Our project focuses on the need for an informed public memory on the history of the world of work in New Brunswick during the last century.
Our team of researchers at the University of New Brunswick and the Université de Moncton is working in partnership with the province's labour organizations and heritage institutions. Our goal is to make the history of work and the history of labour in New Brunswick more accessible to researchers and students, to the labour movement and to the general public. Our programme of research, study and activity on the history of work and the history of labour organization brings an historical perspective to the contemporary challenges facing working people in New Brunswick today.
Our project is supported by the Community-University Research Alliance programme of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which is providing a five-year grant. Ours is a bilingual project, as appropriate in Canada's only officially bilingual province. Our interactive website will assist in developing the project, and a variety of activities, including workshops, exhibits, public presentations, student research work and graduate theses, publications, teaching resources, video and oral resources, will all contribute to the dissemination of information about the history of work in New Brunswick.
The project is organized around five major research areas:
- Provincial Solidarities
- Le travail en Acadie
- Contested Territory: Transformation of the Woods
- Women's Work: Focus on Caring
- Labour Landmarks
Our approach draws on the traditional resources of the social sciences and humanities, including archival collections, government documents and contemporary publications. We are also employing an oral history approach and working in collaboration with the oral history programmes of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick and the Centre d'études acadiennes. Our interviews focus on two major themes, the history of work in the province and the history of organized labour in the province, and these recordings and transcripts will contribute to the enrichment of the personal evidence that forms an important part of our heritage. In all this the project will serve to underline the importance of the world of work as one of the major shared experiences in the growth of the provincial community in New Brunswick.
Detailed Summary of Our Project