Craig Heron “Strangers within our Gates” Hamilton Reads Terryberry Branch
Come out to hear BTL author Craig Heron speak as part of Hamilton Reads.
Immigrants in Hamilton in the Early Twentieth Century
At the turn of the twentieth century, Hamilton’s largest employers began to recruit large numbers of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Those workers got only the hardest, worst-paid jobs in the city’s heavy industries, and lived in crowded neighbourhoods apart from their English-speaking workmates, often returning to their homelands after only a few years. Their experience before World War Two reflected harsh discrimination, but also their own strong desire to recreate their ethnic cultures and solidarities in this new land. Theirs is a story of determination to make a good life for themselves and their families.
Craig Heron is a professor of history at York University. One of Canada’s leading labour historians, he is the author of numerous works on Canadian history including The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History; The Workers Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada; Booze:// A Distilled History, and Lunch-Bucket Lives: Remaking the Workers’ City.