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While it has been generally understood that domestic service was an institution of particular importance to working-class women and to middle-class householders in North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we still know little about the interwar years, a period during which the occupation declined in overall importance, but still defined many women's working lives. In the 1920s and 1930s, a vast majority of women who grew up in Newfoundland's coastal communities, where household production and the family fishery remained the mainstay of the economy, spent part of their lives performing domestic tasks for pay. To begin to understand the historical and cultural significance of domestic service to women's lives in Newfoundland, this dissenation uses a case-study approach. It focuses on the pulp and paper mill town of Grand Falls, where there was a steady demand for domestics by mill workers and their families, the town's elite, and hotels and boarding houses during the 1920s and 1930s. One of a number of single-resource towns supported by Newfoundland's economic diversification policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Grand Falls was built in the interior of the island by the Harmsworth brothers of Britain in 1905. By tracing domestics' lives and experiences from countryside to company town, into the household = as workplace - and then into their married lives, the study explores themes relating to the gendered nature of uneven development. For instance, many Grand Falls employers shared much in common with the women they hired, in terms of religion, ethnicity and social origin., which raises interesting questions about the gender and class dimensions of an employer/employee relationship that has traditionally been characterized as one of domination and subordination. It also considers that relations of gender and class within the company town were formed in conjunction with factors such as migration patterns, pre-existing concepts of the gender division of labour within household production, company paternalism and social stratification within the workplace, the household and the town. The ways in which these factors overlapped and shaped the lives of domestics forms the backdrop of this study.

Cette thèse traite de l'évolution du mouvement ouvrier montréalais de 1918 à 1929. Nous examinons les diverses organisations ouvrières, tant leur structure et leur composition, que les différentes idéologies qui coexistent dans les groupes ouvriers de la région montréalaise. Après avoir retracé les origines de ces organisations, leur évolution au cours de la Première Guerre mondiale, nous analysons leur développement au cours de la décennie qui suit la fin guerre. Nous cherchons, au delà des présupposés et des généralités, à comprendre le processus d'évolution du mouvement ouvrier montréalais. L'analyse de l'évolution des syndicats et des organisations politiques permet de saisir toute la complexité de rapports sociaux et les difficultés pour les travailleurs d'occuper une place significative. Notre analyse décrit aussi la place des diverses composantes nationales présentes dans le mouvement ouvrier montréalais. Nous insistons sur la place des travailleurs francophones et sur le rôle des travailleurs juifs jusqu'ici méconnu. Nous subdivisons cette tranche historique en trois périodes qui recoupent des conjonctures spécifiques. Les années de l'immédiat après-guerre sont marquées par une très forte agitation ouvrière alors que de très nombreux ouvriers et ouvrières se dotent de syndicats et revendiquent de meilleures conditions de vie et de travail. Le syndicalisme international de métier voit sa prédominance contestée par le syndicalisme canadien et le syndicalisme révolutionnaire. À droite de l'échiquier syndical, le syndicalisme catholique s'installe définitivement au Québec et constitue une des caractéristiques majeures du mouvement ouvrier québécois. L'effervescence ouvrière ne débouche pas sur des organisations politiques fortes malgré l'existence d'un parti ouvrier qui obtient quelques gains électoraux alors que les organisations de gauche doivent se réorganiser, victimes notamment de la répression gouvernementale et patronale. La crise, qui s'enclenche dès le milieu de 1920, affecte considérablement des organisations ouvrières lorsque le capitalisme tient à revenir aux situations qui prévalaient avant la guerre. Les organisations syndicales cherchent à résister à cette stratégie mais le nombre de syndicats décroît. Toutefois, cette baisse du membership syndical ne ramène pas le nombre de syndiqués au niveau de 1913 parce que, parmi les syndicats apparus dans la foulée de la révolte ouvrière, de nombreux syndicats résistent efficacement, dont des syndicats canadiens et des syndicats catholiques. La gauche se réorganise autour du Parti communiste canadien, creusant un fossé entre eux et le reste des militants ouvriers. Le Parti ouvrier du Canada entreprend sa lente marginalisation. Au milieu de la décennie, profitant d'une reprise économique, le mouvement ouvrier se relève. Les syndicats se réorganisent, leur membership augmente et leurs revendications deviennent plus offensives montrant ainsi un regain de militantisme. Mais les divisions s'accentuent dans les rangs syndicaux alors que les syndicats canadiens et catholiques contestent de plus en plus le leadership occupé par les syndicats internationaux de métier. Au plan politique, le Parti communiste occupe pratiquement toute la place, les socio-démocrates se voyant relégués à quelques bastions.

