Joanne Holowchak
Joanne Holowchak, a long-time member and supporter of the Communist League in Canada, died June 14 in London, Ontario. She had waged a courageous battle against dementia for the last 10 years, and was lovingly cared for by her niece Jessica.
Joanne moved to Hamilton, Ontario, in 1978 and was one of five women who filed complaints with the Human Rights Commission there against Stelco, the largest steel company in Canada. It had hardly hired any women since the Second World War.
Backed by USW Local 1005, the yearlong campaign called Women Back Into Stelco was supported by many of the 15,000 workers in the plant. Stelco had to back down and hired over 100 women in the coke ovens, blast furnaces and open hearths. Joanne was hired as an apprentice machinist.
In Pathfinder’s newest book, In Defense of Marxism, there is a photo of Joanne (third from the right) with other women steelworkers when Local 1005 waged a long strike against Stelco in 1981. The role women played in helping to build the union and win the strike gained them a lot of respect from their male co-workers.
Of Ukrainian heritage, Joanne had studied Ukrainian and Russian at Kyiv University. In 2014 she participated in a Militant reporting team to Ukraine, helping speak with coal miners on the barricades on the Maidan, part of the successful fight to overthrow the pro-Moscow government of President Victor Yanukovych.
Joanne played a valuable role in building the Communist movement in Canada. She had a politically rich and rewarding life.
Rosemary Ray
Montreal, Quebec
Jon Erway
Jon Erway, a member and then supporter of the Socialist Workers Party for five decades, died May 14. He was 73 and had long worked as an editor.
Jon was won to the SWP in the early 1970s, as he participated in the struggle to defend the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialist assault.
He was a regular dusk-to-dawn defender of the mural painted on the Pathfinder building in Lower Manhattan, part of a multiyear effort to protect this six-story celebration of revolutions and revolutionaries around the world from efforts by rightists to deface it. (To see the mural, go to www.pathfinderpress.com/products/pathfinder-mural_poster)
Although challenged by health problems, especially in recent years, Jon found a way to make regular financial contributions to the party.
Jane Harris
South Orange, New Jersey