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Precarious faculty, once used by higher education institutions as auxiliary labour, now dominate post-secondary campuses. With as much as half of post-secondary institutions’ courses now taught by contract academic faculty, post-secondary institutions have systematically come to rely on hiring precarious contract faculty for their respective departmental teaching capacity. As an emerging and significant trend in higher education, this study aims to examine the precarious faculty experience through autoethnographic methods that reflects on my personal experience as a precarious faculty member working at four different higher education institutions in British Columbia from 2016-2018: the Private Online University, City College, the Teaching University, and the Institute. Using Tierney’s (1997) Organizational Culture Theory, coupled with theories of organizational socialization and the role of models and mentorship, I compare my personal experiences of being hired and onboarded at the four different institutions in which I worked as a precarious faculty member. I focus on three themes: the faculty interview process, being evaluated as a precarious faculty member, and resources that I was given (or not). A literature review precedes each personal autoethnographic account; I then proceed to compare and contrast my personal experiences with that of the literature as a way to examine the ways in which my experiences working as a precarious faculty member are consistent with, and divergent from the literature. To conclude, I suggest that there is a lack of standard processes and practices when it comes to hiring precarious faculty. Additionally, I suggest that one’s career stage plays a significant role during hiring. I also suggest that good student evaluations of teaching lead to reappointment for precarious faculty. In terms of performance evaluations, I stress the importance of communication and suggest that precarious faculty are evaluated (sometimes) both formally, and informally. Finally, in terms of resources, I echo the literature that office space is a place of power, and that professional development is a two-way street. I conclude that more personal stories—like mine—are required to better understand what it’s like to be a precarious faculty member in higher education.

This dissertation honours and pays tribute to Sudbury residents and many others for whom labour strikes played a significant role in shaping their lives. Set in the context of a public history theatrical experiment, this study investigates local and community memories pertaining to Sudbury mining strikes in the postwar period from 1958 through to 2010. Archival research and oral history interviews were conducted on major labour strikes in this era and that research was used to script, rehearse, and stage a theatrical play. Interviews with audience members and performers were also conducted at all stages of the process. This process allows the dissertation to consider the perspectives of both performers and audience members, each enacting their roles as producers and consumers of public history. The dissertation also assesses the value of this form of history making, as it relates to the formation of historical consciousness, both then and now, of individuals within the Sudbury community. This study argues that public history as theatre has the potential to provide an effective and affecting means to nurture critical, reflexive historical consciousness both on and off the stage.

This thesis explores the experiences of Black women who are in tenured, tenure-stream, and non-tenured faculty positions and presents how Black women negotiate their intersectional identities in the academy. The study documents their self-identifications and struggles with the academy in terms of power relations in their respective universities, including racial and sexual discrimination. In addition, the study explores the career paths of Black women faculty from contract faculty to full professor. Methodologically, the study uses Black Feminist theorizing along with autoethnography in order to explore the nature of the experiences of Black Canadian women faculty within the academy. I interviewed 13 self-identified Black women across Canadian universities, including myself as the fourteenth key informant. This study reveals a complex and rich text of how Black women see themselves in the university, their experiences with multiple and overlapping oppressions and how this affects their careers, and finally, their contributions to the academy and their visions of success.

Predicated on a narrative of mutuality and cooperation, what has come to be known as the Canadian fur trade has long been positioned as exceptional in its relationships between colonizers and Indigenous peoples. In this framing the fur trade in what would become Canada is represented as having experienced little of the colonial violence that manifested in other colonial encounters and has been constructed as devoid of the unfreedom of chattel slavery. In fact, this characterization is untrue. Located within the French and British empires, the Canadian fur trade reflected the violences of its empires. From the seventeenth, and well into the nineteenth centuries chattel slavery existed in the fur trade as it did in the empires of which it was a part. Here, as elsewhere, complex webs of family/business relationships carried the violence of empire to and between its colonies. The creation and maintenance of these webs offered spaces where women as well as men could participate in the success of their family/businesses, but also in the transmission of colonial violence. One example of this is the Wedderburn Colvile family, their involvement in both West Indian plantation slavery and in the Hudson’s Bay Company, and in the interventions of one of its members, Jean Wedderburn Douglas, Lady Selkirk in what has become known as the fur trade wars. A closer look at the Wedderburn Colvile family and their interests in the Northern North American fur trade offers insights into how colonial violence and changes in the laws relating to chattel slavery impacted the fur trade, as the effects of these changes traveled along family/business webs of networks of relationship. This research draws on primary sources gleaned from archives and libraries in Scotland, England, the West Indies, the United States and Canada. It brings together a wide range of secondary literature to argue that, just as in other parts of empire, colonial violence, including chattel slavery, connected through webs of family/business relationships, existed in the Canadian fur trade. At the same time, this project argues, the erasure of that story is something we are only now beginning to address.

