Chevrolet Masters

Last year the Globe and Mail commemorated its sesquicentennial with a series of lengthy essays on the paper’s often cringeworthy coverage of key national issues. The fine labour reporter Vanmala Subramaniam opted to focus hers on a single event, the sixteen-day strike in 1937 at the large General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario. It was a good choice. The battle highlighted the Globe’s unsparing antagonism toward unions for much of its history. Front-page editorials denounced the action, purportedly led by Communist-inspired “foreign agitators,” while the publisher, George McCullagh, campaigned feverishly behind the scenes to buttress Premier Mitch Hepburn’s resolve to crush the United Auto Workers, affiliated with the Committee for Industrial Organization.

The strike itself stands as a landmark in Canadian labour history. Despite the powerful forces arrayed against them — a press that, with the honourable exception of the Toronto Daily...