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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

The article briefly reviews "Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Worker," edited by Abigail B. Baikan and Daiva Stasiulis, "The Ethics of the New Economy: Restructuring and Beyond," edited by Leo Groarke, "Working: Images of Canadian Labour, 1900-2000 = Travailler: Images de la vie ouvrière au Canada, 1900-2000," by Laszlo Barna, "Working People: An Illustrated History of the Canadian Labour," 4th edition, by Desmond Morton, "Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth," by Marilyn Waring, "Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour," by Maria Mies, "Rocking the Boat: Union Women's Voices, 1915-1975," by Brigid O'Farrell and Joyce L. Kornbluh, "Organized Labour and American Politics. 1894-1994: The Labor-Liberal Alliance," edited by Kevin Boyle, "The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics," edited by Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore, "Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century," 25th anniversary edition, by Harry Braverman, with a new introduction by John Bellamy Foster, "New Approaches to Disability in the Workplace," edited by Terry Thomason, John F. Burton, Jr., and Douglas E. Hyatt, "The State of Working America, 1998-99," edited by Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt, " Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, Theatres of Memory," v. 2, by Raphael Samuel, edited by Alison Light, with Sally Alexander and Gareth Stedman Jones, "Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics, 1500-1700," by Wayne Te Brake, and "The Maquiladora Reader: Cross-Border Organizing Since NAFTA ," edited by Rachael Kamel and Anya Hoffman.

This article reviews three books: "People's History and Socialist Theory," edited by Raphael Samuel, "East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding," edited by Raphael Samuel, and "Rothschild Buildings: Life in an East End Tenement Block, 1887-1920," by Jerry White.

The article reviews "WAC: Bennett and the Rise of British Columbia," by David J. Mitchell, "Louis Robichaud: A Decade of Power," by Delia M.M. Stanley, "Visions of History," edited by Henry Abelove et al., "A History of Capitalism, I500-1980," by Michel Beaud, "A Radical Reader: The Struggle for Change in England, 1381-1914," edited by Christopher Hampton, "Manufacture in Town and Country before the Factory," edited by Maxine Berg. Pat Hudson, and Michael Sonenscher, "From Chartism to Labourism: Historical Sketches of English Working-Class Movement," by Theodore Rothstein, "Dictionary of Labour Biography," v. 7, edited by Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville, "The Coal Miners' General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.," by Andy Phillips and Raya Dunayevskaya, "Studies in Labour Theory and Practice," edited by William L. Rowe, "Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition," by Cedric J. Robinson, "First Facts of American Labor," edited by Philip S. Foner, "Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism," edited by John H.M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, "Plain Folk: The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans," edited by David M. Katzman and William M. Tuttle. Jr., "The Ties That Bind: Law, Marriage, and the Reproduction of Patriarchal Relations," by Carol Smart, "A Documentary History of Communism," v. 1: "Communism in Russia," and v. 2: "Communism and the World," edited by Robert V. Daniels, "After Marx," edited by Terrence Ball and James Fair, "Dialogue within the Dialectic," by Norman Levine, and "A Guide to Marx's Capital," by Anthony Brewer.

The article briefly reviews ""A Reader's Guide to Canadian History 1 : Beginnings to Confederation," edited by D.A. Muise, "A Reader's Guide to Canadian History 2: Confederation to the Present," edited by J.L. Granatstein and Paul Stevens, "Shaping the Urban Landscape: Aspects of the Canadian City-Building Process," edited by Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F.J. Artibise, "Steve Nelson: American Radical," by Steve Nelson, James R. Barrett, and Rob Ruck, "Immigrant Women," edited by Maxine Schwartz Seller, "American Labor in the Southwest: The First One Hundred Years," edited by James C. Foster, "The Moral Response to Industrialism: The Lectures of Reverend Cook in Lynn, Massachusetts," edited by John T. Cumbler, "Wilhelm Liebknecht: Letters to the Chicago Workingman's Advocate, November 26 1870-December 2 1871," edited by Philip S. Foner, " Guide to the Local Assemblies of the Knights of Labor," by Jonathan Garlock, "The New England Mill Village, 1790-1860," edited by Gary Kulik, Roger Parks, and Theodore Z. Penn, "Democratic Socialism: The Mass Left in Advanced Industrial Societies," edited by Bogdan Denitch, "Marx and Engels on Law and Laws," by Paul Phillips, "The Degradation of Work? Skill, Deskilling and the Labour Process," edited by Stephen Wood, "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology," by Richard R. Weiner,"Our Common History: The Transformation of Europe," edited by Paul Thompson, "Wives For Sale: An Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce," by Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, "Today the Struggle: A Novel," by Mervyn Jones, and "A History of European Socialism," by Albert S. Lindemann.