This dissertation examines the process by which a singular Ukrainian Canadian identity was constructed and entrenched throughout the twentieth century. It details how one of Canada’s largest and best organized diasporic communities, utilizing changing notions of cultural pluralism and the politics of the Cold War, crafted an increasingly nationalist, anti-communist version of identity that eradicated previously popular articulations of what it meant to be a Ukrainian in Canada. The traditional historiography posits that the community defined itself on its own terms, relying on individualized acts of agency and migrant resilience to entrench a version of Ukrainian-ness that was a democratic, bottom-up reflection of the collective. This project offers an alternative perspective by focusing on the battle over community narratives between communists, represented by the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) and then the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), and the nationalists, organized under the umbrella of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (UCC). I show how, with the help of state officials, the nationalists overpowered their ideological enemies on the left, concreting their identity as hegemonic. Through this process of coherence, they further bound specific aspects of their own ideology, perceived as innocuous, apolitical, and simply common sense, into mainstream political consciousness. Beyond a simple community study, this dissertation is also a case study about the building of anti-communist hegemony in Canada. Chapter One examines the role of state surveillance and political policing to show how state officials collaborated with the UCC to weaken the domestic left. Chapter Two analyzes the rise and fall of a government bureaucracy that acculturated the nationalists so as to embed them in Canada’s structures of power and bolster their anti-communism. Chapter Three looks more closely at acts of anti-communist violence, which seriously deterred participation in the AUUC. The state’s refusal to condemn the violence also telegraphed its preferences and helped define Canada’s social, political, and judicial boundaries. Chapter Four focuses on the nationalists’ appropriation of cultural pluralism to further entrench their version of Ukrainian identity. Lastly, Chapter Five explores commemoration, where competing visions for certain cultural figures were articulated and, eventually, nationalist narratives were set.

« L’heure des pétitions est passée, il faut des actes » présente une histoire vue d’en bas des sans-travail québécois au cours de l’entre-deux-guerres (1919-1939). L’objectif de cette thèse est de démontrer la contribution de l’action collective des sans-emploi à la politisation du problème du chômage au Québec durant les années 1920 et 1930. Cette période est un événement matrice pour l’histoire du chômage au Québec et au Canada. Le chômage, qui est déjà un phénomène important au cours du processus d’industrialisation au XIXe siècle, atteint au cours de la Grande Dépression des proportions jusqu’alors inégalées. Ce problème, qui jusqu’à la Première Guerre mondiale est encore largement considéré comme relevant d’une éthique du travail déficiente, de l’imprévoyance des individus, ou encore la conséquence des cycles saisonniers de l’économie, se présente de plus en plus comme un phénomène politique et systémique remettant en cause l’organisation de la société québécoise et canadienne. Dans ce changement de paradigme, l’action collective des sans-travail joue un rôle déterminant. Grâce à celle-ci, le chômage prend la forme d’un problème à la fois collectif, social et politique, qui ultimement remet en question la relation entre la démocratie et le capitalisme. L’étude du répertoire d’action collective des sans-travail québécois permet de mieux comprendre leur rôle dans l’histoire du chômage. Leurs protestations prennent racine dans une économie morale qui annonce une redéfinition de la citoyenneté fondée sur la formulation de nouvelles attentes envers l’État. Considérant que le chômage est indépendant de leur volonté, les sans-emploi estiment alors avoir le droit à une assistance contre le chômage. Bien que les manifestations de sans-travail ne soient pas un phénomène nouveau dans l’histoire québécoise, au cours des années 1920 et 1930, celles-ci apparaissent de moins en moins marginales. Prenant racine à Montréal dans le contexte de la Révolte ouvrière, elles s’étendent à plusieurs autres villes de la province au cours de la Grande Dépression. Perçus comme une menace à la paix sociale, dans un moment fortement marqué par l’anticommunisme, ces mouvements forcent les pouvoirs publics à intervenir. Encore peu étudiées à ce jour, ces manifestations, jumelées à celles qui se déroulent ailleurs au Canada, expliquent pourquoi le chômage devient, pour la première fois, un problème politique d’importance et débattu au sein de la sphère publique.

