From the archives: Mayo man excelled as union boss in Canada
By Tom Gillespie
FIFTY years ago (1975) The Connaught Telegraph published a lead story which told of the strange, colourful and adventurous career of a Co. Mayo man who became one of Canada’s most prominent labour leaders.
The headline read: 'Jumped ship and became Labour Union vice-president’.
E.P. (Pat) O’Neal died in Vancouver on April 16, 1975, after a lengthy illness.
He was regional vice-president of the Canadian Paperworkers’ Union. Yet, incredibly, this was not his real name. He had been born Thomas Joseph Casey in Co. Mayo, one of six children of a policeman.
He changed his name in 1947 when, on a trip with the Merchant Navy, he jumped ship at Victoria.
With his new found name, he headed off with a bank roll of $80 and took a plane flight to Vancouver.
Until he was 15, O’Neal went to a Christian Brothers school in Mayo. He then spent two years getting a classical education at college which landed him the first of many union posts, at the age of 17, with the Irish Transport Workers.
He spent two years helping to look after the affairs of the local people and working with 500 members on a resettlement programmes near Castlebar.
At 19 he became an agent and inspector for the Irish Sugar Company. It was shortly after this he joined the Merchant Navy, jumped ship and headed for Canada.
In a colourful career highlighted by a royal commission on invasion of privacy which he sparked by bugging a rival union’s convention, O’Neal was a powerful fighter for the people he represented, as well as a battler against so-called ‘Canadian’ unions who tried to make inroads into the pulp industry.
He was elected fourth vice-president of the B.C. Federation of Labour in 1956 and was appointed the federation’s secretary-treasurer in 1959.
He served in that position until 1967 - the year of the bugging enquiry which exonerated him. When he resigned then, he said it was partly because of attacks on his role in the bugging and partly to devote all his time to a union jurisdiction fight in B.C. paper mills.
Early in 1967 O’Neal revealed his name and background to the royal commission on privacy invasion after questions were asked about him in the Canadian House of Commons.
At the enquiry he admitted hiring a private detective to bug the November 1956 convention of the Pulp and Paperwork’s of Canada
O’Neal was western regional organiser of the rival International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers at the time.
So on his arrival in Vancouver in 1947, O’Neal found employment was high and his first job was as a local boat caulker at Vancouver Construction logging camp at Ministerl Island in Knight Inlet.
Her stayed on and joined his first union in Canada, the International Woodworkers of America.
Just before Christmas of 1947 he quit and went to work at Pioneer Mines at Bridge River, where he joined the local branch of the Mine-Mill Union and became a shop steward.
The next summer he worked at maintenance shops in logging camps on Vancouver island and the next winter at Torbritt Mine in the Porland Canal, where he was made secretary of the Mine-Mill local branch.
In 1950 he went to work for the Canadian Fishing Company at its cannery in Prince Rupert as an electrician and joined the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union.
A year later O’Neal was working at the Columbia Cellulose pulp mill in Prince Rupert where he joined the pulp-sulphite union.
Elected president of the local union there, he served for four years and at the same time spent three years as president of the Prince Rupert District Labour Council.
In 1954 he was elected to the B.E. executive of the Trade and Labour Congress.
He was elected vice-president of the B.C. Federation of Labour in 1956 and became its secretary and treasurer in 1959.
O’Neal held this post until 1966 when he left to become Western Canada organiser for the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers.
In 1968 he was elected 10th vice-president of his union at its annual convention in Miami, Florida.
When the international Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers and the United Papermakers merged in 1972 to become the United Paperworkers’ International Union, O’Neal was elected a vice-president of the new body.
And in July 1974 he was elected western regional vice-president of the CPU, which was formed after a nationwide referendum to separate from the US, UPIU.
A tribute paid to O’Neal in Montreal by the CPU national president described O’Neal as ‘one of the chief architects of the historic separation of the Canadian membership from an international union to build a new and independent Canadian organisation.
During his long career, O’Neal often made headlines. In 1874 he was awarded $5,000 libel damages in a suit against the PPWC and two of its executives.
In 1970, he spoke out against US draft-dodgers and deserters who, he said, were working as strike-breakers in British Columbia.
During his career, O’Neal served in many capacities. He was a member of the board of governors of Nelson’s Notre Dame University and served on federal conciliation boards.
He was survived by his wife, Glenda, and son, Bryan, 21.