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The everyday life of people on the street has not received the attention it deserves in the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Quebec. This dissertation joins a small number of recent studies which redress this omission. It makes a significant contribution to existing examinations of North American cities and Canadian social history through the use of categories which are rarely employed and questions that are seldom posed in investigations of working-class history during the period of industrialization. A holistic treatment of Marxist philosophy provides the theoretical underpinnings for a sensitive engagement with daily street life in an urban milieu. As a site of intense sociability, Notre-Dame Street, the main street of the industrial suburb of Saint-Henri, offers a unique perspective on the intricate use of public space and its relations to social space. This thesis covers the period between the years of town incorporation in 1875 and annexation to the City of Montreal in 1905. Notre-Dame Street underwent significant transformations in this period. A main street of a small town on the outskirts of Montreal became the principal commercial street of a bustling industrial city. The 1890s was a decade of particularly marked shifts, characterized by significant population growth and dramatic changes in physical form. Class and ethnic tensions intensified as a result. A 1891 labour dispute at Merchants Manufacturing, a textile factory, took to the streets, and the local elite contested George A. Drummond's refusal to pay municipal taxes in 1897. Resistance to monopoly control of utilities was evidenced by the use of petitions and protets or notarized letters. Workers' parties, journalists, and municipal reform leagues increasingly challenged the hegemony of the local elite whose persistent practices of overspending resulted in a substantial debt and annexation. The study of a local street in an industrializing community demonstrates the prevailing social and political distribution of wealth and power. It reveals significant differences between the various class ideologies which were played out in the management of the public space of the street. An economic liberal ideology was instrumental to the development of the modern Western city through the creation of divisions between public and private spaces. Social usage, the visible presence of the working and marginal classes and women on city streets, suggests a different reality. A reconstruction of daily street life from a diversity of written and visual sources indicates that women, men, and children inhabited and frequented homes, shops, and offices, travelling to and from work, and various places of recreation. The rhythm of everyday street life was punctuated by unusual events of a celebratory, criminal, and tragic nature, which emphasize the connections between spatial structures and subjective experience. The local management of public space thus involved class antagonisms, characterized by negotiation, transgression, and resistance. This dissertation argues that the politics of this public space benefited the class interests of a grande bourgeoisie of Montreal and a local petite bourgeoisie, to the detriment of the working classes. These conflicting class interests were played out in a variety of different ways. The exclusion and appropriation of social and symbolic spaces were characterized by distinct property ownership and rental patterns. An anglophone grande bourgeoisie of Montreal owned vacant and subdivided lots. A francophone petite bourgeoisie dominated property ownership, and a majority of renters lived in flats on the main street and on adjoining streets. The shaping of the physical infrastructure was distinguished by the growth of monopolies and minimal local intervention. The civic manifestation of the ordered and ritualistic celebration of the parade emphasized a Catholic identity. Attempts to impose an appropriate and genteel code of behaviour on city streets led to the moral regulation and social control of criminal behaviour.

The Union of Northern Workers, known as the Northwest Territories Public Service Association prior to 1987, is the largest labour union in the Northwest Territories. Northern labour is a little explored field in Canadian history, and as such, this work surveys new ground. Trade unionism in the North's private sector began at the close of the Second World War. The UNW, however, like most public sector unions in Canada, had its roots in the 1960s. This study examines issues pertaining to the union's leadership and staff from 1967, when correctional workers in Yellowknife first organized, until the 1996 convention, when the union took steps to divide into two separate unions in anticipation of the creation of Nunavut in 1999. From its start, the union's geographic jurisdiction distinguished the UNW as unique among Canada's public service unions. It and its predecessor, the NWTPSA represented workers in Canada's most northern reaches. The challenges of life in the North were as real for the union as they were for its members. A relatively small membership spread across such a huge land mass presented obstacles with regards to leadership and service. Also, cultural factors differentiated the organization from others. With an increasing native membership, mostly Inuit, lnuktitut became the union's second language. Distinguishing the union institutionally was its component status within the Public Service Alliance of Canada. The quality of the relationship between these two bodies regularly fluctuated between excellent and belligerent. Similarly, the union's relationship with the Nonhwest Territories Federation of Labour degenerated from founding member to pariah status, in spite of the UNW comprising the overwhelming majority of the Federation's membership. As the union grew from a fly-by-night, seat-of-the-pants organization of less than 100 members at its inception, to over 5,000 when it divided, leadership and staffing gained increasing importance. To meet the challenges of representing northern workers, the union increasingly attempted to professionalize its leadership cadre. The effect of this was an increasing distance between members and leaders which ultimately resulted in the secession of the Nunawt membership.

