For several months in 2019, Winnipeggers across the political and social spectrum celebrated the centenary of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike with events, exhibitions, unveilings of public artworks, and parades. Not only were unionists, historians, archivists, curators, and students preoccupied by the six-week wildcat strike by thirty-five thousand working men and women, public and private sector workers, police and firefighters; remarkably, city and provincial politicians also lauded the strike as a foundational event in the evolution of human rights. The widespread interest awakened by the hundredth anniversary of the longest general strike in labor history is reflected, as well, in some newly published popular accounts of the strike, among them two graphic histories produced by activist scholars and artists and a popular history of the strike by a global labor activist. All depict a usable past with the express intention of inspiring today's working people to mobilize in struggle for...
