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A controversial and chilling examination of child labour in Canadian coal mines, Boys in the Pit shows that beginning early in the nineteenth century, thousands of boys, some as young as eight, laboured underground - driving pit ponies, manipulating ventilation doors, and helping miners cut and load the coal that fuelled the industrial revolution. Boys died in the mines in explosions and accidents but they also organized strikes for better working conditions. Robert McIntosh recasts these wage-earning children as more than victims, illustrating that they responded intelligently and resourcefully to their circumstances. Boys in the Pits is particularly timely as, despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, accepted by the General assembly in 1989, child labour still occurs throughout the world and continues to generate controversy. McIntosh provides an important new perspective from which to consider these debates, reorienting our approach to child labour, explaining rather than condemning the practice. Within the broader social context of the period, where the place of children was being redefined as - and limited to - the home, school, and playground, he examines the role of changing technologies, alternative sources of unskilled labour, new divisions of labour, changes in the family economy, and legislation to explore the changing extent of child labour in the mines. --Publisher's description

When W.O. Mitchell died in 1998 he was described as “Canada's best-loved writer.” Every commentator agreed that his best – and his best-loved – book was Who Has Seen the Wind. Since it was first published in 1947, this book has sold almost a million copies in Canada. As we enter the world of four-year-old Brian O’Connal, his father the druggist, his Uncle Sean, his mother, and his formidable Scotch grandmother (“she belshes…a lot”), it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary book. As we watch Brian grow up, the prairie and its surprising inhabitants like the Ben and Saint Sammy – and the rich variety of small-town characters – become unforgettable. This book will be a delightful surprise for all those who are aware of it, but have never quite got around to reading it, till now. --Publisher's description

The IWA, while closely linked to BC, has played a crucial role in nearly every province in Canada, from the Queen Charlotte Islands to Grand Falls, Newfoundland. The IWA in Canada is a definitive history of the union that follows its progress and setbacks throughout the past century. Its predecessors, the Industrial Workers of the World, the One Big Union, and the Lumber Workers' Industrial Union are examined, as are the historical tensions between craft and industrial unionism, the drive to organize the "timber beasts", and the pioneering role of communist activists. Today, the legendary militancy of IWA members is being brought to bear on the legalistic negotiations, environmental movements, and evolutions in governmental forest policy that continue to pose challenges. Generously illustrated with historical and present?day photographs, and enriched by numerous interviews with founding unionists, The IWA In Canada also features capsule histories of each local. In-depth analysis of specific issues and events such as the mysterious death of Viljo Rosval and Jon Voutilainen, the fight for relief in the Great Depression and the Loggers' Navy can be found in sidebars that enhance the text throughout. --Publisher's description.

As Canadian workers, the labour movement, and scholars confront a new millennium, new opportunities and new challenges loom large. This volume, which mirrors Labour/Le Travail Volume 46, commissions a number of articles addressing themes that will be of consequence as we enter the 21st century. The articles that appear in this collection are authored by some of the more prominent social scientists working in the field of labour-related studies, among them Desmond Morton, Ian McKay, Joan Sangster, Cynthia Comacchio, David Frank, and Jacques Rouillard. Their writing appears in the book, grouped in a series of thematic sections: institutions and ideas; gender, sexuality and family; Quebec and the national question; culture; and workers and the state. Topics such as Canadian socialism, pivotal events such as the 1949 Asbestos strike, and important cultural undertakings, such as working-class representations on film and video, are addressed. Historiographical controversies and debates associated with the relations of women’s and working-class histories or different generational styles associated with the presentation of labour’s past are surveyed. This is an issue all interested in Canadian society and its development will not want to miss. --Publisher's description

A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War is one man's bittersweet account of fighting with the International Brigades against the forces of General Francisco Franco in Spain from 1936 to 1939. Douglas Patrick (Pat) Stephens was born in Armenia in 1910 and emigrated with his family to Canada in 1926. Like countless others, his dream of finding a new and more prosperous life was severely shaken by the onset of the Great Depression, and he turned to the Communist Party of Canada in an attempt to combat the political and economic deterioration which had gripped much of the world. Franco's attempt to overthrow by military force the republican government of Spain seemed to Pat Stephens the ideal opportunity to put his political convictions into action. Through his connections in the Communist Party, he became one of some 1400 Canadians, and 40,000 International Volunteers in all, who went to Spain. Many of the volunteers, including the Canadians, went to Spain against the laws and the wishes of their governments. Many of them never came back. Stephens' memoir, dictated to his wife Phyllis Stephens shortly before his death in 1987, puts a very human face on this strange and complex war. It is a portrait of political and moral conviction tinged by creeping disillusionment. It is also a compelling depiction of the strength, frailty, doubt, and courage which can result from the sometimes incongruous intersection of the personal and the political. A Memoir of the Spanish Civil War is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the conflict which immediately preceded World War II, and of Canada's role in that conflict. -- Publisher's description

