Tag Archives: Melvin Crump

Porter Talk

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By Stacey Zembrzycki

This article contains historical language and content that some may consider offensive, such as language used to refer to racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Please see our historical language advisory for more information.

Stanley Grizzle was born in Toronto in 1918, to parents who had immigrated separately from Jamaica in 1911. His mother laboured as a domestic servant while his father found work as a chef with the Grand Trunk Railway (Grizzle, My Name’s Not George, p.  31). The eldest of seven children, Grizzle became a porter for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at the age of 22, pulled away from school to help his parents meet their dire financial obligations. “Porters,” as he puts it in his memoir My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada, “were well respected, and looked up to by many in the community because they had steady employment. In essence, they were the aristocrats of African-Canadian communities. They were the most eligible bachelors and parents often encouraged their daughters to marry a porter” (p. 37).

Book cover featuring a man with a train behind him, and a group of men below, all dressed in uniforms.

Book cover of My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada: Personal Reminiscences of Stanley G. Grizzle (OCLC 1036052571). Image courtesy of the author, Stacey Zembrzycki.

Grizzle’s early life began to follow this well-established trajectory, especially since portering was one of the only employment options available to Black men in the mid-twentieth century, until it was interrupted by the realities of the Second World War. Conscripted into the Canadian Army in 1942—legislation he firmly opposed throughout his life—Grizzle spent an extended amount of time away from the family he had only just started. In fact, his first child, Patricia, arrived on the very day he departed for Europe and did not have the opportunity to meet her father until he returned home, when she was three years old (Grizzle, My Name’s Not George, p. 57).

Grizzle’s early experiences with poverty, and the racism he encountered as a porter and a soldier, went on to dictate the new career path he paved for himself. First, as a celebrated labour union activist with the Toronto division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), then as the first Black Canadian to be employed by the Ontario Ministry of Labour as a clerk with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and later as the first Black Canadian to be appointed as a judge in the Court of Canadian Citizenship. There is no doubt that these experiences also informed the interviews he conducted in 1986 and 1987, now held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

As I mentioned in a previous blog, these 53 informal conversations among friends and acquaintances constituted what many, including Melvin Crump, referred to as “porter talk.” Meeting in Crump’s Calgary living room on November 1, 1987, the two men spent the afternoon discussing the intricacies of what it meant to be a porter. Not only did they describe what the job signified for them as Black men, they also explained how it shaped their identities and the larger Black communities that supported them.

Having been born in Edmonton in 1916 after his parents immigrated in 1911 as homesteaders from Clearview, Oklahoma, Crump’s early circumstances were much different from Grizzle’s. However, the men had both experienced the abject racism that was central to Black experience in Canada, which ultimately led them to a career with the CPR. Like Grizzle, Crump went to work for the company because it offered stable employment, away from the meatpacking plants and farms in the region that provided little stability and paid poor wages. In fact, Crump knew that this would be the only way to get ahead, so he lied about his age to obtain a job when he was just nineteen years old, thereby defying the age restriction that limited employment to those over twenty-one.

Like Grizzle, Crump spent about twenty years working for the CPR before seeking employment beyond the rails. The move from steam to diesel engines, coupled with automation, drastically changed the size, shape and appearance of this labour force, as well as passenger experience forever. As they had always done, the men moved toward a secure future. Regardless of their similar but divergent histories, both men prided themselves on having done their jobs well, and continued to stress the inherent value of unionization, regardless of the risks, nearly thirty years after leaving portering.

A man in a suit and hat walking down a sidewalk lined with cars and buildings.

Melvin Crump on 8th Avenue, Calgary, Alberta, ca. 1940, (CU1117465).
Photograph: Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.

There is a coded language to this conversation. It is implicit, organic and almost impossible to understand without having lived through the institutional racism and systemic segregationist policies that guided nearly every aspect of these men’s lives, on and off the rails (Mathieu, North of the Color Line). The conversation is warm, the laughter is heartfelt, and the experiences intersect in complex ways. There is no need for detailed explanations between the men. These conversations were meant to support the writing of Grizzle’s memoir. While he was committed to documenting and preserving the history of portering in Canada, one wonders if these conversations were meant to be heard by others. And yet, here we are, listening in, translating their meaning and breaking the coded nature of these exchanges nearly forty years later.

