In the second volume of Canadian National Railways (Toronto, Clarke Irwin 1962), G.R. Stevens discusses the building of the transcontinentals between 1905 and 1914. While he pays very little attention to the workers, his remarks on politics, finance, and engineering place the experience of the stiff in perspective. Students might find F.A. Talbot's The Making of a Great Canadian Railway (Toronto, Masson Books Co, 1912) interesting. He was a publicist for the GTP and his books were, in part, propaganda designed to induce British workers to take jobs on the grade.
The best account of life in camps is Edwin Bradwin's The Bunkhouse Man. Bradwin spent a number of years in northern Ontario working among itinerants as a Reading Camp Association volunteer, and his book provides a comprehensive and insightful discussion of their lives. Fortunately this classic has recently been reprinted in the University of Toronto Press Series The Social History of Canada (1972). Alfred Fitzpatrick's The University in Overalls: A Plea for Part Time Study (Toronto; Frontier College Press, 1923), focuses primarily on the aims and activities of Frontier College, but it, too, contains material on workers in the camps.
The work of James Gray, especially Red Lights on the Prairies (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1971) and Booze: The Impact of Whiskey in the Prairie West (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1972), gives some indication of the services that developed to accommodate workers on a spree, but the picture is far from complete. Students who have seen Robert Altman's film McCabe and Mrs. Millar will probably have a good notion of the realities of tar-paper towns.
Several historians have dealt with the lWW; the most recent and authoritative work is Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago:Quadrangle Books, 1969). In his The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917 (New York:International Publishers, 1965) Philip Foner provides a description of the CN strike. And Gibbs M. Smith discusses the songs of that fight in Labour Martyr: Joe Hill (Salt Lake City University of Utah Press, 1969). Students will enjoy Joyce L. Kornbluh's excellent chapter on itinerants, entitled "Riding the Rails" Chapter 3 pp. 65-93 in her Rebel Voices: An lWW Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964).
The student of history interested in learning about the immigrants' experience is well advised to consult novels. The two best are Ralph Connor (pseud. Rev. Charles Gordon), The Foreigner: a tale of Saskatchewan (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964, New Canadian Library). and John Marlin, Under the Ribs of Death (Toronto: Westminster, 1969).
