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Year by year the trade union movement assumes new significance. [This book] records labour's progress through about 130 years of Canadian history. During these years there were thousands of strikes, negotiations, organizing campaigns, legislative and political struggles. Many of the outstanding events are described here. One of the important features of this book is its outline of how Canadian unions came to form connections with United States unions - the origins, status, and significance of International Unions in Canada. The writer has sought to give an account of trade union evolution as a whole from the period 1827-1959. In addition he has outlined certain continuing spheres of Labour's effort, such as organization of the unorganized, the fight for better conditions, legislative and political action, peace and Canadian independence. -- Publisher's description

Table of contents: Introduction -- Chronology of the Vancouver Strike and the On to Ottawa Trek, 1935. Part 1: Recollections of the On to Ottawa Trek. A Note on Editing, part 1. Prelude to Struggle -- The Origin of the Family -- The Slave Camps -- Strike -- The Trek. Part 2: Documents Related to the Vancouver Strike and the on to Ottawa Trek. A Note on Editing, part 2. The Report of the Macdonald Commission -- The Vancouver Relief Camp Strike -- The On to Ottawa Trek -- The Interview Between the Delegation of Strikers and the Prime Minister and His Cabinet, June 22, 1935 -- Continuing Documents on the Trek -- The Regina Riot -- Debate in the House of Commons . Footnotes for Part 1. Suggestions for Further Reading.

This job very much needed doing, and Dr. Masters has done it in a scholarly, judicial, yet forthright manner. The hysteria engendered by the Winnipeg general strike of 1919, heightened by the singularly unenlightened form that government intervention took, continues to trail clouds of distortion and bitterness. By careful analysis of facts, circumstances, and personalities of the strike leaders, Dr. Masters has cleared away the haze and given us a historical record of the utmost value. --review, Canadian Forum (on paperback book's back cover)

Journalists and poets, economists and political historians, have told the story of Canada's railways, but their accounts pay little attention to the workers who built them. The Bunkhouse Man is the only study devoted to these men and their lives in construction camps; a pioneering work in sociology, it is still the best description of what it was like to be a working man in Canada before the First World War. E.W. Bradwin drew on his own experience as an instructor for Frontier College, working alongside his students during the day and teaching at night, to present this graphic portrait of life in the camps from 1903 to 1914. No detached observer, Bradwin played a vigorous role trying to improve the lot of the men--practicing the sociology of engagement advocated by radical sociologists today. Work camps have existed in Canada from early pioneer times to the 1970s and are unlikely to disappear. In the years of Bradwin's study there were as many as 3,000 large camps employing 200,000 men, 5 per cent of the male labour force. Like the settling of the prairies, these camps are a characteristic Canadian phenomenon, but they have never drawn comparable attention. The republication of The Bunkhouse Man, with an introduction by Jean Burnet, makes available once more a work essential to the exploration of Canada's history and social structure. --Publisher's description

An annotated bibliography of about 290 items ranging from books to articles in popular journals intended as an introductory guide for student research of this topic. Knight's bibliography deals with life and work in the company towns, camps and single enterprise communities of Canada and the U.S. during the last eighty years. Within it, there are economic studies , sociological surveys, local histories, but also memoirs and autobiographies that touch on the daily lives of the primary resource workers whose labour built these countries. --Publisher's description. Contents: Nobody here but us (pages 1-14) -- Work camps and company towns. In B.C. (pages 14-38). In Canada (pages 39-58). In U.S. (pages 59-90).

