The origin of our Labour Day holiday comes from a darker time in our Canadian history. It started with a powerful movement in the late 1800s, lead by the union of the average worker, who was working a standard 12 hour days. The “9-hour movement” was born and resulted in a strike that was technically illegal in Canada at the time.
Allowing workers to have a say in their working conditions required “wiping the barbarous laws” from our legal system, which had outlawed unions.
“victory was a major milestone in the changing relations between Canadian workers and their government.”[1]
This was also a change in the relations between the Canadian worker and their employer.
We celebrate Labour Day with a long weekend, often as the start of the school season, a last hurrah of summer, or the beginning of the fall season. The celebration is also often filled with family gatherings, visiting farmers’ markets, walks on nature trails, or simply enjoying a day off from work, but it is never filled with the reflection of the historical and historic wins we have made in our past. Most of us do not even know why we have this holiday, we just know there is one.
I hope, as a business owner, as well as giving your workers the time to celebrate these workplace wins made to our country’s management of human resources, you give yourself time off too, to appreciate that we all have the ability to earn money doing what we love.
Enjoy Your Labour Day Weekend – You Deserve It
This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI. © 2025 Barb Stuhlemmer
1 Origins of Labour Day – https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/origins-of-labour-day-feature
Leave a Reply