The Canadian worker has been a neglected figure in Canadian history. Workers have contributed in many ways to the development of Canadian society, but the history of working people — their families, communities and work places — has only gradually become part of our view of the past and an important component of understanding how we came to occupy our present. --Introduction. Contents: Early historiography -- Postwar scholarship -- 1970s-1980s -- Class and labour -- Scholarship proliferates -- New interpretation and debate -- Working women and gendered class relations -- Labour history at the current juncture.

The article reviews "Scholars and Dollars: Politics, Economics, and the Universities of Ontario, 1945-1980," by Paul Axelrod, "Language and Nationhood: The Canadian Experience," review by Ronald Wardhaugh"Trouble at Lachine Mill," by Bill Freeman, "The Welfare State in Canada: A Select Bibliography, 1840-1978," by Allan Moscovitch et al., "The Canadian Prairie West and the Ranching Frontier, 1874-1924," by David H. Breen, "The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790," by Rhys Isaac, "The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898-1917," by Peter Conn, "The Hawsepipe: Newsletter of the Marine Workers Historical Association," newsletter started by Jack and Judy McCusker, "Ben Tillelt: Portrait of a Labour Leader," by Jonathan Schneer, "Industrial Democracy at Sea: Authority and Democracy on a Norwegian Freighter," edited by Robert Schrank, "What Rough Beast? The State and Social Order in Australian History," by Sydney Labour History Group, "Politics in the Ancient World," by M.I. Finley / reviews by Bryan D. Palmer -- "A Social History of the English Working Classes," by Eric Hopkins / review by Craig Calhoun.

The article presents a comparison of the working classes in Canada and the U.S. It states that a smaller low-wage manufacturing sector exists in Canada where workers are permanently trapped in poverty. The similarity of the levels and nature of unionization and attitudes toward social provisioning between the two countries are also mentioned.

What constitutes proletarianization? The conventional answer to this seemingly simple question often stresses waged labour. Yet many workers, past and present, are routinely unable,to secure paid employment, in part because of the persistence of capitalist crises of various kinds. This study of indigent workers in Toronto from the 1830s to the 1930s is premised on an understanding of proletarianization as dispossession, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the ways in which capitalism necessarily produces recurrent crises, leaving many workers wageless. It addresses how wagelessness and poverty were criminalized through the development of institutions of ostensible charitable relief, such as the Toronto House of Industry, in which those seeking shelter and/or sustenance were required to chop wood or, more onerously, break stone in order to be. admitted to the ranks of those 'deserving' of such support. By the end of the nineteenth century-resistance to such "labour tests" was increasingly evident. Protests took place in Toronto, where the black flag was carried in demonstrations demanding "work or bread." Refusing to "crack the stone" and demands that relief be administered differently were common features of mobilizations of the wageless in the opening decades of the twentieth century, in which socialists often took the lead. By the time of capitalism's devastating collapse in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Toronto's wageless were well situated to mount an outcasts' offensive.

Introduces "The Big Sleep" by Jack Timmerman (1915-1953), an unpublished, graphic account of the Malartic Mine Fire of 1947 that resuled in the deaths of 12 miners at the gold mine in northwestern Quebec. Provides a biography of Timmerman, who was working at the mine at the time, as well as framing the disaster in terms of the persistence and frequency of such events.