The company town, source of so much of Canada's wealth, was - and is - a place with nowhere to hide. First published in 1971, Rex Lucas's Minetown, Milltown, Railtown is a groundbreaking study of what it's like to live in such communities. Today, with the oil-sands boom and rising commodity prices affecting everything from the value of the Canadian dollar to the balance of power within Confederation, single-industry towns remain as central as ever to the country's economic and social life. Minetown is a compelling portrait not just of Canada's past, but of its present and future, too. Minetown, Milltown, Railtown: Life in Canadian Communities of Single Industry is a Wynford Book - one of a series of titles representing significant milestones in Canadian literature, thought, and scholarship. New introductions place each book in a modern context and show its continuing relevance. --Publisher's description (Oxford University Press)

Illustrates the need for reform and reinterpretation of the labour laws of Canada, and Manitoba in particular. -- Publisher's description

Table des matières: Introduction -- Cadre théorique -- Hypothèses. Première partie : 1760-1791. 1- Conquête et bourgeoisie française : Qu’est-ce qu’une bourgeoisie ? -- Conquête et bourgeoisie française --Conséquence pour la société française. 2- Conquête et aristocratie cléricale : Conquête et collaboration -- Élaboration de la politique de conciliation -- Opposition anglo-saxonne à la politique de conciliation -- Volonté de collaboration de l’aristocratie cléricale -- Acte de Québec -- Éléments de la collaboration de l’aristocratie cléricale -- Idéologie de la collaboration -- Portée de la conciliation -- Déclin des seigneurs -- Conclusion. 3- Apparition d'une bourgeoisie anglo-saxonne : Économie 1760-1792 -- L’Acte constitutionnel de 1791. 4- Le peuple : Le régime seigneurial -- Peuple et classe collaboratrice -- Conclusion. Deuxième partie : 1792-1815. Introduction. 1- Petite-bourgeoisie professionnelle : Idéologie nouvelle -- Oppositions de classes et de nations -- Conclusion. 2- Aristocratie cléricale. 3- La bourgeoisie marchande canadienne-anglaise : L’économie -- Les fourrures -- L’agriculture -- Le bois -- La guerre -- Aspect socio-politique -- Conclusion. 4- Le peuple : Conclusion. Troisième partie : 1815-1850. Introduction. 1- Société canadienne-française : Les quatre-vingt-douze résolutions -- Composition, groupes et factions -- Idéologie --Lutte de classe et lutte nationale --Le peuple --Londres. 2- Société canadienne-anglaise 1815-1836 : Économie -- Bourgeoisie marchande canadienne-anglaise -- L’union --Lutte et alliance -- Conclusion 1815-1836. 3- Guerre civile et guerre nationale 1837-1838. Rébellions -- Caractère du phénomène -- La marche de l’union 1838-1840. Conclusion générale -- Aspect théorique -- Bibliographie.

This important new study in Canadian politics discusses the role of socialism in Canada. By means of comparison between the English-Canadian and the American political importance of socialism in Canada than the United States. In this section Louis Hartz's theory of "fragment" cultures is carried forward and applied to Canada. The remainder of the book is devoted to a detailed historical study of the relationship between the labour movement and the socialist parties in Canada. It starts in the early years of the century and follows the story through to its significant conclusion—the support (and formation) by many Canadian unions of a labour party. The brilliant analysis of Canadian politics in Hartzian terms restores ideology to a place in our political culture, and the meticulous, objective recounting of labour's involved in the formation of the NDP is a timely and valuable contribution to our limited understanding of how Canadian political parties "live and move and have their being." The main sources used by the author were correspondence, minutes, and other materials in the files of the NDP and the Canadian Labour Congress, and personal interviews with labour leaders and socialist politicians. --Publisher's description

A brief ethnographic study done for the National Museum of Canada in 1961-62 focusing on the then continuing economic importance of hunting and trapping for the native people of the region. --Author's description

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation government in Saskatchewan, which was elected in 1944, remains the only government with avowed socialist goals to have come to power in Canada or the United States. In 1949, Seymour Martin Lipset wrote Agrarian Socialism, which has since become a classic, a study of the social background that enabled the movement to succeed in the region that it did. The CCF government, however, remained in power for twenty years. So this new Anchor edition contains not only a new introduction by the author, evaluating his earlier research in terms of later developments, but five new chapters by other sociologists who, taking off from the findings in Agrarian Socialism, studied later developments in Saskatchewan.... -- Publisher's description

