Books

• The New Brunswick Association of Registered Nurses, 1916-1966: The First Fifty Years (Fredericton, 1966).

  The New Brunswick Legislative Assembly passed an Act of Incorporation for the New Brunswick Association of Graduate Nurses in the spring of 1916. At their first annual meeting in St. Stephen, in 1917, they unanimously passed a resolution supporting women's suffrage. As a professional organization, the NBARN worked to improve working conditions and wages, achieving an eight-hour duty day in 1942. From 1923, the NBARN also struggled to raise educational requirements for admission to schools of nursing. By 1960 a minimum of 50 per cent was required in at least eight departmental exams. By 1966, membership in the NBARN had increased from 59 to 4025.

• Camera Canada (1977), 48 p.

  This special issue of Camera Canada is devoted to the work of a pioneer in modern industrial photography, Isaac Erb. Forty-two of the many photographs taken by Erb in and around the city of Saint John between 1877 and 1924 are reproduced here in fine quality. An introductory essay pays tribute to Isaac Erb's skill as a photographer and to the significance of these photographs as social documents of our past: “the first signs of an economic structure are evident in Erb's photographs of the opening of banks, of a stratification of society into master and servant, of regimentation through dubious gifts of technology, and of the shrinking of the natural environment”. Among the many faces of working people captured by Isaac Erb and presented here are those of the “New Brunswick Telephone Company Operators” (1910); “Boy's Work Farm, Nauwegewauk, Kings County” (1910) and “Immigrants Arriving at Saint John” (1906, 1908).

• Les 25 premiers ans: local 1065, 1959-1984 (Saint John [NB], Syndicat des employés de gros, de détail et des magasins à rayons, 1984), 23 p.

• The First 25 Years: Local 1065, 1959-1984 (Saint John [NB], Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, 1984), 23 p.

  A short history of Local 1065, the New Brunswick unit of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which pioneered collective bargaining in the retail sector in the province. The first campaign, at the Dominion Store on Kings Square, Saint John, began in 1958; Local 1065 was finally certified in September 1959, but the first contract was not signed until April 1960, bringing a raise of $4.50 a week and establishing grievance procedures and seniority rights. Subsequently local 1065 carried its organizing efforts across the province, winning gains for workers in centres such as Moncton, Edmundston, Dalhousie, Newcastle, Fredericton and other centres. Important campaigns included an unsuccessful effort to organize Eaton's in Moncton (1965) and a long strike against Sobeys (1968-69). In 1974 the local won the right to represent part-time employees at Dominion, an often-neglected group of retail workers. The booklet highlights the tactics adopted by employers and sometimes governments to obstruct union recognition, and emphasizes the ways in which unions can cooperate to achieve their goals. The booklet pays tribute to the efforts of union leaders such as James McMachin, president from 1959 to 1975, and concludes by pointing out the challenges facing the union in the form of new technologies and new corporate strategies. It is expected the union will devote greater attention to the needs of women members and French-speaking workers. The booklet includes appendices reproducing the original charter (1959), with the names of the 33 original members, and lists of union officers and establishments under union contract.

• History of New Brunswick Federation of Labor (Saint John [NB]), 97 p.

  The purpose of this book, according to its editors, is to show the contribution of labour organizations to social progress in New Brunswick and to foster wider acceptance of the policies of the NBFL. Although not clearly indicated by the title, this is a collection of essays and only one of the essays is concerned with the history of the NBFL from 1914 to 1933. The remaining essays which were written by labour leaders and government officials are mostly about social legislation in New Brunswick. These authors and essays appear as follows: Eugene R. Steeves, “New Brunswick Workmen's Compensation Act”; John S. MacKinnon, “N.B. Mother's Allowance Act”; A.S. MacFarlane, “The Commission on Education for the Province of New Brunswick”; John Kenny, “Factories Act”; Tom Moore, “The International Labor Organization and Unemployment Insurance”; George R. Melvin, “Minimum Wage Act for Women and Girls”; Fletcher Peacock, “History of Vocational Education in New Brunswick”; and James Whitebone, “Why You Should Demand the Union Label”.

• AVERY, Elva, A History of Tabusintac, N.B (Tabusintac [NB], Tabusintac Centennial Memorial Library, 1978), 130 p.

  The seasonal work of men and women in the early twentieth century is described in Chapter 2, “Life in Tabusintac”, pp. 13-31 of this local history. Residents of this community in north-eastern New Brunswick depended upon agriculture, forestry and fishing for their livelihood. A wide variety of different kinds of work in these industries are identified and briefly described, such as roadbuilding, grain threshing, operating a muddigger and digging clams. Most people were self-employed or “worked for themselves” in this period and usually were assisted by the labours of their family members. This way of life and work, according to the author, was lost after the 1930s as most residents of the community became dependent on the “wage bargain”.

• BABCOCK, Robert H., Gompers in Canada: A Study in American Continentalism before the First World War (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1974), 292 p.

  An important study of the growth of unions in Canada between the 1890s and 1914. The major focus is on the relationship between the American Federation of Labor and the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada. Activity in New Brunswick is briefly noted at several points: pleas from New Brunswick labour leaders for greater organizing efforts (pp. 39-40), John Flett's work in 1901 among longshoremen, bartenders, cigarmakers, machinists and carpenters (p. 46), and the early New brunswick Federation of Labour, established in 1913, (p. 177).

• BAIRD, Francis, History of the Parish of Chipman (Sackville, N.B., Tribune Press, 1976), 125 p.

  As in many other New Brunswick communities through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the lumber industry was the most important source of work for boys and men in Chipman. Many men in this community spent their working life following the seasonal rhythm of the forest economy: felling trees through the winter, stream-driving down the Salmon and Gaspereau Rivers in the spring and rafting on the rivers in the summer. By the 1860s, lack of work in Chipman compelled young men to leave the parish to look for work in the lumberwoods and sawmills of Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Montana, British Columbia, Oregon and Washington. By the early 1880s, Baird writes; “Along in October, the deck of the ‘May Queen’ would be black with men as she left her wharf at Chipman. ‘Nothing but a few old stubs left’, said John Dohaney once as the steamer drew away one morning...” bearing away “the flower of the community” to Saint John, and from there, to destinations across the continent. (pp. 103-104) Aside from a brief tribute to the generations of these “stalwart contingents” (pp. 101-104), this history of Chipman is devoted to events and persons mainly of local interest.

• BARRY, Marguerite et al., Looking Back: A History of Bay du Vin, New Brunswick (Chatham [NB], 1979), 126 p.

   “Fishing” (Chapter VIII) and “Lumbering” (Chapter VII) have traditionally played a central role in the working lives of the residents of Bay du Vin. Through the late 19th century, Thomas Williston and the G.S. Loggie Company dominated the local fishing industries, outfitting fishermen and extending credit in return for exclusive rights to their catch. Through the Baie Ste. Anne Co-op, formed in 1940, many local fishermen became independent of these companies. Social activities, such as basket socials and dances, are described in “Family Life” (Chapter VI) along with the seasonal and daily household chores of men, women and children. Much of the information for these and the many other topics covered in this community history was obtained through interviews with older residents.

• BÉLAND, Madeleine, Chansons des voyageurs, coureurs de bois et forestiers (Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 1982), 432 p.

• CAMERON, Allistair, Aberdeen It Was Not (Woodstock [NB], 1982), 147 p.

  An autobiographical story of one immigrant family's struggle to survive in New Brunswick through the early years of the Great Depression. The Cameron family left Scotland in 1929 with high hopes of a better life in Debec, New Brunswick. Allistair, then a teen-ager, remembers the sinking spirits of his parents as the family rode north on the train from Saint John and arrived at their new farm home: “There was such a feeling of emptiness as we looked out on the bare fields, the miles of trees, and the denseness of them, the cold bleak look of the barns and sheds, gray-brown and weathered by storms...” . Farming in the early 1930s proved to be less prosperous than the immigration officials back in Scotland had suggested. In order to attend the Carleton County Vocational School, Allistair and his sister worked in homes in return for their board.

• CAMPBELL, R. Philip, Challenging Years: 1894-1979: 85 Years of the Council of Women of Saint John (Saint John [NB], 1981), 139 p.

  The Saint John Council of Women devoted their volunteer work to further the position of women economically, socially and politically in the community. Among the Council's achievements are the creation of the Victoria Order of Nurses in Saint John, provision of playgrounds for children, vocational education for women, and assistance to young immigrant women seeking employment as domestics. Perhaps the Council's longest campaign was the Saint John Free Milk Fund which provided free milk to poor children in the city from 1921 to 1960.

• CANADA, DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION AND COLONIZATION, British Family Settlement in New Brunswick (Ottawa, 1929), 36 p.

  A promotional booklet which describes the success of the first British families to be settled on semi-improved farms in New Brunswick under a 1927 agreement among the British, Canadian and New Brunswick governments. According to this scheme,-500 British families were to take up farms purchased by the New Brunswick government and pay for the farm out of what they earned from working it. Presented here are descriptions of the lives of more than 30 families who had settled throughout New Brunswick, along with photographs and a selection of comments on their new homes. Many of the settlers acknowledged the importance of wages earned off the farm by their sons and daughters or the sale of home products by their wives as central to their livelihood. As the Department of Immigration and Colonization itself advised, the woman’s labour was very important to the success of the farm: “be physically fit and experienced in farm work. This is even more important than the husband’s farm experience. She must be able to milk cows, feed hogs and poultry, keep a garden and attend to household duties. Above all she must be prepared to stay alone with the children when the husband is away working and must be content to be isolated from friends until she has made her own social connection.”

• CANADIAN WELFARE COUNCIL, Urban Need in Canada 1965. A Case Report on the Problems of Families in Four Canadian Cities. Section II: Saint John by Miss Lillian Thomson (Ottawa, 1965), 112 p.