By pushing Crump to articulate the particular circumstances that defined his experiences in Calgary—the friendships that were made, nurtured and even broken there, the specifics of unionization within that branch and the role of the wider community in fighting for change and supporting porters and their families—Grizzle highlighted the similar ways in which porters across the country were bound together by this demanding and often degrading profession.

And yet these intersections, which we hear across the collection, quickly become more complex when Grizzle asks Crump, as he did with all interviewees, to recount memorable railroad anecdotes. Porter talk offers insight into how each man put one foot in front of the other and built a life around portering. We get brief but powerful glimpses of who these men were, how they saw the world and why they tolerated and overcame the abuse they endured daily. As we gain a superficial understanding of each man’s personality, we also hear about resilience. Stories about memorable passengers naturally shift to stories about the other Black men with whom they shared railcars and responsibilities. The sense of community among porters and the conversations that started on the trains and flowed over into these interviews are what make these recordings so special. The laughter, reinforced by years of hindsight, reflection, recognition of service and a job well done, fuels the jovial exchanges that lead us into the realm of porter talk.

When Grizzle asked Crump to tell him about the prominence of nicknames between porters, Crump let out a roaring laugh, declaring:

Oh nicknames used between porters? Oh-oh-oh-oh, yes. Yeah, I know what you mean. You mean porter talk? You mean porter talk? Well, uh, uh, some of the porter talk names I wouldn’t wanna mention on tape, because if I did uh, it would shock some of the readers or some of the listeners, but they had a language all of their own, I’ll tell you. And some of the conversations that they would get in between themselves. I couldn’t dare, I wouldn’t dare to start to-to mention none of those things. (Interview 417403, File 2 [22:33])

And yet, porter talk is exactly what he, and nearly all of Grizzle’s other interviewees, transmit on these recordings. He couldn’t dare and yet he does. We are offered a seat at the proverbial table to listen, learn and take in a world that no longer exists, and yet remains central to who we are as Canadians.

It is this passing reference that inspired Discover Library and Archives Canada’s new miniseries Porter Talk. This will be the first in a new podcast production entitled Voices Revealed, which will delve into the vast and rich oral history holdings at LAC. While porters have figured prominently in popular culture in recent years, this will be the first time that these men, along with their wives and children, will speak for themselves. It is not enough to write about their exceptional experiences. Readers must hear these narratives. They must be able to differentiate accents, listen to laughter alongside rage, pause to ponder the challenges of portering and the resilience of Black communities in Canada, and grasp the power in these men’s voices and the history they convey.

Grizzle, Crump and all those who graciously agreed to be interviewed, will guide us through this history on their own terms, revealing why it is imperative for us to keep listening, to keep remembering, and to keep porter talk alive, especially as we continue to navigate the many challenges posed by institutional and systemic racism and discrimination in this country and beyond. The structures that these men, alongside their wives and children, worked so hard to dismantle, continue to matter. These voices remind us of the work that remains to be done.

To listen to this miniseries, you can subscribe to Discover Library and Archives Canada for free wherever you get your podcasts.

Additional resources

Stacey Zembrzycki is an award-winning oral and public historian of immigrant, ethnic, and refugee experiences. She is currently employed as a Podcast Development Specialist in the Outreach and Engagement Branch at Library and Archives Canada.

Soundscapes of the Stanley Grizzle Interview Collection

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By Stacey Zembrzycki

This article contains historical language and content that some may consider offensive, such as language used to refer to racial, ethnic and cultural groups. Please see our historical language advisory for more information.

It is rare, when listening to oral history interviews, for the soundscape, the noises that one hears in the background, to be just as interesting and important as the stories being shared by interviewees. Practitioners today are trained to conduct interviews in quiet spaces, limiting noise so that every word spoken is clear and easy to understand. The crispness of each voice matters since it determines the life an interview will have among future listeners and within multimedia projects.

The Stanley Grizzle Interview Collection is fascinating because it flies in the face of this orthodoxy. When Stanley Grizzle travelled throughout the country documenting the stories of Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) sleeping car porters, their fight to unionize and create the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), and the important role of the women who served on the BSCP’s Ladies’ Auxiliary, he did so as an insider. A twenty-year CPR veteran, Stanley Grizzle conducted interviews that revolved around a clearly defined set of questions, which were replicated in each encounter. There were also, however, conversations among friends, many of whom Grizzle had worked with either on the railroad or during his time as a labour leader. Moving from home to home with a tape recorder that he started and stopped at will and at the request of interviewees, Grizzle instantly swept listeners into his world, where the formalities of the typical interview were cast aside, informal banter transpired, and drinks – complete with clinking ice cubes – were stirred in the background.

