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From the 1940s to the 1970s the communist left in British Columbia used debates and perceptions of environmental change as a means to engage in a critique of capitalist society. In engaging in these debates, communists articulated a Marxist understanding of the connections between capitalism and environmental change. However, these articulations were heavily connected to broader occurrences that situated the communist left alongside a diverse group of social actors. Beginning in the 1940s the communist left situated their critique of provincial forest policy into a wider social debate over the management of forest resources. During the 1950s and 1960s, concerns over environmental change were transformed into debates over the effects of nuclear weapons and industrial pollution. From the late 1960s through to late 1970s elements of the communist left once again engaged with the environmental changes taking place in the forest sector, as renewed concerns developed over the status of the forest economy and the preservation of wilderness areas. To investigate the communist left’s perceptions and politicization of these issues this thesis focuses on the activities of communist controlled unions such as the International Woodworkers of America as well as the B.C. section of the Communist Party of Canada/Labour Progressive Party. In addition to these organizations, this thesis also follows the experiences of Erni Knott. As a woodworker, a founding member of the IWA, a member of the Communist Party, and an active environmentalist, Knott’s experiences highlight the complex way in which communist politics merged and conflicted with perceptions of environmental change.

Many rural areas are undergoing structural changes as jobs in forestry, fishing, mining, agricultural and other natural resource-based industries decline. These communities, often based around these industries, are generally small and located some distance from urban areas. They are faced with decreasing population as residents and their families leave for jobs elsewhere. As a result, the communities and residents are looking for alternative ways to create employment and sustain themselves. Given the nature of these rural locations, many small businesses based there face challenges that are not generally experienced by enterprises in urban areas. Some communities are not accessible by paved road while others are not accessible by road at all, relying instead on water and air transportation. The business people in these areas often operate without standard business infrastructure, which can include telephone lines, broadband Internet, banking services and other items, and can have difficulty accessing supplies, customers, employees and other required materials. However, there has been relatively little research on the challenges facing rural businesses and the specific methods by which these owners mitigate these challenges. Understanding and addressing the challenges faced by these businesses becomes important in order to support and encourage economic growth and development in these rural communities. Building on this context, this research looks to answer the following questions: • Why do people start businesses in rural locations? • What type of businesses do they start? • What challenges do these rural businesses face? • How do owners respond to these challenges? Vancouver Island and the surrounding smaller islands in British Columbia, Canada serve as the research site. Given the exploratory nature of this research, an inductive approach has been selected with the use of case studies, interviews and grounded theory analysis. Purposeful sampling is used with the sample businesses meeting specific criteria, based on location, business size and definition of success. These businesses are interviewed at their locations to allow the researcher to experience the challenges associated with accessing the particular rural community. The interview topics are focused on the above research questions. There are several common characteristics among the sample owners and their businesses. The owners tend to be in-migrants who moved to the rural area for lifestyle reasons. They have started their business to provide an income, take advantage of a business opportunity, or both. Family members, particularly spouses, are actively involved in the business. In many cases, participants supplement their business income with other income sources to ensure business viability. Success is measured generally by personal and lifestyle goals, rather than financial criteria. The businesses face common challenges in terms of a limited local population base which impacts on market size and labour pool, rural location and access to urban centres, gaps in business and social services infrastructure and heavy time demands. The owners respond to these challenges in a variety of ways which includes the involvement of family, core business diversification, alternative income sources, long hours invested in the business and involvement with the community. To meet these challenges and devise their responses, the owners draw upon four key resources – their own skills and attitudes, their family, business and community. The resulting conceptual framework draws together these key resources and suggests that all four must be present to ensure success within a rural context. Each resource is comprised of several components which contribute to business success. The framework also integrates several resource-based theories, which consider the key resources either separately or in pairs, to create a holistic model. The conclusions focus on several key areas. This research contributes to the knowledge base on rural small businesses by creating a framework that draws directly from the experience of these owners and their objectives and motivations for their businesses. It reflects their internal focus and a concentration of the four resources that they access easily from within their domain. This research also suggests some possible roles for government which focus on its role in shaping the larger environment, particularly at the infrastructure level and human capital development. Finally, future research directions are recommended. This study considers a relatively unexplored topic and suggests ways for rural small businesses to address the challenges which they face. With this knowledge, individuals, businesses, communities and other interested organizations can work to achieve their economic development goals.