  The different life situations and experiences of the wage-supported versus the welfare-supported poor is the central issue of concern in this study. Information was obtained on 50 such families in Saint John through a series of oral interviews and from the records of private and public social agencies in the city. Profiles of 12 of these families, including work histories, income levels, education as well as their comments and future expectations are included in pages 69 to 112. In the case of the “J Family”, one of the families profiled, the problem of poverty began in the early 1960s when Mr. J was fired along with 26 other men who attempted to organize a union at one of the Irving industries in the city.

• CARR, William Guy, High and Dry: the post-war experiences of the author of “By guess and by God”  (London, Hutchinson, 1938), 254 p.

  William Carr left the British Merchant Service and emigrated to Canada in 1920 in order to take up farming. Farming proved to be about the only kind of work he did not do. In this autobiography, Carr recalls his life in New Brunswick from 1920 to 1929 as a Jack-of-all-trades: house painter, labourer, rigger, CPR policeman and insurance agent. From his own experience, Carr is critical of immigrant schemes in New Brunswick that settled newcomers on farms in the province which had already proven to be unable to support a family and were often very isolated. Within months after arriving in New Brunswick, Carr moved on to work in Hartland and provides here an outsider's observations of social and work life in that community. One such observation was the abject poverty in which families around Hartland lived. The plight of these homesteaders, Carr argues, was due to a “pernicious form of slavery” by which creditors used the threat of eviction to seize everything these small farmers grew or raised. By the late 1920s, Carr had moved again to Saint John working as a CPR policeman on the harbour and watching men with less luck and no work shovel snow for the city. From his work along the waterfront and as an investigator for the New Brunswick Temperance Alliance, Carr was critical of the Scott Act and presented evidence on prohibition before the Stevens Royal Commission. Later he campaigned in Saint John for child and youth protection and on behalf of social welfare. Few aspects of New Brunswick life escaped Carr's attention or outspoken comment.

• CHAPMAN, J.K., Hair from a Black Stallion's Tail (Fredericton, 1982), 50 p.

  Also issued by New Ireland Press under the title Frank Hatheway's Highways and Byways: Tales from 19th Century Wanderings in New Brunswick, the Gaspé and Cape Breton. A collection of short stories originally published by W.F. Hatheway in his “Highways and Byways” column in the Saint John Globe. Of particular interest is a biographical sketch by J.K. Chapman, included as pp. 41-50 of the booklet. Describing Hatheway's activity in business, politics and literature, Chapman makes clear Hatheway's importance as a social reformer and thinker: “With few exceptions, late nineteenth and early twentieth century Conservatives, like their Liberal opponents, believed in free enterprise capitalism and an atomistic society. Hatheway, by contrast, saw society as an organism, with its various classes being mutually dependent upon and responsible to each other” .

• CHRISTIE, Percy S., The Saga of an Oldtimer: An Oral Biography of Percy S. Christie of Waite, Maine (Waite [ME], 1978), 73 p.

  Born in 1890 at Oak Hill, Saint James' Parish, Charlotte County, Percy S. Christie lived and worked in Canada until the early 1910s. As a young man he worked on two river drives and here he recounts adventures he had in the woods as a worker. He then migrated to Boston to work for his uncles as a teamster, and later as a trucker. His father had also worked in Boston every winter, returning in the spring to farm in Charlotte County. Percy S. Christie has been living in the United States ever since the early 1910s. After selling the trucks to a large American company he settled in Maine to retire.

• CLAIRMONT, Don et Winston JACKSON, Segmentation and the low income blue collar worker: a Canadian test of segmentation (Halifax, 1980), 51 p.

  This study is based on interviews with some 500 men and women in the Moncton area employed in low wage work. Half of the interviewed workers were chosen from low wage work in the public sector and then an attempt was made to pair them to a worker in the marginal work world who was of the same sex, age and ethnicity as well as sharing a similar occupation. The study then explored and compared the impact of work setting on a variety of attitudes and behaviours such as income mobility, perceptions of work environment, wages, job security and fringe benefits.

• CLARK, S.D., The New Urban Poor (Toronto, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978), 169 p.

  There are many stories about native New Brunswickers who left the province and found fame and fortune elsewhere. This book is not about them. The poor rural families of northern New Brunswick that this book is about, found only a new kind of poverty when they moved to Toronto. This study was based on the argument that the problem of urban poverty in many western countries (like Canada) was largely due to the internal migration to urban areas of rural people without the necessary aptitudes and work skills to adapt successfully to their new social and work environment. As a case study, field work was conducted in seven northeastern New Brunswick communities, namely, the urban residential areas of Chatham Head, Chamberlain Settlement and Bathurst as well as the four rural communities of Barnetville, Black River, Brantville and Lavilette. Over several generations, residents in these communities had experienced a transformation from living in a self-sufficient economy to one with an increasing dependence on wage labour and welfare. Researchers of this project concluded that the rural society provided little more to its residents than a minimum level of shelter. Many descriptions of observed poverty cases are provided to support this judgement. But while there was migration out of these communities, a large part of it to other parts of New Brunswick, a substantial number of community members did not migrate. In fact, the poorer the communtiy, the less likely were people to leave it. If there were reasons to leave these communities, there were also strong forces encouraging people to stay. For example, many families owned their own homes or had cheap housing which they were reluctant to abandon. Moreover, almost all residents felt that they would be worse off if they moved than they were at the present. They were aware that their relatives who had moved from New Brunswick had been unable to secure much improvement in their economic or social status. Perhaps the most valuable part of this study are the oral interviews and work histories it gathered from these men and women. They testify not just to the human costs of the labour market but also to the persistent ways in which people attempt to control their own lives in the face of the disruptions it creates.

• CREIGHTON, Helen et Edward IVES, Eight Folktales from Miramichi as Told by Wilmot MacDonald (Orono [ME], Northeast Folklore Society, 1963), 70 p.

  Born in 1903, Wilmot MacDonald began work at the age of 14 in the lumbercamps and river drives along the Miramichi River. These are eight of the many stories he learned in the lumberwoods, traditionally told by men in the camps after a Saturday night supper. These stories are “part of lumberwoods tradition” many of them go back to old English, Irish and French tales which were passed on in an oral tradition spanning many generations.

• CRISP, Rev. James, Farming as an occupation; New Brunswick As A Province in which to make a Home (Saint John [NB], C.M. Lingley, 1911), 80 p.

  In the belief that “Divine Providence did not intend that the lives of men, women and children should be bought and sold in the labor market” (p. 37), a British immigrant to New Brunswick encourages his fellow countrymen to follow his example. Farming in New Brunswick, Crisp contends, offers a better life than a trade in Britain. Moreover, for men of little or moderate means, the province offers better opportunities than western Canada. Crisp also considered that such emigration was a way to ease unemployment and raise wages in Britain.

• CROUSE, Alberta V. (Hanscome), History of the Saint John General Hospital and School of Nursing (Saint John [NB], 1973), 90 p.

  An affectionate look at the changes in training, work and work-place of nurses in Saint John by a graduate of the Saint John School of Nursing. Saint John's first public hospital was built in 1860 in order to provide inexpensive medical care for poorer families. The hospital first employed unskilled men and women to provide nursing care for the patients. After 1888, young women were professionally trained at the hospital to care for the sick. Students of the School of Nursing worked in the hospital in return for their education and a small sum for their clothing and personal expenses. A shared experience of long hours of hard work and study contributed to a special comradeship among the nurses. In 1902, for example, one nurse and a student assistant looked after 21 patients, washed the dishes and swept the floor of their ward. Complete lists by year of the graduates of te School of Nursing are included along with the recollections of a number of these women. A number of “firsts” in the history of the hospital are listed, particularly those that created changes in the nature of nurses' work.

• CUNNINGHAM, W.B., Compulsory Conciliation and Collective Bargaining: The New Brunswick Experience (Fredericton/Montreal, 1957), 123 p.

  An analysis of the labour relations system in New Brunswick in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the important period when the basic elements of the modern industrial relations system were established in New Brunswick. In the New Brunswick Labour Relations Act (1952), the province conformed to the general Canadian pattern of encouraging collective bargaining while also maintaining the traditional emphasis on government intervention in disputes and restrictions on strikes. The study focuses closely on the compulsory conciliation procedure, in which the province’s Department of Labour intervenes in disputes in order to promote settlements without a resort to strikes or lockouts. The study is based in large part on the files of the Department of Labour documenting the department's conciliation efforts in the years 1947 to 1956. In this period, conciliation officers brought about agreements in 56 of 146 disputes. Conciliation boards were able to settle only 12 of 67 disputes. Government officers sometimes found it difficult to convince employers and employees to accept the new framework represented by the legal advances of the era. Some employers refused to bargain with the properly certified unions and some unions insisted on going out on illegal strikes. The author suggests two reforms of the labour relations system in order to encourage sound collective bargaining practices: while conciliation officers should remain active, cociliation boards should be established only when requested by both sides in a dispute; also, strikes should not be restricted unless disputes are of major importance.

• DAVIDSON, John, The Bargain Theory of Wages (New York, 1898), 319 p.

  An historical and theoretical treatment of the wages question, by one of Canada's first political economists. Davidson, trained at Edinburgh University, taught at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton at the turn of the century. Well aware of the contemporary “Labour Question” of the late 19th century, Davidson ably summed up the reasons why the relationship between employer and employee cannot be reduced to a simple economic formula governed by the laws of supply and demand: “Labor differs from most, if not all, other commodities in retaining, even under modern industrial conditions, its subjective value to the seller. We cannot separate the labor and the laborer. It is labor that is bought and sold but, with the labor, goes the laborer. Therefore instead of a great simplification we have a great complication” (p. 256). His own “bargain theory” suggested that wages were established through a bargaining process in which trade unions could be expected to play an increasingly influential role.

• DAVIS, Harold A., An international community on the St. Croix, 1604-1930 (Orono [ME], University of Maine, 1974), 412 p.

