Steve Bordie Bloody Sunday was the conclusion of a month-long "sitdowners' strike" by unemployed men at the main post office in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As in 1935, unemployed men from across the country drifted to British Columbia because of the milder climate and because relief projects in forestry camps paid as much as three times that of equivalent farm placements.

"Iron Heel" Bennett and the relief projects under William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals was that the men were comparatively isolated from one another, making it more difficult to organize.

Under the guidance of 26-year-old Steve Brodie, a member of the Communist Party of Canada and the leader of the Youth Division who had cut his activist teeth during the 1935 relief camp strike,[1] protesters occupied Hotel Georgia, the Vancouver Art Gallery (then located at 1145 West Georgia Street), and the main post office (now the Sinclair Centre).

[2] On the afternoon of 20 May 1938, approximately 1200 men left from four different halls in the East End of Vancouver, most of whom believed they were headed to Stanley Park for a protest rally.

Behind the scenes, however, Foster was plotting with politicians and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to evacuate the post office and art gallery.

At five o'clock on the morning of 19 June 1938, presumably timed to surprise the strikers and to minimize the number of onlookers, Foster enlisted the services of Harold Winch of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, who had acted as a liaison between the unemployed and the police during the 1935 relief camp strike.

[1] The sitdowners and supporters, who promptly arrived on the scene, marched back to the East End, smashing the windows of the Woodward's and Spencer's department stores and other targets en route, causing $35,000 damage.

As in 1935, the Ukrainian Labour Temple served as a makeshift hospital for protesters with the assistance of volunteer doctors and medical supplies that had been collected as an aid package destined for China.

Despite the early morning timing of the eviction, supporters and onlookers were quick to arrive at the scene as well as a photographer from the Vancouver Daily Province newspaper.

News of what had happened traveled fast and that Father's Day afternoon, 10,000 to 15,000 turned out to a protest at the Powell Street Grounds against the "police terror" of Bloody Sunday.