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Child and Youth Work is an emotionally demanding profession with an extremely high burnout rate. Previous research has shown that there are a variety of factors that contribute to high rates of burnout within this profession. This thesis begins by exploring topics related to stress, burnout, emotional labour and vicarious trauma, providing a context to understand the inherent issues and challenges faced by workers in this field. The prevailing beliefs and values underlying neoliberal policies resulting in funding restrictions within the social services are then considered in relation to the impact of these policies on experienced levels of worker stress and burnout with the residential care field. Lastly, this thesis looks at the introduction of new organizational methods, specifically Total Quality Management and New Public Management, as strategies implemented by agencies to cope with funding limitations, and the resulting impact on levels of stress and burnout of front line residential child care workers. In addition to the three key areas of focus, the role and impact of unions within residential treatment settings is considered as a potential avenue for positive change within these workplaces.

In several parts of the world, the number of poor people in rural areas surpasses the capacity of agriculture to provide employment opportunities. The increasing role of off-farm income has highlighted the importance of rural migration, both within Mexico and to the United States (US) and Canada, as a vehicle for poverty reduction. A significant number of Mexican migrants are participating in guest worker programs, performing mainly agricultural activities. These programs allow Mexicans to enter the US and Canada through formal channels. Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers' Program (CSAWP) lets Mexican farmers enter Canada to work legally in agriculture, and participants in this Program send remittances home that are an important contribution to rural development. The main reasons to participate in guest worker programs relate to economic factors, such as the opportunity to earn a relatively high, stable income abroad and the lack of employment opportunities in Mexico, particularly in rural areas. The number of Mexican agricultural workers temporally migrating to Canada through CSAWP has increased significantly over time and now exceeds 12,000 annually. In Mexico, the program provides an estimated C$70 million in remittance income annually, mainly directed to rural and poorer regions. In these regions, this fungible income supports consumption activities and expenditures on family education. However, there are also investments in farming activities, in turn enhancing agrarian incomes. This research explores the impact of remittances on farm investments by migrant workers participating in CSAWP, which in turn impact farm income levels. The results highlight the extent to which temporary migrant labour to Canadian agriculture allows Mexican farmers to enhance their agricultural activities through increased farm investments, such as buying better seeds, fertilizer and farm equipment. The results show that, on the one hand, remittances can significantly enhance farm investments in Mexico that in turn increase farm incomes and, on the other, remittances increase non-farm incomes in Mexico, allowing farm migrants to expand their income portfolio. Hence, these results support the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) hypothesis that remittances relax the liquidity constraint in production/investment decisions. Furthermore, family labour availability counterbalances any temporary labour loss because of migration.

Social benchmarking is an evaluation method in which the performance levels of different public social programs are compared, either relatively to each other or to an absolute value. The first part of this research discusses the use of social benchmarking for the evaluation of active labour market policies. This part also develops a social benchmark model, which can be used to assess the performance of active labour market policies in general, and work-based employment programs in specific. The second part of this research consists of the actual benchmarking of the work-based employment programs in five countries: Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Le groupe des jeunes voyageurs combinant le travail dans leur expérience de voyage constitue le segment du marché touristique mondial qui enregistre la croissance la plus importante cette dernière décennie. Certaines économies régionales dépendent de cette force de travail temporaire. C'est le cas de l'industrie agricole des vallées de l'Okanagan-Similkameen et de Creston en Colombie-Britannique qui accueille annuellement des milliers de migrant fruit pickers provenant majoritairement du Québec. Ce mémoire porte sur le quotidien de ces jeunes québécois et s'attarde à comprendre le sens qu'ils accordent à leurs projets de mobilité. Sur la base d'entretiens, je dégage l'imaginaire commun, les mythes, les idéaux et les représentations qui ont incité les jeunes à partir: Les résultats indiquent que ces jeunes inscrivent leur mouvement dans une double logique de quête et de fuite et que le sens attribué à l'expérience de vacances-travail diffère entre les nouveaux arrivants et ceux qui reviennent d'année en année.