  Although much of the information concerns the American side of the St. Croix, this is an invaluable book for communities on the Canadian side. Until the 1930's Depression, the boundary separating the United States from Canada did not matter very much to the workers of the region as they travelled freely on either side. Salaries were relatively the same as was the currency on both sides of the border. The working conditions seem similar as well. The largest industry in the area throughout its history was lumbering. At its peak in the early 1870's, the industry supplied labour to as many as 3000 men in the cutting and transportation process. (p. 213) Lumber industry was badly shaken in 1873 when a world-wide depression hit. The forest industry, while remaining important to this day, never regained the importance it once held in the St. Croix region. The woods-worker survived under very difficult conditions. He was often heavily indebted to the employer. He lived in the company's house. And he worked in the company's mill. He got his grub from the company store. And he paid the company's bill. And when he died, they buried his hide. For the company owned the rest. (p. 216) There was a shipbuilding industry in the area, but it fell on hard times and almost disappeared. By the 1880's there remained the docks where repairs were made. Another important industry in the St. Croix area was the sardine fish packing industry. In Eastport, Maine, 800 men, women and children were employed in eighteen factories processing the small herring. The Canadian fisherman would supply the sardines and also the labour of his family. (p. 237-239) Davis has good descriptions of working conditions and of the dirtiness of the plants. (p. 240) In 1882 the St. Croix Cotton Mill opened. In 1883 it was employing about 600 people. A Knights of Labor group tried to organize in 1886 to demand better wages, but they were not successful. (p. 259-261) The United Textile Workers organized the plant in 1919. (p. 261) The information on the cotton mill is sketchy and Davis does not spend much time on it.

• DAVIS, Nanciellen, Ethnicity and Ethnic Group Persistence in an Acadian Village in Maritime Canada (New York, 1985), 233 p.

  An ethnographic study of a small Acadian community based on observations and field work in the early 1970s. The study focuses on the village of Sainte-Marie-sur-Mer, Lameque Island, where the French language and the Acadian identity remain strong. Chapter Five (pp. 66-93) is entit1ed “Making a Living”. Most of the residents work in jobs related to the fishery, which minimizes the contact they have with English-speaking people. The author describes work arrangements in the inshore (small-scale, labour-intensive) and offshore (large-scale, capital-intensive) fisheries in detail. Often crews are based on kinship, but the author notes the decline of father-son combinations in the inshore since sons are encouraged to enter higher-paid occupations. There is a seasonal cycle to the work year; unemployment is highest in the months from November to March, when the fishermen repair their boats and other equipment, while the women fish plant workers are preoccupied with domestic labour. Some villagers travel to work in the fish plants which are located in Lameque or Shippegan. There are also other, supplementary, ways of earning income, and some individuals identify with more than one occupation: this includes such activities as carpentry, boatmaking, storekeeping, bus-driving and renting cottages. An interesting episode of community action is described in an Appendix (pp. 194-202). Following the unexplained sinking of two herring seiners in 1970 and 1971, with the loss of nine fishermen from the Acadian Peninsula, there was considerable uneasiness among local fishermen. Although all vessels were officially declared seaworthy, questions were raised about the conditions of the Marc Guylaine, a sister ship. In May 1971 a public meeting of some 400 people took place at the community centre in St. Raphael. Following speeches and discussion, a community-based committee was named to pursue the case, and the Marc Guylaine was ultimately found unseaworthy.

• DODGE, Helen Carmichael, My Childhood in the Canadian Wilderness (New York, Vantage Press, 1961), 77 p.

  An autobiographical account of family life and work in the lumber camps of New Brunswick before World War I. Helen Dodge and her family spent their summers in Sunnyside on the Bay of Chaleur. Each fall her family headed for the lumber woods in a wagon where her father ran the lumber camp and her mother worked as camp cook. The camp location changed each winter to areas along the Jacquet River, Bonny River and South Branch River. Until the First World War, Helen's father worked for the McMillan Company. Unable to earn a decent living, the family moved further north to St. Leonard's after the war where better stands of lumber remained and better wages might be earned. All of the Dodge family worked in the lumber camp. Helen and her sisters assisted their mother in cooking, gathering wood each evening and washing. As she writes: “We made bread every day, pan after pan...cakes and pies; also there was a pot of beans to be cooked for breakfast.” Somehow in the busy daily routine, Helen's mother found time to teach her children their school lessons. Helen Dodge relates not only the nature and events of her own family life and childhood but also her memories of the rhythm of work life for men in th lumber camps. Each night, she recalls: “Just before dark we would light the lanterns and set them outdoors, where the teamsters picked them up as they came by. They would leave the woods at dark, but by the time they walked their teams in two or three miles, it would really be getting late. After supper they had to go out again and take care of their teams. They had my sympathy, for it would be nine o'clock before they got through, and nine o'clock is bedtime in any lumber camp” . Dodge offers vivid descriptions of the physical set up of the camps and some insight into the personal relationships between her parents and their children.

• DOSMAN, Edgar J., Labour Management Relations on the Saint John Waterfront: ILA 273 and the Maritime Employers Association (Toronto, 1980), 71 p.

  Note: this is Transportation Paper No. 16. Labour relations on the Saint John waterfront after 1976 became increasingly confrontational. This is a study of why the collective bargaining relationship between ILA Local 273 and the Maritime Employers Association deteriorated in that period. Technological change in the form of containerization is singled out as the most important factor. Containerization, first of all, affected the bargaining structure for the industry. The MEA was formed as the management bargaining agent for all of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic ports. Secondly, containerization affected the workplace. While longshoremen have traditionally thought of themselves as “partners” on the waterfront, containerization made it increasingly clear that they were employees. “...the treasured concept of longshoremen as ‘entrepreneurs' who work as a matter of right, not privilege; the right to show up (or not) for work -- in which case gangs are filled on the wharf; the hierarchy of the gang system; the essentially non-specialized character of cargo-handling --- all these are visibly breaking down before the requirements of an industrial work force”. A variety of local historical, social and cultural factors are also noted as having contributed to the tensions. The recent revival of activity at the port has meant that for the first time in many years, longshoremen enjoyed financial security and independence. The union continues to enjoy autonomy and real power in relation to their employer. For example, the ILA does not release detailed information on its membership which is estimated at about 650 men. There are also 2,267 “high-booters” or nonunion workers who may have been employed on the waterfront for years. The ILA 273 has carefully controlled its membership and now forms an elite group. Many memebers may wish to keep it that way as compensation for the many hard years previously. This study concludes that the ILA will most likely break the MEA position as exclusive bargaining agent on the waterfront as well as expand its own control and privileges. The study judges these objectives to be backward and unproductive. The union should not be “lingering over past practices at a time when all efforts of the union and management should be focused on the future productivity of the Port”.

• DOTY, C. Stewart, The First Franco-Americans: New England Life Histories from the Federal Writers' Project, 1938-1939 (University of Maine at Orono Press, 1985).

  In the late 19th and early 20th century more than half a million Québécois and Acadians left their home countries for the New England states. This book presents a group of life-histories collected under the Federal Writers’ Project in 1938-1939. There are a number of brief references to Acadian immigrants from New Brunswick. The editor notes that the completion of rail service between Maine and the Maritimes promoted the movement of Acadians to places such as Old Town, Maine. One resident, an immigrant from Quebec, states that the “New Brunswick French” were referred to as “Shediacs” and looked down upon by the Québécois (p. 71). Vital Martin (pp. 91-3) was born near St. Leonard in 1881, where the way of life involved work on the farm, in the woods, on the river drive, and in the sawmill. He had two years of school between the ages of six and eight. Farming conditions were primitive: wooden plows and harrows instead of metal plows, self-made wagons pulled by oxen; they farmed beans, corn, wheat, and oats, and raised pork, and made clothes from hand-loomed cloth. Game was plentiful, and there was no warden to restrict hunting and fishing. He left home in 1898 and went to work as a carpenter in Lille, Maine, and then moved to Old Town, Maine in 1913, but never worked in a factory. Steve Comeau (pp. 52-8) was born in South River, N.B. in 1876 and grew up on a farm at Kouchibouguac. He attended a one-room school until he was 12 years old. His memoir includes discussion of the way of life at Kouchibouguac in the 1880s and 1890s: working in the woods in winter and river drives in the spring, running trap lines, and farming for their needs. They raised what they needed: “although they generally had plenty to eat, they never had much money”. People would go to the Maine woods in winter. He saved his fare working in the woods in the winter. He left in 1896 and went to Greenville, Maine, then worked in Waterville in a sawmill, going into the woods in the winter. In 1901 he came to Old Town, where he worked as a weaver in a woollen mill and then in box mills. He recalls: “Some of the young fellows, like myself, couldn’t see much future for themselves on a small village farm where there were a lot of kids growing up. Some of them wanted a change, or they wanted to see a little of the world. The ones that left were generally of the poorer classes, and they thought they could do better across the line”.

• DOUCET, Paul, La pêche: Vie de nos ancêtres en Acadie (Fredericton, Ministère de l'Éducation du N.-B., 1981), 40 p.

• DOUCET, Paul, Vie de nos ancêtres: La forêt et ses occupations (Fredericton, Fondation d'Études du Canada, Ministère de l'Éducation du N.-B. / Éditions d'Acadie, 1983), 48 p.

• DREW, Gwendolyn et Wayland DREW, Brown's Weir (Ottawa, Oberon, 1983), 44 p.

  Four generations have worked on the weir built and maintained by the Brown family of North Head, Grand Manan. Each year that the weir is built to catch herring, its success or failure financially is a gamble. Weirs require large amounts of capital to initially construct and many hours of daily labour to maintain. This carefully describes the kind of work and social relationships required to operate a weir. It also points out the challenges which changes in the technology, organization and ownership of the fishing industry present to the weir fishery. Many young Grand Mananers have abandoned weir fishing for the modern seiners. The Brown family, however, continues to depend on their weir and supplements its income by lobster fishing, work on the docks, dulse-gathering, net-tarring ad pile-driving providing for themselves in a traditional way of work which is seasonal and varied in its tasks.

• DUPONT, Jean-Claude, Histoire populaire de l'Acadie (Montréal, Leméac, 1979), 440 p.