Ce mémoire porte sur les travailleurs de la mine Lamaque entre 1948 et 1985. À partir d’une étude approfondie des fichiers d’employés de l’entreprise, qui est l’une des plus riches mines d’or de l’histoire du Québec, nous analysons l’évolution de la main- d’œuvre sous les volets de la composition ethnique, de l’expérience dans le secteur minier ainsi que de la mobilité. Notre enquête révèle l’existence de deux périodes-clés autour desquelles on assiste à une transformation rapide de la main-d’œuvre: la période 1948-1960 est le théâtre d’un important processus d’homogénéisation des effectifs alors que les années 1967-1977 sont la scène d’un double processus de sédentarisation et de qualification de la main-d’œuvre. D’un groupe de travailleurs cosmopolites, peu expérimentés et très mobiles, il en ressort, au sortir de ces années, une main-d’œuvre nettement plus expérimentée, plus sédentaire et composée presque exclusivement de travailleurs canadien-français et, de surcroît, témiscabitibiens. Au-delà de ces transformations, notre mémoire comporte un bref aperçu de l’histoire de l’industrie aurifère québécoise et de la mine Lamaque, du « boom minier » des années 1930 à la grande relance de l’industrie au début des années 1980. De plus, nous portons une attention particulière aux travailleurs d’origine européenne qui forment, jusqu’à la fin des années 1960, une proportion appréciable de la main-d’œuvre. En plus de lever le voile sur la composition de ce groupe de travailleurs, notre étude révèle des similitudes insoupçonnées entre le contingent européen et canadien-français.

This thesis is an exploration into the potential for worker cooperatives to be conceptualized and experienced as an alternative to precarious employment for immigrants and refugees. It argues that current analysis and responses to precarious employment fail to fully address the root causes of precarious employment and fail to suggest what forms of alternative employment relations we should be striving to build. It is argued that by tracing the roots of precarious employment to the organization of work, the worker cooperative model can be seen as a potential solution to these root problems. This hypothesis is explored through two case studies of immigrant worker cooperatives, analyzing the employment experiences of several of its members. It concludes that workers cooperatives appear to provide alternatives in the areas of control, security and social capital and empowerment. However, more work is needed to support and facilitate the development and sustainability of cooperatives in order to improve in the areas of wages and formal benefits. Despite the challenges of worker cooperatives, the author argues that they remain an important tool, invoking a politics of the act that seeks to build alternative spaces of employment without relying on government or employers.

This is a comparative study of intergovernmental relations in labour market policy in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) between 1996 and 2006, the first phase of devolution in each country. The study focuses primarily on relations between the central government and a single sub-state in each country (Alberta in Canada and Scotland in the UK) and addresses three research questions: 1) to what extent were there differences in intergovernmental relations between the countries?2) what accounted for these differences? 3) what impact did these differences have on the character and workability of the intergovernmental relations system in each country? Workability was assessed based upon the degree to which trust ties developed between senior officials. The analysis concludes that the structure of the state, the structure of the policy domain, and the presence of two important accommodation mechanisms in the UK not found in Canada (the party system and the civil service) made intergovernmental relations in labour market policy in the two countries fundamentally different. In Canada, intergovernmental relations were multilateral, interprovincial and bilateral, whereas in the United Kingdom they were only bilateral. Despite devolution, the UK Government retained control of most policy levers, whereas in Canada devolution has limited federal control and influence and any notion of a national labour market system. Trust ties were enhanced by consistency between the key players, routinized engagement, reliability, honesty, respect, capacity and willingness to engage, and transparency. Although shared objectives made engagement easier, they were not a prerequisite for a positive relationship. Bilateral relationships that took place within the geographic boundaries of Alberta and Scotland were considered as positive and highly workable. Difficulties arose when relationships became multilateral or bilateral relations were managed at a distance. Despite devolution, multilateral relations in the historically conflicted labour market policy domain in Canada remained competitive, with a low degree of workability. Relationships with respect to disability and immigration issues were more positive. In the UK relationships in the welfare to work policy area were cooperative and highly workable. Relationships in skills and immigration did not fare as positively.

