Desmond Morton – författare

From the dock workers of Saint John in 1812 to teenage "crews" at McDonald's today, Canada's trade union movement has a long, exciting history. Working People tells the story of the men and women in the labour movement in Canada and their struggle for security, dignity, and influence in our society. Desmond Morton highlights the great events of labour history - the 1902 meeting that enabled international unions to dominate Canadian unionism for seventy years, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and an obscure 1944 order-in-council that became the labour's charter of rights and freedoms. He describes the romantic idealism of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and looks at "new model" unions that used their members' dues and savings to fight powerful employers. Working People explores the clash between idealists, who fought for socialism, industrial democracy, and equality for women and men, and the realists who wrestled with the human realities of self-interest, prejudice, and fear. Morton tells us about Canadians who deserve to be better known - Phillips Thompson, Helena Gutteridge, Lynn Williams, Huguette Plamondon, Mabel Marlowe, Madeleine Parent, and a hundred others whose struggle to reconcile idealism and reality shaped Canada more than they could ever know.

Our slogan has always been 'Fight or Pay.' We call upon the people to enlist or help others enlist. We sometimes say: 'If you cannot put the "I" into fight, put the "pay" into patriotism,' and that serves as a slogan on any platform.– Sir Herbert Ames, founder of the Canadian Patriotic FundUnlike the Second World War, the Great War exists in the collective memory of Canadians as a tragic war. Characterized by the brutality of trench warfare, the First World War is remembered largely for the immense sacrifice in life and limb of Canadian soldiers. In Fight or Pay, reknowned historian Desmond Morton turns his eye to the stories of those who paid in lieu of fighting – the wives, mothers, and families left behind when soldiers went to war. Aware that the recruiting effort would fail if men were forced to choose between their families and the front, the Canadian government and its wealthy backers introduced the Canadian Patriotic Fund, known in its day as "the Patriotic." Charged with support of soldiers' loved ones, the Patriotic and its volunteers set out to take over their lives and transform them into a middle-class model of frugal self-denial. Meanwhile, the Militia Department took on the task of deciding which dependants a soldier could support. Suddenly, the State and private philanthropists were managing family decisions that had never been their business before.A pan-Canadian story, Fight or Pay brings to light the lives of thousands of valiant women whose sacrifices have been overlooked in previous histories of the Great War. It is also an incisive and honest look at the beginnings of a social welfare system that Canadians have come to think of as intrinsic to citizenship. Social and military historians, scholars of gender studies, descendants of First World War families, and anyone with an interest in popular history will find Morton's tale a rich addition to the landscape of Canadian history.

More than half a million Canadians served in the First World War. Their return to civilian life presented an enormous challenge to government and social institutions. The degree to which that challenge was met and the far-reaching implications of the veterans’ politicization form the core of this study by two eminent Canadian historians. Desmond Morton and Glenn Wright point out that Canada was a leader among its allies in devising plans for the retraining of disabled soldiers. Canada’s pension rates were the most generous in the world. From soldier settlement to returned soldiers’ insurance, Ottawa had prepared for returning Canadian armies with a care and foresight that was virtually unique among belligerents. In those carefully laid plans, and in the veterans’ organization and struggle to create their own version of civil re-establishment, were the roots of the modern welfare state.   But in the end, the momentum of the veterans’ political drive was slowed by diminishing government support and dwindling resources, and veterans ultimately lost their ‘Second Battle.’ The story of that defeat, never told until now, reveals a great deal about Canadian government, pressure group, and politics in the interwar period.