died in 1997: "Truly, it can be said that Mary and Bill were political and social powers in the north end of Winnipeg, people that fought tirelessly for working people and their families. Together, whether it was on the school boards through Mary, or Bill in this Legislature, they fought on behalf of poor people every hour of the day."
(The above article is from the October 1-15, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)