ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, WE STAND THE GAFF
Strategies for Resistance in the Era of Toxic Bros
International Women's Day 2025 comes at a time of unprecedented upheaval and insecurity. In the United States, rights and freedoms are being pushed back in a manner that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Women are the target of militant political misogyny.
Canadian women are watching the situation in the U.S. and understand they cannot be complacent. Resistance against the politics of toxic bros will have to be sustained and determined. It will come down to standing the gaff.
Perhaps you know the expression; perhaps you don't.
It's a Canadian thing, kinda like our motto of resistance, "Elbows Up" (a nod to the hockey great Gordie Howe, who broke the resistance of many opposing teams by his willingness to put the elbows up and go in hard).
In the United States, the expression to stand the gaff means being able to take criticism. But in Canada, the phrase has more militant roots.
It comes from the brutal 1925 coal mining strike in Cape Breton, where families were put out of their homes and forced to live in tents. The streets were patrolled by soldiers with bayonets and machine guns. When asked how long the strike would go on, mine owner, J.E. McLurg, bragged:
"Poker game, nothing, we hold all the cards. Things are getting better every day they stay out. Let them stay out two months or six months, it matters not, eventually they will have to come to us. They can't stand the gaff."
The coal oligarchs were boasting of their willingness to starve the families into submission. But rather than breaking, Cape Breton miners and their hungry families took control of the expression. Stand the gaff became a slogan encouraging people to hold the line and fight for a better deal.
My grandfather, Joe MacNeil, was one of those miners. Soon after the strike, he joined the big Cape Breton exodus to the gold mines of Timmins. His tiny miner's house in Timmins was where the Maritime ex-pats gathered with their multicultural neighbours - Ukrainian, Italian, Finnish, and French. My grandparents loved to host big Saturday night ceilidhs. This is where I learned my love of singing.
It is also where I learned the expression to stand the gaff. Most often it was used by my grandmother Lola who worked 12 hour shifts at the hospital. If I complained about some slight or hurt, she would throw me a tough glance and tell me I needed to stand the gaff.
Neither she nor my grandfather ever explained the hard truth behind the phrase. They didn't talk about the hard times, but they expected that if they came again, we would do our part.
Which brings me to my mom, Anne-Marie. Like Loretta Lynn, she is a coal miner's daughter. She knows how to stand the gaff.
The other day, she was pushing her walker through a blinding snowstorm in Toronto when a woman stopped to help. As they walked, the woman asked worriedly, "Do you think we will survive this Trump thing?"
My mother didn't hesitate.
"Of course, we'll survive," she said. "If I have to choose between buying asparagus from the U.S. and eating root vegetables, I will eat root vegetables. It was good enough for us before. We will get through these times."
Standing the gaff, indeed.
Women in the Fight for Justice
This brings me to a photograph that has always fascinated me. It’s from the 1941 gold miners' strike in Kirkland Lake, Ontario (a region I am proud to represent). Those mines were fantastically rich but very deep, and the ground was very bad—cave-ins, "rock bursts," and seismic shifts killed and maimed a lot of men.
When women felt the dishes rattling in the kitchen cupboards, they immediately knew there had been a rock burst below. I was told by old-timers that when the plates rattled, the women knew that someone’s husband or son was killed or trapped. They rushed to the mine gates to get word on their loved ones.
During the 1941 strike, the provincial premier sent in hundreds of heavily armed police to break the strike. The police announced that any miner who dared protest or appear on the street would face serious violence.
They thought they could intimidate the people.
But mining families are a tough and tight-knit breed. The day after the threat was made, in the bitter cold, the women and children of Kirkland Lake formed a long row and marched through the centre of town.
They were defiant. This was their community, and they were standing up for their husbands, brothers and sons. The police didn't dare move against them.
The women's march was a high point of solidarity. They were standing the gaff. That strike won the right for collective bargaining across Canada.
Moms, daughters, sisters and grannies stood up against the mining oligarchs and changed the course of Canadian labour history.
Standing the gaff isn't just about being able to take the blows and the pressure. It’s about being stronger than the foe and pushing them back. It's the heart of resistance because it is focused on obtaining justice.
This is what makes us stronger than the bros and better able to handle adversity than pampered billionaires. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
On this International Women's Day, I pay tribute to the women who came before us and those on the front lines now.
Keep kicking at the darkness, sisters; it will one day bleed daylight.
This is such an interesting and intelligent article. It gives this American courage to not only ELBOW UP, but STAND THE GAFF! Thank you for sharing and being the light this world needs right now. Long live Canada 🇨🇦!
Great story Charlie. My Irish Grandma married to a Manitoba immigrant German farmer used to say “A man’s got to do what a man has got to do. Women must do what they can’t.”