Sean Carleton, Kirk Niergarth, and Julia Smith When 1,500 workers in Calgary, Alberta struck in sympathy with the Winnipeg General Strike in May and June of 1919, it was the second major sympathetic strike in the city in a nine-month period. Class confrontation was on the rise in Cowtown. The 1919 Calgary strike began on Monday, 26 May and lasted… Read more »
Tom Mitchell The the sympathetic strike in Brandon, Manitoba was the longest and most cohesive of the sympathy strikes that erupted across Canada in support of the Winnipeg General Strike. It began 20 May 1919 and persisted until the end of June. It was preceded in late April by a dramatic and successful civic employees’ strike following the creation of… Read more »
Nolan Reilly Workers in Amherst, Nova Scotia milled around the gates to the sprawling yards of Canadian Car and Foundry railcar building shops. They were hearing union leaders report on the company’s refusal to give Amherst workers the same contract they had signed with workers in Montreal. There would be no union recognition, no nine-hour day with ten hours pay,… Read more »
The Graphic History Collective and David Lester In 1919, 35,000 workers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, staged a six-week general strike between 15 May and 26 June. Workers from various backgrounds withdrew their labour power—they went on strike—to demand higher wages, collective bargaining rights, and more power for working people. One hundred… Read more »
Gregory S. Kealey In 1984, on the 75th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike, Labour/Le Travail (L/LT) published the proceedings of a symposium held the previous year. The cover image we chose for that issue was “1919 MAJUS” by Biro Mihaly (1886–1948), the Hungarian revolutionary artist who was commemorating the new Hungarian Soviet led by Bela Kun. The image reflected… Read more »
ActiveHistory.ca is launching a special Theme Week (17–21 June) that examines the 1919 strike wave in what is today known as Canada. The series is edited by Sean Carleton and Julia Smith. At a time of growing unrest, with calls for climate strikes and recent threats of general strikes in the United States and in Ontario, revisiting the 1919 strike… Read more »
by Rose Fine-Meyer In yesterday’s post, Seneca undergrad Jvalin Vijayakumaran found that there has been a cursory integration of women in the current grade 7 & 8 Ontario history curriculum. His research supports what scholars have found since the 1970s, that women’s historical experiences are either missing or are limited in their inclusion in school history textbooks and resources. The… Read more »
By Jim Clifford [This post was originally published on the Network in Canadian History & Environment site.] Canada Water is a small lake and wildlife refuge in the heart of Rotherhithe in South London. It is one of the few remaining parts of the once extensive Surrey Commercial Docks that covered much of the Rotherhithe Peninsula during the nineteenth century…. Read more »
This spring, the Graphic History Collective re-launched Remember / Resist / Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project as an ongoing series. Earlier this week, on William Davis Miners’ Memorial Day (June 11), we released RRR poster #15 by Karen Jeane Mills and David Frank that looks at class conflict, including the killing of coal miner William Davis, in 1920s Cape… Read more »
https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/History-Slam-111.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Brian Thorn about his book From Left to Right: Maternalism and Women’s Political Activism in Postwar Canada. We talk about the book’s origins, the nature of women’s activism on both the left and right of the political spectrum, and the issues… Read more »
