Some media observers in Canada have suggested that in terms of excitement value, Canadian politics come out on the losing side, referring to the NDP leadership race as boring, or comparing the NDP ‘snoozefest’ to the ‘slugfest’ of the Republican race. As boring as Canadian politics may be to many, I for one am grateful to be able to participate in the more diverse political culture that has been built in Canada.

Granted, the Republican race has produced some provocative headlines. Newt Gingrich wants to colonize the moon? Mitt Romney lambasted in attack ad for speaking French? Newt Gingrich expands on his support for child labor? Like a character in an archetypal horror film, I can’t resist investigating further, even as I risk the death of my faith in humanity as a result.

In comparison, the NDP leadership race has not generated similarly sensationalist headlines. NDP MP Nathan Cullen condemns Harper’s ‘witch hunt’ on environmental charities. Leadership hopeful Mulcair unapologetic about dual citizenship. Nash on early childhood education. The genre might be more suitably cast as documentary, but in the real world of politics, is this really a negative thing?

Both leadership races will determine the leader of each nation’s official opposition. But a key difference is that in the United States, the Republicans comprise the only major opposition. In Canada, opponents of the reigning Conservative Party have a variety of oppositional parties to support, from the long-reigning Liberal Party, to the Green Party, and for some, the Bloc Quebecois.

In both of these leadership races, it is not uncommon to hear the word “liberal” infused with negative connotations. Yet the reasons for this could not be more different. In the American context, liberal is frequently used as a catch-all phrase for anyone to the left of the Republican Party. Within a two-party state, the space for oppositional politics is thus more constricted. The rate at which “socialist” is used to describe Democrat policies in the United States, moreover, suggests that some Republican pundits remain unaware of the very real differences between liberalism and socialism.

Social democracy has gained a stronger foothold in Canadian politics. Born out of the depression years of the 1930s, the CCF began as a party that explicitly embraced socialism. Later renamed the NDP, it has since come to occupy a centre-left position within a capitalist economic system. Social democracy has nonetheless left an enduring legacy in Canada, perhaps most notably in a system of public healthcare.

Calls for the unification of the left in Canada have increased in volume in recent years. However, I fail to see less choice in the political arena as a positive democratic development. A vibrant political culture that can support the growth and development of multiple parties across the political spectrum ought to be celebrated.

The political systems in Canada and the United States are both deeply flawed. However, at least those of us who vote in Canada have greater choice when exercising our democratic rights. The fact that the official opposition in Canada can draw together eight intelligent leadership contenders who can respectfully share their vision for building a more socially just country, while boring for some, is very much the result of a more varied and diverse political culture.

Political debate in Canada can undoubtedly be more mundane at times. Is it hypocritical to criticize a leadership candidate for holding dual citizenship when our official head of state, the Queen, is not a Canadian citizen? But when all is said and done, I will take a civilized debate over the merits of a system of public childcare over suggestions of subsidizing education costs through the physical labour of poor children any day.

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“Debate has now begun on [Conservative] MP Blake Richards’ Private Members’ Bill C-309.  The Bill proposes creating a new criminal offence for those that wear ‘a mask or other disguise to conceal their identity without lawful excuse’ during a riot or unlawful assembly.  This Bill was crafted in response to disturbances in large Canadian cities in which masked rioters assaulted civilians, destroyed public and private property and looted businesses.  So this week I ask, ‘Should it be a criminal offense to mask or conceal one’s identity without lawful excuse during a riot or unlawful assembly?’”

Bill C-309 poses a severe threat to Canadians’ right to freedom of assembly, and  threatens future protest movements. Anonymity, crowd action and protest have a long and storied history, a tradition which extends well into the present day. Crowd action is deeply rooted in anonymity, allowing an individual to blend into a larger group of people, reducing the risk of state reprisal and repression. In this post, I provide some historical context to this, arguing that we should not allow Bill C-309 to pass.

The use of fictional or historical characters to mask a protesters’ identity has many precedents. Historians Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé have explored the symbolic and practical importance of figures like General Ludd to the Luddite movement or Captain Swing to the Swing Riots during nineteenth century British protests. With the latter, farm workers facing unemployment, underemployment, low levels of relief, and the replacement of their labour with threshing machines, used letters from “Captain Swing” to object to these conditions and protect their identity from the long arm of the state. Of course, the use of masks during crowd actions also have a much more sordid history – the white hood, as one example, continues to be a powerful symbol of racist oppression and violence against African Americans.

