How Canada Invented Labour Day

Across the Medicine Line: Tales From the 49th Parallel 

 

How Canada Invented Labour Day

by Clifton Bertram, September 7, 2026 

In order to understand why Labour Day is celebrated on the first Monday of September in both the United States and Canada, we need to travel back in time to 1872. To the height of the industrial revolution in North America. It was a time of innovation and progress, but also one of trade protectionism, worker unrest and a general sense of unease about the rapid changes taking place in society.

In other words, a time not so unlike today.

In that year, Toronto was in the early years of a population boom which would see more than 100,000 people added to the city by 1891. The smoky waterfront was crowded with giant industrial firms like Massey-Harris and the massive Gooderham & Worts distillery – the largest in the British Empire. Factories and mills churning out flour, textiles, wood products, paper and steel were shifting away from individual watermills for their power sources and increasingly moving to centralized steam power fuelled by non-stop coal deliveries borne on steam-powered steel Lake Ontario coal freighters, or the growing Grand Trunk Railway network. Along the Esplanade, and at the mouth of the Don River, landfill was rapidly reclaiming the lake for rail corridors, foundries, and warehouse space.

Gooderham & Worts Distillery, Toronto waterfront. The largest distillery in the British Empire.

The first Toronto Industrial Exhibition, which would later become the CNE, would be inaugurated within seven years, and within the decade it would become the first fair in Canada to be illuminated by electric lights. Also within seven years, McConkey's Restaurant at 145 Yonge Street would be illuminated by arc lamps powered by a steam generator. Within two years, medical student Henry Woodward and hotel keeper Mathew Evans would begin experimenting with battery power and induction coils, leading to a patent on an incandescent light bulb years before Thomas Edison.

Downtown was still illuminated by gas streetlights, and above the streets, a cobweb of metallic conductor wires crackled with telegraph messages.

Before the skyscrapers. In 1872, Toronto’s St. James Cathedral was the tallest structure in the city.

There were not yet any of the skyscrapers that are so characteristic of Toronto’s skyline today. The tallest structures would have been church spires, with St. James Cathedral at King and Church being the most magnificent. Horse drawn streetcars and trolleys – of which there were never enough – clogged the streets, and Second Empire architecture, with its mansard roofs and dormer windows expressed the city’s modernist ambitions.

Leaving aside the progressive trappings of Canada during the industrial revolution, the reality on the streets – and the factory floor – was less rosy, as described in an article in BlogTO from 2021.

“Earning a living looked much different 150 years ago in Toronto when the average worker might face 12 hours days, horrible accidents, child labour and harsh inequalities.”

Twelve-hour days, six-day weeks. Sporadic work meant layoffs occurred without notice, and Employment Insurance was still nearly 60 years away. Women earned 1/3 to 1/2 what men were paid. Children as young as 10 years old were employed in dirty, dangerous mills, and attended school no more than 100 days in a year.

Workers in a Toronto foundry in the 1870s.

Worst of all were the punishments doled out by supervisors and plant managers. The 1889 Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor and Capital reported:

 “…the darkest pages in the testimony … are those recording the beating and imprisonment of children employed in factories. Your Commissioners earnestly hope that these barbarous practices may be removed, and such treatment made a penal offence, so that Canadians may no longer rest under the reproach that the lash and the dungeon are accompaniments of manufacturing industry in the Dominion.”

Punishment was by no means limited to children. Beatings, imprisonment in windowless rooms for hours at a time, fines and arbitrary dismissal were ever-present threats to all workers of all ages and genders, and involvement in a labour organization or a strike could result in a worker being blacklisted. For labour leaders, civil suits could even result in jail sentences, and the spectre of armed union-busting goons and industrial spies loomed over organizing efforts.

Finally, for any worker – man, woman or child – job security was essentially non-existent, as were protections in case of sickness, injury or death. And injury and death were commonplace.

“Records from the day show ‘grisly’ reports of hands cut off, eyes lost, and many deaths. Sanitation in factories would have been at a minimum. Workers would have used outdoor toilets and there weren’t many factories with lunchrooms.”

19^th century steel mill. Heavy, powered equipment lacked guards and emergency provisions, often maiming and killing workers.

Of course, these conditions were by no means restricted to Canada. The United States, Great Britain, Germany and other industrializing nations all experienced the same challenges as part of the transition to the new economy.

In response, workers organizations conceived and promoted the Nine Hour Movement, in an attempt to establish shorter work days. It began in Hamilton, 60 km west of Toronto. Then, as now, Hamilton was also heavily industrialized. On January 27 of 1872, workers held a mass meeting at the Mechanic’s Institute, and the second speaker was James Ryan. A machinist and railway engineer for the Great Western Railway, Ryan spoke about the goals of the Nine Hour Movement, emphasizing the benefit of shorter work days such as in the Ten-Hour Act adopted by Great Britain in 1847.

The Canadian Encyclopedia tells us:

“In the days following the meeting at the Mechanics’ Institute, the Nine Hour League of Hamilton was formed. James Ryan became its secretary. He represented the movement with speeches, writings and participation in meetings in various cities. One of its goals was to unite workers in Nine Hour leagues across Ontario and into Quebec as a way to build power and influence for the movement.”

