A History of Labour Day in Canada Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

A History of Labour Day in Canada - Essay ExampleOn a Sunday evening a vitamin C ago this weekend, 14,000 francophone workers gathered on Old Montreal to prepare for get Day. Instead of shouting through the streets, they quietly converged in Notre Dame Church, where Paul Bruschesi, then Archbishop of Montreal, urged them to abhor strikes and show reverence to their employers. That same day, 2,000 Anglophone workers descended on what later became St. Patricks Basilica, in the core of modern downtown Montreal, to prepare for the next days parade. They heard the identical dont-rock-the-boat message as clergy instructed them to put their trust in church arbitrators to resolve disputes over pay, hours and conditions of work and other issues. Now two Toronto historians have crafted an illuminating, sometimes offensive retrospective of how grate Day has been marked across Canada. With anecdotes like those above, York University history professor Craig Heron and Steve Penfold, an assista nt professor of history at the University of Toronto, deliver substantial analysis. They show how the Labor movement has evolved since the 1880s, along with Canadian society as a whole.In many parts of the country, Labor Day would eventually die out exclusively as a workers festival, or limp on as a spiritless exercise in commercialized civic boosterism Strong words, Stirring prose.In fundamental ways, the authors conclude, Labor Day in Canada is the story of a holiday that never really belonged to workers and has been supplanted by such holidays as May Day and International Womens Day. Their billet is not entirely bitter or sardonic, though. Heron and Penfold linger in loving detail over the floats, costumes, banners and placards that once made Labor Day parades a key event on community calendars. And they illustrate their points with superbly evocative photos. Even readers inclined to disagree with their hard-edged assessments will concede that Heron and Penfold have put inval uable groundwork in an area that to date has been poorly documented. They note that times have changed. Early in the last century, no Asian workers from British Columbias fish-packing plants and sawmills ever got invitations to join the West Coast marchers. In fact, they add, Victorias tailors carried a banner in 1901 blaming the Chinese for their plight.Heron and Penfold were hampered, while researching the book, by the fact that few records of past Labor Days have survived, beyond newspaper accounts of the day. In typically quiche fashion, they note that an 1898 parade float by Winnipeg tailors lambasted the awarding of a city-council contract for firemens uniforms to a local sweat shop -- an open display of dissent that was apparently ignored by the mainstream newspapers. They learned of it from a small workers newspaper.In this painstakingly researched chroma they elaborate how Labor Day parades have had splendid moments in our history. Primarily, the parades were a much sough t-after festival aimed at eliciting attention to the role and needs of Labor. They became a very rich art form developed jointly by organized workers in Canada. Nevertheless, they were also bitterly disheartening to those who attempted to indulge dregs of the people of workers in the celebration. The first Labor Day procession was in Toronto in 1882. At that time one of the demands of Labor was to call for a public interrogative into the status of