Toronto launch of Toronto’s Poor
In this age of austerity this book gives us reason to hope and expect that the rebellious history of Toronto’s poor is far from over. – John Clarke, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Join Bryan D. Palmer and Gaétan Héroux for the launch of Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History
Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how the homeless, the unemployed, and the destitute have struggled to survive and secure food and shelter in the wake of the many panics, downturns, recessions, and depressions that punctuate the years from the 1830s to the present. 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 kind of society, one ordered not by acquisition and individual advance, but by appreciations of collective rights and responsibilities.
Written by a working-class historian and an anti-poverty activist, this rebellious history links past and present in an almost two-hundred year story of struggle and resistance, inspiring a sense of what can be accomplished when poor people fight to win.