In the summer of 2020, COVID-19 ravaged Canada’s farm labour force – in particular the migrant workers from the Global South on whom the agri-food sector has come to depend. The virus spread like wildfire throughout the cramped bunkhouses that typically house these workers. Thousands upon thousands were infected. In Ontario, the province that receives by far the largest number of temporary foreign workers in agriculture, farm workers were ten times more likely than others to catch COVID-19. Three migrant farm workers, all from Mexico, perished.
The disaster was, for many Canadians, the first time they were exposed to the conditions under which men and women produce the fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural commodities that feed the country. The illnesses and deaths of migrant farm workers was a front-page story, the subject of television news documentaries, a topic discussed at press conferences by the prime minister and provincial premiers. Canadians learned about the crowded, often abject conditions of bunkhouses, the climate of repression and fear that pervades temporary foreign worker programs, and the repeated mistakes – and ignoring of warnings – on the part of provincial and federal authorities responsible for ensuring the health and safety of migrant farm workers.
Horrific though the first year of the pandemic was on Canadian farms, it was far from unprecedented: farm labour has long been one of the most dangerous occupations in Canada, and migrants face even greater risks.
This history, however, is not well known. Along with a small team of graduate and undergraduate students, we aim to change this. As part of a broader digital humanities project, we are beginning work on a digital exhibit entitled, “The Human Cost of Food,” which will document death, injury, and illness among migrant farm workers in Canada, from the mid-20th century to the present. Through archival research, oral history, and digital mapping, this exhibit will tell a longer story about the conditions that underpin the production of Canadian food.
At present, students are combing through historic newspaper databases and creating a database of incidents involving death, injury, and/or illness of migrant farm workers. Sometimes these tragedies receive little more than a sentence of coverage at the bottom of a back page. Other incidents – like the COVID infections and deaths, or the tragic 2012 van crash in Hampstead, Ontario that killed ten farm workers and a Canadian truck driver – received lots of coverage.
Upon completing the research stage, the team will use this database to create a digital map of incidents, while also drawing on the findings to create a narrative exhibit.
The exhibit forms part of the project “Active History on Display,” a digital history initiative funded by the Canada History Fund and carried out at 91ÉçÇř and Carleton University, in partnership with Activehistory.ca, HistoireEngagĂ©e.ca, and [ACAM] at the University of British Columbia. In addition to “The Human Cost of Food,” the project is producing a second digital exhibit entitled, “More Than a Face,” on the lived experiences of Asian Canadians. This exhibit is being created at Carleton University, under the curatorship of Professor Laura Madokoro.
By exploring the pasts of migrant and immigrant communities whose stories are often left out of – or flattened by – conventional narratives, this project will create a powerful resource for students, educators, and the wider public, enabling them to gain a deeper and more complex understanding of the histories of migrant and racialized communities in Canada.
Edward Dunsworth is assistant professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies and the author of the just-released book, , published by 91ÉçÇř-Queen’s University Press.