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

The article briefly reviews "Ravished bx the Spirit: Religious Revivals, Baptists, and Henry Alline," by G.A. Rawylk, "The Acadiensis Reader, v. 1: Atlantic Canada Before Confederation and v. 2: Atlantic Canada After Confederation," edited by P.A. Bucknerand David Frank, "The Mysteries of Montreal: Memoirs of a Midwife," by Charlotte Fiihrer, edited by Peter Ward, "The Promoters' City: Building the Industrial Town of Maisonneuve, 1883-I9I8," by Paul-Andre Linteau, translated by Robert Chodos, "Government and Enterprise in Canada," edited by K.J. Rea and Nelson Wiseman, "Collective Bargaining in the Public Service: The Federal Experience in Canada," v. 1-2, edited by Jacob Finkelman and Shirley B. Goldenberg, "The Labor History Reader," edited by Daniel J. Leah, "C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian," by Irving Louis Horowitz, "Foundry Foreman, Foundry men," by Lloyd Zimpel, (San Pedro: Singlejack,1980); "Longshoring on the San Francisco Waterfront," by Reg Theriault, (San Pedro: Singlejack, 1978); and "Night Shift in a Pickle Factory," by Steve Turner (San Pedro: Singlejack, 1980), "The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill," by Staughton Lynd, "International Labour Reports" (a bimonthly magazine established 1983), "The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age," by Gertrude Himmelfarb, "A History of British Socialism," by Max Beer. with a new introduction by Ken Coates, "English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century," by Richard Dennis, "Shop Floor Bargaining and the State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives," edited by Steven Tolliday and Jonathan Zeitlin, "Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 80s," by Beatrix Campbell, " Vision and Method in Historical Sociology," edited by Theda Skoepol, and "Making Sense of Marx," by Joe Elster / reviews by Bryan D. Palmer -- "Agriculture in America, 1622-1860," by Andrea J. Tucher / review by D.H.A. -- "Labor's Joke Book," edited by Paul Buhle / review by Gregory S. Kealey.

The article briefly reviews "A Differerent Kind of State? Popular Power and Democratic Administration," edited by Gregory Albo, David Langille. and Leo Panitch, "Belonging: The Meaning and Future of Canadian Citizenship," edited by William Kaplan, "Policing Canada's Century: A History of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police," by Greg Marquis, "Aberhart: Outpourings and Replies," edited by David R. Elliott, "The Voyages of Jacques Cartier," by Ramsay Cook, "Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth Century Montreal," by Louise Dechtne, "New England Planters in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, 1759-1800," compiled by Judith A. Norton, "Creed and Culture: The Place of English-Speaking Carholics in Canadian Society, 1750-1930," edited by Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, "While the Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women in Eastern Ontario," by Janice Potter-MacKinnon, "Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas," edited by Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, "Farm to Factory: Women 's Letters, 1830-1860," edited by Thomas Dublin, "Gender and American History Since 1890," edited by Barbara Melosh, "Industrial Democracy in America: The Ambiguous Legacy," edited by Nelson Lichtenstein and Howell John Harris, "Race in America: The Struggle for Equality" edited by Herbert Hill and Jamcs E. Jones, Jr., "The Land and the Loom: Peasants and Profit in Northern France, 1680-1800," by Liana Vardi, "Harold Laski: A Political Biography," by Michael Newman, "Socialist Parties and the Question of Europe in the 1950s," edited by Richard T. Griffiths, "Keeping Heads Above Water: Salvadorean Refugees in Costa Rica," by Tanya Basok, "The Althusserian Legacy," edited by E. Ann Kaplan and Michael Sprinker, "Capitalism Versus Anti-Capitalism: The Triumph of Ricardian over Marxist Political Economy," by Paul Fabra, and "Labor Demand," by Daniel S. Hamemesh / reviews by Bryan D. Palmer -- "Tramps, Workmates and Revolutionaries: Working-Class Stories of the 1920s," edited by H. Gustav Klaus / review by Gregory S. Kealey.

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.

The Order of the Knights of Labor played a determining role in the organization of the world of work at the end of the nineteenth century. Social movement more than union than a trade union, the order addressed all workers without consideration of of sex, ethnic or racial origin, and trade qualification. The Order thus represented to industrial capitalism the most important challenge it had to face in North America. In Ontario, this challenge was as much political and cultural as it was economic as well as in economic matters. We present here the history of the Order of the Knights of Labor in Ontario from 1880 to 1902; in the context of the industrial development of the of the industrial development of the province, the internal structures of this movement and the and the actions that it exercised in the economic, political and cultural fields. [Translation of the French resumé]

Bryan Palmer is succeeding Gregory Kealey, who is stepping down as editor after 21 years. Mark Leier is succeeding Palmer as the book review editor; Palmer had held the post for nearly 15 years. In turn, Andrew Parnaby and Richard Rennie are the new co-editors of the Notebook, succeeding Leier. Andrée Lévesque continues as the French book review editor. Various editorial board changes are noted. As incoming editor, Palmer offers a reflection on the journal and its path forward.