In 1960 the Canadian United Auto Workers suggested to the government that in order to save the automobile industry, rationalization with the American industry was a viable and desired option. Over the next five years, as the government gradually moved towards integration, the union stood behind the principle, yet at the same time stated tha protection for dislocated and laid-off workers must be part of the deal for union support to be forthcoming. The union, which felt that the costs of government-induced layoffs should be fully borne by the state, did not waver in its commitment to securing safeguards, even though from 1960 to the Auto Pact in 1965 it became increasingly apparent that the granting of adequate protection was not on the government's agenda. The layoff of 1,600 workers in 1965 resulted in the withdrawal of Canadian UAW support for the trade deal and highlighted the significance and importance of the over-riding condition of support, the protection of workers from the consequences of state actions.

The period 1935 to 1947 provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the ways in which the employment and training policies of Canadian welfare state forms delineated the boundaries of gender, race, class and nation in ways that actively constituted (il)legitimate social and economic forms of work, of motherhood, of sexuality and citizenship. Covering attempts starting in the Depression and accelerating during the Second World War into the postwar period, this study tracks the constitution and deployment of government attempts at mapping the female labour supply, of monitoring the activities of women in the labour market, of charting and opening up to scrutiny the conditions of women's labour force attachment: all in an effort to predict and prescribe patterns of women's employment and problems of female unemployment. I approach government reports, studies, commissions and committees as policy events—exercises in governance—as markers for policy analysis which signified important shifts in governmental approaches to the phenomenon of female participation in the formal waged economy. Viewed during the war as a crucial national resource, central to the war effort, women war workers would be cast as a largely ‘unskilled female labour reserve’ by war's end. I examine how ideas about mental testing, intelligence and human capacities—ideas that comprised the foundation of the mental hygiene programme during this period—informed employment and training policies in the formation of the Canadian welfare state for the period 1935–1947. During the Depression, studies of the labour force produced classifications of unemployed women and men. Scrutiny of female employment patterns resulted in the production of categorical knowledges about employability. These practices were further elaborated through the unprecedented research opportunities presented by the war. Suitable vocation, aptitude, and measures of intelligence: these concepts were drawn upon as part of a growing apparatus of employment policy intended to facilitate the smooth transition into the postwar period. I argue that the roster of policies and programmes devised in the name of postwar rehabilitation constituted ideas about female employability which were deeply imbued with the principles of scientific racism and sexism at the core of the mental hygiene program. Vocational planning, counselling and training practices reorganised relations of employment and of unemployment in ways that reflected the managing principles of the risk society. Postwar planning drew upon and constituted new areas of activity for government and community agencies, creating opportunities for the deployment of knowledge-practices such as personnel selection while opening up the interior of the subject as an object of governance, by assessing and calibrating allegedly innate human capacities.

This thesis examines the effects of the Workers' Educational Association of Toronto (WEA) on social change in Canada between 1917-1945. This study attempts to establish the social importance of this organization in the history of adult education in Canada. The WEA was an educational organization that attempted to provide a link between labour and learning by making educational opportunities available to the working class. The data for this study were obtained from an analysis of the Ontario and Canadian WEA archives. The thesis first examines the history of the WEA and demonstrate its place in the history of adult education in Canada. Secondly, this study suggests that the WEA was the impetus for change in Canada, and in particular for Toronto's working class. The study found that the WEA used a form of critical pedagogy to achieve its goals which brought about social change. This study reinforces the usefulness of critical pedagogy as an approach for adult education when social change is an objective.