Ryan’s employer agreed to a nine-hour workday in April 1872, but in solidarity with other workers, he joined a 3000-person march in Hamilton which shut down the city’s industry in an effective strike. From that point forward, Canadian labour marches became a valuable tool in exerting pressure on employers.

Not only did they bring work to a standstill, in an era of limited entertainment options, they drew huge crowds and included floats, marching bands, sporting events like tug-of-war games and foot races. At one ‘Craftsman’s Day’ event, a burlesque featuring mock battles was staged. These festivities made political protest something the general public both enjoyed and welcomed.

In March, Toronto printers, organized under the Toronto Typographical Union demanded newspaper and book publisher initiate a nine-hour workday without a reduction in pay. Led by Toronto Globe publisher George Brown, employers refused, and on March 25 the printers walked off the job. On April 15, the striking printers led a parade to Queen’s Park, accompanied by a crowd of 10,000 supporters.

Meanwhile, George Brown had formed a sort of industrialist’s cartel called the Master Printer’s Association. Comprising Brown and 16 other local newspapers, along with book publishers like Adam, Stevenson & Co., and Willing & Williamson, its explicit goal was to suppress the workers’ demands. Since strikes were still deemed illegal, the Master Printer’s Association had 24 members of the strike committee arrested for criminal conspiracy.

Despite having been allies in the creation of Confederation in 1867, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and George Brown were fierce political rivals, with Brown’s Clear Grits in opposition to Macdonald’s Liberal-Conservatives. Importantly, Macdonald’s party was allied with French-Canadian leaders like George-Etienne Cartier, while the Clear Grits championed Upper Canada Protestant issues. It surprised no one, then, when Macdonald introduced the Trade Union Act on April 18, immediately after the strikers’ arrests.

It was a blatantly opportunistic act, which the Canadian Labour Congress still calls today “a shameless political manoeuvre.” But it made union membership and strike action legal.

 

Toronto print operators in the 1880s. As members of the Toronto Typographical Union, they walked off the job in March, 1882 and marched on Queen’s Park with more than 10,000 supporters in April.

Meanwhile, Hamilton labour leader James Ryan worked to organize a series of demonstrations and parades throughout the course of May and June. The Canadian Encyclopedia writes:

“On 15 May, Hamilton's “nine-hour pioneers” defied opposition with a procession of 1,500 workers, a virtual general strike of the city’s skilled workingmen. At this point in the movement, labour reform seemed attainable.”

Labour Parade in Hamilton, Ontario in 1872.

Still, comprehensive change was glacial, and over the course of the next decade, labour rallies became more of a fixture on the streets of cities across Canada. Among the onlookers to some of these demonstrations, rallies and parades was an American named Peter J. McGuire. A co-founder of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1881, McGuire was visiting Toronto in April to found Toronto Local 27 of the union.

Inspired by the celebrations and Canadian festivities he witnessed, he returned to the U.S. and worked with the Central Labor Union of New York, Brooklyn and New Jersey, as well as the Knights of Labor, to organize the first U.S. Labor Day parade in New York on September 5, 1882. Around 10,000 workers marched in a parade from City Hall to 42nd Street, followed by a massive picnic, concerts, and speeches. Within two years 30 states in the U.S. were celebrating Labor Day, and on June 28, 1894 President Grover Cleveland signed legislation making the first Monday in September a legal public holiday as Labor Day.

Cleveland’s calculus was not based on a sentimental desire to recognize the milestone New York Labor Day rally. It was cold, political calculus designed to blunt the rising tide of socialism. In a 2025 article titled ‘Why Labor Day Turned its Back on May Permanently’, reporter Tega Egwabor explained:

“The choice between September and May for America’s labor holiday hinged on political perceptions rather than practical considerations. May 1st already served as International Workers’ Day in many countries, making it the obvious choice for American labor recognition.

However, May Day carried baggage that made it unacceptable to federal policymakers. The date’s association with socialist movements and radical labor organizing created fears about legitimizing dangerous political ideologies through official government recognition.”

Walking a similar tightrope, on July 23,1894, Canadian Prime Minister John Thomspon also made Labour Day an official holiday, choosing to match the American date.

Today, Labor Day is celebrated throughout North America as a statutory holiday. Workers are protected by a broad range of legal protections, constitutional legislation and a robust enforcement framework which prevents the vast majority of abuses.

And it all began in Hamilton and Toronto with a few brave working men organizing to defy the law and their employers in hopes of securing a better future.

In closing this Labour Day article, I offer the following poem by Alexander H. Wingfield, published in The Ontario Workman in 1872.

The Nine Hour Pioneers

Honour the men of Hamilton
The Nine Hour Pioneers –
Their memory will be kept green
Throughout the coming years,
And every honest son of toil
That lives in freedom’s light,
Shall bless the glorious day in May,
When Might gave way to right.

Your cause was just, your motives pure,
Again and yet again,
You strove to smooth the path of toil
And help your fellow men;
And Canada will bless your name
Through all the coming years,
And place upon the scroll of fame,
The Nine Hour Pioneers