Like a moment frozen in time

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Actors playing strikers seek to overturn a prop streetcar.

Mounted police drew their guns and charged, goons cracked heads with their truncheons, the Union Jack flew over city hall, and a striking Ukrainian immigrant was shot... again.

Maybe not since 1919 have 5,000 people crammed onto Main Street in front of city hall, said a delighted but still stunned impresario Danny Schur, the man who brought the Winnipeg General Strike back to life Saturday afternoon.

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MIKE.APORIUS@FREEPRESS.MB.CA WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Main Street in front of City Hall was shut down Saturday for a live production of Strike!, a musical depicting the events of the 1919 general strike. - Nick Martin story May 23/2009

No, it wasn't a real streetcar that the strikers tried to overturn, and it wasn't a real scab behind the wheel.

It was all pretend -- those thugs standing on William Avenue in suits and fedoras, wearing white armbands and carrying billy clubs, scowling at families and cyclists and seniors and giving the cellphone cameras all the attitude they could handle.

But when a mounted policeman turned, drew his pistol, and charged up Main at full gallop, and when a man was shot -- just as striker Mike Sokolowski was before he died on that very spot 90 years ago -- it was a moment frozen in time.

Not a single sound came from 5,000 people.

"The performance was just stunning for me. I saw people looking on in wonder," said Schur, composer, producer and playwright of the musical, Strike!.

Schur has worked since November on the shortened version of the musical he staged Saturday on the southbound lanes of Main Street in front of city hall.

"It's just so important we do it here. We tend to forget -- there's no institutional memory," said Schur.

Indeed.

There's a lonely historical plaque about the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike on the north side of William, along a terrace outside city hall, to commemorate one of the most seminal moments in Canadian social and labour history.

"There's more the city could do. It's pretty shocking that people don't know more," said cyclist Krista Scott.

Kelvin High School student performers Laurie MacDonell and Anna Currie were among dozens of strikers recruited from a half-dozen high schools Saturday, but neither had heard much about the Winnipeg General Strike before this year's Grade 11 Canadian history course.

"It's kind of surprising that nothing has been done before this. It's 90 years," said Currie. "When we were talking about it in class, it's not something the government was proud of."

"Our drama teacher said it would be a great opportunity," MacDonell said.

Scott and fellow cyclist Andrew Stobart made a conscious effort to learn more about the strike before Saturday's perfomance, attending a lecture at the Millennium Public Library. But there's far more that can and should be done to raise public awareness, they said.

MLA Rob Altemeyer agreed.

"You look at the faces during the performance -- people were absolutely transfixed.

"It's the arts that are teaching us," said Altemeyer (NDP-Wolseley), who urged that a site be found in the immediate area to commemorate the strike visibly and educate the public. The MLA also touted staging Schur's musical annually.

That's the plan, said Schur, but the full musical would stage at The Forks each year rather than on the street, he said.

"It exceeded my expectations," he said after the crowd applauded Saturday's performance.

"That the city would allow it to happen... it was a logistical nightmare" to close off southbound Main and divert dozens of transit buses, he said. "It took Sam's (Mayor Sam Katz) personal intervention."

Strike will be staged eight times at The Canwest Performing Arts Centre at The Forks from July 30 to Aug. 5.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 24, 2009 A5