I have not received the check yet but I am sure it will come. Mail between parts of the U.S. and Canada seem to be still carried by pony express riders.
I know that there are many Mexican nationals in your part of the world, but it has only been very recently that Mexicans have settled in Canada. However, the question of “ethnic workers” as Canadians would express it, during the 1946 Stelco strike is interesting.
There were many Italians, Ukranians, Poles and others of southern or eastern European origin working at Stelco in ‘46. Almost to a man the ethnic workers were strong union supporters. The reason for this was that Stelco management openly discriminated against non-Anglo Saxon workers. They got the worst jobs, were paid less and were never promoted. That was one of the major reasons for the strike.
I often wondered whether there would have been a strike at all, if it was not for the union solidarity of the ethnic workers. The scabs at Stelco in ‘46 tended to be workers with a British origin. That is because they were given preferential treatment.
Ethnicity and class have played important roles in Canadian, as well as American and Mexican history.
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