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The article reviews the book, "Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities in Practice," edited by Christine Ramsay.
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This article discusses beauty contests held by the Communist Party (cp) in British Columbia during World War II. It presents two arguments. First, the article argues that the beauty contests symbolized the Communist Party's viewpoint on the role of women in left movements, and in society in general. Thus, cp beauty pageants possessed a two-sided nature. On one level, cp women appropriated these pageants to present a hybrid version of the beauty contest where women could present leftist views. On the other hand, the pageants show that the cp only held marginally more progressive views on women than the mainstream. Second, the article suggests that Communist women and men had contrasting ideas about what the pageants meant to the party. cp men used women's bodies in pageants in order to promote and raise money for the party; in effect, Communist men saw these pageants as related to women's physical beauty. Communist women, by contrast, did not view the pageants as related to beauty at all. Indeed, these women saw the pageants as simply a way to promote the party's political program of higher wages and better working conditions. The article concludes that leftist men and women had different ideas about what constituted beauty, and that seemingly conservative cultural productions, like beauty pageants, can have radical goals.
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The period between 1935 and 1945 was a key one for the Communist Party of Canada [CPC or CP] due to the tumult of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Women were key players in the success that the CPC had during this period, one in which Communist and other left-wing movements grew and were more 'respectable' than they were during the Cold War that would follow. Yet women were secondary players in the Communist movement in Vancouver. While CP women played crucial roles in raising money for the Party, setting up fighting organizations such as the Vancouver Housewives league, and supporting the Allied war effort, CP members of both sexes pushed Party women into more traditional 'feminine' roles of wives, mothers, and ornaments. The Vancouver Communist Party offered a substantial challenge to Canada''s liberal state and the CP provided radical women with an outlet to channel their abilities against capitalism. In the end, however, the CP failed to alter substantially the fundamental division of labour between radical men and women. Communists upheld the mainstream doctrine of "separate spheres": they believed that men were workers, labour organizers, and producers while left-wing and working class women were domestic, passive, and consumers. This thesis concludes that while we cannot expect radical organizations to be completely separate from the gender ideals of the period in which they existed, the CPC did little to challenge traditional gender roles.
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At the height of World War II labour unrest, Montréal tramway workers, the majority of whom were French Canadian, struck over recognition of their Canadian Congress of Labour-affiliated union over two entrenched rival unions. The strike, which threatened critical wartime production in Canada's largest industrial centre, illustrates how multi-union workplaces were a source of wartime industrial disorder. Circumstances related to the strike tested the capacity of the federal government to respond in a way which was compatible with Prime Minister King's broader goals of industrial stability and national unity. King's inaction on labour law reform at this time led key cabinet ministers to pursue criminal charges against the parties involved in the tramway strike. However, legal proceedings were obverted after King intervened on a recommendation from Carl Goldenberg, who had successfully conciliated the strike. Concurrent to these events was the announcement of a wide-ranging public inquiry into national labour unrest, which eventually led to the adoption of a new labour code (PC 1003). The new federal labour law adopted provisions similar to those in the US Wagner Act, which severely limited union substitution, subjugating worker free choice and collective self-determination to the goals of capital and the state.
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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.
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