For many years Canada has quietly rationalized importing temporary "low-skilled" migrant labour through managed migration programs to appease industries desiring cheap and flexible labour while avoiding extending citizenship rights to the workers. In an era of international human rights and global competitive markets, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) is often hailed as a "model" and "win-win" solution to migration and labour dilemmas, providing employers with a healthy, just-intime labour force and workers with various protections such as local labour standards, health care, and compensation. Tracing migrant workers' lives between Jamaica, Mexico and Canada (with a focus on Ontario's Niagara Region), this thesis assesses how their structural vulnerability as non-citizens effectively excludes them from many of the rights and norms otherwise expected in Canada. It analyzes how these exclusions are rationalized as permanent "exceptions" to the normal legal, social and political order, and how these infringements affect workers' lives, rights, and health. Employing critical medical anthropology, workers' health concerns are used as a lens through which to understand and explore the deeper "pathologies of power" and moral contradictions which underlie this system. Particular areas of focus include workers' occupational, sexual and reproductive, and mental and emotional health, as well as an assessment of their access to health care and compensation in Canada, Mexico and Jamaica. Working amidst perilous and demanding conditions, in communities where they remain socially and politically excluded, migrant workers in practice remain largely unprotected and their entitlements hard to secure, an enduring indictment of their exclusion from Canada's "imagined community." Yet the dynamics of this equation may be changing in light of the recent rise in social and political movements, in which citizenship and related rights have become subject to contestation and redefinition. In analyzing the various dynamics which underlie transnational migration, limit or extend migrants' rights, and influence the health of migrants across borders, this thesis explores crucial relationships between these themes. Further work is needed to measure these ongoing changes, and to address the myriad health concerns of migrants as they live and work across national borders.

This study applies an IPE approach to examine the economic conditions, motivations and interests which have driven the Canadian government and two sending countries, Mexico and the Philippines, to accept the terms and conditions of a regulatory framework encouraging short-term labour migration between them. The features of program development which underpin the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) have not been compared side by side. Nor have the two programs been compared for the relationship that has developed over the years between the Canadian government and the two sending governments of Mexico and the Philippines. The study's core research question asks how the process of regulating cross-border labour migration works and how it is coordinated between two or more governments that form part of a migration system. An important research finding that emerges from the comparison is the categorization of different types of migration systems. I argue that the SAWP and LCP differ in how they are administered because relations between the various actors differ. Furthermore, what defines these relationships is the set of geopolitical and economic interests that each government carries when it negotiates the regulation of cross-border labour migration. Findings suggest that the geopolitical and economic imperative which has driven the SAWP's development is not the same for the LCP.

New Brunswick nursing history is a little-known but significant story, and it helps us to understand women's paid work and how women organized to protect their interests in this occupation. While the profession's history demonstrates the importance of professional ideals, the New Brunswick, case also illuminates the struggle between these ideals and nurses' growing sense of dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions. In the mid-1960s in New Brunswick as elsewhere in Canada, nurses began to explore collective bargaining as a solution to poor wages and conditions and as a means to express concern for deteriorating patient care. This study examines the early stages of unionization among New Brunswick hospital nurses in 1965-1969. The evidence for this study is drawn from archival collections, interviews, newspapers, journals and secondary sources. Particular emphasis is placed on the pioneering efforts of the Social and Economic Welfare Committee (SEWC) of the New Brunswick Association of Registered Nurses (NBARN) and their efforts to educate members, lobby government, obtain outside expert advice and generally guide nurses towards a sense of collective identity that fostered a willingness to take collective action. By the end of the decade, nurses were included in a new Public Service Labour Relations Act, an outcome of the Royal Commission on Employer-Employee Relations in the Public Services (known as the Frankel Commission) which, among other features, greatly expanded the civil service and consequently the number of government employees with collective bargaining rights. Despite the fact that the new PSLRA had not yet been proclaimed, nurses in mid-1969 negotiated their first (if unofficial) collective agreement using the tactic of mass resignation to force a settlement. This thesis places the NBARN's early explorations of collective bargaining in the context of the political, economic and labour landscape of the 1960s.

This thesis explores the emergence and initial evolution of the British Columbia Nurses Union from 1976 to 1992. The thesis argues that class and gender framed interrelated processes of organizational change, labour action, and political consciousness for British Columbia’s nurses. These changes took place in the context of a historical struggle between professionalism and trade unionism in nursing, and during a turbulent and transformative era for western capitalism and the role of the capitalist state in the 1970s and 1980s. This thesis argues that class, as a socioeconomic relationship and as lived experience, was the driving force behind organizational, economic, and political change in the nursing occupation. This central assertion stands in sharp contrast to claims that class has ceased to be of socioeconomic or political importance in postindustrial, capitalist society.