Grizzle’s insider knowledge both helped and hindered his ability to document the history of the BSCP. In most cases, he was immediately recognized as a “Brother.” Gaining trust was not difficult given the existence of prior relationships. As a result, many of the men tended to get right to the heart of what it meant to be a porter during the first part of the twentieth century. “Porter talk,” as Melvin Crump called it, allows listeners to see this world through the eyes of each porter with whom Grizzle met. It is an intimate look into a world that has now been lost. Viewing the job of a porter through this Black lens reveals how the men, and the women who supported them, thought about their everyday lives and viewed others. Ultimately, it also demonstrates the varied ways that they understood and negotiated societal inequality.

Canadian Pacific Railway sleeping car porter sitting in a train wagon.

Albert Budd, C.P.R., S.C. Porter, 1940s–1960s (e011781984)

Unfortunately, being an insider was not always beneficial. Given Grizzle’s own experiences, and his quest to document the history of the BSCP’s formation and of the men and women who made it possible, there were many missed opportunities along the way. In addition to Grizzle’s inclination to correct interviewees, stories pertaining to the fight for civil rights in the United States, experiences of migration, and some of the more problematic—and even controversial—issues that porters faced on the railroad are limited and, at times, absent from the record. The point was not to glorify porters’ diverse experiences, but there was a careful dance being done by those who recognized that reputations were at stake and the power that the company still wielded, despite the existence of the union, was real. In addition to these considerations, stories that should have been given space to be told were cut short given Grizzle’s objectives. Listeners hear the tape recorder stop and then restart at different stages in the life narratives being recounted. There is never any explanation. Listeners are left to try to listen for what was omitted, silenced, or simply lost to the past.

Nevertheless, along with these aspects of the interview, listeners are presented with wonderful opportunities to hear the ways that various sounds cut across these narratives and give us a way into a deeper understanding of who these interviewees were. Interviewees’ voices reveal the varied countries from which they descended. Heavy accents from America’s Deep South as well as those from a host of Caribbean nations tell us about lives lived elsewhere and the struggle of migrant labourers, who were often highly educated, to make a better life in Canada.

Two Canadian Pacific Railway sleeping car porters standing next to a train.

Left to right, Smitty from Montreal and Albert Budd (e011781983)

Everyday soundscapes also loom large. Radios and televisions wail alongside birds chirping in the background and children playing in neighbouring rooms. The banging of pots and pans reveals the presence of women in nearby kitchens, likely preparing a meal for their esteemed guest. The stomping of feet above the heads of Grizzle and his interviewees alongside the flushing of toilets speak to the substandard tenement housing from which some porters, then retired, were never able to escape.

We hear disability, too, when some stories are relayed. Heavy coughing and wheezing from smoking and its second-hand effects, as well as from years spent on the railcars, which picked up heavy amounts of pollutants through open windows, tell us about interviewees’ life choices in addition to the heavy toll this work took on their bodies. Men spoke of the disability pensions they collected as a result of the damage done to their backs by years of heavy lifting. On more than one occasion, Grizzle and his interviewees seem to be sitting in creaky wooden chairs, rocking back and forth, on creaky wooden floors, as the stories flow. One wonders whether the chairs speak to class, and the ability to own fancier furniture, or to disability, and the need for structure and support for aching bodies.

Group of Canadian Pacific Railway sleeping car porters gathered around a table.

C.P.R. porters, L–R Phil Witt, Jack Davis (e011781985)

The beauty of oral history is being able to listen to a story and take in the surroundings in which it is being created. It helps us process and make sense of the past. The Grizzle Interview Collection speaks to the complexity of understanding history as well as the importance of listening to the soundscapes in which everyday lives were captured and preserved for future listeners.

Additional resources

  • Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice, by Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki (OCLC 841187000)

Stacey Zembrzycki is an award-winning oral and public historian of immigrant, ethnic and refugee experiences. She is currently doing research for Library and Archives Canada.