Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History
As headlines scream “CEO salaries soar to new heights” (Toronto Star); “Top Canadian CEOs will earn more today than average working person does in 2017” (Global News); and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives kicks off 2017 with economist Hugh Mackenzie's "Throwing Money at the Problem: 10 Years of Executive Compensation”, Bryan Palmer and Gaetan Heroux have launched Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History.
We do not know much about political action by people we label ‘poor'. Generally, social scientists study the evolution of social movements through the activities of academics, reformers, political parties and union and labour organizations.
Taking a very different approach to Toronto’s social history, working-class historian (Palmer) and poor people's activist (Heroux) cover the years from 1838 to 2015, linking past and present.
With the gap widening socially, politically and economically on all continents, Toronto’s Poor sheds light on the hardships and humiliations that burden the poor. It is about men, women and children relegated to lives of desperation by an uncaring system, and how they have refused to be defeated.
In that refusal, and in winning better conditions for themselves, Toronto's poor create the possibility of a new society: one ordered not by acquisition and individual advance, but by appreciation of collective rights and responsibilities.
Join Bryan Palmer and Gaetan Heroux for:
Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History
Tuesday, Jan 17, 2017
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm, Beeton Hall
789 Yonge Street
Books will be available for sale and signing by the authors.
For further research, the Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Toronto Collection, 2nd floor, has traditional histories of Toronto, reports on social and political issues, poverty, housing, homelessness, public health, urban planning and revitalization schemes. We also have a large selection of journals, community newspapers and electronic research databases.
Take a look at some of our earlier blogs, too:
Subdivided: Building Inclusion in the Global City
Precarious Work: Why It Is Bad For Our Health
Do We Fall Down On Homelessness?
New Ways of Looking at Our City Display at the North York Central Gallery
Comments