ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we wind the clock back and look at one of the key founders of ICBA: Len Remple.
The interviews and other original research on which the ICBA50 series is based were conducted by writer Kevin Hanson. We appreciate Kevin’s work capturing the people, events, and milestones that shaped ICBA’s first half-century.
ICBA has a long history as a construction association, but we have never been exclusively that. We support entrepreneurs, free enterprisers, suppliers, resource development companies and much more.
Len Remple, ICBA Life Member
For decades, independent businesspeople in other fields, navigating the difficulties of operating non-union, often found great value in membership or working with ICBA.
Len Remple was one of those entrepreneurs. He arrived in Surrey in 1973, after pioneering commercial garbage collection services in Winnipeg. Drawn to the coastal climate by the health benefits it had for his daughter, he needed to rebuild his business. In Winnipeg, the Teamsters had unsuccessfully tried to organize it, but caused no particular difficulties afterwards. “But I sure learned a different lesson when I came to the west coast,” he said.
The troubles began with a tense visit from a union representative on Remple’s first day in his newly rented office. “We just never really fell in love with each other,” he said. But it was when he began to win contracts for residential garbage collection that he felt the full wrath a non-union businessman could face.
His first contract was awarded at Surrey City Hall: “The chambers were full of people carrying baseball bats and two-by-fours, and they were not relieved of them,” Remple said. “When it was awarded, there was a real uproar. And very quickly, I don’t know how many RCMP came in to restore order, and then four of them escorted me out to my car.” A similar scene repeated itself at the City of North Vancouver when he won that contract – with the added twist that a vehicle nearly identical to his was badly damaged in the parking lot, after he took the precaution of parking his several blocks away.
Some of the ugliest incidents took place during a lengthy municipal workers strike in 1981, during which Remple’s crews continued to work. One day his foreman appeared with plywood to cover a large window in Remple’s office, explaining there had been a telephone threat. On another a friend showed up at the Remple home with the loan of powerful fire extinguishers for each room. These weren’t idle fears, as an incident at a temporary dump site Remple had arranged to use demonstrated. He was removing a chain that had been used to block access to the site, when he was hit over the head with what he believes may have been a two-by-four. Rempel fell and was concussed, and needed help to roll out of the way of an approaching vehicle. “There were three newspapers and three TV stations that had cameras there, but all the cameras malfunctioned when I went to the RCMP to lay charges,” he said, noting how afraid average people were to stand up to the unions.
Violence touched his family too. Len’s wife Judy says they endured vandalism at their home, and she herself became a likely unintentional target on a day when she was driving her husband’s car with an out-of-town guest as a passenger. “I had taken her to Bellingham and on our way back she started to yell because this car was coming closer and closer and I just got pushed right off the road,” Judy recalled. “And my friend, she couldn’t believe it, that this was going on in B.C. And how do you explain it?” It all took its toll on the Remples. “Always there was anxiety,” Judy said. “Anxiety for the men and anxiety for the men’s wives and the men’s children, because they were being threatened.”
There was also support, sometimes from unexpected sources. During the strike, Remple began to receive anonymous phone calls, which he at first thought were a hoax or set-up. But the unidentified voice was well versed in the law – able to tell Remple, for example, exactly what Criminal Code provisions to cite to convince a reluctant Surrey chief of police to provide escorts to the landfill.
“When I confronted the police chief with that, he had some pretty profane words to use to me,” Remple said. “But he did order our trucks to be escorted.”
The sound advice continued, with Remple having no idea who it was coming from. “I would ask him each time, why have you chosen to help me? And he kept saying the same thing: right is right and wrong is wrong.”
Some time later, that same anonymous voice extended an invitation for Len and Judy to a social event at the caller’s residence. They were to find out their counsel had been coming from Les Bewley, a then-retired provincial court judge who later became a columnist and commentator.
In 2017, Len wrote ICBA a letter encouraging us to keep fighting for open shop and freedom. These were his closing words:
The open shop concept is a treasure to be protected, fostered, encouraged, expanded and guarded vigilantly. Remember always: those who oppose the open shop concept will never genuinely accept it as a permanent part of our economy. The open shop concept is a constant gift to labour and therefore is a threat to unionization. ICBA must remain on guard and avoid the danger of complacency…
I recognize it is difficult to infuse a second-generation passion for a cause that we are now enjoying, but that is exactly my hope for ICBA members.
Be vigilant, NOT COMPLACENT. What has been gained can be lost at the whim of politicians. Open shop is like the statue of liberty, it is for all persons a benefit.
Len Remple was named an ICBA Life Member for his service to the association and B.C. He passed away in 2022, at the age of 91.