Technology has enabled management to utilize automation in the methods of production, and as such promoted a reduction in the use of traditional skills for traditional skilled trades' workers while narrower task specific apprenticeship training programmes promote the loss of trade knowledge traditionally passed from a trades' person to an apprentice in the manufacturing industry. The purpose of this intergenerational study is to trace the changing skill requirements affected by developing technologies in the manufacturing process focusing on the traditional skills of millwright trade, and associated skilled trades. To place in context the origins of the skilled trades' I have included brief histories of five skilled trades, to represent a selection of skilled trades' often closely connected through their work in the manufacturing industry; the millwright, electrician, welder, toolmaker and machinist. In an effort to also report the possible effects of technology on skilled trade labour from a tradesperson's perspective I have utilised my own experiences and incorporated anecdotal evidence from interviews with certified millwrights and apprentices that are either presently working in the trade, or have retired from the trade in Canada. Interviews with three generations of millwrights assisted in making comparisons of training and expectations of millwright work, together with changes in the control millwrights' exercise over the jobs they perform. The focus of the thesis is the possible effects of technological progress on the required skill sets of three generations skilled trades' with a primary focus on millwright skilled trades'. Restructuring and the utilization of new technologies has facilitated a reduction in the overall number of skilled trades' workers that were previously required when traditional skilled trades' personnel were utilised. Therefore, utilization of technology to lower production costs by modern industry is affecting social structure, in that, traditional opportunities for members of the working class, without the benefit of a university education, are restricted in their ability to obtain well paid jobs as skilled trades' personnel in the manufacturing industry. Thesis: Technology has enabled automation to be utilized by management in the methods of production, and as such promoted a reduction in discretion and control in the use of traditional skills for traditional skilled trades' workers while narrower task specific apprenticeship training programmes promote the loss of trade knowledge traditionally passed from a trades' person to an apprentice in the manufacturing industry.

Le 1er mai 1906, les membres d'un éphémère parti socialiste canadien organisent à Montréal la première célébration de la fête internationale des travailleurs. Des centaines de personnes y défilent sous le drapeau rouge. L'événement se répète ensuite presque chaque année, et s'étend à la plupart des grandes villes du pays. L'histoire du mouvement socialiste / communiste au Canada et au Québec a certes été écrite, mais l'historiographie délaisse le sujet de sa fête annuelle. Pourtant, les journaux canadiens ont couvert l'événement, année après année, léguant aux générations suivantes une riche couverture. Celle-ci représente un outil utile, bien qu'imparfait, pour mieux saisir l'opinion de la population de l'époque à l'endroit des communistes. La présente recherche analyse plus de 400 articles de grands quotidiens pour sonder la perception des Canadiens, durant la première moitié du XXe siècle, quant au phénomène de la fête du 1er mai et au mouvement socialiste / communiste qui l'anime. Dans un premier temps, nos recherches présentent la couverture des journaux de plusieurs grandes villes canadiennes. Nous constatons alors d'importantes différences entre la perception des Canadiens français et celle des Canadiens anglais au Québec. Nous découvrons également une affinité particulière à Winnipeg -et même à Vancouver, dans une moindre mesure -pour le mouvement et sa fête. Le facteur ethnique explique en bonne partie tant les affinités de certaines communautés pour le mouvement, que la répulsion des Canadiens français. Dans un deuxième temps, à travers une approche chronologique plutôt que régionale, des facteurs conjoncturels et internationaux expliquent les fluctuations dans le ton des journaux entre 1906 et 1945. Ce travail de recherche jette la lumière sur une fête particulière, exclue du calendrier officiel nord américain et pourtant observée à travers la majeure partie du monde occidental. L'analyse de la couverture journalistique de l'événement permet de tirer d'intéressantes conclusions quant à la façon dont a été perçu le mouvement communiste canadien, au moment de son apogée.

[Analyzes] various socialist organizations operating at the Canadian Lakehead (comprised of the twin cities of Port Arthur and Fort William, Ontario, now the present-day City of Thunder Bay, and their vicinity) during the first 35 years of the twentieth century. It contends that the circumstances and actions of Lakehead labour, especially those related to ideology, ethnicity, and personality, worked simultaneously to empower and to fetter workers in their struggles against the shackles of capitalism. The twentieth-century Lakehead never lacked for a population of enthusiastic, energetic and talented left-wingers. Yet, throughout this period the movement never truly solidified and took hold. Socialist organizations, organizers and organs came and went, leaving behind them an enduring legacy, yet paradoxically the sum of their efforts was cumulatively less than the immense sacrifices and energies they had poured into them. Between 1900 and 1935, the region's working-class politics was shaped by the interaction of ideas drawn from the much larger North Atlantic socialist world with the particularities of Lakehead society and culture. International frameworks of analysis and activism were of necessity reshaped and revised in a local context in which ethnic divisions complicated and even undermined the class identities upon which so many radical dreams and ambitions rested.

