The Workers' Festival

Description

"In The Workers' Festival, Craig Heron and Steve Penfold examine the complicated history of Labour Day from its origins as a spectacle of skilled workers in the 1880s through to its declaration as a national statutory holiday in 1894 and finally to its reinvention throughout the twentieth century. The holiday's inventors hoped to blend labour solidarity, community celebration, and increased leisure time by organizing parades, picnics, speeches, and other forms of respectable recreation. As the holiday evolved, so too did the rituals, with trade unionists embracing new forms of parading, negotiating, and bargaining, and other social groups reshaping the day and making it their own. Heron and Penfold also examine how Labour Day's monopoly as the workers' holiday has been challenged since its founding by alternative festivals such as May Day and International Women's Day." "The Workers' Festival ranges widely into many of the key themes of labour history: union politics and rivalries, radical movements, religion (Catholic and Protestant), race and gender, and consumerism/leisure; as well as of cultural history: public celebration/urban procession, urban space and communication, and popular culture. From St. John's to Victoria, the authors follow the development of the holiday in all its varied forms."--Jacket.

First Sentence

Holidays have a long history.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Workers' Festival: A History of Labour Day in CanadaHardcoverUniversity of Toronto Press2005-08-27
• Workers' FestivalUniversity of Toronto Press2016-01-01