Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of one aspect of this culture, that of trade union and consumer activism in the bakeries of Jewish Montreal in the transitional years of 1920-1940. The Jewish bakeries of inter-war Montreal were sites of ethnicity in the rapidly changing immigrants' world. Here the annual rhythm of traditional communal life was beaten out on the street, as the bakeshops stepped up their pace before the High Holidays in the fall, and closed for a Passover hiatus in the spring when the eating of leaven was proscribed by religious law. Our inquiry is divided into four basic parts. A preliminary chapter focuses primarily on how Canadian historians have used the concept of "space and culture" to probe Jewish Montreal. After a brief outline of the origins of the immigrant community, we go on to an exploration of the dynamics of the bread trade in the city and how the discourses of class and of ethnicity played out in the conflicts of the interwar period. Finally, we will look at the 35 th Jubilee Journal of the Jewish Bakers' Union as a source of popular ideology emanating from this environment