Cette thèse porte sur les domestiques au Canada entre 1640 et 1710. Recrutée en France ou dans la colonie, cette main-d'oeuvre, principalement masculine, est au service des paysans propriétaires et des communautés religieuses. Ses fonctions sont donc surtout liées à l'agriculture : défrichements, culture des terres, soin du bétail. Mais cela n'exclut pas des tâches comme le soin des malades et l'entretien ménager pour les communautés religieuses et les employeurs urbains plus fortunés. Au fil des ans, la composition du groupe se modifie : les domestiques sont de plus en plus d'origine canadienne et de plus en plus jeunes. Cette évolution est certes à rapprocher de la baisse du mouvement migratoire vers la colonie qui était en grande partie formé de domestiques. En plus d'analyser les modalités d'embauché, la thèse aborde la question des relations entre les maîtres et les domestiques et tente de cerner le devenir social du groupe dans la colonie.

This paper examines the history of the British juvenile immigrants, a group of over 100,000 children who arrived in Canada between 1868 and 1939 to work on farms or as domestic workers. There was both a pressing need within Canada for farm workers, and overcrowding in British cities, therefore conditions were right for a mutually beneficial labour exchange between the two nations. British philanthropists encouraged this movement and ensured its continued success over a seventy year period. The societal changes that occurred in Canada during the same period as a result of the reform movement are also traced within this historical examination. The increase in child welfare policies, and the subsequent attitudinal changes in the Canadian public also impacted how the home children were treated and viewed. Through this research, this neglected group of immigrants will be given a more prominent position in Canadian social and immigration history.

Drawing on data from a sixteen-month ethnography of Queen’s Park, the provincial legislature of Ontario, this study analyses and critiques the evolving production of neoliberal government. The work of real social actors, primarily political workers and politicians, and their active ideological and material creation of government, is central to my focus on the neoliberal project of the Liberal government in Ontario. After charting the historical trajectory of neoliberalism internationally and in Canada, with a particular emphasis on the Third Way approach, Icentre on thedevelopment of neoliberal political culture and restructuring in Ontario. Then I provide an in-depth analysis of the production of the Liberal government, focusing on social and fiscal policies and policy-making, hegemonic gender and class politics, and political communications and spin. I conclude that, at one level, the Liberal chimera fused certain progressive practices and language with neoliberal policies and rhetoric. At the same time, significant and dangerous initiatives that interlocked the public and for-profit sector conceptually and materially were pursued. Thus, a more camouflaged form of deep neoliberal integration was produced.

The CIO related this narrative to working-class Canadians through new, union channels of communication and through a myriad of union-minded social interactions. Together---the CIO's narrative of victory and its subaltern public sphere that communicated this narrative---helped the CIO overcome formidable obstacles to organizing. The Canadian CIO's 1930s momentum had stalled by 1939, but by 1944 it was the country's largest labour organization and was influencing Canadian politics. Using union newspapers, organizing literature, minutes, correspondence, oral interviews, government and corporate records, and the daily press, this dissertation describes and analyzes how the CIO organized thousands of wartime workers into unions in spite of significant obstacles. This study then examines the institutions the CIO developed to create a union "mini-public sphere," where workers debated and developed union positions on issues facing them as workers, family members, citizens and military veterans. The CIO was successful in turning private, workplace issues such as union recognition and bargaining rights into public issues that government was forced to deal with, and its organizing successes and its entry into politics witnessed burgeoning support for the social democratic CCF, a phenomenon that encouraged mainstream political parties to adopt more progressive platforms. The CIO's breakthrough was based not just on worker-empowering wartime labour shortages. Its skill in using modern communications was also a factor in its wartime success, as well as its use of the war as a central character in these communications efforts. CIO communications used a narrative that elided workers with warriors as partners in a "people's war" to defeat the nation's enemies and build a new social order. The CIO told workers that if they organized into unions, they would have the power to shape a peace that, unlike after the Great War, would benefit this worker-warrior partnership. Victory was thus defined not merely as defeating the Axis but creating a modern, new Canada, where workers would have citizenship rights in the workplace and where citizenship entailed a fairer, more egalitarian society. The CIO's talk about rights extended to women workers, and its arguments for equal pay and women's seniority were increasingly based on women's human rights.

