For too long the history of Canadian society has been hidden in secondhand bookstores, the dark corners of library stacks, and the privacy of the occasional graduate seminar. Contrary to what often seems the common impression, there is a richness and distinctiveness to our labour history, our urban development, our traditions of regional and cultural conflict, our movements for social reform and justice – to all that vast range of topics, events, issues, and ideas that comprise the social history of a nation. The demands of teachers and students and indeed the general public for material relevant to Canadian social history have been matched only by the frustrations raised by the inaccessibility, sometimes the apparent non-existence, of documents basic to a new understanding of our heritage. It is now time that this heritage be retrieved and made available to everyone.

It is the purpose of this new series, The Social History of Canada, to help meet these demands. The titles in the series, including The Rapids, will be issued in a common format, in both hardcover and paperback editions, and will deal with all areas of social history. Most of these volumes will consist of a reissue of classic works now out of print – novels, histories, investigations, polemics, tracts; others will contain a compilation of documents in areas where there are no worthwhile book-length studies. Each work will have a new introduction by a scholar who is a specialist in the field.

It is hoped that this series will simultaneously enrich our knowledge of the past and lay the groundwork for future advances in scholarship and historical consciousness