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Award-winning author Gregory S. Kealey's study of Canada's security and intelligence community before the end of World War II depicts a nation caught up in the Red Scare in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and tangled up with the imperial interests of first the United Kingdom and then the United States. Spying on Canadians brings together over twenty five years of research and writing about political policing in Canada. Through its use of the Dominion Police and later the RCMP, Canada repressed the labour movement and the political left in defense of capital. The collection focuses on three themes; the nineteenth-century roots of political policing in Canada, the development of a national security system in the twentieth-century, and the ongoing challenges associated with research in this area owing to state secrecy and the inadequacies of access to information legislation. This timely collection alerts all Canadians to the need for the vigilant defense of civil liberties and human rights in the face of the ever increasing intrusion of the state into our private lives in the name of countersubversion and counterterrorism. --Publisher's description

Workers and Canadian History is a collection of twelve essays by Gregory Kealey, the recognized Canadian leader in the growing field of working-class history. Available for the first time in a single volume, the essays provide an extensive study of various trends and themes in Canadian labour and working-class history, covering debates, major developments in historiography, and key events in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kealey provides an overview of the study of workers in Canada as well as in-depth examinations of two of the field's leading scholars, political economist Clare Pentland and Marxist historian Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson. He analyses the development of Canadian labour history in particular and social history in general, and provides detailed empirical studies of the Orange Order in Toronto, printers and their unions, the Knights of Labor, and the Canadian labour revolt of 1919. The collection concludes with three synthetic views of Canadian working-class history focusing on the labour movement, the role of strikes, and attempts by the state to manage class conflict. --Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1: Antecedents. Writing about Labour -- H.C. Pentland and Working-Class Studies -- Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson: Canadian Revolutionary and Marxist Historian. Part 2: Debates. Labour and Working-Class History in Canada: Prospects in the 1980s. -- The Writing of Social History in English Canada, 1970-84. Part 3: Studies of Class and Class Conflict. Orangemen and the Corporation: The Politics of Class in Toronto during the Union of the Canadas -- Work Control, the Labour Process, and Nineteenth-Century Canadian Printers -- The Bonds of Unity: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900 / Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer -- 1919: The Canadian Labour Revolt. Part 4: Overviews. The Structure of Canadian Working-Class History -- Strikes in Canada, 1891-1950 / Gregory S. Kealey and Douglas Cruikshank -- The Canadian State's Attempt to Manage Class Conflict, 1900-48.

Toronto's Industrial Revolution of the 1850s and 1860s transformed the city's economy and created a distinct working class. This book examines the workers' role in the transition to industrial capitalism and traces the emergence of a strong trade union movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Immigrant workers were already organized along ethnic lines and vol­untary societies like the Orange Order played an informal but active part in the broad pattern of social change. Artisan groups were more directly instrumental in developing strategies to cope with the new pressures of industrial capitalism. In the period covered by this book Toronto's moul­ders and printers maintained and even strengthened the traditions of work­ers' control in the shop. The shoemakers and coopers were less successful, but the lessons of their defeats made them important early members of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s.The Knights of Labor gave new direction to labour organization. Ttiey recruited all workers regardless of skill, sex, creed, or race, and spear­headed the direct involvement of Toronto workers in electoral politics. The final chapters of the book trace the tortured path of working class politics from the early activities of the Orange Order to the emergence of a vibrant minority socialist tradition. Between I867 and I892 Toronto workers established a strong institu­tional base for the new struggles between craft unionism and monopoly capitalism in the early twentieth century and Kealey's detailed study of its development adds a new and important dimension to our understanding of Canadian labour history. -- Publisher's description.

In the 1880s Canadians began to cope with the meaning of their emerging industrial society. During that decade the federal government first investigated industrial conditions and provincial governments passed Canada's first factory legislation. The same period saw the resurgence of an articulate and angry labor movement protesting against the excesses of modern industry. Through the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital we can perhaps gain our best insight into the everyday world of workers and capitalists in late nineteenth-century Canada. The commission gathered evidence in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick and talked to thousands of workers, businessmen, and other concerned citizens. This edited version of its investigation includes much of the best testimony; it describes working class living conditions, the emergence of organized labor, and the attitudes of businessmen to industrial capitalism. The testimony takes us with the commissioners on their tour of New Brunswick cotton mills, Capre Breton coal pits, Ontario shops and foundries, and Quebec City wharves; it explores as well the darkest corners of Montreal cigar factories. Industrialists discuss profits, markets, sources of raw material, and problems with labor. But what is perhaps more important, the working people themselves are also heard, men and women who in most historical records appear as little more than cold statistics. The warmth and humanity of these Canadians reflecting on their lives and on the society around them bring the commission documents to life. Aging craftsmen, ten-year-old saw-mill hands, girls from the spindles and looms, describe their workplaces, wages, hours, and aspects of their lives away from the job. These almost unique interviews allow us to enter their intellectual and cultural world – to learn of their past and present and of some of their hopes and aspirations. The Labor Commission reports and testimony are essential for an understanding of the Canadian working class as it was being transformed by the new techniques of industrial production. --Publisher's description

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.

