Editors’ Note

The year 2022 marks a transition for Labour/Le Travail. Canada’s foremost historian of feminism, Marxism, and labour, Joan Sangster, is retiring from her coeditorial role at the journal. Her contributions to the study of history in Canada are both extraordinary and, to all readers of this journal, obvious. Last year’s publication of Demanding Equality: One Hundred Years of Canadian Feminism (ubc Press, 2021) is a reminder that Joan remains one of the finest, fiercest, and most insightful historians of our times.

The outset of this issue – Joan’s last as coeditor – must acknowledge the much less visible but nonetheless essential contributions Joan has made to the success of Labour/Le Travail over the last five years. She has helped to revitalize and diversify the journal’s editorial board and made frequent efforts to encourage submissions from a wide range of contributors. The authors who have worked with her know well how her erudition and editorial skill have helped them see the best possible version of their work emerge from submission to publication in these pages. The editorial team is entirely grateful for the hard work, good humour, and wise judgement Joan has demonstrated during her tenure as coeditor. We thank you wholeheartedly, Joan, and are thankful that your contributions to the journal will continue on the Editors’ Advisory Committee in the years ahead.

Editors help make journals, but they do not make them under circumstances of their choosing. The conditions of the global covid-19 pandemic have posed challenges for all phases of scholarly production, from access to research materials to printer publication timelines. In spite of these challenges, it has been a privilege and a joy to engage with the quality of the work that appears in this issue and will appear in forthcoming ones. The circumstances have neither dimmed nor made less pressing the journal’s commitment to fostering scholarship, dialogue, and debate to address the long-standing inequities and injustices that, in many ways, have become even more visible in the present context.

One early cancellation of the covid era was a workshop on the carceral state in Canada that was to be held at Brock University in March 2020. Thanks to the efforts of organizers and editors Mikhail Bjorge, Jordan House, and Kassandra Luciuk, several of the papers slated for delivery there have been submitted to Labour/Le Travail. The first of these appear in this issue.

Kirk Niergarth and Charles Smith