In July 2005, six unions withdrew from the central labour federation in the United States, the AFL-CIO. In September 2005, joined by a seventh union, the disaffiliated unions formed a rival labour federation called Change to Win (CTW). On the surface according to Stem, leader of the CTW coalition, what divides the two sides of the split is a disagreement over whether or not to place greater emphasis on organizing new members or altering the political climate in the US in order to facilitate orgamzmg. This thesis explores some of the earlier debates within the union renewal literature in the US and in Canada and exposes many ofthe similarities between the 1995 "New Voices" leadership ofthe AFL-CIO and the CTW leadership. Through a description and analysis of the events that led to the split in the AFL-CIO, the limitations ofthe debates that led to the split are revealed and the strategies for union renewal advanced by the proponents of CTW are critiqued. Drawing on interviews with elected leaders and staff from some of the Canadian sections of the CTW unions, one of the largest Canadian unions, the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress, this thesis examines some of the implications of the split in the AFL-CIO on the Canadian labour movement. As trade unionists in Canada consider different approaches to union renewal, one option is to embrace an approach similar to the CTW approach: greater cooperation with employers and a more "efficient" business unionism. Another approach is union renewal with a socialist character; developing working-class capacities to construct socialist alternatives and renew the labour movement as an instrument of working-class struggle.

L’objet de ce mémoire est la recension et l’analyse des accidents mortels survenus dans les milieux de travail du district judiciaire de Montréal durant la période de 1893 à 1930. À partir des témoignages contenus dans les rapports d’enquête des coroners, nous analyserons les opinions des travailleurs, des contremaîtres, des coroners et des inspecteurs afin de connaître leur point de vue sur les accidents et de vérifier dans quelle mesure ils partagent les valeurs libérales de cette époque. Pour constituer notre corpus d’information, nous avons dépouillé chacun des 1527 dossiers des rapports d’enquête des coroners effectuée entre le premier janvier 1893 et le 31 décembre 1930. Ils constituent notre principale source à partir de laquelle nous établirons l’ampleur des accidents mortels et également analyserons les témoignages recueillis par les coroners, Pour fin d’analyse, nous avons réparti ces données sous les quatre décennies couvertes par notre étude et élaboré des tableaux statistiques établissant la distribution annuelle et décennale de ces accidents de même que l’âge et le sexe des victimes. Nous avons également distribué ces accidents par secteurs d’activités économiques et par catégories d’accidents. Si les employeurs, les contremaîtres et les inspecteurs des manufactures adhèrent aux principes de l’idéologie libérale de l’époque en attribuant aux travailleurs la responsabilité première des accidents de travail, les coroners et les travailleurs considèrent, par contre, dans une forte proportion (72 %) que les causes de ces accidents sont associés à des défaillances des divers éléments des lieux de travail et aux processus de production. Ils sont donc plus enclins à attribuer la responsabilité aux employeurs.

Labour migrants have been routinely categorised within social scientific thought as either abstracted economic entities or as victims of global processes beyond their understanding. A striking majority of attempts to understand processes of migration, especially in regards to "unskilled" Mexican migrant workers, have been informed primarily by macro-level economic approaches, while the social and individual factors at play have been largely pushed to the side. As such, the social lives and individual diversities of these migrants have received meagre academic attention. In acknowledgment of this gap, this current thesis focuses on the lived experiences of Hector-Alberto and Durango, two individuals engaged in a cycle of migration as participants in Canada's managed migration program, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Program. Through an ethnographic description of the everyday experiences of Hector and Durango, three relevant themes are explored: their individual relations to their work, their family, and their co-workers. As such, the present work aims to explore the varied experiences of migration and frame labour migrants as significant social actors rather than abstracted units or victims of social forces. The author encourages an engagement in a broader investigation of the "migrant experience"; to look beyond the idea of transnational migration as simply physical movements across national boundaries, but rather as groupings of processes with profound and diverse meanings to those involved. Perhaps such a perspective would play a role in revealing the complex myriad of interacting processes which combine under the umbrella term of "migration".

