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The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy’s first novel, is a classic of Canadian fiction. Imbued with Roy’s unique brand of compassion and compelling understanding, this moving story focuses on a family in the Saint-Henri slums of Montreal, its struggles to overcome poverty and ignorance, and its search for love. An affecting story of familial tenderness, sacrifice, and survival during the Second World War, The Tin Flute won both the Governor General’s Award and the Prix Fémina of France. The novel was made into a critically acclaimed motion picture in 1983. --Publisher's description

"We are not strong enough to assimilate races so alien from us in their habits … We are afraid they will swamp our civilization as such." – Nanaimo Free Press, 1914. This book examines how British Columbians changed their attitudes towards Asian immigrants from one of toleration in colonial times to vigorous hostility by the turn of the century and describes how politicians responded to popular cries to halt Asian immigration and restrict Asian activities in the province. White workingmen objected to Asian sojourning habits, to their low living standards and wages, and to their competition for jobs in specific industries. Because employers and politicians initially supported Asian immigrants, early manifestations of antipathy often appeared just as another dispute between capital and labour. But as their number increased, complaints about Asians became widespread, and racial characteristics became the nucleus of such terms as a “white man’s province” – a “catch phrase” which, as Roy notes, “covered a wide variety of fears and transcended particular economic interests.” The Chinese were the chief targets of hostility in the nineteenth century; by the twentieth, the Japanese, more economically ambitious and backed by a powerful mother country, appeared more threatening. After Asian disenfranchisement in the 1870s, provincial politicians, freed from worry about the Asian vote, fueled and exploited public prejudices. The Asian question also became a rallying cry for provincial rights when Ottawa disallowed anti-Asian legislation. Although federal leaders such as John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier shared a desire to keep Canada a “white man's country,” they followed a policy of restraint in view of imperial concerns. The belief that whites should be superior, as Roy points out, was then common throughout the Western world. Many of the arguments used in British Columbia were influenced by anti-Asian sentiments and legislation emanating from California, and from Australia and other British colonies. Drawing on almost every newspaper and magazine report published in the province before 1914, and on government records and private manuscripts, Roy has produced a revealing historical account of the complex basis of racism in British Columbia and of the contribution made to the province in these early years by its Chinese and Japanese residents. --Publisher's description

Canadian women on the political left in the first half of the twentieth century fought with varying degrees of commitment for women's rights. Women's dreams of equality were in part a vision of economic and class equality, though they also represented profound desires for equality with men - both within their own parties and in the larger society. In both the Communist Party of Canada and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a male-dominated leadership seldom embraced women's causes wholeheartedly or as a doctrinal priority. So-called women's issues, whether birth control, consumer issues, or equal pay, usually took second place to an emphasis on the general needs of workers or farmers. Nonetheless, many women continued to promote their feminist causes through the socialist movement, in the hope that, eventually, the socialist New Jerusalem would see their dreams of equality fulfilled. In this book, Joan Sangster chronicles in fascinating detail the first tentative stages of a politically aware women's movement in Canada, from the time of women's suffrage to the 1950's when the CPC went into decline and the CCF began to experience the changes that would evolve into the New Democratic Party a decade later. In Dreams of Equality, Joan Sangster chronicles in fascinating detail the first tentative stages of a politically aware women's movement in Canada, from the time of women's suffrage to the 1950's when the CPC went into decline and the CCF began to experience the changes that would evolve into the New Democratic Party a decade later.

Canadian women on the political left in the first half of the twentieth century fought with varying degrees of commitment for women's rights. Women's dreams of equality were in part a vision of economic and class equality, though they also represented profound desires for equality with men - both within their own parties and in the larger society. In both the Communist Party of Canada and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a male-dominated leadership seldom embraced women's causes wholeheartedly or as a doctrinal priority. So-called women's issues, whether birth control, consumer issues, or equal pay, usually took second place to an emphasis on the general needs of workers or farmers. Nonetheless, many women continued to promote their feminist causes through the socialist movement, in the hope that, eventually, the socialist New Jerusalem would see their dreams of equality fulfilled. In Dreams of Equality, Joan Sangster chronicles in fascinating detail the first tentative stages of a politically aware women's movement in Canada, from the time of women's suffrage to the 1950's when the CPC went into decline and the CCF began to experience the changes that would evolve into the New Democratic Party a decade later. --Publisher's description. Originally published: Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989. Contents: Preface --Theory and practice: early Canadian socialists explore the woman question -- The Communist Party of Canada confronts the woman question -- Red revolutionaries and pink tea pacifists: communist and socialist women in the early 1930's -- Militant mothering: women in the early CCF -- More militant mothering: communist women during the popular front -- From working for war to prices and peace: communist women during the 1940's -- The CCF confronts the woman question -- Conclusion: women and the party question.

