Labour history is difficult to access. Essentially, the story of working people is the story of their day-to-day work. Only when there is a departure from daily routine—perhaps loss of life, a bitter strike—will newspapers and other media typically turn their attention to working people. Just as typically, historians will be attracted to the same exceptional events. Even then, source material will rarely include letters or memoirs or biographies of the individuals involved. Such letters and memoirs may have been lost (or, more likely, were not created), so memoirs and biographies simply were not written. It becomes important, therefore, that surviving records of any kind are reliable. If they are not, an event or a historical figure in labour history can become even more out of focus and difficult to…
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British Columbia History (Digital) - 1 Issue, 56.4 Winter 2023