Les Débardeurs au Port de Québec: Tableau des luttes syndicales, 1831-1902 (review)

This book is an important contribution to the role of male workers in the shipbuilding trades of mid- to late nineteenth-century Quebec City. Quebec socio-economic history has more often focused on the commercial decline in square timber transport, increased port activity, and demand for cheap labour in industrializing Montreal, than on this critical period in labour history. The study of stevedores, pilots, small vessel makers, carpenters, ship, cove, and other workers reveals the vibrant union politics of the Société de bienfaisance des journaliers de navires de Québec (SBJNQ) which had a majority of Irish members from Cap-Diamant and French-Canadians from Saint-Roch. The book covers three distinct periods: the 1830s and 1840s reforms; union formation from the 1850s to the 1870s; and capitalist, government, and court attempts to discredit the organization in the 1880s and 1890s.

The author skillfully combines the intricacies of the shipbuilding political economy with working conditions. He clearly emphasizes how British-French hostilities, Napoleon's 1806 blockade of continental Europe, and the suspension of British trade with Sweden, Denmark, and other Baltic states, led to the opening up of Quebec City for business. By 1831, workers there had produced 1,000 vessels and surpassed New York, New Orleans, and Boston in the tonnage of ships sailing from the port. French-Canadian farmers from the countryside and Irish Catholics and Protestants built the ships and transported beams, boards, coal, and other cargo in the Basse-Ville (Lower Town) from 1831 to 1860. Les arrimeurs supervised the dangerous seasonal work of poorly paid day labourers as the Ship Laborers' Society formed in Montreal, Saint John, Halifax, and New York.

Chapters 1 to 3 begin with two petitions, one in 1834 with stevedores and carpenters vying for a mutual aid society, and another for the unionization of longshoremen in 1845. The influx of Irish immigrants from the 1832-34 Potato Famine heightened competition for jobs with French Canadians, and the lowering of the 1842 tariff on square timber prompted the 1845 petition. Merchants, ship contractors, and supervisors contested it, and day labourer agitation preceded further petitions in 1849 and 1852. With no union archives, the author selects evidence from Canada East and Quebec government correspondence, the 1831 to 1901 federal censuses, newspapers, and the records of the Chamber of Commerce and of the SBJNQ.

An array of vested interests unfolded with the upsurge of the British market in the 1850s. Day labourer salaries dropped from $3.50 and $4.00 to $1.80 a day, conflicts proliferated between supervisors and stevedores, and strikes and violence occurred in 1855. Like the Irish in New York and Boston, Richard Burke and others formed the mutual aid Quebec Ship Benevolent Society to compensate for accidents and deaths from 1862 to 1865. Wage demands led to the 1866 strike which represented an important victory for the SBJNQ.

At this point, the author's lack of a gendered and comparative perspective raises criticism. His failure to consider the effects of strikes on the family lives of women and children contrasts with Judith Fingard's studies of Halifax. He could also have incorporated Thomas Acheson's work on Saint John, New Brunswick, and Daniel Horner's analysis of the 1842-43 Montreal Lachine Canal strike and labour struggles in the Atlantic US ports in the 1860s.

Chapter 4 is especially vivid as ship captain and stevedore initiatives conflicted with the rights of day labourers: holders, swingers, winchers, and boys on stage. Montreal merchants such as Alfred Falkenberg chose their own workers, and ship captains and stevedores sustained incorporation efforts for a mutual aid society. Capital, management, and union opposition led to illegal work stoppage in 1866, a labour procession in 1868, and the Quebec City Benevolent Society expelling members working for Falkenberg and others the following year. In 1873, there was an accidental fire at the Palais de Justice, Falkenberg died, and Archbishop...