This study traces the efforts of British Columbia teachers as they endeavour to have increasing input into the educational policies of the Department of Education. It is grounded in a study of primary archival records and written in the form of an historical narrative. Primarily, I focus on the English Teachers' Association in B.C.: I trace its growth as a professional organization and follow its increasingly strident attempts to address the growing professional interests of English/Language Arts teachers in response to government policies, especially those affecting curriculum. Three main interrelated themes permeate the study: the professionalization of B.C. English/Language Arts teachers, the growth in the political power of teacher associations in B.C., and the effects of the B.C. government's changing educational policies in English/Language Arts classrooms. My study follows the English teachers' association from its beginning in 1959 when it was known as S.A.T.E., the Secondary Association of Teachers of English; during the years of 1971-1994 when it was called B.C.E.T.A. , the British Columbia English Teachers' Association; to its later years as B.C.T.E.L.A., the British Columbia Teachers of Engli sh Language Arts. The study reveals that as the decades pass, the association becomes increasingly persistent in its efforts not only to further the professional interests of English teachers but al so to provide input to the government on curricular decisions affecting Engli sh/Language Arts classrooms. It al so becomes increasingly persistent in its dealings with the government as their philosophies of education become more diverse.

This thesis examines the Service, Office, and Retail Workers' Union of Canada (SORWUC), an independent, grassroots, socialist feminist union that organized unorganized workers in Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. It looks at SORWUC's role in Canadian labour history in general, and its efforts to organize unorganized workers in particular, focusing on SORWUC's efforts to organize workers at a pub and a restaurant in British Columbia. The central thesis of this work is that SORWUC's socialist feminist unionism and commitment to organizing unorganized workers positioned the union as radically different from much of the 1970s Canadian labour movement, and that this difference both helped and hindered the union in its efforts to organize the unorganized. By examining SORWUC from this neglected perspective, this thesis ultimately aims to demonstrate SORWUC's importance to the historiography of class and labour organizing in Canada.

During the interwar years, friends Annie Buller and Beckie Buhay established careers with the Communist Party of Canada and forged a uniquely Communist militant femininity that led to their eventual canonization by the Party as ideal comrades. Using a biographical approach to women’s working-class history, this thesis examines these women’s significant contributions to the CPC’s political project as gendered work. It also demonstrates that although their representation of themselves as comrades was organized around their understanding of themselves as workers, it was shaped too by particularities of ethnicity, gender, and other factors that were all subsumed in the Party’s egalitarian rhetoric. Additionally, in exploring how their lifelong friendship supported their construction of Communist militant femininity, and thus enabled their work, this thesis contributes to a developing historiography of friendship that focusses on its work rather than its nature, and that is inclusive of the friendships of working-class women.

Changes to the global economy over the past few decades along with growing support for neo-liberal policies in Canada have led to an increase in precarious, low-wage frontline service work. These kinds of occupations often involve sustained interaction with clients and have high job demands, low job control and insufficient monetary reward. Further, many of these jobs also tend to be gendered (i.e., they involve a large degree of ‘emotional’ labour or care work that is predominantly carried out by female workers). Working conditions such as these can have a negative impact on the mental health of frontline service workers leading to psychological distress and depression. Chronic stress or cumulative stressful life events can also increase vulnerability to depression. While these stressors can be exacerbated by poor working conditions, they can also exist independently of them. Comparative research across two or more frontline service occupations, similar in broad strokes but differing in workplace characteristics, is especially needed to understand how structural and contextual factors in the workplace and over the life course interact to produce depression. This thesis presents data from my supervisor (Dr. Cecilia Benoit) and colleagues’ 4-wave longitudinal study entitled “Interactive service workers’ occupational health and safety and access to health services” (Benoit, Jansson, Leadbeater & McCarthy, 2005). This is a study of three types of frontline service jobs – two in the formal economy (hairstyling and food and beverage service) and one in the shadow/informal economy (sex industry). Results of this secondary analysis demonstrate that not only do working conditions have a significant impact on the mental health of frontline service workers but that stressful life events also have very strong explanatory power in understanding why certain workers experience depression more than others. The findings indicate that sex workers have the highest levels of depression, in comparison to stylists and servers. Yet sex workers report protective factors in their jobs, including higher comparative decision latitude, that contradict much of the current literature on sex work. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations and gives direction for further research in the area of frontline service work and depression.

