Aaron R. Mosher

Aaron Mosher was born of Dutch descent near Halifax in 1881. He went to work in 1903 for the Intercolonial Railway in Halifax, where in 1907 he led a successful strike for better pay and working conditions. At Moncton in 1908 he helped found, and became Grand President of, the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees. This soon became the largest transport union and the largest non-international union in Canada. To build it, Mosher battled communist machinations, stiff competition from international unions, and some attempts by companies to fire union activists. In 1927 Mosher formed the All-Canadian Congress of Labour, a group of Canadian unions. The first and only president of this organization, he united it in 1940 with the Canadian branches of the Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the Canadian Congress of Labour, which also appointed him president. The CCL merged with the Trades and Labour Congress in 1956 to form the Canadian Labour Congress. It named Mosher honorary president and elected him to its Labour Hall of Fame. Mosher was a founding member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. For his war work he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He died in 1959. The stamp, which was designed by Roger Hill of Toronto, features a portrait of Mosher flanked by two railway workers.