• FORSEY, Eugene, J. Albert RICHARDSON et Gregory S. KEALEY, Perspectives on the Atlantic Canadian Labour Movement and the Working-Class Experience (Sackville [NB], Centre for Canadian Studies, Mount Allison University, 1985), 62 p.

  A collection of lectures delivered at Mount Allison University in February 1985. Eugene Forsey discussed “Labour and the Constitution in Atlantic Canada”, pointing out the ways in which workers’ rights have been affected by various interpretations of the Canadian constitution. G.S. Kealey provided an overview of the major stages in the history of Canadian workers, from the early 19th century to the 1980s, explaining the continual readjustments taking place in the balance of power between labour and capital. J. Albert Richardson, secretary-treasurer of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour, explained the purposes of unions, underlining their role in protecting members in the world of work and in defending workers' interests on larger social and economic issues. Echoing the statements of the Catholic bishops, he argued against “the moral disorder of our economic realities” and asserted: “human labour must take precedence over capital and technology”. In all, a useful introduction to the perspectives of working-class history.

• FORTIN, Gérard et Boyce RICHARDSON, Life of the Party (Montréal, Véhicule Press, 1984), 257 p.

  A book-length oral autobiography of a Quebec bushworker and seaman, trade unionist and communist, which offers two brief glimpses of New Brunswickers. Working as a stevedore at a paper mill in British Columbia in the 1930s, Fortin found that most of the workers there were Acadians from New Brunswick (p. 56). Following a voyage to Europe as a seaman, he landed in Saint John in 1946, determined to join the Communist Party. In Saint John he found an active group of communists among members of the Canadian Seamen's Union and joined the party at that time (pp. 81-5). He soon signed on for another long voyage but later became an organizer for the CSU in Quebec City.

• FOURNIER, René, Mémoire d'un pédagogue malgré lui (Québec, René Fournier, 1981), 197 p.

• FRASER, James A., A History of the W.S. Loggie Co. Ltd., 1873-1973 (Fredericton, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, 1973), 116 p.

  The W.S. Loggie Co. Ltd. dominated economic life in northeastern New Brunswick for almost a century. This history of the Chatham-based firm follows its growth first in the fishing industry and later in diversified businesses including lumbering, sawmilling, canneries, grocery and dry goods stores and brick yards. Whole communities depended upon the W.S. Loggie Company for employment. Men and women worked seasonally in the (as many as 45) factories owned by the company and farmed during rest of the year. Fishermen depended upon the company not only to buy their catch but also to advance boats, gear and credit at company stores so that they could continue fishing.

• FRASER, James Andrew, By Favourable Winds: A History of Chatham (Chatham, N.B., Town of Chatham, 1975), 332 p.

  A colourful narrative of the people, politics and industries that have contributed to the character of this Miramichi town. In the last half of the 19th century, lumber and shipbuilding brought prosperity to Chatham and by 1856 the town had is first labour organization. Popular local organizations, such as the Temperance Societies, the Mechanics Institute and the Agricultural Society are described in Chapter VII “Societies” while Chapter VIII “Entertainment and Sports” looks at bands, theatre groups, cock-fighting, skating and the always popular hockey teams which provided a lively social life for working people.

• GAVIN, F.P., Vocational Education Survey of the City of Fredericton, N.B. (Fredericton, Fredericton School Board, 1921), 64 p.

  The purpose of this survey conducted by the Vocational Summer School in Fredericton in 1921 was to determine the way in which the school system of that community could best provide vocational training. Important information is provided on the occupational distribution of 2770 employees which is presented separately for each of the communities of Fredericton, Marysville and Devon. The distribution of employment of 770 working women and girls in these communities is also provided, along with the education level of employees and the opinions of employees and employers about vocational training. All of this information offers an overall perspective on the nature of employment in a primarily commercial and distribution centre.

• GODIN, Pierre, Les Révoltés d'Acadie (Montréal, Éditions Québécoises, 1972), 158 p.

• GOSSELIN, A. et G.P. BOUCHER, Settlement Problems in Northern New Brunswick (Ottawa, Dept. of Agriculture, 1944), 31 p.

  During the 1930s, federal and provincial governments in Canada assisted unemployed families in urban areas to move “back to the land” where it was hoped that they would become self-sufficient farmers. This is an assessment of the progress of some 300 families who settled in the counties of Madawaska, Restigouche and Gloucester from 1931 to 1937. The study found that the main source of income for most settlers during their first 10 years on the land was through the sale of wood and by wage labour off the farm.

• GRANT, Ruth Winona, Now and Then; a History of the Southhampton Area Along the Saint John River (Woodstock [NB], 1967), 105 p.

  The history of the community of Southampton is related from its existence as an Indian settlement to the 1960s. Chapter 9 “How the People Lived” describes the many kinds of work by women and children in the household and on a farm, such as making soap and butter, stocking the woodbox and haying the fields. Chapter 13 “Raftin' and Runnin'” tells of life on the river drives in the early 20th century. Men from the community built rafts of the logs cut upriver and then rode on them to guide the logs to mills in Fredericton and Saint John. Before the railway was built along the river, these men faced a 50 mile walk back to their homes. Chapter 15 “Industries Around Southampton” identifies numerous sawmills, tanneries and grist mills which provided work to men in the community.

• GRAYSON, Linda et Michael BLISS, The Wretched of Canada: Letters to R.B. Bennett, 1930-1935 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1971), 199 p.

  In the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Canadians suffered from the shockwaves of an international economic catastrophe, several thousand men and women wrote directly to Prime Minister R.B. Bennett to describe their difficulties and ask for his personal assistance. This volume reprints 168 of these letters, and includes 12 letters written by distressed New Brunswickers to Mr. Bennett, himself a native of the province. Typical was the appeal from a man in Tanner Junction, who wrote: “As I saw your advertisement in the paper where you said you would see no one hungry or cold. and I am asking your assitance (sic), as I am both hungry and cold, and all in my care” (p. 115). Like many others, he received a reply and a cash donation of five dollars from the prime minister. Other letters from New Brunswick appear on the following pages: 37-8, 41-2, 51, 55, 73, 80, 100-1, 111, 113-4, 122-3, 198. Another New Brunswick letter is reproduced as an illustraton at the front of the book.

• GREENING, W.E. et M.M. MACLEAN, It Was Never Easy: A History of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway, Transport and General Workers (Ottawa, Mutual Press, 1961), 414 p.

  A very useful official history of the CBRT & GW, one of Canada's largest unions, which was established in Moncton in 1908. The Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees, as it was originally called, was formed by workers on the Intercolonial Railway who were disappointed with the Boston-based International Brotherhood of Railroad Employees, which they had recently joined. The founding convention was presided over by Frank A. Smith, a Moncton freightshed foreman. W.N. Collins, a Saint John freightchecker, was elected Grand Vice-President of the new union. From its Moncton headquarters the CBRE organized workers throughout the Intercolonial and signed a first agreement in December 1909. Believers in the autonomy of Canadian unions, the CBRE met resistance from American-based unions in the running trades. However, the CBRE's concentration on previously unorganized workers in the non-operating trades, such as freight-handlers and station clerks, brought the union considerable success. In 1919 the CBRE headquarters were transferred to Ottawa, and by 1921 the union had more than 13,000 members and was “truly national, with Local Divisions in almost every important railway centre in Canada” . The union went on to play a significant role in the history of organized labour in Canada. Chapters One to Three, however, focus on the early years, when the CBRE was primarily a regional organization based in the Maritimes. In Chapter One an extract from the minutes of the founding convention is reproduced, as well as a photograph of the delegates to the 1909 convention.

• HATHEWAY, W. Frank, Poorhouse and Palace (Saint John [NB], 1900).

   “Wealth exists only by dint of labor and the savings of labor. The more of these savings appropriated by the capitalist, leaves the less for the wage earner” . “It should be the wise policy of government to make it extremely difficult for men to become millionaires, and yet comparatively easy for all men to have a comfortable home and enough income to ensure them against penury in their old age” . These are some of the characteristic views voiced at the outset of the 20th century by social reformer W.F. Hatheway of Saint John. The booklet is dedicated to showing the value of a system of “progressive” taxation in New Brunswick, a system which Hatheway believes will be more just than the existing “proportional” system of taxation, under which the wealthy have escaped paying their fair share of taxes. Most of the booklet is devoted to an examination of wealth and wages in Britain and the United States, based on contemporary social reform literature. Hatheway warns of the danger of combines and monopolies and advocates restrictions upon the concentration of wealth. Underlying his proposal is his belief that the scales of justice in the modern world must be balanced -- “to make it difficult for the millionaires to breathe freely in Canada” and “to supply to the industrial classes those aids to livelihood which will tend to decrease ignorance and crime, and keep the working classes to the level of true citizenship”.

• HATHEWAY, W. Frank, Canadian Nationality, the Cry of Labor and Other Essays (Toronto, W. Briggs, 1906), 230 p.

  A collection of eloquent social reform essays by New Brunswick's most prominent turn-of-the-century social reformer. As a friend of labour, Hatheway upholds the dignity of work: “It is labor that creates a nation, lays the foundation of every art, of all trades and professions. Character is not primarily formed by what people read, but rather by what they see, feel, have to do” . And as a preacher of the social gospel, Hatheway warns that social evolution demands an end to the extremes of wealth and poverty in the modern world: “Adam, with the sweat upon his brow, leans on his spade: Eve, at the spindle, watches her weary fingers. From the cities, from the farms, the workers look, hoping, wondering, asking, ‘Will we always be thus? Is this the outcome of the law taught by Christ on the Mount?' Such is the cry of the human, the voice of labor, aye, more than that, it is now the demand of the worker” .

• HIGGINS, Douglas, History of Coal Mining and Other Related Industries in the Minto and Chipman Areas 1783-1978 (Minto, D. H. Higgins, 1979), 240 p.

