Educational, Entertaining Read from Ottawa Author Ruth Latta

By June Coxon

Although Ottawa novelist Ruth Latta’s most recent book with the creative title A Striking Woman is an historical novel, woven among the author’s imaginative tale are many events that actually happened during the early days of trade unions and leading up to the 1970s. As well as being an interesting story, it’s also educational. Readers will learn a great deal about some of the real struggles endured by those trying to start a union in Canada during the early twentieth century.

Ruth Latta notes at the beginning of the book that although her novel was “inspired by” a significant period in the life of a real person – the late Madeleine Parent (1918-2012) – it’s not “based on” her life, because her book includes a lot of fiction.

The novel follows the story of fictional character Jacqueline LaFlamme, her family, friends and acquaintances. As well as telling LaFlamme’s personal life story it describes her life long effort to help, particularly under paid female workers, fight for such things as equal rights for equal pay with their male colleagues. She works along with her first husband, Gryf, and her later husband, Frank, to inform factory and store employees about the benefits of forming a union. She points out that by joining a Canadian union they could achieve such benefits as better working conditions and a fair salary. They help organize some unions, support workers when they need to strike, and sometimes join them at rallies. They even spend some time in jail for their cause.

Real people whose names readers will likely recognize and those of a certain age may remember also appear throughout Latta’s book. Such people as President Roosevelt and his wife, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, members of Parliament Tommy Douglas and Paul Martin, Prime Minister King, women’s rights advocate Madame Thérèse Casgrain, Winston Churchill, C.D. Howe and René Lévesque are a few real people who mingle throughout the story with fictional characters. Actual events that happened in Canada, like the 1939 textile workers’ strike, and the 1949 Canadian Seamen’s Union (CSU) strike as well as the time Prime Minister King banned 15 organizations are mentioned as is Quebec’s 1960s Quiet Revolution. Actual unions like the Catholic Farmers’ Union and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (where all the union officers were men) are also appear in the book.

If you have ever wondered about your own working conditions or the union you belong to reading A Striking Woman may help explain some things and give you some new ideas as well as an appreciation of how hard those who helped establish unions had to work to make today’s working conditions as good as they are today.

Two segments from Ruth Latta’s book have appeared in a slightly different form. “His Point of View” appears in Nectar and “Saints” appears in Where the Winds Blow, anthologies published by Polar Expressions, Maple Ridge, B.C.

A Striking Woman can be bought at Ottawa bookstores The Spaniel’s Tale Book Store on Wellington Street West and Singing Pebble Books on Main Street. It is also available from the publisher, Raymond Coderre, Baico Publishing, info@baico.ca or from the author – ruthlatta1@gmail.com