This thesis examines the role of Chinese in Canadian history by looking beyond the popular railway narrative that reinforces a stereotype of docile cheap labour and a reductive lens of racism. The research will look at what brought Chinese sojourners to Canada and the economic and legislation restraints and discriminatory labour practices by the government and employers. It will look at how Chinese people began to resist the prohibitive social, economic, and political policies through protests, Chinese unions, and collaborative efforts of Chinese and white Canadians. The railway narrative rendered Chinese women invisible within Canadian history as it focuses on the racial discrimination of Chinese men. The research will show Chinese women were impacted economically and socially by their lack of visibility within society due to gender and cultural discrimination by both white and Chinese communities. Finally, without acknowledgement and education the perpetuation of racial stereotypes will continue.

Using Community-Engaged research and an intersectional approach, this dissertation examines and interprets the ways two different Indigenous communities – The Tla’amin of British Columbia and the Mi’kmaq of Pictou, Nova Scotia –responded to the challenges and opportunities associated with settler colonialism, the creation of Indian Reserves, and the establishment of a capitalist wage labour economy in Indigenous territories. It primarily situates this discussion within the context of colonial efforts to geographically anchor Indigenous families in specific places while they struggled to retain meaningful connections with their broader territories. This dissertation provides critical analysis of the utility of using ‘settler colonialism’ as a catch-all to explain the various types of colonialism that impacted Indigenous people in Canada. Various types of colonialism contributed to a process where Atlantic Mi’kmaw and Pacific Coast Salish people with complex understandings of their territories and resources based on seasonal procurement and kinship systems, became geographically anchored on reserves as part of Indian Bands in the late nineteenth century. Within this confusing and often contradictory colonial world, the Tla’amin and the Mi’kmaq built adaptive and flexible economies that emphasized multiple occupations and relied on labour inputs from women and men to function. I argue that these new markets for Indigenous labour and commodities played an as of yet underappreciated role in the historical understanding of Indigenous motivations for securing specific reserve lands during the colonial survey of Indigenous lands in Canada. This dissertation adds to a growing body of literature that celebrates and historicizes Indigenous contributions to the labour history of Canada, and does so in ways that express how Indigenous people developed dynamic and responsive economies within emerging settler colonial economies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Writers’ Union of Canada was founded in November of 1973 “to unite Canadian writers for the advancement of their common interests.” Drawing on extensive archival collections – from both the Writers’ Union and its member authors – this dissertation offers the first critical history of the organization and its work, from pre-founding to the early 1990s, arguing that the Writers’ Union has fundamentally influenced Canadian literature, as an industry, as a community, and as a field of study. I begin by tracing the contextual history of the organization’s founding, interrogating how union organizing, celebrity, and friendship underpin the organization’s work. Chapter One discusses the Writers’ Union’s programs, reforms, and interventions aimed at ‘fostering’ writing in Canada as I argue that the Union was instrumental in building a fiscal-cultural futurity for CanLit. In Chapter Two, I consider the role that women played in this important work, as I highlight the labour of female Union members and the all-female administrative staff, who maintained and supported the organization’s work through its first twenty years. In Chapter Three I draw attention to the stories of, perspectives of, and experiences of BIPOC authors in relation to the Writers’ Union. While the Writers’ Union’s involvement in race relations is often positioned as having ‘begun’ with the Writing Thru Race conference in 1994, this chapter uses the archives to reveal a much longer trajectory of racialized conflict within and around the organization, providing important context for the very controversial and public battles about appropriation and race that would explode in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Throughout this work, I look to see how institutional narratives are deployed and upheld, and to what ends; how successful advocacy work is often effaced and forgotten; how institutional structures function; and how their boundaries and intentions are challenged and developed over time.

This thesis examines the history of the Provincial Workmen's Association of Nova Scotia, from iits formation in 1879, until the resignation of the union's first Grand Secretary in 1898. The study begins with a description of the economic background of the province's coal trade during the 19th century. The end of the "golden age" of wood, wind and sail, and the region's attempts to industrialize in response to the National Policy are discussed in relation to the coal industry. The difficulties experienced by tlthe miners as a result of these changing economic conditions are considered in the second chapter, and the formation of the P.W.A. is described. The early organizational activitities, constitution, ritual and structure of the society are also detailed. The following chapter investigates the three tactics employed by the P.W.A. to protect the rights and improve the condition of the Nova Scotia miners. The utility and ideological underpinnings of each method - strikes, governmennt lobbying and electoral politics - is considered in order to clarify the degree of success achieved by the union in its stated goals. Chapter Four focuses more directly on the idtdeology of the P.W.A. "Loyalist" and "rebel" attitudes toward the coal masters, the increasing alientation of the mine1ers from their work resulting from the development of industrial capitalism, and the growth of trade union consciousness and working class awareness are described. The influence of Robert Drummond on the Nova Scotia miners is also discussed. The fifth and final chapter describes the rank and file disconterent with leadership that emerged in the late 1880s and culminated with the company store dispute in 1896. The "invasion of thee Knights of Labor" and the resignation of Robert Drummond are examined. Final conclusions are then presented, followed by an epilogue, which describes briefly the path taken by the P.W.A. from 1898 until the dissolution of the union in 1917.

