While May Day was traditionally celebrated by workers in Europe, 1 May was perceived as having too many socialist connotations to be designated here as a day to mark workers' contributions to society. Instead, the first Monday in September was declared as a public holiday in the United States in the mid-1880s and in Canada in 1894.
Before World War I, trades and labour councils organized elaborate ceremonies lasting the whole day and attended by politicians of every stripe. The most obvious public display of union solidarity was the Labour Day Parade in which uniformed members of each affiliated union marched alongside a float depicting their trade. Here Local 572 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers pose by their float, complete with power poles, entered in the Regina Labour Day Parade of 1913. The parade was taken so seriously that the unions imposed fines on those who did not attend or who appeared in an inebriated condition. The day often ended with athletic competitions and a gala ball, the latter incidentally being one of the few activities in which women were involved if the union did not have a women's auxiliary.
Less than a decade after the railway had opened the West to immigration, social stratification was so entrenched there that the working class emerged as a distinct element within prairie society. The activities of organized labour confirmed that many working people had developed a sense of class consciousness which enabled them to transcend their ethnic differences in order to further the interests they shared as a social class. The solidarity made possible by this maturation of the working class resulted in more vigourous challenges to the prairie status quo after the First World War than had ever been seen before.
