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O’Keeffe, Art, b. 1918
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Art O'Keeffe papers

The subseries contains materials collected by Art O’Keeffe, former business manager of the IBEW Local 213, including correspondence and legal documentation regarding his suspension from the union following the Lenkurt strike in 1966. Also contains newspaper clippings and court case summaries, some of which may have been added later by Ian McDonald.

O’Keeffe, Art, b. 1918

Collected papers

The series contains materials belonging to Ian McDonald’s father, Leslie (Les) McDonald, and other figures involved in IBEW Local 213. Materials relate predominantly to the activities of IBEW Local 213, though some papers also relate to Les McDonald’s involvement in various sports and community organizations, his writings and his personal correspondence.

Materials within the series include notebooks, postcards, letters, newsletters, newspaper articles and issues, legal documents and photographs. Relative to the ‘Thesis Research’ series, many more materials are original or copies made at the time the originals were created.

Ian McDonald collection

  • RBSC-ARC-1783
  • Collection
  • [1910?]-[before 2022]

The collection contains materials related to Ian McDonald's Master's thesis research on the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Local 213 “Class conflict and political factionalism: a history of Local 213 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 1901-1961," and related to the activities of his father, Les McDonald, a trade union activist who belonged to Local 213 but was eventually suspended for leading the Lenkurt strike of 1966. Les McDonald was also a multi-sport athlete, and is credited with introducing the triathlon into the Olympics; some materials in the collection relate to Les McDonald's involvement in various sport and environmental organizations, as well as some of his personal papers. In addition to what he received from his father, Ian McDonald was also given papers by former IBEW Local 213 business manager Art O’Keeffe and Barry Sharbo, a board member of the Canadian Union of Electrical Workers (UE), as well as Alfie Huston, the former President of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 213 from 1985-1988, which are included within the collection.

The collection is largely comprised of newspaper and photocopied journal articles, correspondence between members of IBEW Local 213, legal documentation, newsletters and other printed ephemera related to IBEW Local 213.

The collection also contains sound recordings of interviews with numerous figures in IBEW Local 213 created by Ian McDonald during his thesis research. McDonald's thesis, submitted for the completion of a Master of Arts in History at Simon Fraser University, can be found in the Summit database: http://summit.sfu.ca/item/6361.

The collection also contains background materials accumulated by McDonald while writing his book “The Red Baron of IBEW 213,” including digital sound recordings of interviews, research articles, notebooks, consent forms, a draft royalty agreement, a draft chapter and a press marketing questionnaire.

McDonald, Ian

Lenkurt papers

The subseries contains materials related to the 1966 wildcat strike by IBEW Local 213 workers at Lenkurt Electric, in which 257 members participated in a walkout that resulted in the loss of their jobs. A large number of the group were women protesting the employer’s demands for them to work overtime. The month-long dispute that followed was at times violent in response to the court injunctions and police presence sought by the employer.

The subseries is predominantly comprised of newspaper articles collected around the time of the strike; there are also legal documents related to Les McDonald’s appeal of his suspension following the Lenkurt strike, pamphlets, correspondence and photocopies of meeting minutes made by Ian McDonald.