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Cape Breton, the site of major strikes during the 1920s, remained a hotbed of political radicalism and trade union militancy for many years. In the 1930s the Communist Party had considerable influence, and most of the coal miners joined the Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia, a CP-led breakaway from the United Mine Workers of America. Ideological opposition to the columnists was spearheaded by the Catholic-inspired Antigonish Co-operative Movement, but this did not prevent the communist leader, J. B. McLachlan, from getting substantial votes in elections. The change of communist policy to the "united front" weakened the party's influence, although communists and the officers of the re-united miners' union were able to help the Sydney steelworkers finally establish a union, and to successfully press the provincial government to pass the 1937 Trade Union Act. Left and right in Cape Breton were also able to work together during the 1937 provincial election. The unity line of the communists, along with the impact of the Antigonish movement on Catholic voters, prepared the way for the UMW affiliation to the CCF in 1938, and during the CCFers won the local seats in both the federal and provincial legislatures. However, the CCF could never win elections elsewhere in the Maritimes, and the move of CCF policies to the right in the post-war years only served to gradually undermine its support in Cape Breton. In the UMW the dissatisfaction of the miners with their bureaucratic officers brought about the 1941 slowdown, one of the most costly wartime industrial disputes, and productivity fell. The union policies advocated by the CCF (and the CP during the war), helped end opposition to the mechanization of the mines. Following defeat in the 1947 strike, the miners had to accept modernization on the company's terms, although this meant the loss of jobs. The steelworkers' union won a national strike in 1946, but thereafter was unable to hold wage rates for Sydney at a level equal to those paid in Ontario steel plants. The militancy and radicalism of the miners and steelworkers of earlier years had almost completely disappeared by 1950. Dramatic anti-communist episodes in both the steelworkers' and miners' unions in the 1949-50 period marked the triumph of union bureaucrats and Cold War politicians over radicalism in Cape Breton.

This thesis explains why in the 1940s, Winnipeg meat packing workers secured sustainable industrial unionism. By tracing the development of the Winnipeg meat packing industry and investigating previously unsuccessful organizational drives, it is suggested that success in the 1940s corresponded to three broad contributing factors. The most significant factor was changing local conditions. With the gradual introduction of mass production techniques to the Winnipeg meat packing industry beginning in the early 1920s, the reorganization of Winnipeg packinghouse work occurred. The large scale introduction of semi-skilled workers changed the face of meat packing, as packinghouse work became deskilled without any significant degree of automation. During this period, craft unionism in the meat packing industry failed on a national pattern. This failure coincided with the 1930s experiment in industrial unionisn by Winnipeg workers'at Western Packers workers. Western Packing's workers' introduction to industrial unionism also provided the successful 1940s drive with links to the Communist Party. An overall strengthening in North America of the labour movement beginning in the 1930s provided the second broad contributing factor to success in the 1940s. With the birth of the CIO in the United States and Canada, Winnipeg meat packing workers gained at the very minimum inspiration. The impact of Wor1d War II accounted for the final contributing factor for success in the 1940s. With a wartime demand creating full employment and the governmentts desire to maintain production, organized labour found itself in a position of unparalleled power. In combination, a spirit of militancy arose among Canada's labour movement. From these conditions, meat packing workers in Winnipeg chose and pursued industrial unionism with great success. By the end of World war II, workers in Winnipeg possessed an effective union organization and had won union shops and wage increases. Ultimately however, the union's national success created a centralized, bureaucratic union movement which consequently provided a loss of local autonomy.

Transition houses are small feminist organizations, providing emergency shelter to women and children who have been abused. They also are workplaces whose social organization divides women as managers and workers. This research, an institutional ethnographic case-study of nine transition houses in one Canadian province, examines how relations between the state and transition house have led to greater institutional power and control over transition house work, by women who are paid managers. This results in a reconstituted struggle for equality between women inside these settings. Mangerialism in the Canadian transition house movement has not been theorized.The argument advanced here is that conflict between workers and managers in transition houses is an inevitable outcome of the on-going struggle to develop feminist praxis within contradictory relations, shaped and influenced by transition house/state relations, dominant managerial discourses, and the exigencies of transition house work. In an attempt to resist and to limit managerial power and control over the labour process and over feminist praxis, transition house workers look for ways to develop their own collective power. Unionization as a vehicle for collective action is an obvious choice and it is one that transition house workers are pursuing.

This study examines the critical years in which the Canadian industrial relations system assumed many of its lasting characteristics. Specifically, it explores the actions of management, unions, and the federal state under the exceptional conditions of the wartime "command economy" and later, with the transition back to a peacetime footing. Frustrated with the inadequacy of existing collective bargaining legislation, and sensing that this period signalled a realignment in the labour-capital relationship, Canadian workers took advantage of special wartime conditions to press home their demands for basic workplace rights framed by a more equitable labour code. The result of this campaign was the establishment of a new legal framework which defined the respective roles for all three groups over the next thirty years. Of particular importance is an investigation of the ambivalent legacy achieved by the Canadian labour movement with its pursuit of the essential rights of free association and collective bargaining. Building on the intense workplace struggles of the war years, labour pushed federal authorities to support mandatory collective bargaining, compulsory wage deductions of union dues, finally entrenching these reforms under the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act (1948).

Drawing on the manuscript records of the Department of Crown Lands, its published reports, and case law, this thesis examines the illegal occupation of rural land, known as squatting in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the period 1838 to 1866. By 1838, demographic pressure in the seigneuries, inflated land prices due to speculation, and inaccessible public land granting practices had made squatting a commonplace strategy for land acquisition. The responses to squatting of the Department of Crown Lands, the Legislature and the judiciary are analysed for what they implied about ideas of property in Lower Canada. While the Department of Crown Lands' policy of pre-emption affirmed that squatters held rights to public land because they laboured to cultivate and improve it, the legislature refused to acknowledge that squatters could acquire such rights on private land; nine out of ten bills intended to ensure ejected squatters a systematically determined remuneration for improvements made by them on the private property of absentees failed to pass into law during the period. Most were rejected by the Legislative Council which defended the interests of landed wealth. Lower Canadian courts, meanwhile, struggled to sort out laws relating to squatting. Ultimately they found that while squatters on private property owned their improvements, they had no right to the land itself. Thus the judiciary applied a bifurcated concept of property to rural land in Lower Canada despite the prevalence of liberal theories of absolute property rights during the nineteenth century.