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Brief obituary for Robert Kenney, who died in Toronto on Sept. 28, 1993 at age 88. A bibliophile with a longstanding commitment to Marxist philosophy, Kenney's collections of books, pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers, as well as the personal papers of A.E. Smith, were donated to the the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto. The Memorial University library has acquired 2,200 pamphlets in the English language representing an international spectrum of opinion include socialist, communist (the Canadian Communist Party is well-represented), trade unionist and anti-war. Saskatchewan labour collections assembled by the Saskatchewan provincial archives include union papers, strike files and secondary sources from the 1940s-1980s. The collection is named after Bob Hale, the former Canadian Labour Congress regional director for the Prairies. Takes note of forthcoming conferences and a newsletter on comparative industrial relations published at McMaster University.

The article reviews the book, "Mères et travailleuses. De l'exception à la règle," by Renée B. Dandurand and Francine Descarries.

The article reviews the book, "London in the Age of Industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions, 1700-1850," by L. D. Schwarz.

This essay attempts to explain why the Scots Canadians of Québec's upper St. Francis district protected the fugitive, Donald Morrison, against the full force of the law in 1888-89. It rejects the proposition that ethnic tensions were a major factor, arguing instead that Morrison conforms to Eric Hobsbawm's definition of a primitive rebel. With the railway undermining the local subsistence-oriented economy and encouraging families to migrate from the district, the Highland community was facing a survival crisis which it would ultimately lose. The Megantic Outlaw affair therefore represented a final defiant and largely symbolic stand on the part of a tightly-knit rural community succumbing to the forces of industrial capitalism.

Describes the collection of over 2,200 pamphlets as well as a number of books that was received from the University of Prince Edward Island Library in 1992, which in turn had been acquired as part of a purchase of the stock of the Blue Heron Bookstore in Toronto in 1970. The holdings include pamphlets by Tim Buck and other leading Canadian communists as well as a range of leftist literature from the US, UK, Soviet Union, and China. Other significant holdings of radical/left literature at the Queen Elizabeth II Library are also described. {Note: The pamphlet collection has since been digitized and may be searched at: https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/radical]

The article reviews the book, "Profit Sharing : Does it Make a Difference?," by Douglas L. Kruse.

The article reviews the book, "Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries," by Dianne Newell.

The article reviews the book, "Militant Workers: Labour and Class Conflict on the Clyde, 1900-1950," edited by Robert Duncan and Arthur McIvor.

The article reviews the book, "Emptying Their Nets: Small Capital and Rural Industrialization in the Nova Scotia Fishing Industry," by Richard Apostle and Gene Barrett.

The article reviews the book, "To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York," by Renqiu Yu.

In compliance with the Third Period "line" of the Communist International (Comintern), the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) launched The Workers' Unity League (WUL) as a centre of "revolutionary" or "red" unionism in December 1929. Until it was "liquidated" during the winter of 1935-6, the WUL had a significance in Canada's Depression labour struggles far outweighing its maximum membership of between 30,000 and 40,000; a significance, moreover, that has yet to be fully acknowledged or analysed. This article seeks to look beyond the conventional view that presents the CPC as a Comintern cipher and the WUL (when it is considered at all) as a "sectarian", "adventurist", "ultra-left" organisation with no real interest in building stable labour unions. While there is no doubt that the two most crucial decisions concerning the WUL — to create it and to liquidate it — were taken in Moscow, neither the Comintern nor the CPC leadership in Toronto was in a position to supervise the implementation of the Third Period line on the ground. Within the broad parameters of the line, local organisers tended to operate as "good trade unionists" rather than "good bolsheviks", using every available opportunity to modify and adapt tactics to local realities. They used their room for manoeuvre to considerable effect, especially during the economic and political upturn of 1933-34, when the WUL led a majority of all strikes and established union bases in a host of hitherto unorganised or weakly organised industries. At the height of its power, however, the WUL knew that it had barely dented the essential mass production industries — auto, steel, rubber, farm machinery. This fact, coupled with the experience of defeat in several key strikes,forced the party to reconsider the WUL's future. Whether the WUL could have survived as part of a national union centre remains open to question. Indisputably, the Comintern terminated that option in 1935.

The article reviews the book, "'Nations Are Built of Babies': Saving Ontario Mothers and Children 1900-1940," by Cynthia R. Comacchio.

The article reviews the book, "Les carnets de David Thomas : roman," by Andrée Dandurand.

Examines crown attorney prosecution files at the Archives of Ontario as primary source material on communism in Canada, union organizing, strike activity, state surveillance, the role of women and youth in left-wing politics and the labour movement, and gender and sexual relations in labour organizing. Discusses several court cases and reproduces a 1929 Communist Party leaflet used as evidence in charging four women with circulating seditious pamphlets. Concludes that the evidence in the files sheds light on the collective struggle for economic and social justice for working people.

The article reviews the book, "Culture, Gender, Race and U.S. Labor History," edited by Ronald C. Kent, Sara Markham, David R. Roediger, and Herbert Shapiro.

The article reviews the book, "From Liberal to Labour With Women's Suffrage: The Story of Catherine Marshall," by Jo Vellacott.

From the mid- to late 19th century, the small settler population in British Columbia formed relatively isolated and highly discrete communities. One of these settlements, on Burrard Inlet, is best understood as the operation of industrial capitalism in a frontier setting. While settlement clustered around two sawmills, the power of capital -- expressed through policies of managerial paternalism -- was sharply curtailed by the ethnically complex, relatively transient, geographically isolated, and generally unstable nature of lumber society. As a consequence, relations between the companies and the community were much more a negotiated process than a simple exercise of managerial domination. Lumber capitalists could not escape the constraints imposed upon them by the frontier nature of their operation.

The article reviews the book, "The system of industrial relations in Canada," 4th edition, by Alton W.J. Craig and Norman A. Solomon.

The article reviews the book, The Origins and Evolution of the Field of Industrial Relations in the United States, by Bruce E. Kaufman.

The article reviews the book, "The Social Origins of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica," by Nelson W. Keith and Novella Z. Keith.