Legal Research

Happy Labour Day

By Connie Crosby

In Canada we celebrate Labour Day on the first Monday of September. Most of us treat it as the last long weekend of the summer, before the kids go back to school. We tend to forget the origins of this day. According to Wikipedia:

The origins of Labour Day in Canada can be traced back to April 14, 1872 when a parade was staged in support of the Toronto Typographical Union’s strike for a 58-hour work-week.[2] The Toronto Trades Assembly (TTA) called its 27 unions to demonstrate in support of the Typographical Union who had been on strike since March 25.

By contrast to the early 1900s photo above, today’s Labour Day Parade in Toronto brought out only “hundreds of people” according to the local news.

This photo is taken from the WikiMedia Commons and is originally from the City of Toronto Archives. Copyright for the image has expired, so it is now in the public domain.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 01, 2008 (boomark / email).