This collection of essays focuses on the experiences of women as poliutical activists in twentieth-century Canada, both in the mainstream of party politics and in groups outside the mainstream. The latter include women in the socialist and labour movements, the farm and peace movements, and women active in variouss ethnic communities. Expanding the notion of politics, the authors highlight the widespread naturee of women's activism - particularly at the local level - and challenge the easy formulation that women were primarily interest in the vote and lost interest in politics when they acquired it. Some of the essays suggest that even the suffrage campaign has been misrepresented as solely a middle-class movement. Women evolved their own styles of political pparticipation shaped by local contexts, class, culture, family, and life cycle. Women often organized at the community level, and worked both in combination with men and in women-only settings. Contributors to the volume explore women's involvement in organizations from the political left to right, and women's efforts to shape Canada's political priorities and activities. Politically minded women often found that their best outless for commitment and service was through women's organizations, which addressed their needs and provided a base for effective action. --Publisher's description

In this study Marjorie Griffin Cohen argues that in research into Ontario’s economic history the emphasis on market activity has obscured the most prevalent type of productive relations in the staple-exporting economy – the patriarchal relations of production within the family economy. Cohen focuses on the productive relations in the family and the significance of women’s labour to the process of capital accumulation in both the capitalist sphere and independent commodity production. --Publisher's description

The changing roles of native women, devices for assimilation, the re-birth of the Metis: these are among the issues examined in this collection of provocative essays which explore the link between aboriginal culture and economic patterns. --Publisher's description. Contents: The Iroquois wars and native arms / Brian J. Given -- Epidemics / Susan Johnston -- Ktaqamkuk Ilnui Saqimawoutie : aboriginal rights and the myth of the micmac mercenaries in Newfoundland / Dennis Bartels -- Families of mixed descent in the Western Great Lakes Region / Harriet Gorham -- The significance of hunting territories today / Adrian Tanner -- Waswanipi Cree management of land and wildlife: Cree ethno-ecology revisited / Harvey A. Feit -- The Innu bands of Labrador / Eleanor Leacock -- The home guard Cree and the Hudson's Bay Company / J.E. Foster -- The Métis Nation: buffalo hunting versus agricullture in the Red River Settlement, 1810-1870 / Herman Sprenger -- The Métis: genesis and rebirth / Jennifer S.H. Brown -- Indian reserves in Western Canada: Indian homelands or devices for assimilation? / J.L. Tobias -- Slave raiding on the North Pacific Coast / Leland Donald -- Women traders in the maritime fur trade / Loraine Littlefield -- Fishing is women’s business: changing economic roles of carrier women and men / Jo-Anne Fiske -- The marginalization of the Tsimshian cultural ecology: the seasonal cycle / James Andrew MacDonald -- Changing perceptions of the industrial development of the North / Bruce Alden Cox -- Capital and economic development: a critical appraisal of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Commission / Michael J. Asch -- Survival and adaptation of the Innu ethnic identity: the importance of the Inuktituk / Jean-Philippe Chartrand -- Prospects for the northern Canadian native economy / Bruce Alden Cox -- Recent publications in Canadian native studies / John A. Price.