In more recent years, “Anonymous” has become a potent symbol among protestors. Popularized by the comic book (inspired by Thatcher’s Britain) and film V is for Vendetta, the Guy Fawkes masks provide a means for activists to escape state repression, rallying behind a symbol that evokes considerable meaning.

Technological developments have been a powerful force in building protest movements and activist links. So too have they made it easier for the state to crack down on dissent. Many repressive states across the world have used the Internet to trace its critics, jailing or otherwise eliminating opposition to dictatorial rule. In the Canadian context, face recognition technology has most recently enabled authorities to identify and arrest individuals caught in crowd shots.

There are many reasons why someone participating in a peaceful assembly may want to cover their face or hide their identity. Some people shield their faces in public for religious reasons. While religion may be read as a “lawful excuse”, this Bill could still limit the right of some religious groups to join in peaceful assembly.

There are many other reasons people may choose to cover their faces during a peaceful assembly. Photos are often shot continuously during protests, as participants, observers and the media attempt to document these events. Pictures can be instantly uploaded to the Internet, available to be viewed by millions. This could cause professional or personal duress for those who may live or work in an environment hostile to activist causes. Furthermore, facial concealment is also an important method for peaceful protestors to physically protect themselves from police violence. A kerchief is often the only tool a protestor may have to shield against the burning effect of tear gas or other forms of crowd control.

Supporters of Bill C-309 might point out that these prohibitions would exist only in cases where a riot or unlawful assembly was unfolding. Yet who gets to define what constitutes an unlawful assembly? Many governments have seemed all too willing to define a broad range of protest as unlawful, particularly when these protests target state authority or power, such as was witnessed during the largely peaceful G20 protests in Toronto.

Bill C-309 could pose a serious threat to Canadian rights to participate in peaceful assembly. It would also enhance the power of the state to crack down on dissenters. This is not a positive development for democracy. The Conservatives in Canada like to position themselves as the champions of smaller government, freedom and democracy. However, a state that dictates what we can and cannot wear is Big Government in all the wrong ways. Bill C-309 would place serious limitations on our democratic rights.

What does your MP think of Bill C-309? Contact information for your MP is available here if you’d like to find out.

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One such example is Stacey Zembrycki’s website, “Sharing Authority With Baba: A Collaborative History of Sudbury’s Ukrainian Community, 1901-1939.” Produced through Concordia University’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS), this site serves as an exemplary model of the innovative ways that scholarly work can be shared in a digital format.

The site opens with a brief description of its contents, along with an invitation to download a historical walking tour of the Donovan, including a guide and audio files of Sudbury’s Ukrainian community. From here, web surfers can navigate a range of options in a highly interactive learning process.

A project tab leads to a more detailed description of the work, outlining her guiding theory and methodology. Exploring the ongoing process of community, Zembrycki uses this space to engage readers with some of philosophical pillars of oral history, concisely blending her personal research experience with the broader politics of oral history. More information about the interviews is located under a social network tab, which offers both visual and written descriptions of people and place in Sudbury. Central here is Baba, who played a pivotal role in facilitating the research project.

Following this is a web of stories where written historical sketches are enhanced by an intricate web of oral interviews, allowing for the voices of interview participants to be heard. This is further supplemented by an interactive memoryscape that locates photographs on a map of Sudbury. A photo gallery serving as a community photo album brings the past much more vividly to life in the wide array of historical photographs on display. A list of credits and a site index top off this inventive work, providing further information about those involved in the production of the research and site, and links to further publications.

This format does not easily fit into traditional modes of scholarship, but herein is also its greatest strength. In written form, an author has a great deal of control in determining the path of the narrative and the flow of information. Digital history does not easily lend itself to long explanatory arguments or in-depth discussions of complex phenomena. Images, maps and audio files can easily lure attention away from the text, and visitors have greater freedom to pick and choose their flow of information.

Yet it is precisely this multi-sensory stimulation that can greatly enhance the learning experience. It becomes possible to not only read about, but to see, hear and locate a diversity of historical experiences. Digital history can bring the past to life in new, exciting and vivid ways.

Digital history offers an added benefit for oral historians who grapple with difficult questions around “sharing authority”, power relations in the research and writing process, and the complexities of transferring the spoken word to written form. Including audio files provides space for people to speak for themselves, capturing cadence, tone and inflection, which in turn can greatly affect the meaning and intention of what is being said. Sound editing, selecting clips and design can still impede a perfect balance of power, but it certainly is a big step towards allowing people to speak for themselves.

