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Dave Bidini, rhythm guitarist with the Rheostatics, knows all too well what the life of a rock band in Canada involves: storied arenas one tour and bars wallpapered with photos of forgotten bands the next. Zit-speckled fans begging for a guitar pick and angry drunks chucking twenty-sixers and pint glasses. Opulent tour buses riding through apocalyptic snowstorms and cramped vans that reek of dope and beer. Brilliant performances and heart-sinking break-ups. Bidini has played all across the country many times, in venues as far flung and unalike as Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto and the Royal Albert Hotel in Winnipeg. In 1996, when the Rheostatics opened for the Tragically Hip on their Trouble at the Henhouse tour, Bindini kept a diary. In On a Cold Road he weaves his colourful tales about that tour with revealing and hilarious anecdotes from the pioneers of Canadian rock - including BTO, Goddo, the Stampeders, Max Webster, Crowbar, the Guess Who, Triumph, Trooper, Bruce Cockburn, Gale Garnett, and Tommy Chong - whom Bindini later interviewed in an effort to compare their experiences with his. The result is an original, vivid, and unforgettable picture of what is has meant, for the last forty years, to be a rock musician in Canada. --Publisher's description

The outspoken leader of the Canadian Auto Workers Union now offers his passionate perspective in Labour of Love: The Fight to Create a More Humane Canada. Buzz Hargrove offers his reasons for his strong belief in unions, a scathing critique of Bob Rae's NDP and the Tories' "Common Sense Revolution," and an insightful analysis of Canada. Hargrove believes that "Days of Action" protests are vital in a society whose governments are threatening to unravel the already suffering Canadian social programs. Political and labour junkies will be riveted by Hargrove's unflinching look at the conservative policies that could destroy a country he loves. --Publisher's description

When The Vertical Mosaic first appeared in 1965, it became an instant classic. Its key message was that Canada was not the classless democracy it fancied itself to be. In fact, Canada was a highly inegalitarian society comprising a 'vertical mosaic' of distinct classes and ethnic groups. This collection of papers by five of Canada's top sociologists subjects John Porter's landmark study to renewed scrutiny and traces the dramatic changes since Porter's time - both in Canadian society and in the agenda of Canadian sociology. Based on papers written for a conference held in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of The Vertical Mosaic's publication, the five essays revisit the central themes of the original work, including gender and race inequality; citizenship and social justice; and class, power, and ethnicity from the viewpoint of political economy. An introduction by the editors provides a historical biography of Porter and discusses his influence on Canadian sociology. --Publisher's description. Contents: Power, ethnicity, and class: Reflections thirty years after The vertical mosaic / Wallace Clement -- Ethnicity and race in social organization: Recent developments in Canadian society / Raymond Breton -- Missing women: A feminist perspective on The vertical mosaic / Pat Armstrong -- Three decades of elite research in Canada: John Porter's unfulfilled legacy / Michael Ornstein -- Social justice, social citizenship, and the welfare state, 1965-1995: Canada comparative context / Julia S. O'Connor.

Canadians often consider the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 to be the defining event in working-class history after the First World War. This book, the collaboration of nine labour historians, shows that the unrest was both more diverse and more widespread across the country than is generally believed. The authors clarify what happened in working-class Canada at the end of the war and situate 'the workers' revolt' within the larger structure of Canadian social, economic, and political history. They argue that, despite a national pattern, the upsurge of protest took a different course and faced a different set of obstacles in each region of the country. Their essays shed light on the extent of the revolt nationally while retaining a sensitivity to regional distinctiveness. --Publisher's description. Contents: The Great War, the state, and working-class Canada / Craig Heron and Myer Siemiatycki -- The Maritimes: expanding the circle of resistance / Ian McKay and Suzanne Morton -- Quebec: class and ethnicity / Geoffrey Ewen -- Southern Ontario: striking at the ballot box / James Naylor -- The prairies: in the eye of the storm / Tom Mitchell and James Naylor -- British Columbia and the mining west: a ghost of a chance / Allen Seager and David Roth -- National contours: solidarity and fragmentation / Craig Heron.