The following study examines the NDP and the union vote. The NDP and labour unions have been officially linked since the NDP's formation in 1961. Despite the initial optimism of the NDP-labour link, the change from the CCF to the NDP has resulted in limited electoral success, especially at the federal level. The partnership between labour and the NDP has met with limited electoral fortunes. Although their tendency to vote NDP is higher than that of other groups, the vast majority of union members still vote for other parties. Federal election studies have repeatedly shown that 10 percent of non-union members, 20 percent of union members, and 30 percent of NDP affiliated union members vote for the NDP. The question is why do the remaining 70 to 80 percent of union members fail to vote for the NDP. This study aims to address this problem using survey research. The first chapter reviews the link between the NDP and labour and voting determinants in Canada. The second chapter looks at the research design and methodology of this thesis. Chapter three and four examines the results of the statistical analysis. Finally, chapter five summarizes with a discussion and concluding remarks.

Analysant la mobilité sociale dans le gouvernement de Québec sous le Régime français, ce mémoire aborde la propriété seigneuriale en tant qu'illustration de la promotion sociale dans la vallée du Saint-Laurent au XVIIe et au XVTIIe siècle. Cette analyse, portant sur une soixantaine d'individus aux origines modestes, issus notamment de la paysannerie, ayant accédé à la propriété seigneuriale, se veut une contribution a l'étude de la promotion sociale en Nouvelle-France. Quatre parties constituent l'essentiel de ce mémoire. L'origine de ces individus et les modes d'élévation sociale sont étudiés dans une première servant de cadre contextuel et de présentation sociodémographique. Les trois chapitres suivants visent à répondre plus directement à la problématique de l'étude, à savoir l'impact socio-économique de la propriété seigneuriale chez ces seigneurs aux humbles origines. La durabilité de la propriété seigneuriale, ainsi que le fait d'y résider ou non et le peuplement de la seigneurie sont les éléments étudiés dans le deuxième chapitre. Le troisième chapitre aborde la question du prestige tributaire de la seigneurie, en s'intéressant aux appellations attribuées aux seigneurs, de méme que les fortunes seigneuriales, pour connaître l'incidence économique de la propriété seigneuriale. Dans un dernier temps, le quatrième chapitre met en relief les alliances matrimoniales des familles seigneuriales, également révélatrices du possible impact de la possession d'une seigneurie. Au sein de cette société française d'Ancien Régime, transplantée sur les rives du Saint- Laurent, d'importantes mutations s'opèrent. L'une de ces transformations est perceptible par la plus grande possibilité de mobilité sociale, quasi inexistante en France. Par l'analyse des destins d'hommes dont la naissance ne laissait en rien présager un tel parcours, ce mémoire vise a comprendre l'enjeu de la propriété seigneuriale pour de tels individus ainsi que ses répercussions.

The everyday life of people on the street has not received the attention it deserves in the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Quebec. This dissertation joins a small number of recent studies which redress this omission. It makes a significant contribution to existing examinations of North American cities and Canadian social history through the use of categories which are rarely employed and questions that are seldom posed in investigations of working-class history during the period of industrialization. A holistic treatment of Marxist philosophy provides the theoretical underpinnings for a sensitive engagement with daily street life in an urban milieu. As a site of intense sociability, Notre-Dame Street, the main street of the industrial suburb of Saint-Henri, offers a unique perspective on the intricate use of public space and its relations to social space. This thesis covers the period between the years of town incorporation in 1875 and annexation to the City of Montreal in 1905. Notre-Dame Street underwent significant transformations in this period. A main street of a small town on the outskirts of Montreal became the principal commercial street of a bustling industrial city. The 1890s was a decade of particularly marked shifts, characterized by significant population growth and dramatic changes in physical form. Class and ethnic tensions intensified as a result. A 1891 labour dispute at Merchants Manufacturing, a textile factory, took to the streets, and the local elite contested George A. Drummond's refusal to pay municipal taxes in 1897. Resistance to monopoly control of utilities was evidenced by the use of petitions and protets or notarized letters. Workers' parties, journalists, and municipal reform leagues increasingly challenged the hegemony of the local elite whose persistent practices of overspending resulted in a substantial debt and annexation. The study of a local street in an industrializing community demonstrates the prevailing social and political distribution of wealth and power. It reveals significant differences between the various class ideologies which were played out in the management of the public space of the street. An economic liberal ideology was instrumental to the development of the modern Western city through the creation of divisions between public and private spaces. Social usage, the visible presence of the working and marginal classes and women on city streets, suggests a different reality. A reconstruction of daily street life from a diversity of written and visual sources indicates that women, men, and children inhabited and frequented homes, shops, and offices, travelling to and from work, and various places of recreation. The rhythm of everyday street life was punctuated by unusual events of a celebratory, criminal, and tragic nature, which emphasize the connections between spatial structures and subjective experience. The local management of public space thus involved class antagonisms, characterized by negotiation, transgression, and resistance. This dissertation argues that the politics of this public space benefited the class interests of a grande bourgeoisie of Montreal and a local petite bourgeoisie, to the detriment of the working classes. These conflicting class interests were played out in a variety of different ways. The exclusion and appropriation of social and symbolic spaces were characterized by distinct property ownership and rental patterns. An anglophone grande bourgeoisie of Montreal owned vacant and subdivided lots. A francophone petite bourgeoisie dominated property ownership, and a majority of renters lived in flats on the main street and on adjoining streets. The shaping of the physical infrastructure was distinguished by the growth of monopolies and minimal local intervention. The civic manifestation of the ordered and ritualistic celebration of the parade emphasized a Catholic identity. Attempts to impose an appropriate and genteel code of behaviour on city streets led to the moral regulation and social control of criminal behaviour.