Zembrycki’s work, like much digital history, is also a project of public history. Its accessibility leaves her accountable to a much wider audience than peer reviewers, including the people from the community she has undertaken to study. But its value certainly doesn’t end in the realm of public history – it also has much to contribute to professional historical studies.

Zembrycki contributes to a growing body of historical work which engages studies of the past with new technology, adding to an increasingly impressive body of scholarly work that is available online. It serves as another striking reminder of the many benefits of remaining open to new technologies both in the classroom and within academic research. As Zembrycki illustrates, the end results can be the beginning of boundless possibilities for a future that more deeply connects with its past.

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Workers were undoubtedly shocked. Having been unorganized, mounting a challenge to this proved difficult, albeit not insurmountable. In Oshawa, where approximately 600 IQT jobs were lost, a long history of workers’ activism, linked to thousands of other communities, has shaped and supported local, provincial and national organizations of labour to safeguard the rights of working people. This history, and the forms of labour organization it has spawned, both help and hinder us as we face an increasingly common problem in many cities and towns – company closures.

Local activists, along with supporters from the Durham Region Labour Council, the Canadian Auto Workers, the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Ontario New Democratic Party were quick to offer support and organizational aid to former IQT workers. However, the extent of support that could be offered to these newly unemployed workers is also limited by the nature and shape of the trade union movement as it has developed in the twentieth century.

Efforts to broadly organize workers predate the 1930s, with the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World and the One Big Union being particularly noteworthy examples. With the mass unemployment of the Depression era came renewed efforts to organize the unemployed. However, industrial unionism, which would go on to form the backbone of the North American trade union movement, emerged from the 1930s as the dominant form of worker organization. A 1937 strike in Oshawa which established the United Automobile Workers in Canada is one early example of this.

Industrial unionism was a radical form of organizing at the time; whereas most workers prior to this had been organized in separate locals by skill or trade, industrial unionism brought all workers at the same company under the same union banner. High employment levels during the Second World War and well into the postwar period, along with the expulsion of “radicals” from the trade union movement early in the Cold War era, further solidified this form of organization, limiting the space for dissent against the postwar status quo. Organizing by workplace has since become the most typical form of unionism, and has laid the basis for labour organizations and labour laws in Canada.

The foundation of this system of organization first trembled in Canada in the 1970s, when Dunlop Tire closed its Toronto factory. Worker protest led to changes to the Employment Standards Act and Canadian Labour Code, requiring employers in Ontarioto provide advance notice of mass terminations and severance pay. In 1980, the Houdaille Bumper plant in Oshawa closed its doors, leading workers there to occupy the plant for two weeks. Their actions brought important changes to the Employment Standards Act, encouraging pension portability and ensuring benefit payments were made through the pre-notification period that companies were required to give when closing.

These gains were overall quite limited. Workers still lost their jobs, and often, their active union membership – there is little space for the unemployed within the current trade union movement. Meanwhile, company closures have become increasingly common in current decades, as the political and economic landscape has shifted to give companies greater flexibility to operate globally.

Yet the labour movement continues to operate largely along the lines established in the 1930s and 1940s, on a system premised on high employment levels and national protectionism. IQT workers have shown us that when pushed far enough, workers can and will self-organize to protect their rights. The labour movement can and has been an important ally to this, offering aid and support in organizing rallies, protests and actions where affected people, unionized or not, can express their voice and demand a fair deal.

At the same time, terminated workers, unionized or not, are excluded from full participation in the labour movement. If they find another job, and if it is a non-unionized workplace, if they are able to convince half of the people at their new workplace to unionize, then they will be welcome to fully participate in the labour movement.

Unionization rates in North America have been steadily declining in recent years, along with the job security, benefits and good pay that organized workers have won. IQT is a reflection of this, whereby Bell Canada has contracted out what were once unionized jobs to a non-unionized third party employer. This process is also linked to the growing ascendancy of global capital in the late twentieth century in the fertile soil of neoconservative governance, and the ability of products and services (but not people) to travel freely across national borders.