Every day millions of Canadians go out to work. They labour in factories, offices, restaurants, and retail stores, on ships, and deep in mines. And every day millions of other Canadians, mostly women, begin work in their homes, performing the many tasks that ensure the well-being of their families and ultimately, the reproduction of the paid labour force. Yet, for all its undoubted importance, there has been remarkably little systematic research into the past and present dynamics of the world of work in Canada. The essays in this volume enhance our understanding of Canadians on the job. Focusing on specific industries and kinds of work, from logging and longshoring to restaurant work and the needle trades, the contributors consider such issues as job skill, mass production, and the transformation of resource industries. They raise questions about how particular jobs are structured and changed over time, the role of workers' resistance and trade unions in shaping the lives of workers, and the impact of technology. Together these essays clarify a fundamental characteristic shared by all labour processes: they are shaped and conditioned by the social, economic, and political struggles of labour and capital both inside and outside the workplace. They argue that technological change, as well as all the transformations in the workplace, must become a social process that we all control. --Publisher's description. Contents: On the job in Canada / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 3-46) -- Dimensions of paternalism: Discipline and culture in Canadian railway operations in the 1850s / Paul Craven and Tom Traves (pages 47-74) -- Work control, the labour process, and nineteen-century Canadian printers / Gregory S. Kealey (pages 75-101) -- Contested terrain: workers' control in the Cape Breton coal mines in the 1920s / David Frank (pages 102-123) -- Keeping house in God's country: Canadian women at work in the home  / Veronica Strong-Boag (pages 124-151) -- Skill and gender in the Canadian clothing industry, 1890-1940 / Mercedes Steedman (pages 152-176) -- Mechanization, feminization, and managerial control in the early twentieth-century Canadian office / Graham S. Lowe (pages 177-209) -- Work and struggle in the Canadian steel industry, 1900-1950 / Craig Heron and Robert Storey (pages 210-244) -- Logging pulpwood in Northern Ontario / Ian Radforth (pages 245-280) -- On the waterfront: longshoring in Canada / John Bellamy Foster (pages 281-308) -- Life in a fast-food factory / Ester Reiter (pages 309-326) -- Autoworkers on the firing line / Don Wells (pages 327-352).

The essays are gathered around two themes: the relationship of sociology and social history, and the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and region with class. Unlike most Canadian essay collections, the contributors and their subjects cover Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with forays into Cape Breton and central Canada. The volume contains articles by Ian McKay, Gordon Darroch, James R. Conley, Alicja Muszynski, Gillian Creese, and Jim Overton. An interesting collection of some of the new work being done in Canada by historians and sociologists, Class, Gender, and Region reflects Charles Tilly’s suggestion that “there should be no disciplinary division of labour: simply both doing social history.” --Publisher's description (Athabasca University Press) Contents: Introduction / Gregory S. Kealey -- The crisis of dependent development: class conflict in the Nova Scotia coalfields, 1872-1876 / Ian McKay --Class in nineteenth-century, central Ontario: a reassessment of the crisis and demise of small producers during early industrialization, 1861-1871 /Gordon Darroch -- “More theory, less fact?” Social reproduction and class conflict in a sociological approach to working-class history / James R. Conley -- Race and gender: structural determinants in the formation of British Columbia’s salmon cannery labour force / Alicja Muszynski -- The politics of dependence: women, work, and unemployment in the Vancouver labour movement before World War II / Gillian Creese -- Public relief and social unrest in Newfoundland in the 1930s: an evaluation of the ideas of Piven and Cloward / James Overton.

The essays are gathered around two themes: the relationship of sociology and social history, and the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and region with class. Unlike most Canadian essay collections, the contributors and their subjects cover Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with forays into Cape Breton and central Canada. The volume contains articles by Ian McKay, Gordon Darroch, James R. Conley, Alicja Muszynski, Gillian Creese, and Jim Overton. An interesting collection of some of the new work being done in Canada by historians and sociologists, Class, Gender, and Region reflects Charles Tilly's suggestion that "there should be no disciplinary division of labour: simply both doing social history." --Publisher's description

Stacey MacAindra burns – to burst through the shadows of her existence to a richer life, to recover some of the passion she can only dimly remember from her past. The Fire-Dwellers is an extraordinary novel about a woman who has four children, a hard-working but uncommunicative husband, a spinster sister, and an abiding conviction that life has more to offer her than the tedious routine of her days. Margaret Laurence has given us another unforgettable heroine – human, compelling, full of poetry, irony and humour. In the telling of her life, Stacey rediscovers for us all the richness of the commonplace, the pain and beauty in being alive, and the secret music that dances in everyone’s soul. --Publisher's description

Part 1 is a revised version of From Consent to Coercion, and Part 2 represents a study of new developments since 1984, including the Supreme Court's crucial ruling that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not protect the right to strike. Contents: Preface to second edition -- 1. Introduction: From consent to coercion -- 2. The era of free collective bargaining -- 3. The turn to coercion: permanent exceptionalism -- 4. The right to strike: freedom of association and the Charter -- 5. The Mulroney record: consolidating the era of coercion -- 6. The consolidation of coercion in the provinces -- 7. The labour movement in the new era -- 8. The social contract: labour, the NDP and beyond -- Appendix I. Legislation and orders suspending the right to strike 1950-1993 -- Appendix II. Legislation amending trade union rights 1982-1993.