The first in-depth analysis of temporary work in Canada, this book by Leah F. Vosko examines a number of trends, including the commodification of labour power; the decline of the full-time, full-year job as a norm; and the gendered character of prevailing employment relationships. Spanning the period from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Temporary Work traces the evolution of the temporary employment relationship in Canada and places it in an international context. It explores how, and to what extent, temporary work is becoming the norm for a diverse group of workers in the labour market, taking gender as the central lens of analysis." "Recent scholarship emphasizes that the nature of work is changing, citing the spread of non-standard forms of employment and the rise in women's participation in the labour force. Vosko confirms that important changes are indeed taking place in the labour market, but argues that these changes are best understood in historical, economic, and political context. This book will be invaluable to academics in a variety of disciplines as well as to policy analysts and practitioners in government, industry, and organized labour. --Publisher's descsription

The companion book to The Labour Millenium Project, a four-part documentary film series and CD-ROM --Page 4 of cover. Text in English and French.

This collection of compelling and original research makes connections in Canada, the US and Mexico among women who work in fast-food restaurants, supermarkets and agricultural production. The fourteen chapters take a critical look at how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has affected these women's working and living conditions, sharpening our understanding of how the workplace has been restructured in order to fulfill consumer demands for tomatoes, exotic flowers and fruits, as well as fast-food burgers and fries. Food activists in Latin America, the US and Canada propose alternatives to counteract the oppressive conditions of free trade and globalization. --Publisher's description. Contents: "Perhaps the world ends here" / Joy Harjo -- Introduction: In the belly of the beast: A moveable feast / Deborah Barndt -- Remaking "traditions": How we eat, what we eat and the changing political economy of food / Harriet Friedmann -- Whose "choice"?: "Flexible" women workers in the tomato food chain / Deborah Barndt -- Serving the McCustomer: Fast food is not about food / Ester Reiter -- The "poisoning" of Indigenous migrant women workers and children: From deadly colonialism to toxic globalization / Egla Martinez-Salazar -- Mexican women on the move: Migrant workers in Mexico and Canada / Antonieta Barrón -- "From where have all the flowers come?": Women workers in Mexico's non-traditional markets / Kirsten Appendini -- Putting the pieces together: Tennessee women find the global economy in their own backyards / Fran Ansley -- Serving up service: Fast-food and office women workers doing it with a smile / Ann Eyerman -- Not quite what they bargained for: Female labour in Canadian supermarkets / Jan Kainer -- Putting food first: Women's role in creating a grassroots system outside the marketplace / Debbie Field -- Grassroots responses to globalization: Mexican rural and urban women's collective alternatives / Maria Dolores Villagomez -- Women as organizers: Building confidence and community through food / Deborah Moffett & Mary Lou Morgan -- A day in the life of Maria: Women, food, ecology and the will to live / Ofelia Perez Peña -- A different tomato: Creating vernacular foodscapes / Lauren Baker.

Finally, a book that documents the rich history of labour arts in Ontario. Making Our Mark presents over 100 projects, showcasing the vibrant banners, photos, plays and lyrics that form the heart and soul of the labour movement. Diverse examples spring from the Artist in the Workplace Program, the Mayworks Festivals, independent labour arts projects, and exhibitions organized the Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre. Making Our Mark celebrates the songs of Arlene Mantle and Charlie Angus, photos by First Nations ironworkers, and dance performances by Tom Brouillette and the Boilermakers, to name a few.... Publisher's description

A tribute to the most important people in government. The most important people in government are not the prime minister, premiers, and senior bureaucrats but the people who work in government field offices across the country, providing service to Canadians. The first book to focus exclusively on the role of field-level public servants in Canada, Service in the Field examines the work they do and the relationship between field and head offices. As governments attempt to focus more on service delivery, it has become apparent that little is known about the people who actually provide the services. Barbara Wake Carroll and David Siegel discuss structural issues and analyse the various administrative reforms developed in the last few years. They highlight field officers' perceptions of the problems in the system and suggest ways to improve field office-head office relations and the operation of field offices generally. The authors' analysis is based on more than two hundred interviews with federal and provincial civil servants in all ten provinces, in the smallest hamlets and largest cities across Canada. Using extensive quotations from these interviews, the authors allow public servants to tell their own stories and, in so doing, provide examples of the application of systematic qualitative research to Canadian political science. --Publisher's description, Contents: Who Are These People and What Do They Do? -- Research Described -- "How We Do Things around Here" -- Service to the Public -- Workplace Environment -- Two Solitudes or One Big Happy Family? Dealing with Head Office -- Administrative Reform: How It Plays in the Field -- Bureaucrats Are People Too -- Where Do We Go from Here? Implications for Implementation and Management Theory.