Using Marxist state theory as an analytical framework, this thesis explains the problems faced by the Ontario New Democratic Party government (1990-1995) in implementing a social democratic agenda. Not only was the government constrained in its ability to implement progressive policy, but it was also pushed to implement a Social Contract (involving legislated wage cuts to public sector employees) that alienated the party's base of support, making it more difficult for the party to organize in the future. Although this study relies predominantly on a reinterpretation of existing research on the topic, some primary research is used in the analysis, including interviews with members of the labour movement and former MPPs and analysis of the news media's treatment of the party/ government. Historical and class analytical perspectives are used to explain the evolution of the ONDP's structure and policies, as well as to assess the relative strength of the working class and its ability to support a social democratic political agenda. It was found that the ONDP' s unwillingness to develop a long term plan for social democracy, and its inability to act as a mass party or to build a strong working class movement, made it more difficult for the party to succeed when it formed the government. Moreover, the class nature of the capitalist state, along with pressure exerted by a well mobilized capitalist class, worked to limit the government' s options.

Relief policy in English Canada in the 1930s was the forerunner of the Canadian welfare state. As practised, the strength of relief lay in local responsibility but this was also a weakness. The aims of relief policy were undermined by the politics of place: the impact of specific historical and spatial circumstances at the local level. Relief policy was not uniformly enforced nor were the outcomes exactly as intended. The objectives, to provide minimal necessities, to exclude individuals and families from relief rolls, to control gender and familial roles, and to impose middle class societal prescription, were not met. Instead, a complex negotiation of responsibilities and expectations was undertaken. Relief recipients, were able to win some concessions. Further, the fragility of social categories used to implement relief policies was crystallized. The conflict between the ideals of policy and people's realities becomes apparent when two very different cities are compared. Using extensive oral history interviews and contemporary relief policy documents and relief department records, this research shows that while the principles of relief were almost identical in Saskatoon and Vancouver, the practice of relief in these two cities revealed the dependency of relief policy upon face to face delivery. Designed to eliminate potential abuse by recipients, the system barely controlled it. Further, local responsibility also ensured that citizens had access to the mechanisms of local politics and tools for change. The local population in Saskatoon was able to win considerable and significant improvements to relief while Vancouver's system remained virtually untouched, in spite of dramatic and revolutionary local activities which reached the national stage.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the culmination of severe contradictions building within a maturing capitalist world economy, and has been credited, in conjunction with the Second World War, for structuring the post-war compromise around a national welfare state, full employment, Keynesian fiscal policy, demand management, and the expansion of trade union rights. Despite the importance of this decade in Canadian history, and the highly developed literature on the Roosevelt administration and the American New Deal, few writers have attempted to probe the finer contours of the Great Depression in Canada. This thesis is broadly structured around the threat of social disorder which state officials and social workers perceived to be rooted in the economic malaise of the decade. Attempts to manage the poor through municipal welfare schemes and efforts to regulate the family through newly developed “socialized tribunals” were paired with a campaign to contain juvenile delinquency and structure the leisure time of working-class adolescents. The order that social workers sought to impose on the working-class family and child was materially related to struggles to bring order to the economy. The ideological retreat from laissez-faire capitalism by business and the state coalesced with a burgeoning and militant union movement that propelled the state towards active intervention in the economic, social, moral, and political relations of capital and labor. Pushed in part by an escalation in strike-related violence, the state tentatively embarked on a program of economic control through the Industrial Standards Act, opened legal space for union activities, and attempted to introduce the first minimum wage for male workers. The thesis explores the role of unions, representing both men and women, skilled and unskilled, in structuring the re-organization of capitalism in Toronto's transportation, construction, and service industries, yet draws upon the paradigm of state-centered regulatory regimes which emerged in the state's treatment of the unemployed, the family, and youth. Policies designed to contain 'chiseling' employers, wayward youth, and cheating husbands all faltered because the state was unwilling or incapable of stepping too heavily into the private sphere or interfering with the prerogatives of private property. The resulting half-measures produced a set of contradictions inherent in initiatives designed to accommodate both labor and capital and generated intense struggles against the 'sweatshop,' while bringing the twin issues of the family wage and relief-subsidized competition to the forefront of political and economic mobilization. The largely ineffectual attempts to bring order to political, economic and social life witnessed the emergence of a nascent regulatory state, tied to significant pockets of organized capital, and contingently supported by organized labor. This particular constellation of social forces not only attained a degree of ideological prominence during the depression, but was of profound importance in shaping the second-half of the twentieth century.

