Essay on strikes in the Maritimes, 1901-1914

Ian McKay has taught Canadian History at Queen's since 1988. His research interests lie in Canadian cultural history; in the economic and social history of the Atlantic region of Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with specific reference to working-class movements and to tourism; in the history of Canada as a liberal order; and in the history of both Canadian and international left-wing movements for socialism. His books include The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (1994, 2004, 2009); Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History (2005); Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920 (2008), which won the Canadian Historical Association's John A. Macdonald Prize for the best 2008 book in Canadian history; and In The Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (2010), co-authored with Robin Bates, which in 2011 won the International Council for Canadian Studies Pierre Savard award for the best book written in Canadian studies in English or French. His article "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History," Canadian Historical Review 81, 3 (September 2000), 617-645 was recognized as the best article in the journal for the year; the discussions aroused by this article can be consulted in Michel Ducharme and Jean-François Constant, eds., Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Warrior Nation? Rebranding Canada in a Fearful Age, co-authored with Jamie Swift, is slated for publication in 2012. Over the next ten years, he plans to bring out two more volumes on the history of the Canadian left, as well as a general book on Canada as a liberal revolution and a study of the influence among western socialists of the work of Antonio Gramsci. To date, he has supervised or co-supervised to completion 64 graduate theses, including 27 at the doctoral level.