Kealey provides an overview of the study of workers in Canada as well as in-depth examinations of two of the field's leading scholars, political economist Clare Pentland and Marxist historian Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson. He analyses the development of Canadian labour history in particular and social history in general, and provides detailed empirical studies of the Orange Order in Toronto, printers and their unions, the Knights of Labor, and the Canadian labour revolt of 1919. The collection concludes with three synthetic views of Canadian working-class history focusing on the labour movement, the role of strikes, and attempts by the state to manage class conflict. Workers and Canadian History will be of great interest to students and scholars of Canadian history, labour history, Marxist and socialist theory and history, and political science.

Gregory S. Kealey is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick. He is the editor of University of Toronto Press’s Canadian Social History Series and former president of the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

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