The times they are a-changin. The actions of IQT serves as another reminder that perhaps it’s time for the labour movement to change along with them, to re-imagine the ways that working people can belong and participate in a larger organization of working people. Alternate models may largely defy living memory in North America, but they are a part of our global history, there to learn from and help us inform future directions, if we are willing to look back far enough. No one system of organization has been perfectly successful, but there is as much to be learnt from past failures and successes which can help us to build a new, strong, successful and more inclusive movement.

Until we open ourselves to different models, recent history and current conditions suggest that we will remain largely powerless in the wake of the antics of companies like IQT Solutions, and as is all too often the case, it will be workers paying the price.

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Yet despite popular interest in the economy, we live in an era where we are told that economic matters must be left to “experts.” As a language of expertise has been created to distance people from a clear understanding of the economic issues that impact our daily lives, we are expected to place our trust in the financers, investors, bankers and economists who claim that they alone can steer us towards economic stability and prosperity.

Having long been suspicious of the direction some of these people have been steering us, I was thus pleasantly surprised to watch the refreshingly clear, straightforward and insightful documentary Inside Job. This Academy Award winning film explores some of the factors that led to our most recent recession, how it could have been avoided, and destabilizes the myth that our economic experts are deserving of our blind trust. Perhaps most importantly, the film illustrates how the gross mismanagement of the economy will continue if we allow it.

Directed by Charles Ferguson and narrated by Matt Damon, Inside Job explores the uncomfortably close relationships between Wall Street, the White House, and knowledge production in universities. As governments have turned towards deregulation of the economy, privatisation has allowed some individuals to benefit from exponential gains in wealth, while they remain largely insulated from their increasingly reckless manipulation of the market.

For example, risky investments have been wrongfully been given the highest, most secure ratings. Meanwhile, insiders have protected themselves against risk by insuring themselves against default. Therefore, if someone has been given a mortgage they cannot afford, a high risk loan, lenders can and have insured themselves against default, standing to reap a financial windfall whether the loan is repaid or not. People who lost their homes were not so lucky; neither were the citizens who footed the bill for the massive financial bailouts given out in the wake of the crisis.

The intimate relation between government, business and universities is another important theme of this film. The powerful lobbying force of the financial sector is probably no surprise to many. The rate at which individuals switch positions between these three sectors may also be unsurprising to some. Perhaps others were even aware of the laissez-fair approach to knowledge production in universities, wherein academics have received substantial amounts of money from corporate interests to produce leading “expert opinion.” Meanwhile, there are no regulations stipulating that said academics reveal their funding sources, and hence how their findings may lean towards those very interests. Such conflicts of interest, and an overall lack of transparency and accountability, are both important and disturbing themes in this film.

A broader historical perspective might have improved this film. The current recession has often been compared with the Great Depression of the 1930s; this overlooks a much longer history of cyclical recessions, and the lessons that can be drawn from this. On the other hand, one of the great strengths of the film is that it exposes the degree to which the economic gospel of our times is based in relatively new, and heretofore untested, ideas. Moreover, it exposes how dismal a failure these ideas have proven to be in practice.

Another important difference between the Great Depression and our current Great Recession is the way that people have responded in times of crisis. The 1930s were characterized by broad-based discontent with corporatism, protest, and the creation of new political parties that to better represent people’s interests. Indeed, much government regulation of the economy had its roots in the widespread discontent and protest of this era.

Today, however, much of this mismanagement, corruption and the growing gulf between rich and poor continues unchallenged, unhindered by our silence. Meanwhile, the proponents of deregulation and privatisation have continued to enjoy electoral successes in Canada, creating more fertile ground for the fruits of economic injustice to grow. Instead of pointing the fingers at those who led us into this crisis, many seem content attacking the other pawns in this game – union bashing, welfare bashing (unless it’s corporate welfare), poor bashing – far too many of us are ready and willing to point the finger at one another, joining the great race to the bottom, as we continue to allow ourselves to be led down this sloping path by those who created this crisis in the first place.

Why is this? Why haven’t those responsible for this crisis been held accountable? Why are we still allowing them – indeed, publically funding them – to lead our economy? Why are we still placing our trust in them? Where is the justice? Where is the outrage?

Inside Job poses these very important questions. A good place to begin answering them is by watching this very powerful documentary.

I would like to suggest that this sort of reaction is misinformed. My purpose here is not to offer a defence of Bob Rae; on the contrary, I am highly critical of his leadership record. Rather, I would like to address the faulty logic that Bob Rae can be conflated with the current New Democratic Party.