  Douglas Higgins spent most of his life in the coal mining industry of Minto and Chipman; as a young man he worked in the mines and later he secured employment as a surveyor for the New Brunswick government. While this history has collected much valuable information on the coal companies and on the nature of the industry in southern New Brunswick, some of its most interesting sections are those drawn from personal experiences. Clear and careful descriptions are given of the way in which coal was mined from the earth and the changes made in the mining methods (pp. 52-61). The conflict between landowners in the Grand Lake area and the mining companies is documented to 1910 (pp. 102-121). The chapter “Federal Government Subvention 1930-1969 and the Great Takeover” (pp. 202-213) relates the author's role in and opinions on the formation of the Grand Lake Development Corporation. Many older miners lost their jobs when the federal government bought out the coal companies.

• HODGETTS, J.E. et O.P. DWIVEDI, Provincial Governments as Employers (Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974), 216 p.

  The New Brunswick Civil Service Association was established in 1954 to represent civil servants in lobbying the provincial government for improved benefits and working conditions. In the 1960s New Brunswick was the first provincial government in Atlantic Canada to recognize the shift from “civil servant” to “public employee” by providing bargaining rights for provincial government workers. The association was reorganized in 1968 as the New Brunswick Public Employees Association. In 1956 there were 1,511 members; in 1971 3,300 members. The union has faced competition in recruiting membership from the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which has been strongest among municipal rather than provincial employees.

• HUANG, Tien-Jong, Measurement and Identification of Poverty in the Communities of Kent County, New Brunswick (Richibucto [NB], New Brunswick NewStart, 1972), 56 p.

  Huang draws a dismal picture of life in poverty stricken Kent County in 1970. A good deal of the report is spent in identifying a measurable poverty line by comparing studies done in the United States and Canada. Huang came up with his own definition of what a person needs not only to survive but also to have a “dignified life” . Twelve communities in Kent County were selected which included 526 families. The poverty rate in these communities was a staggering 62.9 percent of families (331 families) which were considered under the poverty line in 1970. Most of these families were headed by men who were farmers, loggers, fishermen or retired people. Families headed by single women suffered most. Family size was found to be one of the most important variables in explaining the variations of poverty and social welfare dependancy in 1970.

• HUNT, Russell et Robert CAMPBELL, K.C. Irving: The Art of the Industrialist (Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 197 p.

  An exploration, part exposé and part appreciation, of the achievements of New Brunswick's most successful entrepreneur. Two episodes of particular interest to the history of labour relations are described. Irving's hardwood veneer plant in Saint John, which supplied aircraft veneer for the Mosquito bombers in the Second World War, was extremely successful and profitable; the record, however, was marred by repeated and bitter labour conflicts, even at the cost of disrupting war production (pp. 199-104). Also described are the “Kafkaesque” difficulties encountered in 1971 by the Seafarers' International Union in trying to represent seamen on six ships; given the complexity of the Irving corporate structure, the employer could be clearly determined for only one of the ships (pp. 41-4).

• INGERSOLL, Lincoln et L.R. CARSON, Sardine fishing and canning in New Brunswick (Toronto, 1968).

  A well-written and picturesque account of sardine fishing and processing in the Bay of Fundy area. This book, designed to be used in the elementary or junior high-school level, follows the operations step by step from fishing to selling the sardines. It explains how fishermen go about their work, using photographs to illustrate the points. There are questions relating to the text as well as to the diagrams. The role of Connor's Brothers company is also touched upon in this text. The book deals with the operations of the Connors' Brothers Black's Harbour factory.

• JOHNSON, George Brooks, Miramichi Woodsman (Richmond [VA], Press of Whittet & Shepperson, 1945), 102 p.

  This is the story of Paul Kingston and his kin who were lumbermen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Miramichi area. Kingston started his career as a cutter and moved up from there to a teamster. Later on he purchased his own crown timber lease and employed crews to cut for him. He also worked as an agent for the Burchill company, a large lumbering concern. The author gives vivid descriptions of the hardships endured by the men and women during the winter and spring operations of the cut. The log drive is well described through lively and realistic stories (pp. 65-66). The description of the division of labour within the camp is also enlightening. There are a few drawings as well as photographs of teamsters and their horses, ferrymen, log camps and a log jam on the stream.

• KIERSTEAD, David G., Reflections: The Story of Hampton, N.B (Hampton, N.B., Kings County Historical and Archival Society, 1983), 336 p.

  A glimpse of Hampton as an industrial company town in the late 19th century is offered in this local community history. The Flewelling mill complex (pp. 36-42) which included a sawmill, match factory and general store along with the Ossekeag Stamping Factory, manufacturer of enamelware, were significant industrial employers in this community at the turn of the 20th century. Included is an unidentified description of the organization of work within the Flewelling sawmill in 1893: “the men who plane them know nothing about shaping them; those who shape them do not know how to put them together...” . Chapter 24 “Sports” (pp. 279-291) attests to the prominent role that team sports such as baseball, curling, hockey and rugby have played in the social life of Hampton over the years.

• LAGACÉ, Anita, How Grand Falls Grew (Grand Falls, 1945), 77 p.

  Over the years the prosperity of this community was closely linked to the sawmills and lumber drives of the Saint John River. The importance of employment in the fluctuating forest industry is reflected in the poem “When the Pulp Mill Comes This Way” . In this verse, author Tom May expresses the high hopes in Grand Falls around 1910 that a pulp mill will locate in their community: No more the young men of the town will loaf about the street / With scarce the money with them to buy themselves a treat / They will be flush with money, pool and billiards they will play / And there'll be lots of money, when the pulp mill comes this way.

• LANTEIGNE, Leopold, The Agricultural Co-operative in New Brunswick (Fredericton, Agricultural Resources Study of New Brunswick, 1976), 100 p.

  The scope of this study is much broader than its title would suggest as it touches on most aspects of the cooperative movement in New Brunswick rather than exclusively those of the agricultural sector. This reflects the strength of the cooperative movement itself as consumer cooperatives have enjoyed more vigorous growth than producer cooperatives in the province. The cooperative movement is traced from its early beginnings in such groups as The Maritime Livestock Board (formed in 1927) and the United Maritime Fishermen (begun in 1930) through to the 145 credit unions and caisses populaires in the province in 1975. Much of the information is of a contemporary nature and is frequently presented in tables. With almost 200,000 members in 1975, the cooperative movement represents 50 per cent of the New Brunswick population that is more than 20 years of age.

• LEWIS, William Reed, New Brunswick, Canada: A Nearby Colony for Men of Moderate Means (Fredericton, 1904), 32 p.

  A pamphlet which advertises the employment opportunities in New Brunswick available to British immigrants but which warns away “loafers” and “those who prate about ‘Jack as good as his master’”. As the Crown Land Office reminded its readers: “The distinctions between Jack and his master are not always emphasized here in the same ways as at home, but Jack is the employed, and the master, while called here the boss, pays the wages; and Jack succeeds best if he realizes this”.

• MACHUM, Lloyd Alexander, A History of Moncton Town and City, 1885-1965 (Moncton, City of Moncton, 1965), 431 p.

  A chronological account of the fortunes of the city of Moncton which ranges widely over local people, business and events. Chapter 11, “Industry and Commerce” identifies a number of the city's first industrial employers including the Record Foundry, the Humphrey mills, a sugar refinery and a cotton mill. The chapter concludes with a roll call of organizations and their executive members in Moncton in 1913 among which are 20 labour unions and numerous fraternal societies. The heyday of amateur sports teams is the subject of Chapter 16, “The Days of Real Sport” . In the years just before the First World War, hockey teams such as the Moncton Victorians and field sports under the Moncton Amateur Athletic Association dominated Maritime competitions. Chapters 25, “Depression” and 26 “Recovery” recount the unemployment and hard times of the 1930s. The unemployed made do , workers shared their jobs and delegations demanded relief work from civic officials. One response to such hardship was support for the co-operative movement. The choice of Moncton as an equipment depot which supplied the Eastern Air Command in the Second World War improved employment prospects.

• MACKAY, Donald, The Lumberjacks (Toronto, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978), 319 p.

  A colourful social history which pays tribute to the workers in one of Canada's historic staple industries. Work in the woods gave birth to “a breed of skilled, hard-working men with pride in their trade and rough, but definite, codes of conduct”. The author focuses on many aspects of life and work in the woods, examining in turn the raftsmen and timber cruisers, choppers and sawyers, skidders and teamsters, river drivers and cooks. The social life of the lumber camps is amply described, and superstitions and legends, such as the New Brunswick tales of the Dungarvon Whooper (pp. 144-6), are presented. Often the author relies on oral history to present accounts of the lumbermen's life: Harding Smith, for instance, describes a drive on the Miramichi (p. 133) and Wilmot MacDonald recalls “going up for Frasers” on the train from Newcastle to Plaster Rock (p. 219). The focus of the book is national, but there are frequent references to New Brunswick, and the importance of New Brunswck lumber workers in other parts of Canada and in the UnIted States is noted. The treatment spans a century and a half of development, from the beginnings of the timber trade through the growth of the lumber and pulp and paper industries, and ends with the transformation of the lumbermen into modern-day “woods technicians” in the 1950s. Useful maps are included, and many fine photographs.

• MACKEAN, Ray et Robert PERCIVAL, The Little Boats: Inshore Fishing Craft of Atlantic Canada (Fredericton, Brunswick Press, 1979), 106 p.

  The importance of the inshore fishery is frequently a neglected theme in the past of Atlantic Canada. Coastal fishermen depended upon many types of small boats designed for specific functions in the fishery and for specific local conditions. These coastal craft reflected “the skills and traditions of generations of fishermen” and an appreciation of the diversity and purposefulness of their design helps us understand the fishing process itself. These small boats are rapidly passing from use in the Atlantic provinces. Indeed for some kinds of boats, a last example does not even exist to be preserved in a museum. Ray MacKean, in models authentic to the smallest detail, and Robert Percival, in paintings, have pooled their talents to help preserve a record of these boats and the fishermen who built them. Along with the visual representation of the boats, many of which were found in New Brunswick, usually included is a discussion of the particular characterisics of the local fishery it was designed to serve.

