For six years, Martin Long was president of the Toronto Teachers’ Federation, an early amalgamation of teachers from the FWTAO and the OPSTF. He discusses the 1987 strike over preparation time, the Social Contract, and the fight against the Harris...
Vivian McCaffrey began her career as the Government Relations staff member for the Ontario Public School Teachers’ Federation (OPSTF), then men elementary teachers’ union, in 1981. She became a staff member of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) at...
Born in South Africa and with a career as a teacher in Durban, Jay Nair was forced to flee for political reasons and ended up in Canada, first as a security guard and then as a meat-cutter, where he became active in the United Food and Commercial Workers. In this...
For Marshall Jarvis, union activism started when he filed a grievance while a teacher at the York Region Catholic school board and was not satisfied with how his union handled it. Sixteen years later, he was provincial president of the Ontario English Catholic...
Description – Bill Heffernan, a long-time teacher in the Catholic system in the Dufferin-Peel area, discusses his activism in the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, as the organization transformed itself into a union. He highlights issues in teacher...