Cette thèse porte sur la carrière du syndicaliste Gustave Francq (1871-1952). Grâce aux nombreux postes d'importance qu'il a occupés dans le mouvement syndical et à la visibilité qu'il a obtenue par la publication d'un journal hebdomadaire durant près de 30 ans, Francq est considéré comme une figure marquante du syndicalisme international au Québec dans la première moitié du )0(e siècle. Personnage polyvalent, il se distingue des autres syndicalistes de son époque, entre autres, par la multiplicité de ses champs d'intérêt: typographe et syndicaliste, il compte aussi à son actif une carrière d'homme d'affaires, de journaliste, de militant politique et de haut fonctionnaire au gouvernement du Québec. La thèse vise à rendre compte du personnage dans sa globalité et sa complexité, c'està-dire en examinant tant sa vie professionnelle que sa vie privée. Pour ce faire, nous abordons sa carrière sous trois angles: l'action syndicale, l'action politique et l'action sociale. Au Québec, il est certes l'un des plus importants défenseurs du syndicalisme de métiers et de la Fédération américaine du travail (FAT). Il prône l'organisation des travailleurs sur la base des syndicats de métiers, reconnaît la légitimité du système capitaliste, favorise les relations harmonieuses entre le Capital et le Travail et témoigne d'une grande confiance dans l'État comme arbitre des relations de travail. À cet égard, il se distancie des positions fondamentales du syndicalisme de métiers, telles que défendues par la FAT. Au début de sa carrière, Francq touche à l'action politique ouvrière. Défendant des positions travaillistes, il dirige le Parti ouvrier de Montréal de 1906 à 1916 et s'oppose systématiquement aux socialistes. Il remet cependant en question son engagement politique entre 1916 et 1921 avec la montée des socialistes au sein du Parti ouvrier et la multiplication des défaites des candidatures ouvrières. 11 se rapproche alors considérablement du Parti libéral avec lequel il a des affinités. Sur le plan social, il mène plusieurs combats depuis le début du siècle pour améliorer les conditions de vie de l'ensemble de la classe ouvrière. Ses principales revendications touchent la réforme du système scolaire québécois, la démocratisation de l'administration municipale montréalaise, la promotion des coopératives de consommation et de production et l'amélioration de la législation des accidents de travail. Au cours de sa carrière, Francq siège donc à diverses commissions gouvernementales comme la Commission fédérale d'appel du travail (1918), la Commission de la charte de la ville de Montréal (1920), la Commission des accidents de travail (1923) et la Commission du salaire minimum des femmes dont il occupe la présidence de 1925 à 1937. Intellectuel du mouvement ouvrier, Francq défend des positions libérales et travaillistes au début du siècle, pour évoluer progressivement vers une position de libéral réformiste au tournant des années 1920. Or si sa conception de l'action politique ouvrière se transforme rapidement au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale, il témoigne d'une grande fidélité idéologique tout au long de sa vie à l'égard du syndicalisme de métiers et de son rôle de réformateur social. Croyant à la nécessité et à la possibilité d'améliorer le système socio-économique et les institutions politiques, il est animé de préoccupations sociales majeures axées sur une meilleure répartition de la richesse et un engagement substantiel de l'État dans le champ des politiques sociales. Malgré leur importance numérique, peu d'historiens se sont penchés sur l'étude des syndicats internationaux au Québec, et ce, même si leurs effectifs dépassent largement ceux des syndicats catholiques depuis le début du siècle. S'inscrivant dans le renouvellement des études à caractère biographique, notre thèse vise donc à mettre de l'avant la carrière d'un des principaux dirigeants du syndicalisme international au Québec.

