Your search

The article reviews the book, "Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State," by Eric D. Weitz.

Created in January 1942 to supply war materials to the Canadian military, the Port Alberni, British Columbia, plywood mill was a haven for women mill workers. Many of the women who worked at Alberni Plywoods moved to the Vancouver Island town from Canada's economically depressed Prairie Provinces. Although women comprised four-fifths of the mill's work force by January 1943, women were largely excluded from the skilled positions at the plant. A gender-based hierarchy remained in place throughout the war, with men in the supervisory and high-skill roles, and women concentrated in unskilled positions. After the war, the mill did not expel its female workforce, but it hired only males.

The article reviews the book, "Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942," by Ellen Graff.

The Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Center has published a Workers' City Kit that describes three walking tours of significant labor history sites in Hamilton, Ontario. Historians used a vast array of local sources to create the walking tours. The first tour, "Downtown Hamilton," explores the city's late-19th-century industrial sites. The second, "Hamilton's East End," features the city's Stelco, Westinghouse, and International Harvester plants. The third, "Hamilton's North End," showcases the residential neighborhoods populated by Hamilton's industrial workers.

The article reviews the book, "Éducation et travail en Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne et Italie," edited by Annette Jobert, Catherine Marry, and Lucie Tanguy.

Cet article examine la migration et Γ intégration socio-économique des Canadiens français dans la vallée forestière de la Saginaw, au Michigan, entre 1840 et 1900. Les principales conclusions révèlent que les Canadiens français ont contribué de façon marquée à toutes les étapes du développement socio-économique de la vallée. Si plusieurs migrants se sont dirigés directement vers le Michigan, d'autre sont d'abord amorcé leur migration vers les centres forestiers du nord-est pour ensuite poursuivre leur migration en suivant le déplacement de la frontière forestière vers le Midwest. Leur «culture de mouvement,» conjuguée à une longue expérience de travail sur le continent dans le domaine forestier, a fait en sorte que le Michigan est apparu comme une destination toute naturelle dans l'esprit des Canadiens français à la recherche de meilleures conditions de vie.

From 1945 to 1960 Canada began to move into what has been called “the age of rights.” At the end of the Second World War the nation paid lip service to “British liberties,” but both the state and private individuals frequently violated the libertarian rights of political radicals as well as the egalitarian rights of certain unpopular ethnic and religious minorities. By 1960 a discourse of human rights had largely replaced the British liberties approach, and the country enjoyed a far higher level of respect for minority rights, in part because of a number of legal changes—Supreme Court decisions, anti-discrimination legislation, and a Bill of Rights. This dissertation examines this shift, focussing upon the activities of members of the Canadian “human rights policy community.” Relying largely upon primary resources, it presents a number of case studies, demonstrating how human rights activists dealt with the deportation of Japanese Canadians, the Gouzenko Affair, the problem of discriminatory restrictive covenants, the Cold War, the need for an effective fair accommodation law in Ontario in general and the town of Dresden in particular, and the struggle for a bill of rights. In presenting these case studies, this dissertation also focusses upon the activities of a number of key interest groups within the human rights community: the coalition known as the Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Jewish Labour Committee, and a number of civil liberties organizations (especially the liberal Civil Liberties Association of Toronto and the communist Civil Rights Union). Attention is paid to the reasons for their successes and failures; within the general context of economic, social, and cultural changes, special attention is paid to the way in which these interest groups made their own history, using their own history, using the resources available to them.

The article reviews the book, "Histoire de la Côte Nord," edited by Pierre Frénette.

This dissertation examines the seasonal round of St Lucian contract workers who travel to Ontario every year for temporary employment in the Foreign Agricultural Resources Management Service program (FARMS). The study's focus is divided among Ontario growers as employers, St Lucian agricultural workers as employees, residents of a rural town in Southwestern Ontario, and governmental departments that influence the FARMS program in Canada and in St Lucia. The main argument of the dissertation is that labour migration has been an integral part of St Lucian history since emancipation on the island. It is both an economic strategy and a symbol of the freedom emancipation promised. While factors external to the island, such as the need for agricultural labour in Ontario and a long history of connections between Canada and the British West Indies influence where St Lucians travel, the propensity of these men and women to leave the island and return can only be explained in terms of St Lucia's history as a British colony. Within this history, labour migration emerges in conjunction with other strategies of enduring yet resisting the plantation economy that characterized the island for centuries. Although "workin' on the contract" in Canada is used by St Lucians for individual social and economic goals, it derives its meaning from the shared cultural beliefs and values of the island's society.

The article reviews the book, "Histoire de la Coopérative fédérée de Québec. L'industrie de la terre," by Jacques Saint-Pierre.

The recent "renaissance" of industrial homework is attributed to the search for flexible labour in processes of economic restructuring. This paper argues that common-sense ideas about the meaning of work in western capitalist society underpin the use of industrial homework as a flexible strategy for economic efficiency in the context of corporate and state restructuring of the economy. Drawing on an ethnographic study of homework in Southern Ontario, the paper discusses some of the ways in which the meaning of work is ambiguous, situationally specific and continuously redefined in the homework context. It is argued that this is possible because of the awkward location of the homework labour process, occupying as it does space and time usually associated with home and family.

This paper examines the life of Robert Raglan Gosden, 1882-1961. Gosden was an unskilled worker who joined the Industrial Workers of the World and advocated violent revolution. He took part in the Vancouver Island mining strikes of 1912-1914, and was a key player in the 1916 provincial election scandal. By 1919, however, he was an informant for the RCMP. The paper outlines Gosden's career and analyzes the complex way his class experience shaped his construction of masculinity as well as his radical politics and his later activity as a labour spy.

Patrick Lenihan displayed rare courage and unwavering commitment to social justice, from his childhood in revolutionary Ireland through his leading role in the Communist Party of Canada to the formation of the first national union of public employees. Patrick Lenihan: From Irish Rebel to Founder of Canadian Public Sector Unionism chronicles a lifetime of rebellion, protest, and organizing, aganist the backdrop of the major economic, social, and political struggles of this century. Lenihan was constantly watched, repeatedly arrested, and often imprisoned, but he emerged time and again as a leader in the cause of the downtrodden, the working poor, and the unemployed. The On-to-Ottawa Trek, the work camps of the 1930's, the radicalism of the western mine towns, the Cold War -- Pat Lenihan was involved in it all, front and center. Drawn from interviews conducted by Gilbert Levine and written in an unadorned, engaging style, Patrick Lenihan is far more than the story of Canada's most infuential and colorful figures. It makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of western radicalism, Canadian communism, state repression union organizing, and the daily struggles which have shaped 20th-century Canada. --Publisher's description

Pays tribute to the life and work of Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson—a prominent and influential Marxist historian who was also a member of the Communist Party. A photo of Ryerson is included.

The article reviews the book, "The Death of Uncle Joe," by Alison Macleod.

The article reviews the book, "Men at work: Labourers and building craftsmen in the towns of northern England, 1450-1750," by Dbnald Woodward.

The article reviews the book, "The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island, 1864-1867: Leasehold Tenure in the New World," by Ian Ross Robertson.

The article reviews the book, "The Ideology of the Socialist Party of America, 1901-1917," by Anthony V. Esposito.

Compilation of recent English/French publications on Canadian labour history that emphasize the period 1800-1975. Materials pertaining to the post-1975 period may also be included, although more selectively. [See the database, Canadian Labour History, 1976-2009, published at Memorial University of Newfoundland.]

The article reviews the book, "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies," by Dennis Dworkin.