August 1, 2018

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018

On August 1st 100 years ago Kent and Rocky rose early aboard the train. By 7:30 they were all dressed up and waiting to arrive in Vancouver for breakfast. "There we shall take the first steamer we can and go north to Skagway where we’ll probably change to another. But this is all guess work." That wasn't to be the case. Kent liked to travel with little planning. From his letters, it's clear that he rarely knew precisely what would happen next. 

He wrote many letters on the train -- to his mother, to his wife Kathleen, to Carl Zigrosser, and especially to his lover back in New York, Hildegarde Hirsch. Kent's tiny handwriting script is difficult to read normally, but all the bumps and jolts on the train, which he noted, makes it all the more difficult. At this point he'd given up on getting his wife to join him in Alaska, so he turned that effort toward Hildegarde. "What fun we’d have had together yesterday in the open car," he wrote her. "It was glorious. We even at our supper out there and I stayed till after dark looking up at the stars as we sped along. And sweetheart, I wanted you so much in the bunk with me." 

Early that morning of August 1, 1918, they got off the train in Vancouver and had breakfast. 

To appreciate the historical context of Kent’s Alaska journey, readers need to understand some important events. To study fish, you have to know the water in which they swim. The Great War (World War I) raged in Europe. Like many artists and intellectuals of the period, Kent was against the war. He and others also opposed the draft. The first draft in this country came during the Civil War, and it was extremely controversial with draft riots. A man could buy his way out by paying a substitute. Many joined, but those drafted were often the working-class poor. With the Great War, officials knew the draft would again become an issue, so they created the euphemism “selective service” for registration, and rather than have the military administer the program, they formed a civilian organization to oversee local draft boards. 

By August 1918 the early enthusiasm for the war had diminished. Now four years old, the devastation and horrors of the conflict had reached the public. Millions of soldiers and civilians were dead and wounded and no end seemed in sight. Both sides faced each other along miles of stench-filled, muddy trenches separated by a desolate no-man’s-land. To make matters worse, a world-wide influenza epidemic was killing millions. When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, the Germans knew they had to act fast before American troops massed in France. By the summer of 1918, German forces began throwing everything they had into the fight. In the U.S, men up to age 40 were being drafted. Though patriotic fervor was high, the draft was not popular – especially among labor organizations who saw their workers as cannon fodder used by the capitalists who profited from the war. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia caused fear in this country. All labor organizations and movements were considered tools of communists, socialists and anarchists. Many returning veterans were unemployed, disenchanted, traumatized, mourning, and wondering whether it all had been worth it. 

Emotions were tense in Vancouver. On Aug. 2, 1918 – just one day after Kent arrived there -- the city was hit with the first general strike in Canadian history. It was held to protest the killing of labor activist and draft resister Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, a coal miner at the Cumberland Mines. Three hundred men, including returned war veterans, stormed labor headquarters. They forced a longshoreman to kiss the Union Jack, and tried to throw another out a window. 

As Kent stepped off the Canadian Pacific train, he noticed someone scanning the passengers, a “tall, splendid looking man in shining, full-dress army regalia.” The soldier stopped Kent and asked him why he wasn’t in the army. “I might have answered,” Kent thought, ‘Because of what the soldiers on the train, returned from overseas, have said about it.’” But he didn’t say that. Kent liked to push people’s buttons. He had done that in Newfoundland a few years earlier, resulting in he and his wife and four children being tossed out of that British colony. Kent most likely knew tensions were brewing in Vancouver. He didn’t want an incident to prevent his Alaska trip. Instead of a snide remark, Kent lifted his hat to show is bald head, pointed to young Rocky and said “I have this one and three more like him.” Men with families could still be deferred. This would be only the beginning of the Great War’s influence on Kent’s Alaska journey.

Kent and his son left Vancouver right away. They ferried to Victoria where they boarded a vessel to Seattle. “After a few days of Seattle rain,” Rocky remembered, “we were on a steamer heading for Alaska.” He wasn't feeling well -- stomach problems. Kent had the same symptoms. 

PHOTOS

1. A Canadian World War I recruitment poster.
2. A cartoon from the May 24, 1918 Federationist (Vancouver, B.C.) attempting to convice returning veterans and labor organizations to fight their common enemy, those profiting from the war.
3. Canadian labor leader and consciousness objector, Albert “Ginger” Goodwin (1887-1918). After his appeal was rejected, he hid for months in the hills of Cumberland with other draft resisters. Officials sought them out. Goodwin's killer claimed self-defense and charges of manslaughter were dismissed, outraging labor leaders and instigating the 1919 Vancouver General strike on August 2, 1918. There's quite a bit of information on the web about Goodwin and the strike for those who want more information.
4. A cartoon from the Jan. 31, 1919 Winnipeg Leader, showing an angry and out-of-work veteran confronted with the radicalism of the period.