Labour Pains: Thunder Bay’s Working Class
in Canada’s Wheat Boom Era
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by Jean Morrison
Thunder Bay Historical Museum
Society, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 2009
176 pp., illus., $14.95 paperback
Prior to World War I, as Canada enjoyed a financial high from the wheat boom, it lured people from many other nations with the promise of free land and a better way of life.
Newcomers responded to the need for cheap labour and filled jobs created by profit-seeking entrepreneurs. Uprooted from their homelands, many endured meagre pay and rising prices — a combination that soon erupted into social disharmony, labour unrest, violence, and eventually military action.
Thunder Bay, Ontario — at that time the separate cities of Port Arthur and Fort William — experienced a large portion of this social discontent. The Twin Cities emerged “as key transshipment points for western and eastern freight in Canada’s east-west rail and water transportation system,” notes author Jean Morrison.
Her book Labour Pains explores the city’s industry, unions, politics, and people during this time of boom and bust. She describes the division between English-speaking tradespeople and labourers and newcomers from countries such as Finland, Ukraine, and Italy.
Morrison also discusses the rise of organized labour, which saw both violent and peaceful strikes. The book concludes with the formation of the Finnish and English-speaking woman’s suffrage movements and the 1914 depression.
Peppered with historic photos, Labour Pains is a thorough and interesting examination of a period in Thunder Bay’s history that saw both turbulence and cooperation.
— Beverley Tallon (Read bio)
Beverley Tallon is a freelance writer and the former Assistant Editor for Canada's History.