Copp, J. Terry

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

COMPI'ES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 271 cal, economic, social, and cultural nature" and to sustain a movement that expres-sed "the deepest concerns and aspirations" of the people. Such a sweeping claim is not sustained in the following pages. Instead, Forbes has provided a thorough analysis of an economic and political protest movement, united where general issues spring from region-wide problems, divided where class and other special interests predominate. This is a movement based largely in two rather than three Maritime provinces, a movement fuelled by business and farm dissatisfaction with economic conditions rather than by intellectual or artistic expressions. But Forbes' achievement is an important one. He has created an excellent introduction to twentieth-century Maritime history and a valuable corrective to western and central Canadian perspectives upon the national experience. * * * Gerald FRIESEN, University of Manitoba. JACQUES RouiLLARD. - Les Syndicats nationaux au Quebec de /900 ii /930. Quebec: Les Presses de l'Universite Laval , 1979. Pp. 342. Jacques Rouillard has written a major work on the first thirty years of "na-tional" trade unionism in Quebec. The book, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, is based on an exhaustive study of primary sources and is painstakingly documented. There are 1,140 footnotes in just over 300 pages of text. Rouillard's objective is simply stated as "une meilleure connaissance du syndicalisme et de Ia societe quebecoise en general" (p. 12) and the book reflects this general search-for-information approach. We learn a great deal about a number of hitherto obscure or unknown events but we are not always able to see why the events are significant or how they relate to each other. All aspects of trade unionism which can be designated national rather than international are gathered into the story and thematic unity is achieved simply by chapter organization. There are really two books under review here. The first is Rouillard's study of the fragmented Quebec labour movement of the pre-war years ; the second is a detailed account of the origins and early development of the Confederation des travailleurs catholiques du Canada. But what connection is there between the bewildering variety of non-international union activity, much of it inspired by personality differences and purely local issues, and the emergence of the Confede-ration des travailleurs catholiques du Canada? Is it correct to suggest that the current of nationalism in Quebec is the common thread? Might not the greater number of national syndicats in Quebec have been due to the language barrier? This point needs stressing because it seems that the rise of the CTCC had far more to do with the general crisis of Quebec society in the years after 1916 than with the Berlin Convention of 1902 or with most of the other incidents described in the first three chapters . Rouillard does discuss the nationalism of the late war and post-war years briefly, but argues that "c'est avant tout pour des motifs reli-gieux que les syndicats catholiques ont ete fondes et nullement pour des questions ethniques" (p. 226). The confessional idea had been around for years; what was new was the conscription crisis and the profound animosities which it created. Conscription was a fundamental event in the social as well as the political history of Quebec and requires closer scrutiny. 272 HISTOIRE SOCIALE- SOCIAL HISTORY Individual sections of the book are excellent. Rouillard's judicious treatment of Alfred Charpentier's role and his careful unravelling of membership figures for the 1920s are first class and, unlike previous studies of the CTCC, this account offers a realistic assessment of the predominant role of the international unions in Quebec labour history. The chapter on "les Internationaux et le syndicalisme catholique" offers new insights and describes the mutual respect which developed between the two labour organizations by the end of the 1920s. There was far less conflict between the CTCC and the Internationals than popular tradition suggests. This book will prove indispensable to students of Canadian labour history because so many issues which have been touched upon by other authors are care-fully examined by Rouillard. His discussion of the 1902 Berlin Convention is the best account available. The material on the boot and shoe workers is equally solid. Almost all the discussion of the CTCC's early years is a considerable advance on previous versions. Yet ultimately the book is disappointing because it fails to relate the evolution of the trade-union movement to the social and eco-nomic history of Quebec. We learn more than we ever wanted to know about "les importants conflits intersyndicaux qui ont caracterise la periode" (p. 107), but very little about the period. Reviewers are always asking authors to write the kind of book they would have written and authors are properly repelled by this approach. But I cannot help remembering Rouillard's first book, Les Travailleurs du colon au Quebec 1900-1915 (Montreal, 1974) which remains one of the outstanding con-tributions to Quebec socio-economic history. If Rouillard had approached this topic with the same analytical concerns that are evident in the earlier work, we might have had the definitive work on national and Catholic unions in Quebec. * * * J. Terry CoPP, Wilfrid Laurier University. J. R. MILLER. -Equal Rights: The Jesuits' Estates Act Controversy. Mont-real: MeGill-Queen's University Press , 1979. Pp. 223. J. R. Miller's new book is a much needed conclusion toR. C. Dalton's 1968 study of the background to the Jesuits' Estates Act of 1888. Equal Rights is a readable, well researched, political narrative that examines the causes of the anti-Jesuit agitation in Quebec and Ontario, traces its development through 1890, and concludes with an analysis of its ultimate failure the following year. The early history of the Jesuits' Estates was complicated by the internal struggle within the Catholic Church of Quebec for control over the Estates. Honore Mercier, intent upon gaining political capital by solving this long-running, con-tentious issue, had to contend with this problem as well as the desires of the Quebec Protestants. The purpose of the lengthy, controversial preamble to the Jesuits' Estates Act was to deflect Roman Catholic criticism, rather than to arouse Pro-testant, Anglo-Saxon hostility as John A. Macdonald believed. In fact, the Quebec Premier subsequently made several concessions to the Protestants of Quebec which served to diminish their opposition. Although the Protestant minority in Quebec was already unhappy with the patronage-ridden Mercier Government, it did not become vocal until after the Ontario agitation was well under way - as if, Miller postulates, the Protestants of Quebec first had to be certain of support from Ontario. 

JACQUES ROUILLARD. — Les Syndicats nationaux au Québec de 1900 à 1930.

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/37918/34386

JACQUES ROUILLARD. — Les Syndicats nationaux au Québec de 1900 à 1930.

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)