Bob Rae rose to leadership in Ontario during hard economic times. Following Brian Mulroney’s re-election in Canada in 1988, and the negotiation of the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, the Canadian economy became much more closely linked to the value of its currency. In the midst of the recession of the early 1990s, the value of the Canadian dollar skyrocketed, leading to a decline in Canadian exports and jobs.

Industrial Ontario, long the beneficiary of protectionism, was hit hard. It was within this rocky economic climate that Bob Rae, a centrist voice within the New Democratic Party, was elected as Premier in Ontario in 1990.

Rae’s popularity declined dramatically between 1990 and 1995, even among traditional NDP supporters. He reneged on his campaign promise of public auto insurance, and instituted the Social Contract and its highly unpopular “Rae days,” causing the party to lose much support from organized labour. Tuition fees more than doubled during his leadership; the Canadian Federation of Students has been a vocal critic of his track record and more recent support for unregulated tuition.

Rae resigned as leader of the NDP and MPP in 1996. He resigned from the New Democratic Party in 1997, later returning to his Liberal roots. Yet to date the NDP has been unable to regain a significant presence in Ontario provincially or nationally. This was evident in the most recent federal election, where a majority of Ontarians opted out of the “orange wave,” cementing a Conservative majority. Conservatives were quick to play the Bob Rae card in an effort to stifle support for the NDP.

Yet a political party, particularly a democratic one, is much more than a single part – especially a former part. There have been more successful records of NDP governance in other provinces, not the least of which includes the leadership of Tommy Douglas, while examples of bad leadership can be found across the political spectrum.

In spite of this, too many Ontarians that I spoke with during this campaign were largely unable or unwilling to differentiate between the NDP and Bob Rae, refusing to accept that different leaders may have different visions, goals and practices. Expanding our frame of reference beyond our direct lived experience is critical in making informed decisions that affect our future.

It would be ludicrous for me to refuse support for the Conservative Party of Canada because I did not like John A. Macdonald’s National Policy. The Conservative Party today is a very different organization from what it once was, not least because it is now a main proponent of free trade. Indeed, much of the change within this party has taken place within lived experience. So too have the priorities and philosophies of the Liberal Party and the NDP changed over time. The measure of a party ought not to be weighed by its past alone; the leadership and platforms each party presently offers needs to be accessed in as fair, balanced and open a manner as possible. A party should also be judged not only on its leadership, but its responsiveness to its membership, and more importantly, its electorate. Democracy should not begin and end at a polling station once every four years or so.

The NDP made minor gains in Ontario in the 2011 federal election, increasing their seats in the province from 17 to 22, while the Conservatives won an overwhelming 73 seats. Surely some of these cast votes were rooted in informed decision-making. However, I hope those who voted against the orange wave simply because of the spectre of Bob Rae will reflect more carefully on our political system in the future. History can be an important guide for our future, helping us to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. But history is not the sole determinant of the present and future.

When I first started doing this, I was surprised to encounter some distrust of academics. One woman shared a story with me that poignantly captured this. She had participated in an academic project once, but she hadn’t found it to be a very positive experience. When she read about a research project in the paper, she was eager to help, and she mailed some of her prized possessions – diaries and other records of her late aunt’s life – to the person conducting the research. And then she never heard from the researcher again.

She expressed deep hurt and concern over this. What had happened to her late aunt’s things? Was a book ever published? She’d really been looking forward to reading it. A quick search of a university library catalogue revealed that this book had indeed been published years ago; she expressed gratitude when I shared this information with her, opting to purchase the book online. The most important moral of this story for me was that if people were going to freely share their life histories with me, I ought to share my work with them in return.  This was standard protocol at Trent University where I was working on my Master’s thesis at the time, and a question on the ethics form invited participants to indicate if they would like a copy of the work when it was finished.

The positive response was overwhelming. Many people requested a copy, even those who hadn’t participated in the project. Again and again I was asked: Is it done yet? When can we read it? Sharing copies posed a challenge once it was finished; many told me they did not want to spend that much time reading from a computer screen, and not everyone had e-mail addresses. Printing is costly, I explained, and I was obligated to provide a copy to everyone who participated first; after that, I promised to save up money to have extra copies printed for anyone else interested in reading it. Soon after, I received calls informing me that the Retirees’ Chapter of Local 222 and Family Auxiliary 27 of the CAW had passed motions of financial support for the costs of printing my thesis.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who have read my thesis since then, and the feedback has been incredible.  To a certain extent, reviews have been mixed. Some critique that my interpretation leans too far to the left, while others found a left perspective refreshing. Most have suggested that the first part is a tad long-winded or boring, but that the later chapters are much better, especially when I quote the interview material extensively. The message I’ve taken from this is more of their voices, a little less of mine – which I happen to agree is very good advice.

