{"id":4242,"date":"2014-08-29T19:25:57","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T00:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.une-sen.org\/press\/?p=4242"},"modified":"2014-09-02T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T21:23:10","slug":"labour-day-or-leisure-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/?p=4242","title":{"rendered":"Labour Day or Leisure Day?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"labourday\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In their heyday, Labour Day parades were a sight to behold. People lined the streets to see floats that stood as monuments to workers\u2019 individual contributions to society. This was a day when plumbers marched alongside firefighters, in a show of unity among the working class.<\/p>\n

But Labour Day parades have always had to compete with one of its main goals: getting time off for leisure. Indeed, for many Canadians, Labour Day is more synonymous with a long relaxing weekend at the cottage than with the labour movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tension was built at the very beginning,\u201d explained Professor Craig Heron, who teaches history at York University. \u201cIt was a celebration of labour that had an implicitly political twist and a day of pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow you keep those things working together is obviously an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heron points out that Labour Day was alive and well before Parliament made it an official holiday. In The Workers\u2019 Festival, <\/i>a book he co-authored with Steve Penfold, Labour Day parades are traced back to the early 1880s, years before the day was officially recognized at the federal level in 1894.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was first celebrated in Toronto in 1882, Hamilton and Oshawa in 1883, London and Montreal in 1886, St.Catherines\u2019 in 1887, Halifax in 1888, and Ottawa and Vancouver in 1887.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back then, workers were simply asking their local municipality to declare the day a civic holiday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they would just celebrate it. Workers would take the day off,\u201d explained Heron. \u201cIn 1894, [Parliament was] just putting the legal stamp on a fait-accomplit<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

That precious time off was all the more important at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century, when workers didn\u2019t have vacation time \u2013 when Saturday was part of your workweek.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one-day holidays \u2013 Victoria Day, Dominion Day and an August holiday in some parts of the country \u2013 those were your only holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Heron sees the movement for paid vacation as an extension of that initial request for the fall holiday.<\/p>\n

With so little time off, Labour Day parades had stiff competition from the get-go. It wouldn\u2019t take long for union leaders bemoan the fact that many chose to spend that day of leisure at the local tavern or pool hall instead. Soon, the labour movement would be competing against a host of other options for holiday fun, where market forces sought to fill a void.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the parade would draw an impressive crowd. Onlookers could get a glimpse of a craftsman\u2019s work and his tools of the trade. For workers, it was a chance to present themselves as essential cogs in a society of producers. For unionists, it was a show of force for the labour movement \u2013 one they hoped would draw more workers into their ranks.<\/p>\n

But that would change over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cLabour Day evolved,\u201d explained Heron. \u201cWhat Steve and I wanted to emphasize in the book was how it was reinvented a number of times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The parades of the 1940s were characterized by what Heron referred to as \u201ca much sharper edge\u201d \u2013 with fiery protests more akin to today’s May Day demonstrations. After the Second World War, there was an attempt to merge activism with old traditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d put on a show that drew on the cultural elements that people expected to see in a parade; you added the clowns, you added the pretty girls in the short skirts,\u201d explained Heron. \u201cThose elements that now look frivolous to us, they co-existed alongside floats that asked \u2018What\u2019s going to happen as a result of automation?\u2019 and \u2018We need Medicare!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Gradually, as the labour movement entered more tumultuous years in the 1970s, the frivolous elements were dropped in favour of more protest activities.<\/p>\n

Despite this state of flux, one thing remained constant: Labour Day parades were a grassroots effort, usually led by a local labour council.<\/p>\n

In Ottawa, the Labour Day parade is organized by the Ottawa District Labour Council. With the big day just a few days away, Labour Council President Sean McKenny\u2019s voice is already ringing with pride and excitement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is free,\u201d said McKenny, urging everyone to attend the festivities. \u201cWe have hot-dogs, corn on the cob, bags of chips, soft-drinks and juice for folks \u2013 we have a bouncy castle and pony rides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ottawa has been home to a Labour Day parade for well over a century. In recent years, the festivities have followed a standard formula: everyone meets at city hall and marches to a nearby park, where the fun continues.<\/p>\n

The event, McKenny contends, puts the emphasis on family and leisure over activism and protest.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that we often say around here is \u2018we have 360-some-other days of the year to protest and rally; this is a day when we\u2019re going to enjoy ourselves and celebrate all our hard work throughout the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKenny argues that in Ottawa, the parade is far from dying out. After being involved with its planning for over 20 years, he says the level of participation has undoubtedly increased. Moreover, he hopes that the family-focused attractions will act as an extension of the Canadian Labour Congress\u2019 campaign, which aims to paint a different portrait of unions \u2013 one that counters public perceptions of union members as radical and constantly being on strike.<\/p>\n

In this vein, Labour Day festivities continue to be an important communications vehicle. In Heron and Penfold\u2019s book, the authors declare that parades \u201cwere intended to convey powerful symbolic, largely non-literate messages about appropriate social and political values and acceptable social relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1880s-1890s, there were parades all the time in the streets,\u201d explained Heron. \u201cIt was a way of communicating. You expected to see parades; you went and watched them. What was on display there, in terms of what people looked like, how they dressed, how they organized themselves, what they were carrying, what they were showing off \u2013 all of that was a mode of communicating to the crowd that was watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the digital age, where messages can reach a broader audience regardless of their proximity to a downtown core, is there still a place for parades? Could resources be more wisely invested elsewhere?<\/p>\n

Professor Heron contends that there is still something very powerful and visceral about people getting together for a public demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is part of the debate that everyone is having about social media,\u201d he responded. \u201cIt\u2019s a debate we\u2019re having at the university level about online courses \u2013 what\u2019s the value of bringing people face-to-face for anything?\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of replacing the act of taking to the streets altogether, social media can be used to bolster that act. Professor Heron pointed to both Occupy and Idle No More as great examples of movements that used these tools effectively to garner more boots on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s incredible power in having people standing together, walking together, finding each other in a face-to-face environment,\u201d he added. \u201cIt can\u2019t be experienced any other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does make people feel proud and powerful and capable of greater things. That\u2019s why I think, again and again, in strike situations and in protests, people come back to it as a way to show to the world that there are people who care and feel some solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________<\/p>\n

If this article has inspired you to get involved in your local Labour Day Parade, please contact your local labour district council. In Ottawa, they\u2019re hoping to recruit another 10-20 volunteers.<\/i><\/p>\n

This article relied heavily on information found in Craig Heron and Steve Penfold\u2019s book, <\/i>The Workers’ Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada. Professor Heron is the author of several books on the Canadian labour movement, including <\/i>The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History. Incidentally, that book features a few UNE members on the cover!<\/i><\/p>\n

Thank you to both Professor Craig Heron and ODLC President Sean McKenny for taking the time to speak with us.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their heyday, Labour Day parades were a sight to behold. People lined the streets to see floats that stood as monuments to workers\u2019 individual contributions to society. This was a day when plumbers marched alongside firefighters, in a show of unity among the working class. But Labour Day parades have always had to compete … <\/p>\n

>> “Labour Day or Leisure Day?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[171,12,19,173],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4242"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4255,"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions\/4255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unesen.ca\/press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}