The private English language training industry in Canada has grown rapidly in recent years. While subject to influences of market competition, ESL schools have had little educational or labour regulation. This study presents life history interviews with four teachers who became involved in forming unions at their workplaces because of their experiences with just labour practices. The findings show that teachers sought union protection to deal with a pervasive sense of insecurity in their jobs. Through unions, they established clearer processes for dealing with such issues as the allocation of work and the resolution of grievances, a forum for communicating concerns to management, and a peer support structure. Additionally, these teachers have gained significant increases in salary and benefits. These narratives also show teachers, both individually and collectively, engaging in resistance as they confront the daily infringement of business priorities on their capacities to develop and practice as educators.

This thesis addresses the topic of electronic employee monitoring in non-unionized workplaces in Canada. Electronic employee monitoring is defined as including (1) the use of electronic devices to review and evaluate employees’ performance; (2) ‘electronic surveillance’; and (3) employers’ use of computer forensics. Detailed consideration is given to a variety of technologies, including computer, internet and e-mail monitoring, location awareness technologies (such as global positioning systems and radio frequency identification), as well as biometrics, and the developing case law surrounding these innovations. Analogies are drawn to the jurisprudence developing with respect to unionized workplaces and under statutory unjust dismissal regimes. This analysis leads to the conclusion that legislative reform is necessary, either through (1) the creation of parallel private sector privacy regimes, such as those in British Columbia and Alberta, mirroring existing federal legislation; (2) amendments to existing employment standards legislation; or (3) the enactment of a stand-alone surveillance statute.

The 1880s were turbulent years in the Dominion. Under the auspices of the National Policy, Canada was in the midst of a social and political ‘transformation.’ The social and cultural aspects of this transformation became a source of public debate as the ‘Labour Question’ and the relations between labour and capital reached a high mark of political and economic significance. Waves of strikes and the emergence of large international labour organizations challenged many liberal Victorian ideas about a strictly limited state. Many looked upon the federal government as responsible not only for economic growth, but also for protection from the more pressing problems of industrial life. The Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour is a testament to not only the turbulent economic relations in late-Victorian Canada, but the emergence of the Canadian state’s active role in social relations. Its very title envisioned a dual role for the Canadian state: to “promote the material, social, intellectual and moral prosperity” of labouring men and women, and to improve and develop “the productive industries of the Dominion so as to advance and improve the trade and commerce of Canada.” However, this thesis argues that the Labour Commission was more subtly designed to enhance the prestige of the Canadian state and install Ottawa as an authority on, and mediator of, industrial relations in Canada. Attention to the formation, activities, and impact of the Labour Commission suggests that, rather than an exercise in addressing a mounting social polarization between “labour” and “capital,” the Commission lends insight into the emergence of a Canadian middle class. It was a carefully-constructed exercise in the assertion of middle-class cultural hegemony whereby such values and understandings as respectability, morality, manliness, worth and expertise were naturalized. In the process, the tension between labour and capital was diminished and in its place were developed visions of social reciprocity and mutual interest. It is in this way that the Labour Commission was an exercise in ‘commissioning consent:’ it placed oppositional voices and wrenching exposés about industrial life in a framework that worked to quell rather than stimulate far-reaching critiques of the established order. The Commission’s formation, methodology and language functioned like an industrial exhibition rather than a pointed social investigation. The evidence presents a thriving economy that had grown exponentially under a wise and paternal government. It also presented a vision of the Dominion whereby the disturbances that occurred between labour and capital could be handled within a conventional language of liberal politics. In addition, social and intellectual elites were fully ensconced in the formation and legitimization of these social and moral understandings. Because it was up to the state to select who would speak for labour and capital, the Commission’s message was not one of class polarization. Thus, exploring who became ‘labour’ and who ‘capital,’ and what sorts of things they said to each other, sheds light on to the emergent strategies of the Canadian state as it sought to understand and influence civil society. The Commission is an indication, even anticipation, of a more activist and energetic state.

