Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History

In 1983 and 1984 the Canadian Studies Program of the Secretary of State funded four lecture series at Canadian universities on the history of the Canadian working class. This volume presents many of the lectures in a published version. Ranging from east to west and covering two centuries of Canadian labour history, the volume includes a selection of essays by some of Canada’s leading social historians including Michael Cross, David Frank, Ross McCormack, Bryan Palmer and Joy Parr. Outstanding participants in the making of Canadian labour history Eugene Forsey and H. Landon Ladd have also contributed. Directed at a popular audience these fourteen lectures provide a major survey of Canada’s labour past.

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgements
2. Illustrations
3. Preface
4. Overviews
   1. The History of the Canadian Labour Movement
      Eugene Forsey
   2. The Structure of Canadian Working-Class History
      Gregory S. Kealey
5. The Nineteenth-century Experience
   1. The Canadian Worker in the Early Industrial Age
      Michael S. Cross
   2. Labour in Nineteenth-Century Canada
      Bryan D. Palmer
6. The Twentieth-century Experience
   1. Canadian Working Women in the Twentieth Century
      Joan Sangster
   2. Women Workers in the Twentieth Century
      Joy Parr
   3. Gompers in Canada Revisited
      Robert H. Babcock
   4. Wobblies and Blanketstiffs: The Constituency of the IWW in Western Canada
      A. Ross McCormack
   5. The Western Working-Class Experience
      A. Ross McCormack
   6. The Provincial Workmen’s Association: A Brief Survey of Several Problems of Interpretation
      Ian McKay
   7. The Struggle for Development: Workers in Atlantic Canada in the Twentieth Century
      David Frank
   8. The Newfoundland Loggers’ Strike of 1959
      H. Landon Ladd
   9. Quebec Workers in the Twentieth Century
      Leo Roback
   10. “Taking It:” Ontario’s Workers’ Struggles
       Bryan Palmer

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 CA). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.