Marion Pollack
Marion Pollack was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. During grade school, Marion was bullied by her classmates, an experience she credits with teaching her about resilience, empathy, and the importance of supporting and defending those on the margins. After high school, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of British Columbia (UBC).
As someone who often felt at odds with prevailing expectations of women in the 1960s and 1970s, Marion recognized the need for feminism from a young age, citing two key incidents. The first occurred during her time at UBC, when she joined one of the first women’s liberation groups on campus and learned about feminist theory from an academic perspective. The second was much more personal. After helping a friend procure an abortion (at a time when the procedure was still illegal in Canada), Marion came to see even more clearly that reproductive rights are essential to enable women to live their lives to the fullest.
After completing her degree, Marion began her career with Canada Post as a mail sorter in 1974. She joined the Vancouver Local of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), and becoming a shop steward shortly thereafter. Early in her career, Marion recognized and fought against the sexism that she and her sisters experienced in the workplace. When she first started at Canada Post, the women’s washroom was a repurposed men’s facility, and did not contain a menstrual product dispenser. To campaign for access to necessary facilities, the women left “little red trails from the sorting areas to the bathrooms” to pressure the employer.
She also dealt with workplace safety concerns. Following a rise in muggings targeting female employees leaving the office at midnight, 1 until 1am. In response, Marion and her sisters organized a meeting and invited a local anti-violence organization to discuss the issue, although the session ultimately did not produce any practical solutions.
While fighting for safety, Marion and her sisters also started organizing nationally for a CUPW national women’s committee, writing letters to supporters across Canada to build momentum. The campaign succeeded, and Marion and her union sisters established the first Vancouver Women’s Committee to connect women in the union across the country. In retrospect, Marion noted that many of the committee’s early campaigns focused primarily on the experiences of white women and often overlooked the struggles of older women working part-time and raising children without paid maternity leave.
As a shop steward and member of the Vancouver local, Marion worked with her sisters to fight for paid maternity leave, preparing backgrounders and writing letters to engage women’s organizations across Canada and pressure national union leadership. She later reflected that, due in part to longstanding tensions and distrust between some women’s organizations and unions, there was little external support for the campaign at first, and that meaningful support only emerged once CUPW went on strike for maternity leave in 1981.2 The strike lasted 42 days, bringing women’s groups onto the picket line and concluding with CUPW securing 17 weeks of fully paid maternity leave for its female members. The success of the campaign influenced subsequent negotiations by the Public Service Alliance of Canada and, later, private sector unions, beginning with Bell Canada.34 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Marion remained an active and outspoken member of CUPW, publishing in periodicals including Priorities, a feminist socialist perspective on the impact of provincial budgets and new legislation on the rights and experiences of female workers.
In 2004, Marion also participated in the CUPW negotiations that led to the first collective agreement for rural and suburban mail carriers, 66-70% of which are women. In 2016, she with the union to write a letter to the federal government requesting pay equity for rural and suburban mail carriers. The campaign was successful and in 2018, rural and suburban mail carriers won pay equity with their employer. In recognition of her activism, Marion received the Canadian Labour Congress’ Carol McGregor Disability Rights Award in 2019.5
Marion joined the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW-ICREF) in 2008, when she was invited to an in-person event in Ottawa by then-President Jane Stinson, whose partner Marion knew through CUPW. From 2012 to 2013, she served as President of CRIAW-ICREF during a period marked by significant federal funding cuts under the Harper government. Despite these challenges, CRIAW-ICREF remained operational, in part due to Marion’s connections within CUPW, which became a key source of donations sustaining the organization during this period. The Conservative government reduced funding for women’s organizations by $5 million, “closed 12 of 16 regional offices of the Status of Women Canada [SWC],” rewrote the SWC mandate to remove reference to the “advancement of women,” and revised funding criteria so that organizations were “no longer able to receive funding for advocacy or research.”6
Even in this constrained context, Marion notes that she deepened her understanding of intersectionality through initiatives such as FemNorthNet and through her collaboration with Executie Director Jackie Neapole on the Action on Systemic Barriers to Women’s Participation in Local Government project. The project examined local initiatives in Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia, to “identify systemic barriers faced by diverse women and recommend changes to increase the involvement of women in leadership and decision-making at all levels of government.”7
Marion continues to work with and publish through CRIAW-ICREF, while mentoring younger women from marginalized communities and advocating for the rights of older adults, including submitting a report to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women in 2019 on transportation challenges experienced by senior women in rural and remote communities. She is currently co-authoring a paper with Jane Stinson, Leah Levac, and Yuriko Cowper-Smith for Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of CRIAW-ICREF.
References
BC Forum. “Sister Marion Pollack, BC FORUM Board member, is the CLC’s 2019 Carol McGregor Disability Rights Award winner.” BC Forum News, December 2019. https://www.bcforum.ca/BCFORUMNEWS/19/marionpollock2019.html
Boucher, Lisa and Tara McWhinney. “Policy4Women: Public space, public engagement”. Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 2017. https://www.criaw-icref.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Funding-for-Womens-Organizations.pdf
Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. “Action on Barriers.” Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, accessed May 2026, https://www.criaw-icref.ca/our-work/research-projects/action-on-barriers/.
Canadian Union of Postal Workers. “Trailblazing Women of CUPW 2020.” Accessed May 2026. https://www.cupw.ca/en/about-us/committees/national-womens-committee/trailblazing-women-cupw-2020
Floresco, Aaron. “A Struggle to Remember: Fighting for Our Families’ Workers’ History Museum.” Worker’s History Museum, November 15, 2018. Video, 20 minutes, 38 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9czpIswnj9g
Hanson, Cindy and Marion Pollack. Written submission from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women for its study on challenges faced by senior women.” Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, March 28, 2019. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/FEWO/Brief/BR10398897/br-external/CanadianResearchInstituteForTheAdvancementOfWomen-e.pdf
Pollack, Marion. “The Budget and working women.” Priorities: a feminist socialist perspective, vol. XI, no. 4, (November 1983): 5-7. https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/priorities-11-4-nov-1983-OCR.pdf
Pollack, Marion. Interview by MacKenzie Gott. Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. June 1, 2026. Zoom recording and transcript.
Pollack, Marion and Micki McCune. Interview with Marion Pollack and Micki McCune. Interview by Al Cornes. Labour Heritage Centre, May 3, 2023. Transcript. https://www.labourheritagecentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pollack_and_McCune_transcript.pdf