• MACLEAN, Eleanor O'Donnell, Leading the Way: An Unauthorized Guide to the Sobey Empire (Halifax, GATT-Fly Atlantic, 1985), 85 p.

  This book contains a variety of insights into the Sobey empire. As the author points out, it is a critical and unauthorized account, not “okayed” by the Sobey family. One section is devoted to the issue of labour relations and working conditions at the Sobeys stores. Only about 18 per cent of Sobeys food workers are unionized. Events at the Dalhousie Sobeys store are described by Dianne Harm, a former employee (pp. 26-30). She describes the working conditions and management policies which led workers to invite the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union to organize the store. A strike began in December 1981. “We figured we worked very hard for them, and I would say it was one of the best staffs Sobeys ever had. And they just laughed at us, they thought it was quite funny that we would try to organize. And they tried to break us, and we wouldn't. We were very strong” . Two months later the store was permanently closed on the grounds that it was not a “viable” operation. “Sobeys pick their employees now. I think they try to watch who they hire, so that you won't even think of organizing” .

• MADORE, Lina, Petit coin perdu, tome 2: entre deux voies ferrées (Edmundston, Lina Madore, 1981).

• MADORE, Lina, Little Lost Corner (Edmundston, Lina Madore, 1982), 141 p.

  Published also as Lina Madore, Petit Coin Perdu (Rivière-du-Loup, 1979). “One had to have a lot of imagination and courage in order to fight this miserable poverty which lasted all through the Depression of the Thirties and Forties. Money was very scarce and one had to work the land by hand just too be able to eat each day...” . This is the story of one family's struggle to survive the hard times from 1932 to 1949 in northwestern New Brunswick . In 1932 Lina Madore's parents and their 12 children moved to St. Jean-de-la-Lande under a “back-to-the-land” settlement scheme. Under this scheme, settlers who successfully erected homes and cleared back the forest might claim ownership to land. In theory, jobless city families were to settle the land and become self-sufficient farmers. As the Madore family's experience reveals, other ways had to be found to earn a living. Two of Lina's brothers found work illegally in lumber camps in the United States in 1936 only to be caught by the police and placed in jail. At age 13, Lina left school and for the following seven years moved back and forth from household work at home, for relatives and through a series of jobs as a domestic worker, cook and potato picker. In 1944, Lina eagerly accepted her first job picking potatoes in Maine for 15 cents a barrel plus room and board. Up at 4.30 a.m. on her first day in the potato fields, Lina had little appetite for the reheated beans that were standard breakfast fare. Once in the field, potato pickers followed behind a tractor-pulled digger, pulling the stems from the plants and loading the potatoes from baskets into large barrels. As Lina recalls: “that digger kept going by! The driver stopped the machine and came to help me pull the stems off. I must have looked pitiful. To add to my misery, I had put my barrels in the wrong line....They told me I had to roll them over the rows already picked and line them with the others. These barrels were almost full. I tried to move them but I couldn't....It was ten in the morning, I was warming up but I was hungry...I kept on working but I began to feel sorry for myself. I was comparing myself to prisoners condemned to hard labour...I thought things would go better in the afternoon; on the contrary...I felt sleepy and was beginning to feel a pain in the back. The machine kept coming and going. I kept accumulating the stems in bulk and throwing them back over the potatoes. I didn't have the strength left to remove the stems” . At the end of the day: “When the machine stopped I still had ten rows ahead of me. I knew I was required to pick them before the night...The next day, on my first attempt at getting up, I thought I was sick. I was sore all over...The calves of my legs were stiff, my arms felt like jelly...” (pp. 91-95) Potato picking, like many other forms of seasonal harvest work, was back-breaking work and the living conditions of migrant harvesters were often intolerable. It was, for Lina, the fastest way to make money. Three days of picking potatoes earned as much money as working in a private home for a month (p. 97).

• MAGNUSSON, Charles E., Helpful Questions for Norwegian Settlers. Praktisk raadgiver for Norske Kolonister (Saint John [NB]), 18 p.

  This pamphlet was designed to serve as a handy English/Norwegian phrasebook for immigrants arriving in New Brunswick. A series of questions that immigrants might ask or be asked by immigration officials, travellers' aid workers and employers are listed side by side in both languages along with appropriate answers. Of particular interest are those sections directed to new immigrants seeking employment as household domestics, as agricultural labourers, and as woods workers. Phrase number 36 for housemaids, for example, sketches an average week's work, this in addition to the multitude of daily household tasks: (1) Monday - Wash day; (2) Tuesday - Ironing day; (3) Wednesday - Vacuum cleaner used on carpets, and rugs, (or) thoroughly cleaned with carpet sweeper (or) well swept with broom; (4) Thursday - (for example) Afternoon off; (5) Friday - Silver and brass polished; (6) Saturday - Carpets and rugs cleaned thoroughly. Necessary floors scrubbed. Also published in identical format as above is: Charles E. Magnusson, Helpful Questions for Danish Settlers.

• MANNY, Louise et James WILSON, Songs of the Miramichi (Fredericton, Brunswick Press, 1968), 330 p.

  Collected here are 101 traditional songs and ballads about local happenings, superstitions and folklore along the Miramichi River. According to the authors, these songs are part of the culture of the “folk” -- farmers, fishermen, shipwrights, carpenters, labourers, servants, woodsmen, tailors, mechanics, skilled workers. This culture has survived and flourished over the years through these songs which were sung at work or social gatherings. The words and music are provided for each song along with an explanation of how the song originated. A number of songs describe the aspects of worklife such as this verse from “Bruce's Log Camp”: Oh, the floor it was greasy, all covered with mud / The dishes were dirty, and so was the grub / The bed clothes were lousy; the straw it was damp; / Give boarders comsumption in Bruce's log camp.

• MCGAHAN, Elizabeth W., The Port of Saint John, Volume One: From Confederation to Nationalization, 1867-1927: A Study in the Process of Integration (Saint John [NB], 1982), 333 p.

  A major scholarly study of the transformation of the port of Saint John from a Maritime port based on the 19th century New Brunswick lumber trade to a national Canadian port dominated by the export of western Canadian grain. This sophisticated study traces many aspects of the transformation, including the changing spatial geography of the port and the evolving transportation links of the community. The role of the longshoremen's union is also examined, both in the late 19th (pp. 56-8) and early 20th centuries (pp. 180-7). The most important changes affecting the long-established Ship Labourers' Union at the turn of the century (renamed the Longshoremen's Association in 1903) were the shift from lumber to grain exports, from summer to winter seasons, and from local merchants to outside steamship companies as employers. Readjustments caused strains within the ranks of the organized workers and in relations with employers. Splits between Protestant and Catholic longshoremen divided the workers into rival unions in 1899-1903 and 1905-1911. Major strikes took place in 1905 and 1907, as the workers sought a 35 cents per hour wage; the Montreal steamship companies, reluctant to continue union recognition, brought in strike-breakers from Montreal. In 1907 municipal authorities helped settle the strike. Subsequently, longer-term agreements became the pattern. In 1911 the union became Local 273 of the International Longshoremen's Association. Like their employers and like the port, the workers were now also linked to outside structures.

• MCGEE, Arlee D., The Victoria Public Hospital, Fredericton, 1888-1976 (Fredericton, 1984), 135 p.

  McGee describes the growth of institutional health care in Fredericton in two parts. The first is concerned with the evolution of the hospital, particularly the physical additions, technological changes, and the human element including doctors, support staff, the community and patients. The second part is concerned with the nursing staff and the nursing school attached to the hospital. Fees structures are periodically presented but no mention is made of those unable to pay. Significantly, however, the introduction of the Government Hospital Insurance Plan in July 1959 saw a tremendous growth in the number of those using the hospital. The establishment of a nurses' training school in the early years of the hospital seems to have been a means to provide cheap labour. Until the post-Second World War period, student nurses received little theoretical education. The emphasis was placed on long hours of practical experience working in the manner of an apprentice. Their living conditions were poor and included a rigid social structure regulating dress, conduct and personal relationships. Not until the late 1950s did nursing “education” begin to take precedence over training. Eventually nursing education moved to the universities and colleges. While nurses were consistently the largest number on staff at the hospital, they never achieved a say in how it would function. Requests were repeatedly made but were met with a “conflict of interests” response. The doctors on the other hand resigned “en bloc” in 1895 and through this tactic secured representation on the hospital's board. In 1924, the board listed 16 “Duties and responsibilities of the Hospital to Patients”, all of which were nursing responsibilities. As late as the 1960s it was imperative for a nurse to stand when a doctor entered the nursing station. Nurses were given certain important responsibilities, but often they appear to be tasks that either no doctor wanted to perform or for which no doctor was available. As an example, before obstetrics was centralized at the hospital, students gained maternity experience at the maternity home on Smythe Street “often delivering the public cases themselves” . The book concludes with a list of nursing graduates from the (the last class in 1974 contained the only male) and a brief description of the varied positions they occupied, from public health and the Victorian Order of Nurses to the military and missionary nursing.

• MCINTOSH, Dave, The Seasons of My Youth (Toronto, General Pub., 1984), 189 p.

  A lively and heart-warming remembrance of growing up in the early years of the Great Depression. Dave McIntosh's boyhood years revolved around two seasons: winters spent in Stanstead, Quebec and summers, when his widowed mother loaded the family into their aging car and headed off to Jacksontown, Carleton County, New Brunswick, to spend the season helping out his aunt and uncle on their potato farm. Even for young Dave, the daily routine of work began at sunrise “fetching water from the well, cleaning out the stalls and feeding the horses, milking the cows” . Dave was still young enough to be called upon to assist his mother and aunt with household chores and just old enough to help his uncle and older male cousins reap grain and hay. Descriptions of domestic and farm work and the family relationships around them are interwoven with humorous anecdotes and personal reminiscences. For a young boy, summers in Carleton County were a time of close family relationships, fun and excitement. Dave had little grasp of the economic circumstances which contributed to his mother's decision to move her family each year or the financial difficulties facing potato farmers which lay behind his observation that most of his uncle's machinery was held together by haywire. But even a young boy understood that something was gravely wrong when, as on one occasion, he accompanied his older cousin John to sell potatoes for an unexpectedly low price. Concluding that there was no future for him farming potatoes in Carleton County, John defied his parents and headed west following the path of other neighbourhod boys who had gone to Detroit and Windsor looking for work. When John left, young Dave could understand the worried faces of his aunt and uncle. So many of the young men who had gone west were now trickling back to farms nearby.

