By Ryan Kelly A friend of mine with decades of bargaining experience once told me, “No one has ever sat down to a bargaining table and had management say: ‘Sounds good! We have enough money to cover all of that.’” There are many nuances to negotiations, many ingrained in the processes as described in the Ontario Labour Relations Act. Negotiations… Read more »
By Christine McLaughlin On a hot summer day, few activities are more pleasant than a visit to your nearest waterfront to enjoy a cool dip or a stroll along a breezy beach. In my own heavily (de)industrialized city, where the landscape is dotted with abandoned factories, vacant fenced lots, and a few industrial complexes that still produce in the city,… Read more »
By David Zylberberg Following the census, Canada’s federal electoral districts are redrawn every decade. On Monday, Ontario’s proposed new ridings were announced, the last province to do so. You can look at the details of the proposed new ridings or the process of consultation, here. The proposed changes have led me to think about the origins and rationale for electoral… Read more »
Is race something we wear on our faces? Does it lie our skin colour, place of origin, or ancestry? Is it tangible? Two online exhibits challenge these ideas. The White Australia Policy began in 1901. Years of xenophobia and racial tensions, caused by increasing immigration, labour disputes, and competition in the Australian goldfields, fostered the passing of the Immigration Restriction… Read more »
By Nathan Smith Here in East York Canada Day celebrations began in the morning with a parade. I pulled my daughter in her wagon to the starting point a few blocks from our house. As we hurried to meet neighbours I reflected on the nature of the event organizing itself just beyond a set of traffic lights ahead. Historians of… Read more »
By Mathieu Brûlé While there have been a number of labour-related subjects in the news recently, from the Elliot Lake tragedy to the Ontario Progressive Conservatives’ White Paper on unions, one article in particular caught my interest. It was about the recent efforts of the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) to organize a number of demonstrations in support of continued access to safe,… Read more »
By Dan Horner The face that glares down from the cover of the June 4th issue of Maclean’s is meant to be unsettling: A protestor scowls at us, his menace heightened by some digital tweaks that bathe the whole scene in a blood red glow. The accompanying headline plays to the dystopian gloom of the image, suggesting that the mob… Read more »
By Christine McLaughlin Sometimes ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I had the pleasure of witnessing an example of this recently when I attended a tribute luncheon in honour of the 23rd annual Agnes Macphail Award winner, Beverly McCloskey. Agnes Macphail was the first woman in Canada elected to the House of Commons and first woman sworn into the Legislative… Read more »
By Ian Milligan The government claims that Library and Archives Canada needs to be modernized so all Canadians can access archival services. Yet the state of Canada’s online collections are small and sorely lacking when compared to their expansive on-site collections. LAC does need to modernize, and the goal of expanding access beyond just Ottawa is actually a laudable one. But what… Read more »
The federal government’s latest round of “austerity”cuts threaten to undermine Canadian history research and limit the capacity of the public to know this country’s past. While the recent federal budget slashes funding for Library and Archives Canada, Canadian studies programs, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, it also redirects funds for history research into the political control of individual ministers. Within the Conservative Party of Canada’s ideological agenda to reduce the role of government in the lives of Canadians lies a contradictory policy initiative for direct cabinet control over the financing, research, and production of knowledge about Canadian history.