Yet time and again the feedback I receive from academic circles is the exact opposite. Quote the interviews less, cut them down, sum them up. Speak for them, not with them.  The message here is a little less of their voices, a lot more of mine. And this is what historians do, isn’t it? They analyze sources, produce data, and engage in debate with other historians.

But is oral history just another source? No, it is not. These are people, not just texts. A source does not greet you with a smile, welcome you into its home, invite you to make yourself comfortable. It doesn’t ply you with food and drink, laugh, cry, hug you, bare its soul. Sources don’t wait to reveal themselves until they’ve gotten to know and trust you, they don’t ask to read what you’re writing about them, critique the way you’ve presented them, or call you out if you haven’t fairly represented them.  Sources don’t suffer heartache, pain and ill health. Sources don’t die.

I was unprepared for the emotional rollercoaster of oral history when I first set out on this journey. The emotional highs were exhilarating as I got to know people, share with them, and came to care about them. I knew these people had more time behind them than in front of them, but the ramifications of that hadn’t completely sunk in yet. Then I lost Betty Love, and so began the first long plummet down.  The last time I saw her, I was dropping off a transcript of our interview. Of course she welcomed me inside, and we sat and talked. She shared many incredible stories with me that day, as I mentally kicked myself for not bringing along a recorder so I could capture every single word. But there would be other opportunities, I assured myself, lots of conversations we’d have in the future. But first I had a thesis to write! It wasn’t until I was about to drop off a finished copy that I found out Betty Love had died. She’d touched my life in so many ways, not only in the short time we’d spent together, but in the many hours I spent listening to her words, carefully transcribing them, agonizing over how to capture this brilliant personality on paper. I felt like a failure. If I’d just worked a little harder, a little faster, I would have been able to give something back to her, she’d have seen the product of our labour, as she’d requested. I found some solace in learning that the transcript I’d dropped off had been used in her eulogy, but it was cold comfort.

I’ve witnessed death many times since then. It never gets easier. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, it just numbs the pain a little, pushing us to grow and change along the way. I see things more clearly now. When I sit down to listen to a life story, and I’m told with a wry smile that they’ve reached the point in their lives where they now read the paper “back to front,” I’m “in the know.”  I, too, now start with the obituaries when the paper arrives, hoping as I scan the names that I won’t recognize any of them. I have a deeper appreciation of the urgency underlying their words when I’m asked when I’ll be done, when they’ll be able to see what I’ve written. I know too well the truth of their statements when I’m reminded frankly that they won’t be around forever, and that I’d better get on it if they’re going to live to see it.

And here lies my greatest difficulty reconciling these “two worlds.” On the one hand, in the university, it is commonly accepted that your dissertation won’t be widely read, that you are engaging in a conversation with academics first and foremost. Wait for the book, I’m told. Start a side project of public history in your spare time – have two separate conversations, in other words. On the other hand, I have people participating in the project who want to read what I’m writing about them, who want in on the conversation. Do I tell them that there must be two conversations? Should they trust me if one of these is disconnected from, and largely unresponsive to them?

Oral historians have been responding to these and other concerns for some time. But it seems to me that much of this remains concentrated in oral history niches, slow to filter into the larger profession, where oral history is still often considered just another source. But we don’t really live in two worlds; perhaps if we were more open to engaging in a common conversation, we’d find that we all had something to learn from the process.

Some suggestions for further reading:

Steven High, What Can Oral History Teach Us?

Canadian Oral History Blog

Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling

Oral History Forum d’histoire orale

Published in: American Federation of Labor: History, Encyclopedia, Reference Book (Washington: American Federation of Labor, 1919); additional digital editing by Tim Davenport, no copyright claimed.

Consumer activism has a long history in Canada. From the union label campaigns of the early North American labour movement, to the more contemporary “Buy Domestic” slogan of some unions, to the “buy local” movement popularized by environmentalists, the link between activism and consumption has long been recognized. I would like to suggest that this trajectory has not been entirely progressive, and that current consumer activists need to learn from the past. It’s not enough to just buy domestically, or locally: people involved in the production process need our attention, too. For example, it is laudable to call for local, sustainable agriculture, but we cannot ignore the exploitative working conditions that can also grow in our local communities.