Precarious employment refers to forms of work characterized by limited job security, few employment benefits, lack of control over the labour process and low-wages. Restaurant work demonstrates a range of precarious forms of employment and reveals the complexity of issues that such jobs raise in the context of the regulation of the local labour market. This thesis analyses the nature of precarious employment in the restaurant industry in Kingston, Ontario. In particular, it seeks to understand how precarious employment is shaped by the structure and dynamics of the local labour market. The research highlights the role played by labour mobility, in shaping workers’ experiences of precarious work. Labour mobility refers to the movement of workers between different jobs and between different worksites within a structured local labour market as they seek to better their economic situation and generate a sustainable income for themselves. Through a discussion of labour mobility, this thesis seeks to contribute to a new lens through which the impacts of a precarious and flexible labour market can be better understood as they shape the lives of workers themselves. The objective of this study is to better understand the factors which shape the lived realities of precarious restaurant workers in one specific local labour market. The empirical analysis draws on data collected by Statistics Canada and interviews conducted with both employers and employees in local restaurants to analyze the structure of the local labour market and the nature of precarious employment. The research demonstrates that the restaurant industry in Kingston is comprised of three distinct submarkets, each of which appears to operate largely independently of one another. Interviews were conducted with employees and employers in the submarket located in downtown Kingston. Within this submarket the combined processes of labour market segmentation and labour mobility has a significant impact on workers experiences of precarious employment. By understanding the complex interaction of these two features within the labour market, we can begin to conceive of ways to address the issues associated with the precariously employed in the low-wage service industry.

The NDP was founded out of the ashes of the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation to cooperate with the Canadian Labour Congress to become the 'political arm of organized labour' in Canada. The NDP has long claimed they are the party which represents the policy goals of organized labour in Canada: that the NDP alone will fight for trade union rights, and will fight for Canadian workers. Divergent Paths is an examination of the links between the labour movement and the NDP in an era ofneo-liberalism. Provincial NDP governments have become increasingly neoliberal in their ideological orientation, and have often proved to be no friend to the labour movement when they hold office. The Federal party has never held power, nor have they ever formed the Official Opposition. This thesis charts the progress of the federal NDP as they become more neoliberal from 1988 to 2006, and shows how this trend effects the links between the NDP and labour. Divergent Paths studies each federal election from 1988 to 2006, looking at the interactions between Labour and the NDP during these elections. Elections provide critical junctions to study discourse - party platforms, speeches, and other official documents can be used to examine discourse. Extensive newspaper searches were used to follow campaign events and policy speeches. Studying the party's discourse can be used to determine the ideological orientation of the party itself: the fact that the party's discourse has become neoliberal is a sure sign that the party itself is neoliberal. The NDP continues to drive towards the centre of the political spectrum in an attempt to gain multi-class support. The NDP seems more interested in gaining seats at any cost, rather then promoting the agenda of Labour. As the party attempts to open up to more multi-class support, Labour becomes increasingly marginalised in the party. A rift which arguably started well before the 1988 election was exacerbated during that election; labour encouraged the NDP to campaign solely on the issue of Free Trade, and the NDP did not. The 1993 election saw the rift between the two grow even further as the Federal NDP suffered major blowbacks from the actions of the Ontario NDP. The 1997 and 2000 elections saw the NDP make a deliberate move to the centre of the political spectrum which increasingly marginalised labour. In the 2004 election, Jack Layton made no attempt to move the party back to the left; and in 2006 the link between labour and the NDP was perhaps irreparably damaged when the CAW endorsed the Liberal party in a strategic voting strategy, and the CLC did not endorse the NDP. The NDP is no longer a reliable ally of organized labour. The Canadian labour movement must decide whether the NDP can be 'salvaged' or if the labour movement should end their alliance with the NDP and engage in a new political project.

This research undertakes an examination of the employment opportunities and experiences of black Caribbean women in Canada, particularly within the context of the growing trend towards precarious jobs—casual, part-time and low paying—in the restructured Canadian labour market. The specific purview of this study is the labour history and employment experience of a representative group of black Caribbean women who work as Personal Support Workers in nursing homes across the Greater Toronto Area. A main concern of the study is to understand the ways in which precarious work affects these women’s settlement and integration experiences, particularly their ability to gain economic independence; this, in turn, affects a number of variables related to their, and others, perception regarding their status and place in Canada. By focusing on the case of Personal Support Workers, the study aims to shed light not only on the employment experiences of black Caribbean women in this sector but also to examine more closely the policies and employment practices that create labour market “niches” or labour “segregation” along racial and gender lines.