There is now a vast scholarship that explores union decline and renewal in various economic sectors and workplaces. To date, however, there is little understanding of how union decline has impacted unionized retail environments in Canada. Using a feminist political economy framework, this dissertation explores dynamics of union decline and renewal through a case study of labour standards in Ontarios unionized supermarket sector. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 28 union representatives and an analysis of collective agreements, this study examines the decline and trajectory of labour standards in unionized supermarkets, explores the unions perspectives and responses to changing standards, assesses how changing labour standards reflects the problem of union decline, and assesses how the case of Ontarios unionized supermarkets informs union renewal research and strategy. Findings suggest that the decline and trajectory of labour standards in Ontarios unionized supermarkets reflects a shift towards increasing precariousness in this sector. While there have been some wins for supermarket workers, unions have been largely unable to secure substantial improvements through collective bargaining. The precariousness associated with supermarket work is both contractually negotiated, as evidenced by provisions in collective agreements that ensure low wages and minimal and infrequent wage increases, demanding availability requirements, and limitations to the number of hours of work, as well as experiential, as indicated in workplace dynamics such as competition between workers, high turnover, and reduced health and safety measures. During the period under study, several factors have contributed to the increase in precariousness in this sector. While unions have implemented a variety of strategies in an effort to mitigate precariousness in unionized supermarkets, the persistence of deeply ingrained business union cultures and practices make improving labour standards through collective bargaining difficult. Continued precariousness in unionized supermarkets and the persistence of business unionism point to the need for an interrogation of the cultures and practices within unions that may contribute to the ongoing precariousness in unionized supermarkets and the challenges facing unions in this sector. The complex nature of union decline in this sector also suggests that multiple forms of union action are required to improve labour standards in unionized supermarkets and the strength of unions more broadly.

Canada’s continuous reliance on temporary foreign workers to address its labour shortage and maintain its competitive advantage has resulted in a seasonal transnational workforce characterized by its precarious living and working conditions, cumulative legal disenfranchisement based on the lack of permanent status, and vulnerability to the ongoing pandemic. Despite the common portrayal of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) as a ‘model for migration management’ by governments and growers, a large body of academic publications has studied their precarious conditions in an attempt to explain the seeming contradiction between a highly-exploited workforce and the steady growth of willing participants. This project examines the exploitative practices embedded in the cycles of transmigration through a series of individual interviews with SAWP participants, scholars, and government officials. The central argument is that the differential treatment of migrant and citizen workers lies at the heart of the former’s precarity. It stems from the paradoxical promotion of human rights at the macro-level, while relying on an exploited workforce at the micro-level. The program creates mechanisms that keep workers in a state of continuous marginalization despite decades of participation in the program. The legal, subtle, and overt mechanisms that maintain workers in a continuous state of control and competition are among the key findings of this project. This project challenges the idealization of the SAWP by analyzing the main beneficiaries, its shortcomings, and its projected future. It presents a unique opportunity to reimagine temporary foreign worker programs and methodological nationalism in a globalized context.

AbstractThis dissertation explores the points of tension between dominant histories of neighbourhood activism in Toronto and Montreal between 1963-1989 and the lived experiences of locally embedded activists who organized for access to safe jobs, homes, and the right to exist in their neighbourhoods. It demonstrates how material conditions, determined by the overlapping processes of deindustrialization, post-industrial development, and the movement of capital from Montreal to Toronto, shaped how neighbourhood activists organized, who they organized with, what they organized for, and how they recorded what they were doing. Dominant narratives of neighbourhood activism during this period over-emphasize the perspectives white, middle-class, and cis-gendered male activists who benefitted from the world the sixties made. Their upward mobility, made possible through the expansion of public spending and their involvement in gentrification, gave them the time and resources to document what they were doing, elevating their perspectives in the historical record. At the same time, embedded poor and working-class, racialized, disabled, and trans activists who continued to experience the ongoing structural violence of the capitalist city also continued to collectively resist that violence. Unfortunately, their ongoing precarity denied them of the resources necessary to produce historical records to the same degree as their upwardly mobile contemporaries. By historicizing how uneven material conditions shaped what activists were doing and how they recorded what they were doing, this thesis demonstrates how power shaped the production of neighbourhood activism history. It also presents opportunities to contest this power in the historical record.