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In this study of the clothing industry in Canada, historian Mercedes Steedman examines how the intricate weaving together of the meanings of class, gender, ethnicity, family, and workplace served, often unconsciously, to create a job ghetto for women.
In Canada, the donut is often thought of as the unofficial national food. Donuts are sold at every intersection and rest stop, celebrated in song and story as symbols of Canadian identity, and one chain in particular, Tim Horton's, has become a veritable icon with over 2500 shops across the country. But there is more to the donut than these and other expressions of 'snackfood patriotism' would suggest. In this study, Steve Penfold puts the humble donut in its historical context, examining how one deep-fried confectionary became, not only a mass commodity, but an edible symbol of Canadianness. Penfold examines the history of the donut in light of broader social, economic, and cultural issues,...
In Reasoning Otherwise, author Ian McKay returns to the concepts and methods of “reconnaissance” first outlined in Rebels, Reds, Radicals to examine the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to 1920. Reasoning Otherwise highlights how a new way of looking at the world based on theories of evolution transformed struggles around class, religion, gender, and race, and culminates in a new interpretation of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. As McKay demonstrated in Rebels, Reds, Radicals, the Canadian left is alive and flourishing, and has shaped the Canadian experience in subtle and powerful ways. Reasoning Otherwise continues this tradition of offering important new insight into the deep roots of leftism in Canada.
From the 1870s until the Great Depression, immigration was often the question of the hour in Canada. Politicians, the media, and an array of interest groups viewed it as essential to nation building, developing the economy, and shaping Canada's social and cultural character. One of the groups most determined to influence public debate and government policy on the issue was organized labour, and unionists were often relentless critics of immigrant recruitment. Guarding the Gates is the first detailed study of Canadian labour leaders' approach to immigration, a key battleground in struggles between different political factions within the labour movement. This book provides new insights into labour, immigration, social, and political history.
In nineteenth-century Toronto, people took to the streets to express their jubilation on special occasions, such as the 1860 visit of the Prince of Wales and the return in 1885 of the local Volunteers who helped to suppress the Riel resistance in the North-West. In a contrasting mood, people also took to the streets in anger to object to government measures, such as the Rebellion Losses bill, to heckle rival candidates in provincial election campaigns, to assert their ethno-religious differences, and to support striking workers. Expressive Acts examines instances of both celebration and protest when Torontonians publicly displayed their allegiances, politics, and values. The book illustrates not just the Victorian city’s vibrant public life but also the intense social tensions and cultural differences within the city. Drawing from journalists’ accounts in newspapers, Expressive Acts illuminates what drove Torontonians to claim public space, where their passions lay, and how they gave expression to them.
From the dock workers of Saint John in 1812 to teenage "crews" at McDonald's today, Canada's trade union movement has a long, exciting history. Working People tells the story of the men and women in the labour movement in Canada and their struggle for security, dignity, and influence in our society. Desmond Morton highlights the great events of labour history - the 1902 meeting that enabled international unions to dominate Canadian unionism for seventy years, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and an obscure 1944 order-in-council that became the labour's charter of rights and freedoms. He describes the romantic idealism of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and looks at "new model" unions t...
This intellectual history explores how the idea of manhood shaped French Canadian culture and Quebec’s nationalist movement. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Quebec was an agrarian society, and masculinity was rooted in the land and the family and informed by Catholic principles of piety and self-restraint. As the industrial era took hold, a new model was forged, built on the values of secularism and individualism. Jeffery Vacante’s perceptive analysis reveals how French Canadian intellectuals defined masculinity in response to imperialist English Canadian ideals. This “national manhood” would be disentangled from the workplace, the family, and the land and tied instead to one’s cultural identity. The new formulation was crucial in the larger struggle to modernize Quebec’s institutions while preserving French Canadian community, faith, and culture. It offered French Canadian men a way to remodel themselves, participate in industrial modernity, and still assert cultural authority.
A formative moment in Canadian history, the 1940s left as a legacy not only the welfare state but also the legal framework that has defined organized labour for five decades."--BOOK JACKET.
Kealey provides an overview of the study of workers in Canada as well as in-depth examinations of two of the field's leading scholars, political economist Clare Pentland and Marxist historian Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson. He analyses the development of Canadian labour history in particular and social history in general, and provides detailed empirical studies of the Orange Order in Toronto, printers and their unions, the Knights of Labor, and the Canadian labour revolt of 1919. The collection concludes with three synthetic views of Canadian working-class history focusing on the labour movement, the role of strikes, and attempts by the state to manage class conflict. Workers and Canadian History will be of great interest to students and scholars of Canadian history, labour history, Marxist and socialist theory and history, and political science.