This thesis examines what the two sides of class-- capital and working class --have meant in left parlance, what these meanings imply about class struggle, and how they were put into political practice through Communist Parties and trade unions. Ideas about class and strategies for class struggle continue to be central to the left, as the various ways these are conceptualized give rise to very different answers to some common and persistent questions: Who is legitimately a worker and when? Why, how and with what result are certain struggles delayed or subsumed within others? At what point does self-criticism cross over to counter-revolutionary dissent? And what might continuing schisms over these questions tell us about traditional left organizations? The thesis traces the development of 'the left' from its key conceptual subject, the working class, through its two most widely-adopted organizational strategies in order to examine the poverty of the left's analytical and political traditions, particularly as regards (1) the notion of socialism as an alternative management plan and (2) ideas about capital and working class that stressed the embodiments of power relations rather than those relations themselves, and which were lifted directly from capital's own definitions of productivity. Finally, the thesis argues that insights from long-neglected Marxisms, certain critical post-structuralisms and the political strategies of some emergent anti-capitalist networks together offer the opportunity to produce a more fluid, and more liberatory left, imbued with: (1) an understanding of class as a relationship that does not inhere to individuals or organizations, and (2) a notion of the working class as a permanent resistance that has nothing whatever to do with a particular ideology or strategy; with (3) an analysis which emphasizes situational relationships of power that are at once racialized, gendered, sexualized, and classed; and (4) a political approach which draws means and ends together in an emphasis on resistance as the troubling of order, and revolution as a process of refusal.

Through an analysis of qualitative, ethnographic data, I locate the narratives of nine Mexican women married to migrants within the context of capitalist globalization, state policies, and local gender ideologies. In doing so, advocate for a theoretical approach to migration which combines elements of structural theories of migration and network theoretical approaches. These women's narratives position them at the juncture of capitalism and other social relations, and show them to be active agents in migration. Not only is their labour critical to the maintenance of migration patterns and the capitalist relations into which migrants and non-migrants are incorporated, but women's labour is also imbued with social meanings.

For the last 40 years, migrant farm workers from the Caribbean and Mexico have been recruited to work temporarily on Canadian farms under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In 2002, the pilot Foreign Worker Program (FWP) for low skilled migrant workers was initiated in the province of Quebec and under this program began the recruitment of Guatemalan migrant farm workers. Since the program's start, the number of Guatemalan migrants has nearly tripled and there seems to be a decline in the number of workers hired under the SAWP in Quebec. This paper examines the FWP's development, set-up, consequences and operation alongside the SAWP and shows how the Canadian state is expanding the number and flexibility of temporary worker programs. This paper draws attention to the neo-liberal context of migrant farm labour in Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canada's federal policies governing seasonal agricultural migrants and the agricultural labour market are exploitative and racist.

Since World War II, service work has become the major employment sector in North America. One of the most recognizable forms it takes is in the fast food industry, a multi-billion dollar business with outlets all over the globe. Little has been written about the history of this work, central to the functioning of the global economy and a key part of the move from an industrial economy to a consumer one. This move has changed work by examining BC's White Spot chain, which unlike almost any other has been unionized for over three decades. Drawing on union records an d oral interviews, it analyzes fast food unionism, evaluates organizing in the sector, and draws out workplace dynamics and processes; arguing that labour practices in this sector have been crucial in making work more exploitative.

This thesis explores the wide variety of ways in which radical intellectuals and activists in Montreal used and adapted Third World decolonization theory to build a broad movement of solidarity and anti-colonial resistance from 1963-1972. Beginning in the early 1960s, activists and intellectuals in Montreal began drawing upon the language of Third World decolonization to resituate their understandings of themselves, their society, and the world in which they inhabited. Through their engagement with Third World liberation theory – and the closely related language of Black Power – radical intellectuals in Montreal sought to give new meaning to the old conception of humanism, and they worked to drastically expand the geographical frame of reference in which Quebec politics were generally understood. After analyzing the shifting meaning of decolonization in the period leading up to the late 1960s, this thesis explores the ways in which various groups adopted, built upon, challenged, and shaped the conception of Quebec liberation. Montreal’s advocates of women’s liberation, the city’s Black activists, defenders of unilingualism, and labour radicals were all deeply shaped by the intellectual and urban climate of Montreal, and by ideas of Quebec decolonization. They developed their own individual narratives of liberation, yet linked by the flexible language of decolonization, these narratives all greatly overlapped, forming a vast movement which was larger than the sum of its parts. If the concept of decolonization was extremely powerful, however, it was also highly ambiguous and contradictory, and activists only slowly came to an understanding of the multi-layered nature of colonialism in Quebec. By the early 1970s, the idea of decolonization was slowly abandoned by those advocating radical social change in the city. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that radicalism in Quebec in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger international context in which it emerged. Second, it attempts to rethink the ways in which different groups and movements during the 1960s interacted and fed upon each other’s analyses and learned from each other. And, finally, by looking at the centrality of Third World decolonization to the development of dissent in Montreal, it hopes to add new perspectives to the growing field of international Sixties scholarship, by insisting that history of the ‘West’ was profoundly shaped by its interactions with the Third World.