• MCKEE-ALLAIN, Isabelle et Huguette CLAVETTE, Portrait socio-économique des femmes du Nouveau-Brunswick, tome 1 (Moncton, 1983), 124 p.

• MILLER, Maud Henderson, History of Upper Woodstock (Saint John [NB], Globe Print. Co., 1940), 165 p.

  A furniture factory was established at Upper Woodstock in 1873 by A. Henderson. Chapter V, pp. 62-76 has a description of the workshop and storage areas. It also describes the dangers of furniture making in the 19th century. Burnham Ganong was killed in this factory when he was caught in a driving belt; Will Dysart lost an arm in the planing machine. Although the emphasis is on the owner and the buildings, one does get glimpses of the working conditions and the salaries of the workers in Upper Woodstock at the turn of the century.

• MYLES, Roderick G., Memories: Tales From the Restigouche River (North Bay, 1978), 161 p.

  A personal narrative of growing up and working in the lumber woods along the Restigouche River in the first two decades of the 20th century. Roderick Myles originally wrote these memories to provide his sons with a sense of the world in which he had grown up and worked as a young man. As a boy, Myles spent several winters in lumber camps working as a cookee for his father, a camp cook. By the age of 16, Myles was working on his first river drive. The first half of the book (pp. 14-80) is a detailed explanation of how lumber camps operated and what life was like for the men who worked in them. Clear descriptions are provided, for example, of the way a camp was constructed, the organization of the crews, the work skills of portagers, teamsters and Restigouche River scowmen, and the daily routine in the camp from breakfast through to the story-telling at the end of the day. Myles recalls the pride that teamsters took in their horses: plaiting their manes and tails, oiling the harness until it shone, and hanging red, white and blue drop rings on it for decoration. This pride in their teams led to spirited competition among the teamsters through the winter's hauling-off of logs. A bucking board, hung prominently on a wall of the camp, recorded what each teamster had hauled each day, week and month. In the spring, the logs cut through the winter at the lumber camp were driven down brooks in to the main Restigouche River. Here, a boom company took charge of driving the logs to the main boom, the North Shore Boom at Tide Head. Myles recalled that some of the brook drivers stayed to work for this Corporation drive while “the rest would go home and collect their pay, which would not be hard to carry. One spring I worked twenty-five days and collected twenty-five dollars. I hope I wasn't overpaid” . In the second half of this book, Myles remembers his boyhood in the community of Tide Head, attending school and working on his uncle's farm. These stories provide a vivid sense of the daily rhythm of family and work life as well as colourful accounts of special community occasions, like barn framing and the visits of travelling pedlars and entertainers. The careful explanations make this book an invaluabe source of information on work in the lumber woods of northern New Brunswick. The warmth and humour of the personal reminiscences make it an enjoyable story from cover to cover it is illusrated by the author with sketches of “stick” people, sleds, etc.

• OUELLET, J. Maurice, Sur le sentier de la Vie, Témoignage d'une époque (Moncton, Éditions d'Acadie, 1985), 196 p.

• PETCHEY, Marion, Pioneer Days in Plaster Rock (Saint John [NB], 1983), 32 p.

  Like most everyone in Plaster Rock, Marion Petchey's father worked for the Donald Fraser Company. These are her memories of growing up in that company town before the First World War. Her entire family cooked and cleaned in the boarding house managed by her father for the Fraser Company: “On Saturday morning I always came to breakfast to find a mound of cookie dough mixed and ready for me to roll and cut out and bake” . The up to 60 men who stayed at the boarding house, like all Fraser Company employees, worked 10 hours a day and all days of the year except Sundays and Christmas. Wages were paid once a month in cash or employees might use coupons to purchase goods on credit at the Fraser store. Among Marion Petchey's childhood recollections are also vivid descriptions of work in the sawmill and on the spring river drive.

• PICOT, J. Ernest, A Brief History of Teacher Training, 1848-1973 (Fredericton, Dept. of Education, Province of New Brunswick, 1974), 146 p.

  The difficulties over many years faced by teachers in New Brunswick to secure professional status and decent wages is the central theme of this chronological history. Progressive developments in teacher training, such as in courses and certification, are discussed as the most important way that educators attempted to upgrade their occupation in the eyes of the public. Low salaries meant that from the 1880s onwards in New Brunswick there were repeated shortages of qualified teachers. While school inspectors annually documented the problems this created in public education, the provincial government appeared reluctant to act on their requests for change. A shortage of male teachers did prompt the provincial board of education in 1920 to attempt to enforce a minimium scale of salaries based on the qualifications and experience of the teacher. This policy was abandoned in 1933 and local school boards once again were free to set the wages of their teaching staff as they saw fit or might be able to pay.

• PICOT, J. Ernest, Les écoles normales du Nouveau-Brunswick, 1848-1973 (Fredericton, Ministère de l'Éducation, Province du Nouveau-Brunswick, 1974), 157 p.

• POND, Douglas Daamon, The History of Marysville, New Brunswick (Fredericton, 1983), 163 p.

  For working people in Marysville, the history of their community is inseparable from the legend and legacy of its 19th century industrial entrepreneur, Alexander “Boss” Gibson. The relationship which developed over the years between the people of Marysville and the “Boss” reveals much about the complex workplace and social relations in the first years of New Brunswick's industrial development. Through the 1860s, Marysville residents worked as cutters, stream drivers, teamsters and mill hands on Gibson's vast lumber holdings. Life at work and in the community changed as Gibson expanded his interests to include railways, shipbuilding, a leather company, tannery, iron foundry and cotton mill. By the 1880s, up to 2000 men, women and children worked for the “Boss”, many living in company tenements and boarding houses, attending the school and church built by Gibson and shopping at the company store. Life working for the “Boss” began at an early age. Many youngsters found work in the mill preferable to the iron discipline exercised by the school principal, Zula V. Hallet. As Chester Cochrane recalled: “I went to work in the mill when I was 12 years old; I thought it was the lesser of two evils...I wasn't about to go on to grade 7 with Zula...Mind you, we were supposed to be 14 before we went to work in the mill, and when the Inspectors came around...they would hide us...in the filling boxes or send us out to another part of the mill” . In 1916, mill workers earned 75 cents per day, working from 6: 40 a.m. to 6 p.m. with Saturday afternoon off. The Marysville workers who recalled this period of their lives remembered the long hours and low wages but they also spoke with pride of their work, the sense of family in the mills and the strength of the community spirit expressed in fraternal organizations, the local baseball team and band concerts. After the mid-1940s, changes in the ownership and management practices of the cotton mill altered work and community life in Marysville. Workers organized in the Textile Workers Union of America as a solution to the new relationship between employer and workers demanded by Canadian Cottons. By the 1950s, the mill had lost much of its skilled workforce and with production quotas, there was no opportunity for family members to train one another. In the context of these more recent experiences of industrial capitalism, the legend of “Boss” Gibson has come to be a symbol in Marysville's history of the alternative work and social relationships that may exist in a community.

• REID, John G., Mount Allison University: A History, to 1963 (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1984).

  In 1933 the labour question posed a moral dilemma for Mount Allison University. It was learned that a Quebec construction company, who had submitted the lowest bid for a contract to build new college buildings was paying a rate of 15 cents an hour to its workers, much less than public works projects in Saint John at the time and lower than the same company had paid on previous contracts in the Maritimes. The issue was hotly debated in United Church circles and the “United Churchman” commented that the moral seemed to be “that no Christian institution should submit any contract to competition without inserting a fair wage clause” . The contractor agreed to raise the rate to 20 cents an hour, once workers had been employed for one week at the lower rate. In additon to this episode, which is discussed on pp. 118-9 of Vol. II, there are numerous references in both volumes of this history to salaries and working conditions for the college faculty.

• ROBICHAUD, Donat, Le grand Chipagan. Histoire de Shippagan (Beresford [NB], Donat Robichaud, 1976), 454 p.

• SAINT JOHN COMMITTEE ON POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION, Report (Saint John [NB], 1944), 35 p.

  In reflecting on the changes which would affect their city in the transition period following the Second World War, the Saint John Committee on Post-War Reconstruction identified two central problems. The most immediate problem following the war would be providing employment for some 6,000 people from the armed services, 3,000 industrial workers and another 1,000 shipping workers who would be seeking employment in the peacetime economy. The second, and larger problem, was one of “rectifying the social and economic imbalance which has long been characteristic of the community, and which has its roots deeply imbedded in the forces which have shaped the economic history of New Brunswick” . To meet these needs, the committee advocated that an emergency programme of public works be undertaken to cushion unemployment and that these projects be in providing housing, slum clearance, town planning, constructing water and sewerage facilities and expanding educational institutions. The committee included two members of the Saint John Trades and Labour Council, James Whitebone and James DeLay.

• SAINT JOHN VOCATIONAL SCHOOL, 25th Anniversary Souvenir Booklet of the Saint John Vocational School, 1926-1951 (Saint John [NB], 1951), 40 p.

  A collection of photographs and accounts of sports, teachers and social activities which were part of student life at the Vocational School in its first 25 years. The important role played by the Vocational School in training Canadians for war industries, in wireless operation and providing skills to veterans of the Second World War is the subject of one section.

• SAUNDERS, Roy, The Escuminac Disaster (London, Oldbourne, 1960), 120 p.