The article briefly reviews "The Formation of Labour Movements, 1870-1914: An International Perspective," edited by Marcel Van Der Linden,and Jurgen Rojahn, "Reluctant Icon: Gladstone, Bulgaria, and the Working Classes, 1856-1878," by Ann Pottinger Saab, "On the Move: Essays in Labour and Transport History Presented to Philip Bagwell," edited by Chris Wrigley and John Shepherd, "Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900-1933," by Morton Keller, "The Nature of Work: Sociological Perspectives," edited by Kai Erickson and Steven Peter Vallas, "Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory, 1910-1945," by Cary Nelson, "The Arbitration of Rights Disputes in the Public Sector," by Clarence R. Deitsch and David A. Dills, "Women, Employment and the Family in the International Division of Labour," edited by Sharon Stichter and Jane L. Parpart, "History from South Africa: Alternative Visions and Practices," edited by Joshua Brown et al., "Arbitration Discharge: Grievances in Ontario : Outcomes and Reinstatement Experiences," by Peter J. Barnacle, "Labour Arbitration Yearbook, 1991, Volume 1," edited by William Kaplan, Jeffrey Sack, and Morley Gunderson, "Class War: A Decade of Disorder," edited by Ian Bone, Alan Pullen and Tim Scargill, "Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory Since 1945," Stephen P. Waring, and "Women Workers and Global Restructuring," edited by Kathryn Ward / reviews by Bryan D. Palmer -- "Foreign Language Literature on the Nordic Labour Movements," edited by Marianne Bagge Hansen and Gerd Callesen / review by Gregory S. Kealey.

The article briefly reviews "Love A Solidarity: A Pictorial History of the NDP, by Cameron Smith, "Industrial Relations in Canadian Industry," edited by Richard P. Chaykowski and Anil Verma, "Reaction and Reform: The Politics of the Conservative Party under R. B. Bennett, 1927-1938," by Larry A. Glassford, "The Un-Canadians: True Stories of the Blacklist Era," by Len Scher, "History of Canadian Youth and Childhood: A Bibliography," by Neil Sutherland, Jean Barman and Linda L. Hale, "The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York," by John E. Zucchi, "In the Floating Army: F.C. Mills on Itinerant Life in California, 1914, by Gregory R. Woirol, "Visions of a New Industrial Order: Social Science and Labor Theory in America's Progressive Era," by Clarence E. Wunderlin, Jr., "The Lost World of the Craft Printer," by Maggie Holtzberg-Call, "The Trucker's World: Risk, Safety, and Mobility," by J. Peter Rothe, "Avoiding the Cracks: A Guide to the Workers ' Compensation System," by Anne Tramposh, "Feminism and the Women's Movement: Dynamics of Change in Social Movement Ideology and Activism," by Barbara Ryan, "Ethnic Minorities and Industrial Change in Europe and North America," edited by Malcolm Cross, "English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Approach," by R.H. Hilton, "The Education of Desire: Marxists and the Writing of History," by Harvey J. Kaye, "White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History," by Catherine Hall, "William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture," by Ian Dyck, "European Labour Politics from 1900 to the Depression," by Dick Geary, "Women of the Praia: Work and Lives in a Portuguese Coastal Community," by Sally Cole, "New Trends in Employment Practices: An International Survey," by Walter Galenson, "Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography," by Emma Mashinini, "Status Influences in Third World Labor Markets: Caste, Gender, and Custom," edited by James G. Scoville, ,"Labor and Economic Growth in Five Asian Countries," by Walter Galenson / reviews by Bryan D. Palmer -- "The Labor Process and Control of Labor: The Changing Nature of Work Relations in the Late Twentieth Century," edited by Berch Berberoglu, "Culture and the Labour Movement: Essays in New Zealand Labour History," edited by John E. Martin and Kerry Taylor / reviews by Gregory S. Kealey.