The North American union label movement, rooted in craft unionism, began in 1869 and spread quickly over the next decades. Products made or services offered by unionized workers were clearly marked with a union label; fellow working class consumers were in turn encouraged to purchase products or services with the union label. While this movement did not disappear entirely, its popularity did wane. The growth of the industrial unionism in the twentieth century partially contributed to this; many union members were involved in large scale mass production with a less clear personal connection to consumers. To cite an example given in a lecture I recently heard, steelworkers are unlikely to enjoy much success convincing working class woman to buy union-made pig iron when it is not them, but rather large manufacturers buying this product. This economic complexity continues today, and can still pose challenges for contemporary activists.

But consumer activism has been embraced by some industrial unions. The slogan “Buy Domestic” is practically synonymous with the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW); however, nationalist buying campaigns originated in the United States with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the United Automobile Workers (UAW). Dana Frank’s Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism explores some of the major problems surrounding ‘buy American’ rhetoric, and its support of “corporate patriotism” and even outright racism, wherein American corporations and workers were pitted against “foreign” people and products.

Of course, nationalism in Canada has a much more complex relationship with left-wing politics. As Steven High illustrates in Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969-1984, an appeal to nationalism often buttressed unionized workers in Canada from some of the harsher realities of North American deindustrialization.

However, I would like to suggest that a Canadian “Buy Domestic” campaign is still fundamentally flawed. First, it is silent on the importance of buying union-made products. Is someone driving a Honda, made in Canada by a non-unionized workforce, realizing the CAW’s message? Presumably not.

Furthermore, buying domestic presupposes just working conditions for all within the nation. This suggests that sweatshops do not exist in Canada, when, in fact, they do. It overlooks the many forms of precarious labour that thrive in a country that has embraced neoliberalism, and working people who have been historically excluded from protective labour legislation in Canada, such as domestic service workers and farm labourers. Buying domestic is no guarantee of fair labour practices.

The “buy local” movement emerged from “green politics,” wherein people are urged to “think globally, act locally” by considering the health of the entire planet while taking action in their communities. Proponents of buying locally point to the environmental and social costs of shipping products such as food across the world, pointing to the added benefits of better working conditions (in ‘developed’ countries).

But what about the import and export of people whose labour prepares local food for local markets? Canada provides fertile ground for exploitative working conditions through the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program. Persistent and sustained unionization efforts have largely been unsuccessful. Workers caught supporting unionization can be fired and “repatriated.” Critics of this program point to workers’ exclusion from Health and Safety Legislation, most of the Employment Standards Act, 12-15 hour workdays without breaks or overtime, low wages and substandard housing – all which can and has flourished in our local communities. Buying locally, then, is certainly no guarantee of socially conscientious consumerism.

Buying domestic or buying local is not enough. Without insisting on the union label, consumer activism is limited to half measures, leaving unchallenged the spaces for exploitative working conditions in so-called developed countries.

Our group blog has been one of our most successful initiatives of the year.  It began as 2009 drew to a close as a response to welcome criticism that we weren’t being as active as our name might suggest.  In the beginning we struggled to post once a week, but throughout 2010, our group of contributors has expanded to include a large group of fantastic bloggers whose dedication and hard work has been a welcome and appreciated addition to the site.  We now post between 2 and 5 submissions a week, and our readership has grown from a few hundred unique monthly hits to more than 4000 hits each month.  We are constantly seeking new bloggers on a regular or one-time basis, so if you are interested in joining the team, please contact us.     

We had been throwing around the idea of podcasts for some time, but Lisa Rumiel’s History Matters lecture series in Toronto was pivotal in propelling us to put this idea into action.  These public lectures were highly successful, drawing full houses; those unable to attend these talks can listen to them here.  Given the dramatic success of these events, talks of this nature will hopefully be held in many cities and towns. 

We have continued to be rather Toronto-centric, certainly not because Toronto is the centre of the universe – at least according to this exiled Maritimer – but rather due to the challenges of reaching out across the vast space that makes up Canada.  While much work remains to be done in this area, we’ve made a few leaps and bounds, thanks entirely to the willingness of people from across the country and beyond to participate in this project.