  Roy Saunders' account of the Escuminac disaster in which 35 fishermen died in June of 1959 is both a tragic and a heroic description. Saunders attempts to capture the hard life that these workers face every day. Mainly it is a story of the living, those who risked their lives to rescue their neighbours. He also points to their poverty and the relief needed to succour the grieving families who lost their only bread-winners. The sea has claimed many people in its time and it will continue to do so, but the fact that on one stormy night it claimed 35 men and boys will always remain with the people of Escuminac.

• SETO, William et Larry SHYU, The Chinese in New Brunswick: A Historical Perspective (Fredericton, Chinese Cultural Association of New Brunswick, 1986), 113 p.

  Chinese immigrants, arriving from Western and Central Canada, settled in small numbers in Saint John in the 1890s, and subsequently in other urban centres in the province. Drawing on oral history and archival research, Chapter III ( “Career Patterns of Early Chinese Immigrants” ) presents an effective description of the Chinese workers' contribution to the economic life of the province. Although routinely discriminated against, the Chinese performed important economic functions in these centres by working in restaurants and laundries. In 1902, for instance, Saint John listed 29 Chinese laundries and laundrymen. The hand laundries gave way in time to dry cleaning and washing machines, but the Chinese presence remained strong in restaurants and some small stores.

• SEYMOUR, Edward E., An Illustrated History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1974 (Ottawa, Canadian Labour Congress, 1976), 91 p.

  This is a useful general history of Canadian labour. One interesting episode in New Brunswick labour history is discussed (pp. 50-51). In the early 1950s textile mills all across the country were closing down, and one of these was the old cotton mill at Milltown, near St. Stephen, established in the 1880s. Rather than watch the community's biggest industry disappear, workers at the mill adopted a bold experiment in industrial democracy. Members of Local 858, Textile Workers Union of America, undertook to run the mill as a cooperative. The Textile Coop leased the mill and machinery. The union president was elected president. Foremen and superintendants were eliminated. The Coop ran the mill for three years, but the end came in 1957 when the workers could not raise sufficient capital to buy out the mill. Provincial and federal governments failed to help. So ended the “bold, imaginative concept which had captured the interest of Canadians” .

• SISMONDO, Sergio, Economic Opportunity Survey of Kent County, New Brunswick (1969), 61 p.

  Three aspects of this study interested us. First Sismondo identifies the number and types of employment opportunities within the county. From a total of 6,602 workers in 1961, 37 per cent were engaged in agriculture, fishing, trapping and the forest industry. The manufacturing areas are linked to fishing where work has a pronounced seasonality. The productivity of these workers is not very high in these industries. The second purpose of this study was to classify the present employment opportunities (1969) by means of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (1965 edition) which determines the type of education or training required for particular jobs. Sismondo found a relatively unskilled labour force coupled with technological obsolescence of traditional resource-based industries. The third objective was to determine wage patterns. Sismondo, not surprisingly, found average incomes well below those of average New Brunswick and Canadian levels. Per capita income was $430 compared to a national average of $1550. Kent County suffered from poor employment opportunities combined with high migration, low educational levels and low salaries.

• SQUIRES, W. Austin, History of Fredericton: The Last 200 Years (Fredericton, City of Fredericton, 1980), 174 p.

   “Some have said, and many have believed, that Fredericton failed to develop manufacturing because its elite considered such industries unsuitable to a capital city and college town. This is a myth” . In Chapter VII (pp. 81-96) of this “social history of Fredericton”, the author provides a revealing portrait of the little-known “Industrial Fredericton”, which emerged during the course of the 19th century and still existed at the beginning of the 20th century. On the south side of the river Fredericton boasted as many as five sawmills, with more on the north side. Woodworking factories produced furniture and door frames, axe handles and peavies. There were foundries and carriagemakers, tanneries and boot and shoe makers. On York Street, the Hartt Boot and Shoe factory (still in operation today) was constructed in 1898-99, and the Chestnut Canoe factory (closed in the 1970s) was built in 1907. Concludes the author: “It is clear that Fredericton's period as an industrial centre began in the late 1830s and lasted until the turn of the century, after which the founding of new enterprises virtually ceased for fifty years. It is also clear that Fredericton's industry rested primarily upon local entrepreneurial talent, inventiveness and ambition, and upon a skilled and hardworking labouring class” .

• STANLEY, Della M.M., Louis Robichaud: A Decade of Power (Halifax, Nimbus, 1984), 262 p.

  During New Brunswick’s Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, the size of the provincial civil service increased dramatically and the legislation governing labour relations in the civil service was modernized. In 1964 the Civil Service Act allowed collective bargaining by public employees and encouraged consultation between the government and employees' associations. In 1968, following a royal commission chaired by Saul Frankel of McGill University, the Public Services Labour Relations Act was passed, providing full collective bargaining rights to some 30,000 civil servants, including the right to strike under certain conditions. According to the author, Premier Robichaud believed that this legislation was “an expression of his government's modern approach to labour relations and human rights”, and the author lists this among the major reforms of the Robichaud era.

• THOMPSON, Ethel Anne, The Tides of Discipline (A Personal History of Three Traditional Fishing Communities: Chance Harbour, Dipper Harbour and Maces Bay, Situated on the South Shore of New Brunswick) (St. Stephen [NB], N.B.: Print'N Press, 1978), 116 p.

  Ethel Anne Thompson wrote a history of the communities in which she spent her life at a time when she felt their traditional way of life and work was threatened. The building of the Point Lepreau nuclear plant nearby and the employment it provided to the young people of these communities drew them away from the fishing industry. The regular work hours and pay cheques offered by this employment was vastly different from the uncertainties faced in fishing. As Point Lepreau nears completion, Thompson fears these young men and women will not return to the “more independent way of life” in fishing but seek clerical or constructon work away from their homes. A large section of this book is devoted to tracing the early settlement of each of the individual communities. One may read of how, through the years, these communities survived the changing demands of the fishing industry, for example, by moving to weir fishing, adapting to and then abandoning smoked fish, as well as working in the clam cannery of Brown Brothers (1890-1924).

• TRADES AND LABOUR COUNCIL, SAINT JOHN, N.B, History of Saint John Labor Unions, compiled and issued by the Saint John Trades and Labor Council and Subordinate Unions (Saint John [NB], 1929), 136 p.

  The Saint John Trades and Labour Council, organized in 1890, proudly recalls the important milestones in the history of organized labour in Saint John. The TLC claims a number of Canadian labour “firsts” for their city. These include: the first labour union in Canada, the Saint John Laborers' Benevolent Association later Local 273 of the International Longshoremen's Association; the first ten-hour day in July 1849; the first international charter granted to a Canadian local union, issued to the Saint John Typographical Union, Local 85 in 1859. The balance of this book is devoted to short histories and lists of officers of unions affiliated with the council over the years. Information is provided on the following unions and where dates were provided for the establishment of a union they have been included in brackets: International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada, Local 440 (October 1920); International Longshoremen's Association, Local 273 (1849); Plumbers and Steam Fitters', Local 574 (?-disbanded in strike of 1917 then reorganized 1929); Federated Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 6 (1891); United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Local 919 (1901); Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers, No. 1 (1889); International Brotherhood of Boiler Makers and Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of America, Local 717 (1912); Shipwrights' Union (1853-1906); International Association of Painters, Decorators and Paper Hangers, Local 440 (1876-?, revived 1927); International Journeymen Barbers' Union, Local 682 (1913); International Association of Machinists, Lodge 156 (1910), Lodge 1292 (1918), Local 482 (1928); New Brunswick Federation of Labour (1912); The Caulkers' Association (1864, incorporated 1886); International Union of Cigar Makers (1901); Sail Makers' Union (1882 - disbanded 1902); United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, Local 1544 (1917); Saint John Musicians' Protective Association, Local 728 of American Federation of Musicians (1919); Sheet Metal Workers International Association, Local 683 (1919); Saint John Typographical Union, Local 85 (1859); International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Drop Forgers and Helpers, Local 42 (?); International Longshoremen's Association, Local 1039 of Ship Liners (1919); International Longshoremen's Association Scowmen's Union (1913 - disbanded 1924); Printing Pressmen and Assistants, Local 36 (1903); International Longshoremen's Association, Local 1121 Elevator Employees (1923).

• WARNER, Agnes et al., My Beloved Poilus (Saint John, Barnes & Co., 1917), 123 p.

  A collection of letters from a nurse stationed at the front (Dionne-les-Bains) in France to her family in Saint John during the First World War. Her letters were collected and published by concerned citizens in Saint John as a means of raising money to supply Red Cross ambulances for Canadian troops. Most of this correspondence describes her work with the patients: serving meals, changing dressings, cleaning wards and boosting their spirits. A working day was a long and hard one. As she wrote to her parents: “Do not worry about me, I am as well as possible and as strong as a horse, but as my day begins at half-past five in the morning and ends at half-past nine at night I fall asleep over my letters” . Most of the patients she cared for had lost limbs on the battlefront, many, as she noted, because they waited in the trenches without help for hours after being wounded. Thus upon hearing that troops from her own home in Saint John were on their way to Europe, she expressed “mixed feelings “. While acknowledging that troops were badly needed at the front, by 1915 she knew the horrible reality of the war awaiting these young men.

• WHITE, Hants A., Potatoes Without Gravy (Lakeside [CA], 1972), 168 p.

  Hants White tells the story of his struggle to survive as a small-scale potato grower during the 1930s. Born in Carleton County in 1911, White began growing potatoes after his marriage in 1931. Through the Great Depression. White repeated a yearly ritual of planting potatoes, wishing, harvesting, trying to sell his crop and storing potatoes in the hope that prices would improve. Hospital bills at the birth of the children and a series of disastrous contracts to grow potatoes destroyed the family's hopes of living on the land. During the 1930s, White moved back and forth across the Maine-New Brunswick border to work in the woods and escape his creditors. Reflecting back on those years, White recalled that potato farmers of the time blamed low prices on the “Big Fellow” -- anyone who came between the farmer and the consumer -- and their assessment had probably been correct. Why farmers had failed to organize remained a mystery to him.