Social Protest from the Left in Canada 1870-1970

J.V. Rahilly was an engineering librarian in Ontario.

Peter Weinrich was the executive director of the Canadian Crafts Council when he took on the challenging task of assembling bibliographic references to materials dealing with the Canadian Left in Canada. This selective listing of resources, published in both French and English, comprises about 5,000 monographs and covers all parts of Canada except Quebec, which was the subject of André LeBlanc and James D. Thwaites’ Le Monde ouvrier au Québec: bibliographie retrospective (Los Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1973). The entries in Weinrich’s bibliography are arranged chronologically by year, subarranged alphabetically by author and title, and individually numbered; the actual physical location of each is also noted. The work includes listings of annual reports, a chronological arrangement of almost 1,000 serials, some bibliographies, two listings of some prohibited publications, and a listing of selected organizations.

Because there are lots of listings for speeches and pamphlets in this source, the book has good control over what librarians call “ephemeral” or “fugitive” materials. Many of these items were issued by political parties, such as the CCF-NDP or the Communist Party, and quite a few were printed by trade and labour unions. The bibliography concludes with thorough author and title indexes.