A comprehensive study of the nursing profession using data collected from over 1600 surveys. This is the first and only comprehensive labour market study of the largest group of nursing professionals in any one province in Canada. It explores the career paths of more than 1600 registered nurses and registered practical nurses, using survey data collected in 1992-1993, just as these front line caregivers faced the sea change wrought by governmental restructuring in Ontario hospitals. A "snapshot" of key labour force and market issues in the nursing field, the study provides important baseline data from which the impact of present and future public policy trends and changes can be monitored, reviewed, and researched. The dimensions studied here include recent demographic shifts, the various forms of employment mobility, levels of voluntarism, career interruption, and nurses' reasons for leaving the field. Each line of inquiry raises pressing questions about the professional lives of those who work most directly and dynamically with patients but whose careers are being altered, perhaps detrimentally, by reorganization in the Canadian health care system. --Publisher's description

This collection brings together a wide array of writings on Canadian immigrant history, including many highly regarded, influential essays. Though most of the chapters have been previously published, the editors have also commissioned original contributions on understudied topics in the field. The readings highlight the social history of immigrants, their pre-migration traditions as well as migration strategies and Canadian experiences, their work and family worlds, and their political, cultural, and community lives. They explore the public display of ethno-religious rituals, race riots, and union protests; the quasi-private worlds of all-male boarding-houses and of female domestics toiling in isolated workplaces; and the intrusive power that government and even well-intentioned social reformers have wielded over immigrants deemed dangerous or otherwise in need of supervision.Organized partly chronologically and largely by theme, the topical sections will offer students a glimpse into Canada's complex immigrant past. In order to facilitate classroom discussion, each section contains an introduction that contextualizes the readings and raises some questions for debate. A Nation of Immigrants will be useful both in specialized courses in Canadian immigration history and in courses on broader themes in Canadian history. --Publisher's description. Contents: The Irish in nineteenth-century Canada: class, culture, and conflict -- American Blacks in nineteenth-century Ontario: challenging the stereotypes -- Settling the Canadian West: the 'exotic' continentals -- 'Women's work': paid labour, community-building, and protest -- Men without women: 'bachelor' workers and gendered identities -- Demanding rights, organizing for change: militants and radicals -- Encountering the 'other': society and state responses, 1900s-1930s -- Regulating minorities in 'hot' and 'cold' war contexts, 1939-1960s.

[This book] re-creates the experiences of Canadian women on the left in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a crucial period when women became more prominent in the work force, in labour unions, and in politics, where they fought for, and ultimately won, the vote. The book examines discourse on women's work and on attempts to regulate it; labour activism, including formal membership in unions and parties as well as women's auxiliaries and organizations such as the Women's Labor League; and women's militancy during the First World War and the troubled postwar period. The author argues that while women helped mount an opposition to the inequalities inherent in industrial capitalism, they also had to struggle to move beyond the supporting role they were forced to play in the very movements to which they belonged. Kealey explores what the left thought about women's participation in politics and in left-wing organizations across the country, and also looks at the nature of that participation itself. The scope of her book puts it in the forefront of its field. --Publisher's description. Contents: Only a Working Girl': Women's Work and Regulation, 1890-1914 -- Gender Divisions: Women in Labour Organizations, 1890-1914 -- 'A Socialist Movement Which Does Not Attract the Women Cannot Live': Women in the Early Socialist Movement -- 'Full of the Spirit of Revolt': Women in the Socialist Party of Canada and the Social Democratic Party --  'Wanted -- Women to Take the Place of Men': Organizing Working Women in the Era of War and Reconstruction -- 'This Crimson Storm of War': Women, War, and Socialism -- 'No Special Protections...No Sympathy': Postwar Militancy and Labour Politics.

A comprehensive overview of women's place in the work force. A Female Economy analyses a hundred years of women's work in Manitoba from the province's entry into Confederation in 1870 to the publication of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970. Mary Kinnear shows that, whether women were working in the household or on a farm for no direct monetary reward or working for wages in the industrial, service, and professional sectors, their work was undervalued. Kinnear details how ordinary women - including early pioneers, East European immigrants, Native women, and professional women - lived and what they thought of the world of work, often telling their stories in their own words. She highlights the cultural and economic expectations for women and juxtaposes the activities society deemed suitable for women with what they actually did. Kinnear argues that a host of factors, such as class and ethnicity, differentiated their choices but that these women shared many common experiences. While women's own views furnish the main theme, A Female Economy contributes to a developing debate in feminist economics. By focusing on women's experiences in the sexually segregated economy of a Canadian province at the geographic centre of Canada, Kinnear furnishes a paradigm for women's economic activity in most western industrializing societies at the time. --Publisher's description

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