The goal of this thesis is to question conventional definitions of work through the detailed study of a professional group---specifically rural clergy---whose work falls outside the parameters of accepted definitions of work. According to the feminist literature, work and non-work are differentiated typically by dichotomies which privilege a masculine model of work and devalue women's experience; thus, "real work" is defined as an activity which is paid rather than unpaid, public rather than private, instrumental and intellectual rather than emotional. Professional work definitions also obscure the way in which "work" relies on activities which are linked with the feminine in these dichotomies. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with rural clergy, I explore the extent to which women and men draw on these gendered dichotomies to define work. In some ways, the approach of clergy counters conventional work norms: for them, emotional labour is a priority, work is not limited to a specific time or place, and public and private lives frequently overlap. I demonstrate how clergy define their work in terms of obligation, context, visibility, and time. Furthermore, I also argue that clergy delineate work in terms which still reflect a masculinized work norm specific to their profession. This "clergy masculinized mode" professionalises emotional labour by separating it from the facilitating work of female volunteers; it assumes a worker free from domestic demands in order to fulfil professional obligations within a flexible time frame; and it overlooks how the overlap of the public and private spheres is sustained by the work of wives. Thus, delineating work is particularly problematic for female clergy because professional demands are confounded with demands for adjunct work typically performed by women. My findings (1) highlight alternative markers of work which are suggestive for feminist theory; 2) point to a gap in theorizing about the gendering of work when conventional dichotomies fail to reinforce each other (as in the case of public, yet unpaid, volunteer work); and 3) recognize the possibility that varying masculinities define work.

The question of the origins of a Metis identity in Canada is one that has been contemplated by several scholars. These scholars have taken various approaches to the question, many focusing solely on the social and political aspects of Metis history. While such approaches can be useful, they ignore the crucial influence of the economic and labour relations of the Rupertsland fur trade in the development and expression of a distinct Metis identity in western Canada. The unique economic and labour relations of the Rupertsland fur trade, identified by H. Clare Pentland as personal labour relationships, allowed a cohesiveness and inter-connectedness to develop between the Aboriginal labourers and their European employers which emphasized the interdependencies inherent in the industry. However, while personal labour relations were an important catalyst for the development and expression of a distinct Metis identity, it is too simplistic to suggest that it was these relations alone that encouraged such a phenomenon. The northern Australian cattle industry utilized similar economic and labour relations and yet a distinct mixed descent identity did not develop in Australia. Therefore, the external influences in the industry must also be examined. The four most important external influences that encouraged the development of a Metis identity in Canada and discouraged a similar event in Australia were: the needs of the colonial employers in regards to land tenure; the economic opportunities available to the people of mixed descent; the educational opportunities available to the people of mixed descent; and, the time depth of contact in both industries. These four external influences combined with the use of personal labour organization in the Rupertsland fur trade encouraged the development and expression of a distinct Metis identity in Canada.

