Manitoba Commercial Market Gardening, 1945-1997: Class, Race and Ethnic Relations

W.J.C. Cherwinski is a professor of history and co-ordinator of Canadian
Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the co-author of
Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History.

No matter where it was conducted, agriculture required a great deal of
physical labor. Smaller operations were often sustained largely by
family members, but once farms became primarily commercial labor was a
problem to be addressed continually because it was either scarce or
expensive, or both. Canadian commercial grain producers solved their
labor problems by adopting capital-intensive equipment, but this option
was only of limited benefit to commercial market gardening operations
where the care for the product meant that a great deal of it had to be
tended and harvested by hand. Domestic workers, however, spurned market
gardens if they could, so to meet demand owner-operators had to import
seasonal workers or turn to minority-group Canadians such as First
Nations people.

Migrant farm labor has been around since the 19th century, primarily in
Ontario and the Maritimes, but its use in south-central Manitoba gardens
has been common only since World War II. This book examines the
development of the industry there, together with the nature and origin
of its labor supply, and concludes that labor’s relation with the
petit bourgeoisie owners of Manitoba market gardeners has been
influenced more by class than by race and ethnicity. We will take the
author’s word for it, since anecdotal experience shows that the nature
of the work has more to do with the attitude toward it than does the
background of those who are doing it. Moreover, Mysyk’s scholarly
research on this rather limited topic appears solid.

Whatever the perspective, the book is still useful to those interested
in labor economics of this industry and social theory as it relates to
aboriginals and “foreign” labor. Of greatest benefit to those
outside this narrow field is the bibliography, which contains an
up-to-date list of most of the sources available on agricultural labor.