Gone Fishin’ to honour typographers
| Sep 2nd, 2007 | Filed under: Today's Post | By: Alpha Male |
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On a rainy April Day in 1872, a group of labour activists led a protest in downtown Toronto, Canada in support of 24 members of The Toronto Typographical Union who were imprisoned for demanding a 9-hour workday. Over 10,000 people showed up to cheer on the protesters and the movement quickly spread to the nation’s capital where the prime minister of the then 5-year-old country was hoisted on the shoulders of marchers to celebrate his ardent stand against unsafe working conditions.
The event became an annual picnic. And for its tenth anniversary, organizers invited Peter McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners in the US, to address the crowd. Later that year, McGuire brought the idea to the United States and helped organize the first US Labor Day in September 1882.
So today we take the day off in honour of our forefathers – those early Toronto-based bloggers (a.k.a. “typographers”).
Now if only our workday ended after 9 hours…