The extremely poor have often been cast as deviants or others, in both the past and the present. Historians of Atlantic Canada have used the idea of deviance as an acceptable approach to the poor and homeless of the past and tacitly encourage us to see the contemporary homeless as deviants. Victorian theorists such as Malthus and Mayhew pejoratively characterized the poor as an underclass. Contemporary writers have provided evidence that challenges the use of the concept in Canada. But it remains a powerful force within American sociology, which is able to cast its influence over Canadian historical writing. It is the contention of this research that it is possible to be true to the past, to reflect the warts and downfalls of the extremely poor and homeless who lived there, but at the same time recognize their efforts to follow prevailing norms and to empathize with their plight and in doing so generate at least the possibility of recognition and empathy in the present. Such recognition and empathy may be the keys to creating and maintaining humane solutions to poverty and homelessness. The examinations conducted by this research address an area of our past that has been largely overlooked. This research supplements broad historical surveys of social welfare legislation by examining social welfare policy in action at the local level. By positioning itself at the convergence of labour history and studies of poverty, and by demonstrating that the populations examined by these discrete areas of research are more alike than different, this research shows that labour history can be extended to include many of those who lived "rough" in the past. Through its approach this research hopes to encourage a view that can help to integrate the study of extreme poverty and homelessness into the mainstream of Canadian historiography.

Many rural areas are undergoing structural changes as jobs in forestry, fishing, mining, agricultural and other natural resource-based industries decline. These communities, often based around these industries, are generally small and located some distance from urban areas. They are faced with decreasing population as residents and their families leave for jobs elsewhere. As a result, the communities and residents are looking for alternative ways to create employment and sustain themselves. Given the nature of these rural locations, many small businesses based there face challenges that are not generally experienced by enterprises in urban areas. Some communities are not accessible by paved road while others are not accessible by road at all, relying instead on water and air transportation. The business people in these areas often operate without standard business infrastructure, which can include telephone lines, broadband Internet, banking services and other items, and can have difficulty accessing supplies, customers, employees and other required materials. However, there has been relatively little research on the challenges facing rural businesses and the specific methods by which these owners mitigate these challenges. Understanding and addressing the challenges faced by these businesses becomes important in order to support and encourage economic growth and development in these rural communities. Building on this context, this research looks to answer the following questions: • Why do people start businesses in rural locations? • What type of businesses do they start? • What challenges do these rural businesses face? • How do owners respond to these challenges? Vancouver Island and the surrounding smaller islands in British Columbia, Canada serve as the research site. Given the exploratory nature of this research, an inductive approach has been selected with the use of case studies, interviews and grounded theory analysis. Purposeful sampling is used with the sample businesses meeting specific criteria, based on location, business size and definition of success. These businesses are interviewed at their locations to allow the researcher to experience the challenges associated with accessing the particular rural community. The interview topics are focused on the above research questions. There are several common characteristics among the sample owners and their businesses. The owners tend to be in-migrants who moved to the rural area for lifestyle reasons. They have started their business to provide an income, take advantage of a business opportunity, or both. Family members, particularly spouses, are actively involved in the business. In many cases, participants supplement their business income with other income sources to ensure business viability. Success is measured generally by personal and lifestyle goals, rather than financial criteria. The businesses face common challenges in terms of a limited local population base which impacts on market size and labour pool, rural location and access to urban centres, gaps in business and social services infrastructure and heavy time demands. The owners respond to these challenges in a variety of ways which includes the involvement of family, core business diversification, alternative income sources, long hours invested in the business and involvement with the community. To meet these challenges and devise their responses, the owners draw upon four key resources – their own skills and attitudes, their family, business and community. The resulting conceptual framework draws together these key resources and suggests that all four must be present to ensure success within a rural context. Each resource is comprised of several components which contribute to business success. The framework also integrates several resource-based theories, which consider the key resources either separately or in pairs, to create a holistic model. The conclusions focus on several key areas. This research contributes to the knowledge base on rural small businesses by creating a framework that draws directly from the experience of these owners and their objectives and motivations for their businesses. It reflects their internal focus and a concentration of the four resources that they access easily from within their domain. This research also suggests some possible roles for government which focus on its role in shaping the larger environment, particularly at the infrastructure level and human capital development. Finally, future research directions are recommended. This study considers a relatively unexplored topic and suggests ways for rural small businesses to address the challenges which they face. With this knowledge, individuals, businesses, communities and other interested organizations can work to achieve their economic development goals.