“Creating a public holiday was never just a question
of marching down the street in a straight line. While
organized labour used parades to proclaim their sense
of dignity and self-worth in a direct and immediate
way, journalists, photographers, priests, illustrators
and others put their own particular skills to the task of
shaping and interpreting the day. Each year these groups
took Labour Day as an opportunity to reflect on a whole
host of issues: the condition of workers, the place of
labour in society, the state of human progress and even
the nature of the public good. In the newspaper, in the
photograph, at the podium or in the pulpit, these groups
helped to create Labour Day; to guide interpretations,
to set boundaries on meaning of events and to shape the
messages of the worker’ festival. In this sense, Labour
Day was not so much an event as a touchstone, a chance
for many social groups to imagine the kind of society
that Canadians ought to create. Thus, while Labour Day
organizers could invent a holiday, they could not control
it. They could define a form for its celebration - a parade,
speeches, a picnic, respectable amusement - and get
their holiday recognized through municipal declaration
and later federal statute, but Labour Day was not the
exclusive property of the working class at all. From the
beginning, it was the product of many groups speaking
at once, never forming a single, unified voice.”
Craig Heron and Steve Penfold,
The Workers’ Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada.