A note before we begin: like other units that we have covered, the history of canneries in British Columbia is racist history, and this shows up many different ways. One of the ways that this shows up is in the use of offensive and harmful language. For example, many of the resources in this unit refer to a canning machine by a name that includes an anti-Chinese slur. This language gives us information about the foundations of Canadian society and helps us to understand the world that we live in today. As a class and as a community, we have a responsibility to be considerate with our language and the impact it can have on each other, so that we do not replicate this violence in our own relationships. Understanding this, we will follow our class agreement about respectful language and avoid using slurs in class and in our community.
Let’s get started
To help you in your research, I have organized these resources into different topics that they relate to. Many of these resources can relate to many different topics, so some may show up under multiple topic sections. Each of these resources has a lot of information that can can be examined from many different angles, with many different lenses, to answer many different questions! Remember to approach these sources critically. Who made them? Who was the intended audience? What was the author’s goal or intention? Some sources may tell slightly different versions from one another or may conflict. Why might this be the case?
WORKING CONDITIONS & LABOUR ORGANIZING
