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This text is a collection of classic and contemporary articles exploring the nature of work in Canadian history from the late eighteenth century to the current day. Class relations and labour form the core of the volume, but attention will also be paid to the state and its relations with workers both formal and informal. The volume is designed as a core text for classes in Canadian labour/working-class history, taught out of history and labour studies departments. --Publisher's description

Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how the homeless, the unemployed, and the destitute have struggled to survive and secure food and shelter in the wake of the many panics, downturns, recessions, and depressions that punctuate the years from the 1830s to the present. Written by a historian of the working-class and a poor people’s activist, this is a rebellious book that links past and present in an almost two-hundred year story of struggle and resistance. It is about men, women, and children relegated to lives of desperation by an uncaring system, and how they have refused to be defeated. In that refusal, and in winning better conditions for themselves, Toronto’s poor create the possibility of a new kind of society, one ordered not by acquisition and individual advance, but by appreciations of collective rights and responsibilities. --Publisher's description

Announces Sean Cadigan's resignation as editor. Bryan Palmer and Gregory Kealey to be interim co-editors until a new appointment is made. Takes note of the Canadian Labour Studies database, an open access bibliography of labour studies resources produced by Laurentian University librarians Desmond Maley and Dan Scott.

The notebook opens with "Representations of a Radical Historian," a review of "You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train," a documentary on Howard Zinn by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller (78 minutes, colour, (Brooklyn 2004)). In the second part, entitled "System Failure: The Breakdown of the Post-War Settlement and the Politics of Labour in Our Time," Bryan D. Palmer presents a revised version of an "educational and agitational address" given to the Alberta Federation of Labour's membership forum on 7 May 2004 in the aftermath of the British Columbia hospital and long-term care workers' strike.

A survey of the global trajectory of labour history. Specially commissioned essays by labour historians of international repute consider: early labour history traditions, new conceptions of class, gender, ethnicity, culture, community and power. Whether the 1960s can be regarded as turning point in labour history the general historiographical climate in the mid-twentieth century the institutional context (e.g. the evolution of labour history societies, historical associations and journals) links between labour history and the labour movement Many authors are connected with the British Society for the Study of Labour History; all are experts in the labour history of particular countries. They analyse key debates, question dominant paradigms, acknowledge minority critiques and consider future directions. --Publisher's description.

Working-class history is the story of the changing conditions and actions of all working people. Most adult Canadians today earn their living in the form of wages and salaries and thus share the conditions of dependent employment associated with the definition of "working class." -- Introduction

Provides an illustrated overview of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and its significance today for working-class organizations and socialism. Contents: Introduction: Revisiting the workers' revolt in Winnipeg / Sean Carleton and Julia Smith (p. 23) -- 1919: Recovering a a legacy / Bryan D. Palmer (pp. 24 - 31, 40) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/1919-recovering-a-legacy] -- 1919: A graphic history of the Winnipeg General Strike [reproduction of the cover and illustrations from the book by the Graphic History Collective and David Lester] (pp. 32, 36-37) --  Red flags: Reflections on racism and radicalism / Owen Yoews (pp. 33-35, 40) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/red-flags-reflections-on-racism-and-radicalism] -- From 1919 to the fight for $15: Working-class organizing in Winnipeg today / Emily Leedham (pp. 38-30) [https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/from-1919-to-the-fight-for-15-working-class-organizing-in-winnipeg-today].

The article introduces the first of a two-part series in the journal on the 50th anniversary of the publication of "The Making of the English Working Class" by British historian E.P. Thompson. In addition to describing their own responses, the authors discuss how the book has influenced working-class studies, its political impact, Thompson's Marxism, and his critique of Methodism. The articles in the presentation include: "E.P. Thompson’s Capital: Political Economy in The Making" by Michael Merrill; "Among the Autodidacts: The Making of E.P. Thompson" by Margaret C. Jacob; “The something that has called itself ‘Marxism’” by Peter Way; "The Face of Power" by Tina Loo; "A Definitive ‘And fookin’ Amen to that!" by David Levine; "Frame Breaking Then and Now" by Rebecca Hill; and "The Privilege of History" by Sean Cadigan.

The article discusses the opportunities and challenges facing the labour movement in Canada during the global financial crisis and the neoliberal restructuring of the economy.

Introduces the second of the two-part series in the journal on the 50th anniversary of the publication of "The Making of the English Working Class" by E.P. Thompson. Articles include: "The Lost Causes of E. P. Thompson" by Dipesh Chakrabarty; "Class Formation, Politics, Structures of Feeling" by Geoff Eley; "Comrade Thompson and Saint Foucault" by Todd McCallum; "Exploitation: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?" by James Epstein; "Looking Back and Ahead" by August Carbonella; "The Making dans les eaux troubles de l’historiographie québécoise : réception hésitante d’un livre en avant de son temps" by Robert Tremblay; "Who now reads E.P. Thompson? Or, (Re)reading The Making at UQAM" by Magda Fahrni; and "Individual Statements on E.P. Thompson" by, respectively, Jesse Lemisch, Alice Kessler-Harris, and June Hannam.

The work of Bryan D. Palmer, one of North America’s leading historians, has influenced the fields of labour history, social history, discourse analysis, communist history, and Canadian history, as well as the theoretical frameworks surrounding them. Palmer’s work reveals a life dedicated to dissent and the difficult task of imagining alternatives by understanding the past in all of its contradictions, victories, and failures. Dissenting Traditions gathers Palmer’s contemporaries, students, and sometimes critics to examine and expand on the topics and themes that have defined Palmer’s career, from labour history to Marxism and communist politics. Paying attention to Palmer’s participation in key debates, contributors demonstrate that class analysis, labour history, building institutions, and engaging the public are vital for social change. In this moment of increasing precarity and growing class inequality, Palmer’s politically engaged scholarship offers a useful roadmap for scholars and activists alike and underlines the importance of working-class history. --Publisher's description

Although the 1960s are overwhelmingly associated with student radicalism and the New Left, most Canadians witnessed the decade's political, economic, and cultural turmoil from a different perspective. Debating Dissent dispels the myths and stereotypes associated with the 1960s by examining what this era's transformations meant to diverse groups of Canadians - and not only protestors, youth, or the white middle-class.With critical contributions from new and senior scholars, Debating Dissent integrates traditional conceptions of the 1960s as a 'time apart' within the broader framework of the 'long-sixties' and post-1945 Canada, and places Canada within a local, national, an international context. Cutting-edge essays in social, intellectual, and political history reflect a range of historical interpretation and explore such diverse topics as narcotics, the environment, education, workers, Aboriginal and Black activism, nationalism, Quebec, women, and bilingualism. Touching on the decade's biggest issues, from changing cultural norms to the role of the state, Debating Dissent critically examines ideas of generational change and the sixties. --Publisher's description