Medical laboratory technology is the third largest health profession in Canada. Yet, these workers are largely invisible, both to the public and historiographically. Even recent studies of laboratory medicine make only fleeting reference to workers at the bench. This study examines the origins of the laboratory workforce at the Pathological Institute in Halifax in particular, and the Maritime provinces more generally. It utilizes hospital, university and archival records to demonstrate how this workforce was created as part of a "health care team" and the implications this had for the workers themselves. As Canadian hospitals grew in number and bed capacity over the opening decades of the twentieth century, they also grew in complexity. Hospitals added new services, including departments such as dietetics, x-ray and expanded laboratory facilities. As these services matured, the routine work passed from physicians working alone to specially trained workers. Yet, this process was not uniform and remained remarkably incomplete. In the first half of the twentieth century, laboratory workers did not share a common education, training experience, or labour process. Hospital workers in the Maritimes and elsewhere did not necessarily perform discrete tasks and many, notably nurses, assumed duties in the laboratory. The workers themselves had diverse educations and work experiences. Well into the 1950s, the "laboratory worker" was a diffuse concept. The demands of patients and physicians for enhanced services, the constraints of budgets, recruitment and retention problems, and the interests and desires of workers themselves combined to shape laboratory work. Viewed from the laboratory, the story of the twentieth century Canadian hospital is not one of ever-expanding specialization, but rather a complex milieu where the social relations of skill and gender found bold articulation.

This thesis examines the dramatic shift from international to national union dominance in Canada. Within this context, this analysis explores breakaway activity, and discusses the broader significance of this phenomenon in relation to the labour movement in Canada. It identifies factors critical to the development of international unions. and factors related to their decline, both in Canada as reflected in breakaways, and in the United States as reflected in the general decline of the labour movement. and concludes that contextual factors and individual responses have been central to this process. Ultimately. this thesis illustrates existing distinctive elements of the Canadian labour movement. and suggests that these became more apparent over time. It identifies changes that occurred in objective and subjective conditions that led to the expression of this distinctiveness in a series of breakaways that contributed to the 'Canadianization'. if not the dramatic differentiation, of the labour movement in Canada.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of both international unionism and of the labour revolt in Quebec, two neglected areas in Quebec labour history. It examines the industrial conflict of the war years and the post-war revolt in 1919 and 1920, a period of militancy characterized by rapid trade union growth and aggressive strike action by international unions. During the same period workers renewed their interest in independent political action and briefly attained a small measure of success. A major focus of this study is the ethnic, religious, political and gender divisions within the international unions and the labour party in Quebec. The labour revolt was, however, ultimately unsuccessful. While this was because employers were generally stronger than organized workers, especially in the depression of the 1920s, it also faltered on profound divisions within the Quebec working class. The emergence of a Catholic labour movement as a serious rival to secular international unions created one of the most important divisions within the Quebec working class. This thesis constitutes a significant revision to our understanding of the formative years of this confessional movement. While there is a large body of work on Catholic organizations, few studies have examined either their role in the 1919 labour revolt, or the specific nature of the rivalry with the international unions. Inter-union rivalry in the years from 1916 to 1925 is an important theme of this study. Catholic union promoters conducted an experiment in the industrial relations of social harmony which involved attempting to replace class conflict with harmonious relations with employers. While eschewing strike action, Catholic unions and their supporters often helped employers undermine international union strikes in the hope of destroying and supplanting the more aggressive secular organizations. The result was that the Catholic labour movement impeded the growth of the American-based unions and contributed to the defeat of the workers' revolt.

From 1945 to 1960 Canada began to move into what has been called “the age of rights.” At the end of the Second World War the nation paid lip service to “British liberties,” but both the state and private individuals frequently violated the libertarian rights of political radicals as well as the egalitarian rights of certain unpopular ethnic and religious minorities. By 1960 a discourse of human rights had largely replaced the British liberties approach, and the country enjoyed a far higher level of respect for minority rights, in part because of a number of legal changes—Supreme Court decisions, anti-discrimination legislation, and a Bill of Rights. This dissertation examines this shift, focussing upon the activities of members of the Canadian “human rights policy community.” Relying largely upon primary resources, it presents a number of case studies, demonstrating how human rights activists dealt with the deportation of Japanese Canadians, the Gouzenko Affair, the problem of discriminatory restrictive covenants, the Cold War, the need for an effective fair accommodation law in Ontario in general and the town of Dresden in particular, and the struggle for a bill of rights. In presenting these case studies, this dissertation also focusses upon the activities of a number of key interest groups within the human rights community: the coalition known as the Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Jewish Labour Committee, and a number of civil liberties organizations (especially the liberal Civil Liberties Association of Toronto and the communist Civil Rights Union). Attention is paid to the reasons for their successes and failures; within the general context of economic, social, and cultural changes, special attention is paid to the way in which these interest groups made their own history, using their own history, using the resources available to them.

