Happy Labour Day

Labour Day has been marked as a statutory public holiday in Canada on the first Monday in September since 1894.

It originated in the first workers’ rallies of the Victorian era. Historically, workers marked the day with various activities. These included parades, speeches, games, amateur competitions and picnics. The holiday promoted working-class solidarity and belonging during a time of rapid industrialization. Since the Second World War, fewer and fewer people have participated in Labour Day activities. Nevertheless, it remains a statutory holiday. Many Canadians now devote the Labour Day holiday to leisure activity and family time. Labour Day is supposed to be a heartfelt celebration of workers and their families.

Today we take paid holidays, safe workplaces, medical care, unemployment insurance, fair hours, union wages and 'the weekend' for granted. But how many of these advances would have happened if it were not for the long-forgotten heroes who fought so hard to make unions, and Labour Day, a reality in the first place?

Labour Day began in Canada on April 15, 1872, a mere five years after Confederation. On that historic day the Toronto Trades Assembly, the original central labour body in Canada, organized the country's first significant 'workers demonstration.'

At the time trade unions were still illegal, and authorities still tried to repress them, even though laws against "criminal conspiracy" to disrupt trade unions had already been abolished in Britain.

Despite the obstacles, the assembly had emerged as an important force in Toronto. It spoke out on behalf of working people, encouraged union organization and acted as a watchdog when workers were exploited. Occasionally, it also mediated disputes between employers and employees.

By the time the landmark parade was organized in 1872, the assembly had a membership of 27 unions, representing woodworkers, builders, carriage makers and metal workers, plus an assortment of other trades ranging from bakers to cigar makers.

One of the prime reasons for organizing the demonstration was to demand the release of 24 leaders of the Toronto Typographical Union (TTU), who had been imprisoned for the "crime" of striking to gain a nine-hour working day.

Held on Thanksgiving Day, which was then observed in the spring, the parade featured throngs of workers and a crowd estimated at 10,000 Torontonians who applauded as the unionists marched proudly through the streets, accompanied by four bands. In speeches that followed, trade union leaders demanded freedom for the TTU prisoners and better conditions for all workers.

It was a defining moment in Canadian labour history, opening the door to the formation of the broader Canadian labour movement over the next decade and sowing the roots of what is now an annual workers' holiday around the world.

The Toronto parade inspired leaders in Ottawa to stage a similar event. A few months later, on September 3, 1872, seven unions in the nation's capital organized a parade more than a mile long, headed by an artillery band and flanked by city firemen.

The Ottawa parade passed the home of Sir John A. MacDonald, the prime minister. He was hoisted into a carriage and taken to City Hall where, by torchlight, he made a ringing promise to sweep away "such barbarous laws" as those invoked to imprison the TTU workers in Toronto.

In 1873 the Toronto Trades Assembly called a national convention and set up the first national central organization, the Canadian Labour Union (CLU), which in 1886 became the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC), which was one of the forerunners of the present Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), now the major national labour organization in Canada.

Initially, Labour Day was celebrated in the spring but that did not last long. After it was declared a legal holiday by the Parliament of Canada on July 23, 1894, the celebration was moved to the early fall, where it has remained ever since.

Here is a link to a song about the Union Maid by Pete Seeger, to end the post on a high note.

Balancing a chequebook

Since a lot of purchases and bill payments happen online these days, the frequency of someone writing a check to cover — well, anything — has sharply decreased, especially in the last decade. I use my Debit card for almost all of my purchases and I cannot remember the last time I wrote a check. Balancing a chequebook was one of the skills I used to teach in my Recordkeeping classes and it was one that I believed was an important lifelong skill. However, technology has changed that need.

The art of balancing a chequebook — that is, going through your own notes of what you paid out to compare it to your monthly bank statement — is also a thing of the past.

While you may not have a physical chequebook anymore, the logic of financial literacy behind this process is sound. The logic is that you know where you spend your money, and you know how much you have in the bank. Without understanding this simple concept, as a person on a fixed income, you may be one of the many that just shut your eyes and whisper a small prayer that your debit card would have enough funds to cover your purchase. Maybe taking some time to look at your statements regularly and understanding what they mean isn’t such a bad idea.

It can help you spend your money more wisely, and it can help you notice any signs of fraud.

Unless you meant to buy thousands of dollars in gift cards. In that case, you do you.

Using the card catalogue

I remember learning the Dewey Decimal System in junior high so we could find books on our own in the library. At university, it was the only way to find a book without disturbing the librarian. The decimal number classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than the topic. The classification's notation makes use of three-digit numbers for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. Numbers are flexible to the degree that they can be expanded in a linear fashion to cover special aspects of general subjects. A library assigns a classification number that unambiguously locates a particular volume in a position relative to other books in the library, on the basis of its subject. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries

In 2015, the Smithsonian reported that the Online Computer Library Center had discontinued providing the printed cards for those drawers that once lined the walls of most libraries.

The card catalogue had been the staple method for organizing a library’s inventory for more than a century. Now, if you see them, chances are it’s in a reference or historical archive department.

There was just no need to keep them around once online drives could store and organize a library’s collection in a much more efficient and automated way.

Earlier librarians would have to write down long strings of numbers on scraps of paper to find their way to the book they were looking for via the Dewey Decimal System.

This is where that clear, concise handwriting would have come in handy.  As well, the internet, and the proliferation of computers to help people look up the book they want, mean certain death for those little card-filled drawers. I am not sure it is a loss.

Do you have a land line?

I wonder how many of you still have a land line. I do and I use it a lot. I also have a smart phone, which I use as a phone, a map, a search engine and a social media viewer and I use it for group messages with family. I find it hard to use all of the capabilities of my smart phone, because my fingers do not work well, and I am not used to using my thumbs or whatever the younger generation use to work their phones. I and my friends still rememb3er waiting to use the land line when others were on the party line. Young people may never understand the torture of waiting your turn to use the one household phone — which had a tangled up spiral cord that stretched halfway into the next room, if your call required any privacy.

According to data by the U.S. Census, 84% of households had at least one smartphone in 2018, and as of 2020, over 80% of adults ages 25-34 had opted to go entirely wireless, says the National Center for Health Statistics.

Heading out alongside landlines and rotary phones — remember those? — are the days when you needed to remember all your buddies’ phone numbers.

Now that most of us have cell phones that we use for notes, phone numbers and calendars, the phenomenon of “digital amnesia” has grown. Research by multinational cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab has shown that with a rising reliance on technology, people don’t try to remember these things because they know they have it in the cloud somewhere.

I suspect that land lines may go the way of other extinct technology, but the telephone companies may figure out new ways for us to use the land line as the boomers are still a huge market force. It won’t be long now before the only land line phone you’ll find will be in a museum but it will be a few years before all of us who use the land line give it up. We will not go quietly into the night on this issue.