2022 Banner drop by tenants organised with le Syndicat des locataires autonomes de Montréal, Montreal Autonomous Tenants’ Union, (SLAM) This series looks at the different housing crises tenants have experienced across Canada from the 1900s until the present and details how they responded, successfully and unsuccessfully, through tactics of community and/or class-based direct action and structures based in grassroots direct democracy…. Read more »
By Fred Burrill This post is part of the Tenants’ Collective Responses to Housing Crises across Canada series. Anti-gentrification demonstration in Saint-Henri, Montreal, QC, 2011. Photo by Fred Burrill. One of capitalism’s most powerful myths is that of supply and demand. Take housing, for instance. We’re told by policymakers that the current desperate situation facing tenants in major Canadian cities… Read more »
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 »
by Steven High We are living in polarized times. Brexit, Trump, and the rise of right-wing populism has led to a resurgence of popular and scholarly interest in working class history and the ways it gets entangled with race in the wider politics of economic change. There is much at stake given the looming global transition away from fossil fuels…. Read more »
by Peter Thompson Pictou is a sleepy town of about 3000 people on the north shore of Nova Scotia. Despite its small size and its place on Canada’s margins, Pictou has been featured twice in the pages of ActiveHistory.ca over the past decade. First in Lachlan MacKinnon’s 2014 piece, “The Power-Politics of Pulp and Paper: Health, Environment and Work in… Read more »
by Anna Bettini A Changing Energy Landscape Driving along Highway 529, two hours south of Calgary, giant wind turbines tower over the fields of canola. Along the road, several signs indicate the local community opposition to wind energy projects [Picture 1]. As I approach the entrance of village of Carmangay, I notice a large wind turbine blade lying near it… Read more »
by Nicholas Fast For the public at any grocery store, the most shocking part of choosing any meat package is usually the price. It is no secret that the price of meat, especially beef, has skyrocketed during the pandemic. The sticker shock prevents many from looking beyond the plastic wrapping to really consider where the beef—or chicken or pork—comes from…. Read more »
by Liam Devitt In 1991, the AIDS Coalition of Cape Breton was founded. Cape Breton Island, a small industrial region, was a far cry from the perceived metropolitan hotspots of the AIDS epidemic. It did not have the cosmopolitan queer nightlife of these cities and little activism that could be called “gay liberation” manifested in any visible way. In short,… Read more »
by Lauren Laframboise In early February this year, Canopy Growth announced that it would close its cannabis flower production plant in Smiths Falls, Ontario. The facility was located at 1 Hershey Drive in the former Hershey chocolate factory that had once been a major employer in the small town. After Hershey’s closed in 2008, a subsidiary of Tweed Inc. (now… Read more »
Steven High Most mills and factories close with a whimper and not a bang. Few were therefore prepared for the media fire-storm sparked by General Motor’s (GM) decision to close its auto-assembly plant in Oshawa, putting 2,500 Canadians out of work. What makes this closure so special? For starters, there is the historic centrality of the auto industry in Southern… Read more »