Ce livre ne représente qu'un aspect d'une vaste recherche sur les différences entre les femmes et les hommes dans des structures politiques: partis provinciaux, municipaux et central`es syndicales. En effect, ne son présentés ici que les résultats de la recherche portant sur le militantisme dans deux centrales syndicales du Québec soit: la Centrale des syndicats nationaux (C.S.N.) et la Centrale de l'éducation du Québec (C.E.Q.). --From Introduction

This volume is a reprint of a special edition of the Canadian Journal of Sociology.The essays are gathered around two themes: the relationship of sociology and social history, and the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and region with class. Unlike most Canadian essay collections, the contributors and their subjects cover Canada from British Columbia to Newfoundland, with forays into Cape Breton and central Canada. The volume contains articles by Ian McKay, Gordon Darroch, James R. Conley, Alicja Muszynski, Gillian Creese, and Jim Overton. An interesting collection of some of the new work being done in Canada by historians and sociologists, Class, Gender, and Region reflects Charles Tilly's suggestion that "there should be no disciplinary division of labour: simply both doing social history." --Publisher's description

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive examination of the working class experience in British Columbia and contains essential background knowledge for an understanding of contemporary relations between government, labour, and employees. It treats workers' relationship to the province's resource base, the economic role of the state, the structure of capitalism, the labour market and the influence of ethnicity and race on class relations. --Publisher's description

Contents: Section 1. The era of industrialization. Ethnicity and class, transitions over a decade: Ontario, 1861-1871 / A. Gordon Darroch and Michael Ornstein -- Women and wage labour in a period of transition: Montreal, 1861-1881 / Bettina Bradbury -- The 1907 Bell Telephone strike: Organizing women workers / Joan Sangster -- Industry and the good life around Idaho Peak / Cole Harris -- Through the prism of the strike: Industrial conflict in Southern Ontario, 1901-14 / Craig Heron and Brian D. Palmer. Section 2. World War I and its aftermath. Munitions and labour militancy: The 1916 Hamilton Machinists' Strike / Myer Siemiatycki -- Company town/labour town: Local government in the Cape Breton Coal Towns, 1917-1926 / David Frank. Section 3. The rise of modern unionism. Strike in the single enterprise community: Flin Flon, Manitoba, 1914 / Robert S. Robson -- The 1943 steel strike against wartime wage controls / Laurel Sefton MacDowell. Section 4: Overviews. Unionization versus corporate welfare: The "Dofasco Way" / Robert Storey -- Labour and working class history in Canada: Prospects in the 1980s / Gregory S. Kealey -- Through the looking glass of culture: An essay on the new labour history and working class culture in historical writing / David J. Bercuson -- Further reading.

In 1980...[the author] was approached by Nanaimo's Coal Tyee Society to write a book based on 105 interviews of Vancouver Island coal miners and their families. Nanaimo coal mines had closed 30 years before and the city had been home to some of the most important coal mines in the world, along with the one of largest explosions in history, the 1887 Nanaimo mine explosion. The miners wanted their oral histories preserved. Bowen compiled those oral histories in her first book, Boss Whistle, and later book, Three Dollar Dreams. --From Wikipedia article on Lynne Bowen

1983's powerful Solidarity movement, which for a time seemed capable of deflecting the Social Credit government of British Columbia from its neo-conservative course - or even toppling it - instead died with a whimper. In Solidarity: The Rise and Fall of an Opposition in British Columbia, the first book-length account of this pivotal point in the province's history, Bryan Palmer concludes that it was not Social Credit tactics, but the nature of Solidarity's leadership which foreordained the defeat. --Publisher's description

History of Fort Chipewyan, the first European settlement in Alberta, an important fur-trading centre, and a vital base for the exploration of the continent's hinterland. Traces the development of the Fort Chipewyan fur trade from 1778, when Peter Pond entered the region, until 1835, when the rivalry between the North West and Hudson's Bay companies was no longer a factor, and a monopoly in the fur trade had been restored. Provides a vivid portrayal of life in a remote fur trade outpost during this crucial period in Canadian history. --WorldCat summary/Publisher's description