Category Archives: Left History

Professors or Propagandists? McGill’s Socialist Professors and their Students in the 1930s

This is the final post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s. Raffaella Cerenzia 1930s McGill was a small, tight-knit place. Only 3,000 or so students roamed the university’s campus. They were taught by a short roster of professors; the Department of Economics and Political Science numbered just six in the early thirties. In this intimate… Read more »

The Chancellor and His Principals: Administrative Reponses to Socialist Professors at McGill, c. 1930-1941

Edward Beatty at his desk

This is the second post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s. Raffaella Cerenzia As the 1930s unfolded, the soaring unemployment and general miseries of the Great Depression breathed new life into the Canadian left. Socialism began to take root in federal politics, a process exemplified by the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in… Read more »

“Time to Wake Up!”: Principal Currie and the McGill Labour Club’s Alarm Clock

Front page of the newspaper The Alarm Clock, with the headline, "Time to Wake Up!"

This is the first post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s. Raffaella Cerenzia Tick tock, tick tock. “Time to wake up!” In January 1933, deep in the midst of the Great Depression, a new student publication announced its arrival on McGill University’s campus. The paper was the production of McGill’s Labour Club, to which all… Read more »

Deindustrialization Studies MA Fellowships at Concordia University

  The Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time (DePOT) Project, a transnational SSHRC Partnership Project, is in a position to fund up to THREE (3) DePOT Master’s Fellowships for MA students starting at Concordia University in September 2025. The Fellowships are valued at $12,000 CAD a year for two years (total value of $24,000 CAD). Two fellowships are open… Read more »

Remember/Resist/Redraw #32: Police Surveillance and Democratic Socialism in Cold War Canada

The Graphic History Collective recently released RRR #32, by historian and illustrator Frances Reilly, that looks at police surveillance and democratic socialism in Cold War Canada. In particular, the poster examines RCMP spying and the thirty-five year long covert program, Operation Profunc (PROminent FUNCtionaries of the Communist or Labor Progressive Party) that began in 1948. This program planned to arrest Canadians… Read more »

How a Belfast Immigrant to Canada Came to Testify Before the Undercover Policing Inquiry in the UK

Bryan D. Palmer In the summer of 1955, Ernest (Ernie) Tate, a young immigrant from Belfast, wandered into the “Toronto Labour Bookstore” on Yonge Street north of Wellesley. The proprietor of the bookshop was Ross Dowson, a founder of the small Canadian Trotskyist movement. It espoused the ideas of Marx and Lenin, but was critical of the Soviet Union and… Read more »