During the 1843 Lachine Canal strike, an estimated 1,100 to 1,300 workers on the Lachine Canal expansion project in Montreal walked off the job after their wages were cut by one-third, down to just 2 shillings a day. The canal workers were predominantly marginalised Irish migrant labourers who lived with their families, including women and children, in the shantytown around the worksite. They demanded their wage be increased to 3-and-a-half shillings a day, and they wanted to be paid in cash, not credits to the company store, which was operated by contractors. Canal workers at the nearby Beauharnois Canal also went on strike sometime in early 1843 in response to poor wages.
After the work stoppage began at the Lachine Canal, violence broke out between rival factions of canal workers, one being migrants from Cork and the other larger group from Connaught. The military intervened and sent the 71st regiment to confiscate weapons and arrest the ringleaders of the factions. Twenty-seven people were arrested in January. When the Montreal Gazette covered the strike and the clashes, the correspondent portrayed the violence as "manifestations of hereditary hatred ... imported among us from various provinces in Ireland", rather than a conflict stemming from the workers' material conditions. This narrative quickly spread throughout the Montreal press and stoked xenophobia against the migrant canal workers.
The strike carried on for several weeks, with violence erupting periodically. Then in March, the canal workers staged a demonstration; led by fife players, they marched from the shantytown on the banks of the Lachine Canal into the city of Montreal and gathered peacefully on the steps of the Bank of Montreal. This act garnered sympathy from some of the Montreal press. However, the workers' motivations were unclear; despite the coverage of the strike and the demonstration, the voices of the workers themselves were almost completely absent from the press. One exception was a statement from a worker printed in the Montreal Gazette, in which the worker attacked public works contractors on the canal "[who want] to live by the sweat of our brow". Increasingly, editorials in the press were critical of the contractors and the way they paid canal workers in credits that could only be used to buy goods at the contractors' company store.
The Lachine Canal strike ended in March 1843 after work recommensed on that worksite; there was no clear conclusion or formal agreement. Later that year on 12 June, the strike led by the workers at the nearby Beauharnois Canal turned deadly. After the Beauharnois workers attacked two contractors, the 74th army regiment confronted them and killed as many as 20 workers and injured 50.
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See also Shiners' War Welland Canal Riot