Kent Rowley: The Organizer

First published in 1980, Rick Salutin's biography captures Kent Rowley's unforgettable personality and details his life struggle: an epic tale in which one man's life intersects with all the major issues of his time.
Kent Rowley's remarkable odyssey through Canadian history began with a Montreal high school strike. In the depths of the Depression he organized office workers. He was interned under the War Measures Act in 1940, emerging from jail to take on Premier Maurice Duplessis and the textile giants of Quebec alongside Madeleine Parent, a brilliant and influential union organizer. He survived fifteen years in the wilderness during the Cold War; and his stubborn opposition to international unions culminated in the founding, in 1968, of the Confederation of Canadian Unions dedicated to fight for independent Canadian trade unionism.
Kent Rowley is a brilliant examination of the career of one of the great figures of Canadian labour history.