by Peter Haines, Local 500

Edward MacMillian Glennie (Scottie) died on March 18. He was 74. He retired from the Vancouver waterfront October 1995. Ed wasn’t a past president or secretary-treasurer. He had served on the Local Executive, but for all of his career on the beach he was a rank-and-filer. He had worked in the Canadian Stevedoring gear locker as a splicer and his last years were spent driving lift truck out of the dispatch hall.

We had a service for Ed on Tuesday, March 23 in the auditorium of our union building, the Maritime Labour Centre. More than 500 people from all over the world and from all walks of life attended. What was so special about this longshoreman that he would have such a send-off?

The first thing you would notice about Ed was his smile. A soon as you were introduced he would make you feel that he really appreciated that he had the opportunity to meet you. And when you got to know Ed, you realized that you were the fortunate one to have got to know him.

Ed was born on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, off the northwest coast of Scotland. He went to sea when he was 16, just after WWII. In 1952 he jumped ship in Vancouver and, after many other occupations (and dodging Immigration), he got a job in the Canadian Stevedoring gear locker as a lockerman and a truck driver. At that time the gear lockers were not organized. Ed and others worked to get the lockers covered by the ILWU. They were successful.

Ed was always a vigilant enforcer of our rights under the collective agreement. In the 1960s teamsters were doing pick-ups and deliveries on our docks, using our fork lifts to load and unload their trucks. Ed got the business agent working on this violation of our jurisdiction and ultimately we got control of this work. To this day truck drivers stay in the cab of their trucks except to unlash or lash their loads.

But Ed was much more than this. He was known far and wide as Scottie and on his business cards as the “Knotty Scottie.” The day after his death, it was announced on Stornoway Radio. Stornoway is the capital of the Hebrides.

He was a poet and an artist with rope and knots. He wrote poems when guys retired and eulogies in verse when they died.

In 1997 his friends collected his poems in a book and it was 90 pages long. Many of us have the monkey-fist key chain Ed made hanging out of our jeans pockets.

However, what Ed was best known for was his ability to tell a yarn over a beer or a glass of Glenlivet down the hill from our union hall in the pub at the Princeton Hotel, “the Prinnie.”

"Down in the Eastend
Close to the docks
There’s a friendly little ale house
Where you meet some friendly folk
It’s listed as the Princeton
But called the Prinnie by its guests
With a staff of kindly waiters
Who greet you with smiles and jest.”

Ed told tales of his travels as a seafarer and the brawls and the women he had met as he traveled around the world. There were longshore stories and stories of some of the interesting characters he had known, and he knew a lot of people. He would get to know every newcomer to the pub. And every new girl got introduced with a hug from Scottie.

Scottie would be in the pub till late at night, as long as there was someone to listen to his tales. But next morning he’d be up early tying a few monkey-fists and doing the crossword puzzle. He never seemed to have a hang-over. Ed was always happy because he saw the connectedness of all things. Life had meaning and he passed along his understanding.

“We’ve all at times been knotted, tied and sometimes spliced
And often fouled with griefs and gripes
Pulled and heaved and wrapped around
Ashore, adrift and hard aground.
And through it all with tensile strength
You utilized its very length.
But the best rope when often used
Will weaken some and its strength will lose.”

His poems about people were some of his best. He had the ability to capture the essence of a person in a few rhymed lines so that everyone could recognize the subject. And always with a little humor.

“Bert had the touch of a surgeon’s class hands
To check all the crate contents before it hit land
All of the gang would admiringly look on,
Before all the goodies were drank and all gone.
All this was done to protect the public, you know
How else do you find what is hid in the stow?
Bert would lift and smell it, then take a wee sip
The rest of the grog swept over the lip,
He’d squint and he’d swear and throw down his hat
And shout “Open another,
I’ll have four bottles of that.”

Scottie never aspired to high elective office in the local or the Area. He was a rank and filer all the way. However, the turnout to see him off was as great as I’ve ever seen for many of our late distinguished leaders.

We had the Rev. Pike from the Mission to Seafarers say a blessing. The piper, Mike MacInnes, played “The Flower of Scotland.” Scottie’s cousin, Alex MacLennan, sang one of Ed’s poems that had been put to music, accompanying himself on a guitar. The packed hall was silent as we listened. Then there were speakers remembering the varied aspects of Scottie’s personality.

It made me think that we had a genius in our midst and really didn’t appreciate what we had. I drank a few beers with Ed down at the Prinnie and listened to his stories and laughed when his lovely wife Sandra would say, “Edward, Peter’s heard that story a thousand times.”

So, to all of you that have these gems around you, give heed to what you have. Don’t wait until it is too late.