Part of the new aproach currently transforming the writing of Canadian history, this volume approaches the past in terms of people and the activities and events that shaped their existence. The essays explore the roots of the radical tradition and outline the struggle against industrial capitalism between 1850 and 1925. [This book] increases our understanding of the past, provides a valuable perspective on present struggles, and, in a broader sense, contributes substantially to a new and decisive synthesis of Canadian history. --Publisher's description

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

In 1919 at the height of the post-war labour revolt,the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took responsibility for national security. This volume contains archival materials and other materials received through Canadian Access to Information legislation. It includes lists of personal files, subject files, and security bulletins circulated to the government. In general the material provides an excellent overview of the genesis of the Canadian state security system. --Publisher's description

These Bulletins show that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's continued fascination with the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was broadened to include the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1937. The RCMP believed the CPC's fingerprints were all over the CIO. Other topics examined in the bulletins include reports on the Spanish Civil War, municipal elections, ethnic newspapers and strikes. --Publisher's description

From its inception in 1919-1920 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police security service compiled periodic reports on "subversive" activity in Canada, which were circulated to the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Through use of Canada's Access to Information legislation Gregory S. Kealey and Reg Whitaker have acquired copies of the extant Bulletins, which are now held by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service....This volume covers the early years of World War II when the Communist Party of Canada was illegal and many CPC leaders were interned. --Publisher's description

This volume completes the series of Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Bulletins for World War II, following on the War Series, Vol. 1, 1939-1941. These Bulletins allow us to see not only the nature of RCMP Security concerns but also the underlying ideology of the Security Service. The volume also contains a critical introduction by the editors. --Publisher's description

This volume completes the Depression Years Series and, for the time being, our publication of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Bulletins, John Manley examines the RCMP fascination with the CPC and how the CPC coped with the Popular Front and the Nazi-Soviet pact. Manley concludes that the CPC's anti-war line was a disaster, claiming that "undoubtedly..., the Comintern was the RCMP's best friend"(29) --Publisher's description

This volume is a continuation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Bulletins series on the Depression. The RCMP Security Service reported in these Bulletins on security and intelligence matters to Cabinet and other government officals. Those for 1936 contain much material on labour and the left. --Publisher's description

This volume documents the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's surveillance activities during 1935 and contains informants', agents', and operatives' perspectives on developments within the Communist Party of Canada on labour unions, and on unemployed organizations. It includes coverage of the 1935 federal election, the successes of red unions, and the development of popular front strategies. The introduction by historian John Manley provides a considered overview of the events. The volume is fully indexed. --Publisher's description

This volume completes the series of Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Bulletins for late 1933 and 1934. It begins a new series on the Depression years. These Bulletins allow us to see not only the nature of RCMP Security concerns but also the underlying ideology of the Security Service. The volume also contains a critical introduction by Gregory S. Kealey. --Publisher's description

Max Swerdlow's life as labour organizer and educator began in Depression-era Winnipeg and carried him to national and international prominence in the Trades and Labour Congress, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the International Labour Organization. In this lively memoir, Swerdlow recaptures the persons and events of his life in the Labour movement. --Publisher's description

This collection of essays provides a generous introduction to the vibrant field of labour and working-class history in Canada's eastern provinces. Organized in four sections covering pre-industrial labour, the industrial revolution, labour's wars of the early twentieth century, and the rise of industrial legality, the book should prove useful in university classrooms and for all readers interested in the history of the region's ordinary people. Concluding chapters address topics of current interest such as public sector unionism, the role of women in the fishery, and the horrors of the Westray mine disaster. The editors provide an introduction, section heads, and suggestions for further reading. The volume is edited by David Frank, Department of History, University of New Brunswick, the former editor of Acadiensis, and Gregory S. Kealey, Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Dean of Graduate Studies. Authors include T. W. Acheson, Rusty Bittermann, Sean Cadigan, Jessie Chisholm, Patricia M. Connelly, Peter DeLottinville, E. R. Forbes, Eugene Forsey, Harry Glasbeek, Linda Little, Martha MacDonald, Robert McIntosh, Ian McKay, D. A. Muise, Nolan Reilly, Eric W. Sager, Anthony Thomson, and Eric Tucker. --Publisher's description

As Canada's most industrialised province, Ontario served as the regional centre of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, an organisation which embodied a late nineteenth-century working-class vision of an alternative to the developing industrial-capitalist society. The Order opposed the exploitation of labor, and cultivated working-class unity by providing an institutional and cultural rallying point for North American workers. By 1886 thousands of industrial workers had enrolled within the ranks of Ontario's local and district assemblies. This book examines the rise and fall of the Order, providing case studies of its experience in Toronto and Hamilton and chronicling its impact across the province. --Publisher's description. Contents: Introduction. Part 1. Overview: The working class and industrial capitalist development in Ontario to 1890 -- 'Warp, woof, and web': the structure of the Knights of Labor in Ontario. Part 2. The Local Setting: Toronto and the organization of all workers -- Hamilton and the home club. Part 3. The Wider Experience: Taking the Bad with the Good -- 'Unscrupulous rascals and the most infamous damn liars and tricksters at large': the underside of the Knights of Labor -- The order in politics: the challenge of 1883-1887 -- 'Politicians in the order': the conflicts of decline, 1887-1894 -- 'Spread the light': forging a culture -- The people's strike: class conflict and the Knights of Labor. Part 4. Conclusion: Accomplishment and failure -- Appendix -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index.

Contents: Pt. 1. Manuscripts. Pt. 2. Newspapers. Pt. 3. Pamphlets. Pt. 4. Government documents -- Addenda -- Index.