Contents: 1. The Roots of Canadian Socialism -- 2. The Years of Uncertainty and Unrest: 1917-1919 -- 3. The Birth of the Canadian Communist Party -- 4. The Rise of the Workers' Party -- 5. Underground Operations and the CPC -- 6. The CPC and the Fourth Comintern Congress -- 7. The CPC and the United Front -- 8. The Emergence of the Canadian Communist Party -- 9. Bolshevization and the Canadian Party -- 10. The Interim Years: 1924-1925 -- 11. The CPC and the Canadian Labor Party -- 12. The CPC and the Trade Union Educational League -- 13. Canadian Party Life: 1925-1926 -- 14. The Seventh Plenum, Comintern Proposals, and Canadian Party Policies -- 15. The Rise of Canadian Trotskyism -- 16. North American Exceptionalism and the Triumph of Stalinism in Canada -- Epilogue.

The Winnipeg General Strike is undoubtedly one of the most controversial events in Canadian history. Many Canadian newspapers and a considerable portion of correspondence among the federal, provincial and municipal officials claimed that strike was inspired by the Bolsheviks who allegedly aimed to create a soviet in Winnipeg. On the other hand, the majority of the strikers as well as labour leaders contended that strike was a last-resort weapon used by the workers to gain the rights of collective bargaining and to obtain higher wages. Documents, newspapers editorials, and extracts from critical works have been selected for giving the students a relatively complete picture of government and public opinion of the causes, events and effects of this strike. There has been one notable exception, for no excerpt from the Robson Report is included in this volume. --From author's preface

The relationship between the Canadian and American labour movements is unique. It has given rise to considerable controversy and yet has been the subject of surprisingly little intensive examination. While a fair amount has been written about this unusual phenomenon, little of this material is very complete or incisive. As a result the door has been left open for those with an axe to grind to express themselves freely on the subject without the fear of contradiction based on cold hard facts. This study may reduce the frequence of such utterances in the future. It endeavours to deal objectively with an area of Canadian-American relations where emotions and prejudices have distorted public debate. Many of the events which have provided fuel for this debate over the past few years are dealt with, including the Seafarers' International Union dispute on the Great Lakes and the Internaitonal Typographical Union strike againist the three Toronto newspapers. --Preface. Contents: Introduction (pages 1-10) -- Explaining the presence of international unionism in Canada (pages 11-49) -- The Canadian membership within international unions (pages 50-95) -- Relations between the central federations of labour in Canada and the United States (pages 96-145 -- The unity and structure of the Canadian labour movement /(pages 146-178) -- Collective bargaining policies and practices in Canada (pages 179-230) -- Policies and practices outside the area of collective bargaining (pages 231-258) -- The flow of funds and benefits across the border (pages 259-278) -- Employer and government attitudes towards international unionism (pages 279-301) -- Summary and conclusion (pages 302-324) -- A selected bibliography (pages 325-327).

The relationship between the Canadian and American labour movements is unique. It has given rise to considerable controversy and yet has been the subject of surprisingly little intensive research. As a result those with an axe to grind have been able to express themselves without fear of contradiction based on cold, hard facts. This study may reduce the frequency of such utterances. It endeavors to deal objectively with an area of Canadian-American relations where emotion and prejudice have distorted public debate. The reader will have to judge for himself whether sufficient detachment has been shown to achieve real objectivity. --From author's preface

Contents: The first signs -- The great crusade -- The Western Federation of Miners and the new radicalism -- From class war to world war -- Conscription, western revolt, and the OBU -- The not so roaring twenties -- The Great Depression -- The war against fascism -- United we stand -- To the merger -- The challenge of a new century -- Postscript: The British Columbia labour movement: an interpretation -- Statistical appendices -- Chapter notes.