The Union of Northern Workers, known as the Northwest Territories Public Service Association prior to 1987, is the largest labour union in the Northwest Territories. Northern labour is a little explored field in Canadian history, and as such, this work surveys new ground. Trade unionism in the North's private sector began at the close of the Second World War. The UNW, however, like most public sector unions in Canada, had its roots in the 1960s. This study examines issues pertaining to the union's leadership and staff from 1967, when correctional workers in Yellowknife first organized, until the 1996 convention, when the union took steps to divide into two separate unions in anticipation of the creation of Nunavut in 1999. From its start, the union's geographic jurisdiction distinguished the UNW as unique among Canada's public service unions. It and its predecessor, the NWTPSA represented workers in Canada's most northern reaches. The challenges of life in the North were as real for the union as they were for its members. A relatively small membership spread across such a huge land mass presented obstacles with regards to leadership and service. Also, cultural factors differentiated the organization from others. With an increasing native membership, mostly Inuit, lnuktitut became the union's second language. Distinguishing the union institutionally was its component status within the Public Service Alliance of Canada. The quality of the relationship between these two bodies regularly fluctuated between excellent and belligerent. Similarly, the union's relationship with the Nonhwest Territories Federation of Labour degenerated from founding member to pariah status, in spite of the UNW comprising the overwhelming majority of the Federation's membership. As the union grew from a fly-by-night, seat-of-the-pants organization of less than 100 members at its inception, to over 5,000 when it divided, leadership and staffing gained increasing importance. To meet the challenges of representing northern workers, the union increasingly attempted to professionalize its leadership cadre. The effect of this was an increasing distance between members and leaders which ultimately resulted in the secession of the Nunawt membership.

In 1960 the Canadian United Auto Workers suggested to the government that in order to save the automobile industry, rationalization with the American industry was a viable and desired option. Over the next five years, as the government gradually moved towards integration, the union stood behind the principle, yet at the same time stated tha protection for dislocated and laid-off workers must be part of the deal for union support to be forthcoming. The union, which felt that the costs of government-induced layoffs should be fully borne by the state, did not waver in its commitment to securing safeguards, even though from 1960 to the Auto Pact in 1965 it became increasingly apparent that the granting of adequate protection was not on the government's agenda. The layoff of 1,600 workers in 1965 resulted in the withdrawal of Canadian UAW support for the trade deal and highlighted the significance and importance of the over-riding condition of support, the protection of workers from the consequences of state actions.

The period 1935 to 1947 provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the ways in which the employment and training policies of Canadian welfare state forms delineated the boundaries of gender, race, class and nation in ways that actively constituted (il)legitimate social and economic forms of work, of motherhood, of sexuality and citizenship. Covering attempts starting in the Depression and accelerating during the Second World War into the postwar period, this study tracks the constitution and deployment of government attempts at mapping the female labour supply, of monitoring the activities of women in the labour market, of charting and opening up to scrutiny the conditions of women's labour force attachment: all in an effort to predict and prescribe patterns of women's employment and problems of female unemployment. I approach government reports, studies, commissions and committees as policy events—exercises in governance—as markers for policy analysis which signified important shifts in governmental approaches to the phenomenon of female participation in the formal waged economy. Viewed during the war as a crucial national resource, central to the war effort, women war workers would be cast as a largely ‘unskilled female labour reserve’ by war's end. I examine how ideas about mental testing, intelligence and human capacities—ideas that comprised the foundation of the mental hygiene programme during this period—informed employment and training policies in the formation of the Canadian welfare state for the period 1935–1947. During the Depression, studies of the labour force produced classifications of unemployed women and men. Scrutiny of female employment patterns resulted in the production of categorical knowledges about employability. These practices were further elaborated through the unprecedented research opportunities presented by the war. Suitable vocation, aptitude, and measures of intelligence: these concepts were drawn upon as part of a growing apparatus of employment policy intended to facilitate the smooth transition into the postwar period. I argue that the roster of policies and programmes devised in the name of postwar rehabilitation constituted ideas about female employability which were deeply imbued with the principles of scientific racism and sexism at the core of the mental hygiene program. Vocational planning, counselling and training practices reorganised relations of employment and of unemployment in ways that reflected the managing principles of the risk society. Postwar planning drew upon and constituted new areas of activity for government and community agencies, creating opportunities for the deployment of knowledge-practices such as personnel selection while opening up the interior of the subject as an object of governance, by assessing and calibrating allegedly innate human capacities.