This dissertation examines the seasonal round of St Lucian contract workers who travel to Ontario every year for temporary employment in the Foreign Agricultural Resources Management Service program (FARMS). The study's focus is divided among Ontario growers as employers, St Lucian agricultural workers as employees, residents of a rural town in Southwestern Ontario, and governmental departments that influence the FARMS program in Canada and in St Lucia. The main argument of the dissertation is that labour migration has been an integral part of St Lucian history since emancipation on the island. It is both an economic strategy and a symbol of the freedom emancipation promised. While factors external to the island, such as the need for agricultural labour in Ontario and a long history of connections between Canada and the British West Indies influence where St Lucians travel, the propensity of these men and women to leave the island and return can only be explained in terms of St Lucia's history as a British colony. Within this history, labour migration emerges in conjunction with other strategies of enduring yet resisting the plantation economy that characterized the island for centuries. Although "workin' on the contract" in Canada is used by St Lucians for individual social and economic goals, it derives its meaning from the shared cultural beliefs and values of the island's society.

Using a comparative case study research design, the thesis examines the similarities and differences in farm wives' work on family owned and operated dairy and potato farms in New Brunswick, Canada. New Brunswick, Canada was selected as the research site because of the opportunity it provided to study two highly contrasting but comparable farm industries. Potato production is an intense and seasonal process, involving the planting, tending and harvesting of a field crop. Dairy farms are all-year operations involving animal husbandry and milk collection on a daily schedule. Potatoes are sold in 'open', uncertain markets; milk is sold in a 'closed' market protected and regulated in the provincial Milk Marketing Board. The differing labour demands, marketing arrangements and other conditions surrounding the production and sale of milk and potatoes made them ideal industries to study the effects of a farm's commodity on farm wives' work. The family, farm and work histories of fourteen farm wives on potato farms and sixteen farm wives on dairy farms were gathered, between November 1995 and September 1996, using an in-depth, open-ended interview format. What the farm sets out to produce effectively establishes its labour requirements, its work rhythms, as well as the marketing and pricing arrangements farm families will face. As a result, the farm's commodity provides the key for understanding the various ways farm wives' become 'incorporated' into their husband's work. Dairy farmers are not engaged in the same work as potato farmers even though both are called farmers and there are similarities in their work. It is not enough to study farm wives' work without ascertaining the particularities of being a dairy farmer's wife or a potato farmer's wife. At the same time both sectors must contend with agricultural restructuring, the cost-price squeeze and the economic uncertainties facing their rural communities. In examining the implications of this case study for future research on farm women's work, the thesis adds we must re-evaluate the spatial locations of work - household, on farm, off farm and community - and analytic dichotomies of work - productive and reproductive, paid and unpaid, direct and indirect - in order to better appreciate how farm wives contribute to family farming and how family farming contributes to farm wives' work.

In the study of the economic and labour history of the West Coast Native people of British Columbia most research has centered on activities such as fishing, farming and forestry. This thesis turns the attention from what was primarily men's work in the dominant society to the Coast Salish wool working industry where women worked with the help of their children and husbands. I examine the significant economic and cultural contribution Coast Salish woolworkers had on West Coast society, the meeting place woolworkers' sweaters provided between the Coast Salish and the newcomers and the changes which took place in the industry during the last century. This story includes many voices most of which are recorded in newspapers, correspondence and journals, and in the memories of those that lived and worked in the industry.

