Bruce Magnuson

Who is Bruce Magnuson?

Bruce Adolf H. Magnuson was a Canadian trade unionist and Communist leader.

Magnuson was born in the Swedish province of Värmland and grew up on his parents' farm. He immigrated to Canada in the spring of 1928 at the age of 19 and worked on farms in Saskatchewan before settling in the Lakehead district of northern Ontario in 1933 where he got involved in a bushworkers' strike led by the Lumber Workers Industrial Union of Canada.

He was hurt working in the bush and spent several months in hospital convalescing during which time he read the Communist Manifesto and other leftwing literature and decided to join the Communist Party of Canada.

Magnuson as elected president of Local 2786 Lumber and Sawmill Workers' Union in 1940 and led the union until 1951 when Communists were purged by the parent union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, after which Magnuson organized a breakaway union, the Canadian Union of Woodworkers In 1946, he led a strike that is credited with establishing the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union on a broad basis in northern Ontario winning recognition of the union by lumber companies as the bargaining authority for workers in the pulpwood industry and establishing collective bargaining in the region's timber industry.