Richard Parmater Pettipiece

Richard Parmater Pettipiece
Alderman R.P. Pettipiece c. 1937
Born	1875 North Gower Twp., Carleton County, Ontario, Canada
Died	10 January 1960 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Socialist, publisher

Richard Parmater (Parm) Pettipiece (1875 – 10 January 1960) was a Canadian socialist and publisher. He was one of the founders of Socialist Party of Canada, and one of the leaders of the Canadian socialist movement in British Columbia in the early 20th century. Later he moved into the moderate trade union movement, and for many years was a Vancouver alderman.

Richard Parmeter Pettipiece was born in Ontario in 1875. He was a newspaper vendor in Calgary as a boy, then joined the printing trade in 1890. In 1894 he moved to South Edmonton (later renamed Strathcona) and started a weekly newspaper, the South Edmonton News. The first ice hockey match between the newly formed South Edmonton Shamrocks and the Edmonton Thistles was held on 31 January 1896. Pettipiece was secretary of the Shamrocks, which he supported in his paper. He was also active in the local branch of the Orange Order.

He left South Edmonton in 1896 to found a weekly paper in Revelstoke, British Columbia, but soon sold it.

Pettipiece began to publish the Lardeau Eagle in Ferguson, British Columbia, a miner's journal that published the views of the Canadian Socialist League (CSL). In 1900 Pettipiece supported female enfranchisement in the Lardeau Eagle. A strike began in Rossland, British Columbia in July 1901 in response to efforts by the mining companies to break the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) locals. The companies ignored the Alien Labor Law and brought strike-breakers from the United States in large numbers. When the WFM called on the federal government to take action the prime minister Wilfrid Laurier and the justice minister David Mills replied that they did not have jurisdiction. Pettipiece said "the Laurier government is afraid to enforce the provisions of a law placed in the statutes by themselves." The strike had collapsed by November.