The history of labour in Canada is most often understood to mean – and presented as – the history of blue-collar workers, especially men. And it is a story of union solidarity to gain wages, rights, and the like from employers. In Contracting Masculinity, Gillian Creese examines in depth the white-collar office workers union at BC Hydro, and shows how collective bargaining involves the negotiation of gender, class, and race. Over the first 50 years of the office union's existence male and female members were approximately equal in number. Yet equality has ended there. Women are concentrated at the lower rungs of the job hierarchy, while men start higher up the ladder and enjoy more job mobility; men's office work has been redefined as a wide range of 'technical' jobs, while women's work has been concentrated in a narrow range of 'clerical' positions. As well, for decades Canadian Aboriginals and people of colour were not employed by BC Hydro, which has resulted in a racialized-gendered workplace. What is the role of workers and their trade unions in constructing male and female work, a process that is often seen as the outcome solely of management decisions? How is this process of gendering also racialized, so that women and men of different race and ethnicity are differentiallv privileged at work? How do males in a white-collar union create and maintain their own image of masculinity in the face of a feminized occupation and a more militant male blue-collar union housed within the same corporation? What impact does the gender composition of union leadership have on collective bargaining? How do traditions of union solidarity affect attempts to bargain for greater equity in the office? These are the central questions that Contracting Masculinity seeks to answer in this in-depth look at a Canadian union. --Publisher's description

Just when Solange De Santis had achieved success and security in the white-collar world of journalism, she decided to leave it all to work on the line during the final year and a half of a General Motors van plant in Scarborough, Ontario. --Publisher's description

On peut dire de Michel Chartrand qu'il est le dernier des vrais. À lui seul, il représente tout un programme politique: liberté, égalité, fraternité et justice, ces vieilles idées révolutionnaires dont on s'est plu, à maintes reprises, à annoncer la fin. À lui seul, il représente le courage, celui d'affirmer et de défendre en tout temps ses idées, qui, en fait, ne sont pas si vieilles. Ce combat, c'est l'histoire de sa vie, celle d'un homme en tout temps minoritaire, d'un simple citoyen de l'opposition qui n'a jamais connu le pouvoir mais qui aura sans doute réussi à exercer, en plusieurs occasions, un véritable contre-pouvoir. On a dit de Michel Chartrand qu'il était excessif, colérique, enragé, mal engueulé, mais c'est aussi un incorruptible, un insoumis, un idéaliste, un perpétuel insurgé, un prophète. Dans cet ouvrage, qui n'a pas la prétention d'une vraie biographie, mais qui nous permet également de survoler les moments marquants de l'histoire du Québec et du mouvement ouvrier, Fernand Foisy, qui a interviewé une centaine de personnes, amis ou détracteurs, nous présente le portrait d'un homme engagé, passionné par la politique, amoureux des mots et de la vie, celui qui fut pendant plus de cinquante ans l'époux assidu d'une autre personne exemplaire, Simonne Monet. À lire et à relire ce portrait d'un homme à part et pourtant bien de son temps, il m'arrive de croire à cette utopie toujours dérangeante d'un partage juste et équitable des grandes richesses, malgré le nouvel ordre mondial qu'on tend à nous imposer violemment. --Résumé de l'éditeur

Focusing on the transition from the production of squared timber to that of milled lumber and, finally, wood pulp, Gaudreau traces the constant depletion of the resource and the companies' resulting, inexorable push westward from Quebec into Ontario - an economic migration that led to the establishment of significant francophone communities across northern Ontario. He shows how recent generations of Quebec historians have failed to provide adequate historical explanations because of an overly exclusive focus on Quebec. Gaudreau's work provides an important historiographic corrective, showing that the history of Quebec is part of a complex fabric that, like the forests themselves, does not recognize provincial boundaries. Detailed annual data on the volume of principal forest products produced from Crown lands in Quebec and Ontario during the second half of the nineteenth century compiled systematically for the first time form the backbone of this study. Based on these data Gaudreau describes and clarifies the timing, scale, and significance of transitions in forest outputs as spruce joined pine as the principal type of wood logged and as milled lumber and subsequently pulp wood joined, and eventually replaced, square timber as the key product. The book addresses the implications of resource depletion and the economic and historical changes in the forestry industry, including the transition from a commercial and artisanal process to an industrial process and the implications this had for colonization and migration. --Publisher's description