This dissertation examines the history and evolution of the employment relationship associated with the contemporary temporary help industry in Canada from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Using gender as a central lens of analysis, it explores how, and to what extent, this employment relationship is becoming a nom for a more diverse group of workers in the Canadian labour market. In so doing, the dissertation develops the following argument: with the shift away from the standard employment relationship since the early 1970s and the coincident nse of the temporary employment relationship -- two developments indicative of the ferninization of employment -- workers situated at the expanding margins of the labour market are increasingly treated like commodities. A growing body of scholarship argues that the nature of employment is changing, citing the spread of non-standard forms of employment and women's rising and/or consistently high labour force participation rates as evidence of this claim. This dissertation confirms that important changes are indeed taking place in the labour market but it argues that the tenor and direction of these changes oniy corne into Full view when they are examined in light of continuity as well as change. To this end, it probes the shape of dualism in the Canadian labour market historically, paying particularly attention to its gendered and racialized character, through a case study of the temporary employment relationship. The dissertation begins by providing a conceptual map for understanding and interpreting contemporary employment trends that engages in three broader theoretical inquiries: the investigation of labour power's peculiar commodity statu under capitalism; the exploration of the rise and decline of the standard employment relationship as a normative mode1 of employment; and the examination of the gendered character of prevailing employment trends. Following this overview, the body of the dissertation traces the history of the temporary employment relationship in Canada, examining how its three core actors -- the temporary heip agency, the customer and the worker -- have adapted to shifting employment trends and gendered employment noms and negotiated developments at the regdatory level over the course of the twentieth century. In probing the evolution of the temporary employment relationship, it devotes special emphasis to examining the role and fùnction of early precursors to the modem temporary help agency (e-g., private employment agents such as general labour agents and so-called padrones), its immediate forerunners (Le., the 'classic' temporary help agency of the 1950s) and its most recent manifestation (Le., the employment and staffing service). AIthough the dissertation focuses on the Canadian context, it also traces developments at the international and supra-national level throughout the twentieth century, developrnents that have often mirrored, frequently affected, and occasionally even prefigured trends in Canada. Interdisciplinary in its focus, the dissertation approaches the evolution of the temporary employment relationship from a range of angles, building on scholarship fiom the fields of Law, History, Political Econorny, Sociology and Industriai Relations. The research methodoIogies used include: archivaVhistorica1 research; field observation; interviews with temporary help workers, agency managers and customers as well as government officials, representatives from organized labour and industry leaders; and analysis of industry, government and legal documentation at the municipal, provincial, national and supra-national levels.

What kinds of associations did Canadian 'civil servants' form in the postwar period? Why and how did they learn to become 'uncivil', transforming themselves into militant unionists during the 1980s and 1990s? These questions are addressed theoretically and empirically through a case study of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). In 1966, PSAC leaders adopted a consultative, harmonious approach to staff relations, organizing the newly formed union to reflect the federal civil service's structure and practice. Class and gender divisions were submerged, hidden beneath the historical and ideological construction of the civil service as a distinctive, politically neutral category. Cracking apart of the unity of federal 'civil servants' began to occur in the 1960s. Class and gender divisions started to come to the fore with the expansion of the Canadian federal state, the increase of women in administrative support roles, and the enactment of collective bargaining rights. During the 1970s and 1980s, working class formation and capacity developed within the Canadian labour movement in concert with feminism, even though the legal structuring of labour relations continued to limit this class and gender formation. In this respect the Public Service Staff Relations Act and the Public Service Employment Act continued to reproduce the practices of the social category of civil servants. Nevertheless, within the PSAC, collective bargaining, the right to strike and the pay equity provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act produced openings for learning and strategizing around subordinate class and gender issues and demands. Predominately female clerical workers, successfully challenged the structure and practices of the traditional 'civil service' associations. They learned to strategize and to incorporate a working class, feminist discourse into the union's practices. In the process the demand for pay equity was redefined and transformed into a demand of wage equity for all members, thus becoming a source of solidarity during the PSAC's 1991 general strike. PSAC activists learned to use openings in state structures to transform union agency, despite the existence of a legal regime that continues to constrain the development of working class and feminist capacities.