When it comes to class relations, state policy, and the social history of the post-World War II years in Canada, the basic storyline is similar to other industrial nations in this period. In 1945, memories of the misery, humiliation, defiance, and support for political alternatives (on both the Left and the Right) characteristic of the Depression years were fresh in people’s minds. For many Canadians, sacrifices during the war inspired calls for a social order free of the volatility and dehumanization that defined capitalist relations in the decade before the war. Union organization and militancy, both of which reached unprecedented heights during the war, carried over into the postwar period, giving teeth to these calls for a different kind of social system. The result? A system of industrial relations that accepted labor as a key figure of the postwar order, though in ways that ultimately accepted private ownership and “managerial...
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