En 1999, la Fraternité des policiers et policières de Montréal célébrait son cinquantième anniversaire. Quelles sont les étapes qui ont marqué la vie de ce syndicat? --Résumé de l'éditeur

[T]his history is a major contribution in recording the tumultuous times and many sharp battles of the working class in British Columbia. --From introduction by Maurice Rush

This volume presents the inaugural issue and articles from The Woman Worker, the official newspaper of the Canadian Federation of Women's Labor Leagues, during its 1926 to 1929 run. Edited by prominent Communist Party of Canada leader Florence Custance, The Woman Worker's objective was to "champion the Protection of Womanhood, and the cause of the Workers generally." In this collection, Hobbs and Sangster have provided an introductory chapter examining the evolution The Woman Worker, its editor Florence Custance, the Communist-led Women's Labor Leagues, and, more generally, the socio-economic and political context of the mid to late 1920s. Each chapter includes an introduction and suggestions for further reading. Chapters include women and wage work, protective legislation, feminism and social reform, peace and war, women and the sex trade, marriage, the family and domestic labour, and the local Women's Labor Leagues at work. --Publisher's description

At the time of its publication in 1930, The Fur Trade in Canada challenged and inspired scholars, historians, and economists. Now, almost seventy years later, Harold Innis's fundamental reinterpretation of Canadian history continues to exert a magnetic influence. Innis has long been regarded as one of Canada's foremost historians, and in The Fur Trade in Canada he presents several histories in one: social history through the clash between colonial and aboriginal cultures; economic history in the development of the West as a result of Eastern colonial and European needs; and transportation history in the case of the displacement of the canoe by the York boat. Political history appears in Innis's examination of the nature of French-British rivalry and the American Revolution; and business history is represented in his detailed account of the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Companies and the industry that played so vital a role in the expansion of Canada. In his introduction to this new edition, Arthur J. Ray argues that The Fur Trade in Canada is the most definitive economic history and geography of the country ever produced. Innis's revolutionary conclusion - that Canada was created because of its geography, not in spite of it - is a captivating idea but also an enigmatic proposition in light of the powerful decentralizing forces that threaten the nation today. Ray presents the history of the book and concludes that "Innis's great book remains essential reading for the study of Canada. --Publisher's description. Includes bibliographical references (p. [421]-441) and index.

Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada was first published in 1990 by Oxford University Press as a collection of twelve original essays that provided a comprehensive overview of government policies and academic theories that affect the way race and ethnic relations are structured and interpreted in Canada. This second edition takes into account social changes and academic debates of the 1990s and updates materials and arguments in the original edition. The contributors, all leading Canadian sociologists and social scientists, discuss a wide range of topics, including theories of race and ethnicity, demographic trends, the 'vertical mosaic', immigration, multiculturalism, employment equity, policy on Native peoples, and language policy. The book is essential reading for understanding Canada's race and ethnic relations. --Publisher's description. Contents: Part 1: Introduction. Race and Ethnicity / Peter S. Li -- Demographic Overview of Ethnic Origin Groups in Canada / Madeline A. Kalbach, Warren E. Kalbach. Part 2: Race, Ethnicity, and the State. Immigration, Diversity, and Minority Communities / Morton Weinfeld and Lori A. Wilkinson -- State Policies and Practices as Racialized Discourse: Multiculturalism, the Charter, and Employment Equality / Frances Henry and Carol Tator -- Altered State: Federal Policy and Aboriginal Peoples / James Frideres -- The Multiculturalism Debate / Peter S. Li -- Language Policy in Canada / Wilfrid Denis. Part 3: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity. Revisiting the Vertical Mosaic: Occupational Stratification Among Canadian Ethnic Groups / Hugh Lautard and Neil Guppy -- Studies of Ethnic Identity, Ethnic Relations, and Citizenship / K. Victor Ujimoto -- Intergroup Competition in the Symbolic Construction of Canadian Society / Raymond Breton -- The Political Economy of Race and Ethnicity / Vic Satzewich -- Feminist Intersectional Theorizing / Daiva K. Stasiulis.

Was the Westray mining disaster a tragic accident or a corporate crime gone unpunished? In this book authors from backgrounds as diverse as engineering to public relations are brought together to create a holistic picture of what happened at Westray. From an analysis of the geology of the underlying coal seam to an assessment of the difficulties of pinning legal responsibility on the company, the government or any of the managers, this book constitutes one of the few case studies of corporate crime in Canada. The contributors offer the reader challenging new ways to think about workplace disasters and occupational injuries. Each contributor brings their special expertise to bear in a way that makes complicated issues transparent to the most general reader. At the same time, footnotes and references guide the reader who desires more extensive information. -- Publisher's description