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At the end of World War I, Canada was poised on the brink of social revolution. At least that is what many Canadians, inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution in 1917, hoped and others dreaded. Seeing Reds tells the story of this turbulent period in Canadian history during the winter of 1918-19, when a fearful government led by Prime Minister Robert Borden tried to suppress radical political activity by branding legitimate labour leaders as "Bolsheviks" and "Reds." Canada was in the grip of a widespread Red Scare promoted by the government and the media in order to discredit radical ideas and to rally public support behind mainstream political and economic policies. The story builds toward the events of the Winnipeg General Strike in May-June 1919 when the authorities, believing that the expected revolution had begun, sent soldiers into the streets to put down with force a legitimate labour dispute. Author Daniel Francis examines Canada's Red Scare in a global context, including government responses to similar activities in the United States and western Europe, as well as its ramifications for the contemporary war on terror, in which issues of free speech and political dissent are similarly compromised in the name of national security. Based on government documents and first-hand accounts by the participants themselves, Seeing Reds is a gripping account of a little known episode in Canadian history. --Publisher's description.
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À la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale, le Canada menace de basculer dans une révolution sociale. Rassemblements et mobilisations des milieux ouvriers se succèdent durant l’hiver 1918-1919 et culminent avec la grève générale de Winnipeg en mai-juin 1919. Le mouvement est finalement écrasé par l’armée sur l’ordre de Robert Borden, premier ministre de l’époque. Cette suite d’événements, qui correspond dans les faits à un conflit de travail généralisé, est immédiatement associée par les autorités à la menace d’une révolution bolchevique. Le gouvernement et les médias lancent une grande campagne de diabolisation à l’endroit des chefs syndicaux et autres leaders politiques. Le but, bien évidemment, est d’user de la peur que suscitent partout les rouges pour étouffer le conflit social, et d’obtenir le soutien de l’opinion publique pour l’éradication de toute activité politique jugée radicale. Fondé sur des documents officiels et des témoignages de première main, cet ouvrage raconte un épisode méconnu mais déterminant de l’histoire canadienne. La campagne contre « le péril rouge » a joué un rôle fondamental dans la répression des conflits de travail de l’entre-deux-guerres. Depuis, la même recette a été utilisée pour les mêmes raisons. En outre, les parallèles avec la guerre actuelle contre le terrorisme se font sans effort. Aujourd’hui comme hier, les libertés d’expression et de contestation de l’ordre établi sont contraintes au nom d’une sécurité nationale aux frontières desquelles semblent s’arrêter les droits civils. --Résumé de l'éditeur
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"This book is a history of hypocrisy." So begins Daniel Francis, BC's leading popular historian, as he explores the colourful and ultimately tragic story of prostitution in Vancouver. He writes: "The city's political and social leaders consistently have treated prostitutes as pariahs whose presence was tolerated, sometimes exploited, but never approved. All the while, the authorities collected millions of dollars in fines and licence fees from businesses that everyone knew were, and are, fronts for the sex trade." Working in long overlooked archives and drawing on personal interviews, Francis shows how in some ways commercial sex has been both a reflection and a result of Vancouver's essential character, with its tolerant social mores, ethnic diversity--and political opportunism. It's a tale that takes in mayors and masseuses, police chiefs and pimps, judges and johns. Francis explains: "Sex workers have never lacked for customers. What they have lacked is a secure place to conduct their business. A vast off-street sex trade flourished while police, at the urging of politicians vowing to purify the city, concentrated their attention on the comparatively small number of street prostitutes who worked out in the open. Because they were considered a nuisance, these sex workers were hounded from street to street and neighbourhood to neighbourhood [... These efforts salved the conscience of the morally righteous, but each attempt to discourage prostitution simply forced women to work in increasingly dangerous circumstances." The end result, ultimately, was the tragedy of the Missing Women--murdered sex workers from the Downtown Eastside--and the sensational criminal case that followed. --Publisher's description
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