The Kingston Workers’ History Project seeks to preserve and promote the history of working people in Kingston, Ontario, Canada and the surrounding area.
Kingston is founded on the traditional homelands of Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat.
The KWHP was founded in 2022.
Goals
The purpose of this organization shall be to establish and maintain a non-profit educational association:
- To present and communicate educational programming on the history of working people in Kingston;
- To present cultural events concerning the history of working people in Kingston;
- To encourage and facilitate the preservation of records and artefacts related to the history of working people in Kingston;
- To encourage and facilitate research and writing on and representation of the history of working people in Kingston.
Board of Directors
Douglas Nesbitt is a former union organizer of janitors and home care workers. He is currently writing his first book about Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution and the Days of Action. He earned a PhD in History from Queen’s University.
John Rose is a researcher and staffer working in the union sector in Katarokwi-Kingston. He has a PhD from the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University, and his interests include preserving blue collar histories and interrogating Canadian colonial institutions. He is also a singer-songwriter.
Cameron Willis works as a curatorial assistant at Canada’s Penitentiary Museum in Kingston. He grew up in a working class union family in Thunder Bay and it is that upbringing that continues to fuel his interest in workers’ history. He is especially interested in histories of unfree labour, the unemployed, welfare, and the incarcerated.