In this regard, we were very happy to welcome George Buri and David Webster from the University of Regina as our book review editors.  Book reviews are another project we took on this past year, following Jim Clifford’s suggestion that we begin publishing reviews of academic works by non-academics.  To date this has been a successful addition to the site, one which will hopefully continue to grow over the next year.

We’ve also forged some exciting partnerships over the past year, while maintaining pre-existing ones.  Our French partner site, HistoireEngagée, has grown dramatically over the past year.  THEN/HIER has been a great source of support for us, and Jen Bonnell and Tom Peace have co-operated in organizing a number of events through their Approaching the Past series, with more to look forward to in the future, including an upcoming workshop, Experiencing History, on January 27, 2011.  Ian Milligan has been hard at work over the past year coordinating a theme issue on Active History with the journal Left History.  Jim Clifford and Jay Young have also been working closely with Matt Price from the University of Toronto; his digital History and Its Publics project, while still in its very early stages, offers something to look forward to learning more about in 2011.  Finally, thanks to the work of Karen Dearlove who joined our team this year, we have recently filed an application seeking non-profit status, which will hopefully enable us to develop even more partnerships throughout the upcoming year.

Of course, while things change, so too do they stay the same.  Questions that we have grappled with since this project began remain.  What can we do to encourage fuller and more equitable participation?  Is there anything we can do to encourage more people to submit short, accessible papers?  How stringent should our editorial standards be?  Should our editorial standards be tougher for papers than blog posts?  Should we moderate comments, or should anyone be free to post anything?  Are there ways we can foster a forum for greater discussion and commentary on the site?

Overall, it’s been a great year at ActiveHistory.ca.  I’ve been very lucky to work with a dedicated, imaginative, intelligent and ever-growing group of people, and I look forward to seeing the ways in which we continue to respond, change and grow in the coming year.  The present and future direction of this site is very much indebted to the criticism, suggestions and commentary that we have received in the past, and I hope we have much more of this to look forward to this year.  We love hearing from you, so please don’t hesitate to share comments and ideas on what we’ve done, haven’t done, or what we could be doing.

Does this mean we have the right to tell an employer or supervisor exactly what we think of him or her?  Alternately, do we have the right to share these feelings with others?  The rising popularity of social network sites like Facebook have added another dimension to this question: how public of a forum can we use to express our opinions of employers?

Recent decisions in Canada and the United States help shed light on the latter question, and suggest that workers in the United States have much more freedom when it comes to criticizing their employers over social network sites. 

In what may be the first Facebook-related dismissal in Canada to be brought before a labour relations board, two workers in British Columbia who recently unionized their workplace were fired for making derogatory remarks about their employer on Facebook.  Granted, their comments were highly contentious, and included homophobic slurs and threats.  In addition, the subject of their slurs were also their ‘friends’ on Facebook, making it much easier for their managers to track their activities off the job.  The British Columbia Labour Relations Board upheld their termination, citing the creation of a hostile work environment and insubordination.

In a similar case with very different results in the United States, the National Labour Relations Board recently upheld an employee’s right to criticize her supervisor on Facebook, accusing the company she worked for of illegally firing her.   According to the National Labour Relations Act, workers have the right to form unions, and both unionized and non-unionized workers are protected against being punished for discussing unionization or working conditions.  A Board spokesman stated that whether it be at the water cooler or on Facebook, American workers have the right to talk about working conditions, which includes the right to talk about their supervisors.  The Labour Relations Board will not have the last word on this, however; the case is scheduled to be heard in an American court in January of next year.  In Canada, labour law falls under provincial jurisdiction, whereas in the United States labour law is a federal domain.

These cases raise interesting questions about workers’ rights, freedom of speech, and employers’ right to discipline workers’ behaviour and activities both on and off the job, and have spawned a slew of online commentary.  In some ways, these are not new problems; there is a long history of workers seeking to limit the power and control employers have wielded over their personal and professional lives.  Social media outlets, however, add new questions to age-old problems.

These two labour board decisions are a first, but undoubtedly will not be the last we hear on this topic.  Indeed, there is even a Facebook page devoted to people Fired by Facebook.  As the lines between work and home, personal and professional life, become even more blurred under the pressure of technological innovation, competing definitions and boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour will undoubtedly continue to be contested.  In the meantime, Canadian workers may want to be careful of what they say about their employers on Facebook.