Adopted 24 June 1989 on 92F/11 as submitted by Ruth Masters, Comox District Mountaineering Club. See also Ginger Goodwin Creek.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

"Albert Goodwin was a little bit of a man with a shock of red hair - the source of his nickname "Ginger". Little is known about him before his arrival in Halifax at age 19 on board a ship from England, 2 September 1906. He was an experienced miner and worked in the mines of Cape Breton for the next four years. With a group of other miners who were blacklisted and penniless after the American-based United Mine Workers of America called their first Canadian strike and soldiers were called in to control strikers, he headed west to Vancouver Island. Ginger Goodwin was well liked by all who met him. He played on Cumberland's championship soccer team in the fall of 1910. From accounts of the time he was something of a ladies' man and he attended the local dances regularly. Children like his company. He was an eloquent speaker and a loyal friend. He was a avid fisherman. He was a socialist and a pacifist and didn't own a gun, even for hunting game. He [was] involved in the 1912-14 coal strike on Vancouver Island, where some of the world's most dangerous coal mines operated. Miners were victims of explosions, blacklung and deadly vapours. The strike affected every pit on the island. BC's attorney general called in the Canadian army to clean house and Goodwin was one of the miners arrested. Later he was a strike organizer for the eight-hour day in the coal mines of the Kootenays. Near the end of the First World War.... Goodwin was conscripted to army service but was classified unfit for service after his initial medical examination. He suffered from tuberculosis, a disease prevalent among miners. Then, mysteriously, 2 weeks later, he was reclassified as fit for duty. Goodwin appealed his reclassification twice and twice it was rejected. Believing he had been drafted to muzzle his labour voice, Goodwin and several other pacifists struck out for the hills behind the coal mines of Cumberland. A special force of the Dominion Police, a military force responsible in part for security and counter-subversion, searched the bush around Comox Lake for the draft evaders after the Provincial Police had given up the search earlier in the summer. Cumberland residents distrusted the police who had helped crush the strike of 1912-14, and as friends and comrades of Ginger Goodwin, they organized food supply lines. Although the military police force's orders were to "arrest military defaulters" Goodwin was "shot on sight" with a soft-nosed bullet rifle bullet. Troubling discrepancies relating to the shooting and to the events that followed still exist. The official story is available in public records of the day, but even they point out incongruities. After Goodwin was shot, the Dominion Police left the area and called off their search for the other draft dodgers who had been hiding out with him. Constable Dan Campbell's superior, a member of the search party in the bush behind Cumberland that day, disturbed evidence when he turned Goodwin's body over after he came upon the scene. He placed Campbell under arrest then sent him into town to get the coroner. He wanted an inquest conducted on the spot. When the elderly doctor realized how much bush he would have to hike through to reach the body, he refused, and Ginger Goodwin's body lay in the bushes for four days before it was retrieved by friends. After it was removed, police set a fire on the spot where he had been shot and the whole area was burned. The size and placement of the wounds on Ginger Goodwin's body led to the theory he'd been ambushed and shot in the back. The official record states that Campbell shot Goodwin in self defence. There was also much confusion about the gun and the bullets. News of the shooting spread swiftly through the community, stirring the labour movement to action. The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council and the Metal Trades Council issued a call for a 24-hour general strike. On August 2, while more than 2000 people attended Ginger Goodwin's funeral in Cumberland, thousands of workers in the Lower Mainland stayed off their jobs. Meanwhile, Goodwin's friends carried his coffin shoulder high at the start of a 4-mile funeral procession.
After Dan Campbell's preliminary investigation for manslaughter he was committed to higher court. On 1 October 1918 the grand jury of the Victoria fall assizes heard several witnesses and the next day the judges agreed that the matter not be sent to trial; Dan Campbell left the court a free man. Although unknown persons regularly laid flowers on Goodwin's grave, it remained unmarked until the 1930's when a Cumberland stonemason carved a headstone, inscribed "Lest We Forget, Ginger Goodwin, shot July 26, 1918, a worker's friend." He was off on the date by a day. The hammer and sickle symbol at the top of the stone reflects the affiliation of the 1930's miner's union. Even years after his death Ginger Goodwin stirs controversy.... Mount Ginger Goodwin has a place in BC's geography books as its namesake has a place in history." (excerpt from Ambushed! The Killing of Ginger Goodwin, by Marcella Harapiak, published in PASSAGE, BC Ferries on-board magazine, Vol.1, No.2, fall 1993.)

Source: included with note

The following additional biographical details and/or corrections to Harapiak's story in PASSAGES [excerpted above] were provided January 2005 by Roger Stonebanks, author of Fighting For Dignity: The Ginger Goodwin Story, published by the Canadian Committee on Labour History, St. John's, Nfld, 2004, as well as the entry for Albert (Ginger) Goodwin in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume XIV, 1911-1920:
1. Goodwin arrived in Halifax on 1 September 1906, not 2 September 1906 (Source: National Archives of Canada, ships manifest Halifax, reel T-501.)
2. After the Cape Breton strike, Goodwin headed to British Columbia, but before he arrived on Vancouver Island he was working in late 1909 or 1910 in Michel in the Crowsnest Pass, after which he went to Vancouver Island in late 1910. (Source: Fighting For Dignity, with sources.)
3. Goodwin was never arrested or charged in any of the disturbances during the 1912-14 miners strike on Vancouver Island. The 1917 strike for the eight-hour day was not in the coal mines of the Kootenays but at the lead-zinc smelter of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company Limited (now TeckCominco) in Trail. (Source: Fighting For Dignity, with sources, plus contemporary newspapers in Cumberland.)
4. The statement that Goodwin suffered from tuberculosis: I could find no evidence to support this in my research. The statement has often been made but no one has produced any evidence of this. It seems most unlikely that he was suffering from such a serious disease when he was able to play soccer even in the summer of 1917. It also seems highly unlikely that the army would admit anyone with such a communicable disease.
5. There are conflicting second-hand stories re who was responsible for the burning of the area where Goodwin was shot and killed as shown in the manuscript The Shooting of Ginger Ginger Goodwin, assembled by Ruth Masters, 1982 (Cumberland Museum and Archives).
6. RE: The theory that Goodwin was shot in the back: This would have been impossible according to the medical evidence given at the inquest and at the preliminary hearing of Const. Dan Campbell on a charge of manslaughter. The medical evidence (uncontroverted) was that Goodwin was shot through the neck.
7. RE: The statement that the grand jury in Victoria and the judges agreed that the matter not be sent to trial: This was a verdict by the grand jury. (submitted by Roger Stonebanks, Victoria, BC)

Source: included with note

Ginger Goodwin was shot on the lower northeast slope of this mountain, approximately 49º 35' 25" - 125º 15' 20", as annotated on Cumberland & District Historical Society's map (copy received January 1989, file B.1.38). See also Victoria Times-Colonist, Islander magazine, 30 April 1989, and 23 July 1989.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office