Full bibliography

This article takes a historical event, which has made a strong impact on a working-class community, and shows how it has become part of the historical consciousness of that community, interpreted in accordance with its value system. The event is the death of two union organizers, Vilho Rosvall and John Voutilainen, in a Port Arthur lumber strike in 1929. The community is the national community of class-conscious Finnish working-class immigrants, organizationally connected by membership in the Finnish Organization of Canada, a left-wing cultural organization. The author reconstructs the event from available historical sources and proceeds to show how this community has viewed it, by reviewing both oral history records and published accounts in union papers and community publications. In looking for reasons why this event has remained significant for this particular community, both Old Country working-class traditions and the Canadian experience of Finnish pre-World War II immigrants has to be considered.