Eileen Tallman-Sufrin (1913-1999): organizing Eaton’s and organizing in Canada

How do you write about historical figures for which there are very few traces? This is especially familiar ground for feminists engaged in critical historiography in management and organizational studies. Very few women feature prominently in our history of theorizing or conceptualizing of the field. Nor are they visible actors, writers or subjects.

Over the past ten years, I have been exploring overlooked and neglected female figures in management and organizational studies and management history. There have been several key conditions which have allowed me to pull them from the periphery to the fore (Williams, 2021). Sometimes, they are known for something other than their contributions to management and organizational studies which makes them findable (Williams, 2017, 2020, 2023). Sometimes, the discourses that hide them from view are familiar tropes and thus easy to detect and unpack (Williams, 2018, 2021). Regrettably, and far too often, they are a small footnote in history (Williams, 2024). The findability of overlooked and neglected women seems like an obvious and pragmatic starting place, but what if she is indeed findable, but everything you can find, gives you a very limited sense of who she was? Such is the case with Canadian labour leader and organizer, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, who I uncovered in 2017 while completing research for a book. I found her through her work as the lead organizer in the Eaton Drive, which seemed to stand in as a proxy for the woman behind her accomplishments; the Eaton Drive being just one organizing effort in a long career devoted to engaging women in unions, improving workplace standards, improving labour standards and bargaining rights, and contributing to labour scholarship.

As a feminist scholar, I write from an embodied and affective standpoint. I do not gravitate towards the idea that history is a linear concept, constructed of so-called known facts, figures and events. Instead, I like to get to understand a particular part of history from the standpoint of an overlooked figure. How did she view her circumstances? How did she think about certain events? How did she navigate gender barriers and malestream roles? Therefore, for me, it is not enough just to find her and some notable facts about what she accomplished. Instead, I want to know her, understand her and see how events unfolded in the context of her lived experience and then share those insights. In this paper, I attempt to get to know Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, by examining the historical traces that she left behind. I then attempt to reconstruct a portrait of her which is full of resonance, but also didactic. Therefore, you as my reader, will learn about Tallman-Sufrin, but you will learn about her through my own subjective engagement.

This paper responds to the recent call in the Journal of Management History to explore different approaches to critical biography. It also contributes to scholarly conversations in the journal that have engaged with overlooked female figures and lost histories (Gibson et al., 2013; Phipps, 2011; Shaffner et al., 2019). And though I take a distinctly feminist approach, I am certainly not the first to do so in the journal (see for instance, Calas and Smircich, 2020; Nyland and Rix, 2000; Ruel et al., 2019). This paper also invites further scholarly engagement between labour and management. In particular, this paper is joining newer conversations in the journal about women’s overlooked economic and labour history (see for example, Schachter, 2025).

I hope that through this investigation to not only reveal more about the remarkable accomplishments of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, but also something about who she was and why and how she did what she did. It is particularly fascinating that she appeared to accomplish all that she did despite the gendered nature of organizing in Canada historically, and the limited roles that women played as leaders in organizing. Through this study, I will attempt to cast her in a more prominent light, where she might inspire a different kind of discourse, one which not only serves expanded thinking in management and organizational studies and management history, but also contributes to feminist theorizing, methods and modes of writing.

This paper explores the theoretical and empirical development of critical biography through the investigation of an overlooked labour leader in Canada, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. This paper sets out to accomplish the following: (1) expand our understand of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as an important but overlooked Canadian labour leader, organizer and author of labour policy, (2) to expand our understanding of the development of Canada’s labour history and some of its enduring characteristics thus contributing to more historical and contemporary and scholarly engagement, (3) to bring into focus the contributions of women to both unionizing in Canada and as contributors to Canadian labour discourse and (4) to illustrate the power of ficto-feminism as a critical biographical method for management history. Guiding this study are the following key research questions:

This paper proceeds as follows. First, I present my methodological approach, ficto-feminism (Williams, 2021, 2024, 2022c), which combines elements of autoethnography (Ellis, 2000; Ellis et al., 2011; Ellis and Bochner, 2003, 2006), fictocriticism (Gibbs, 2003, 2005; Linden, 2012; Schlunke and Brewster, 2005) and collective biography (Davies et al., 2013; Gannon and Davies, 2006; Gonick et al., 2011; Page and Speedy, 2012). I explain the role of ficto-feminism in developing feminist histories, and I review why feminist histories are important and how they have been explored in literature to date through the work of Joan Wallach Scott. To help develop an understanding of her historical context, I share insights into Eaton’s, Canada’s largest department store and the site for one of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s most visible contributions to Canada’s labour history. I continue this primer, with insights into Canada’s labour history, women’s engagement with unionization in Canada and women’s engagement in Canadian labour discourse. I then provide some background on Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. The empirics of this paper are presented as a fictitious encounter with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin in the form of an imaginary interview. To connect with her as a subject, I use historical traces from her own writings, literature, media and archival accounts to envisage what it might be like to engage with her, thus framing her less as a subject and more as an active participant in this study, where she has both agency and voice. In the discussion, I consider the historical context of Canada’s labour movement during the time of the Drive and contemplate why Eileen Tallman-Sufrin suspended deference to established authorities and explore the legacy of her actions and the sexism inherent in labour movements. In so doing, I reiterate two key concerns within the existing literature:

1. why she does not figure more prominently in Canada’s labour history; and

2. given her accomplishments, why she should factor into our present discourse in management and organizational studies, particularly as it relates to the contributions of women to our labour and economic history.

In conclusion, I return to what I believe are her key contributions and share some final thoughts about the challenges for feminists engaged in historical inquiry and how critical biographical methods, such as ficto-feminism, may help advance the feminist agenda by creating new feminist histories. The findings of his paper support the assertion that Eileen Tallman-Sufrin ought to figure more in our historical understanding of the labour history of Canada. Therefore, this paper’s key contribution is that of a new discrete history of an important but neglected female labour organizer, which is distinctly feminist in composition.

For feminist writers in management history, ficto-feminism is a strategy to engage with female historical figures anew in contemporary discourse. Ficto-feminism takes the philosophical view that feminism and feminist thinking and being spans ontology, epistemology, axiology and methodology. This means that the nature of reality is firmly rooted in a gendered experience and that the nature of knowledge flows from that gendered experience. Additionally, ficto-feminism holds that feminist knowledge is scholarly knowledge and that feminist values in research contribute to the aims inherent in feminist social justice, which recentres discourse around women’s lived experiences and critiques patriarchy as a key oppressive force in all aspects of women’s lives. Classically speaking, ficto-feminism shares ontological roots with postmodernism and epistemological roots with existentialism. Ficto-feminism shares the critique that existentialism is limited by unitarian models and that postmodernism’s commitment to refractory expression is essential in combination with existential themes (Knauft, 1994; Oberman, 2004). It further produces a form of writing which resists convention and is emotive and polemical (Ferguson, 1986). And though feminist polemic is not a new form of women’s writing, it is still extremely limited in application in management and organization studies and management history.

Ficto-feminism shares the same epistemological commitments as critical biography, in terms of critical intentions, and exploring a critical incident to explain a subject’s intellectual contribution (Gibson et al., 2013). Additionally, both critical biography and ficto-feminism are similarly committed to understanding the social and historical background of a subject through various primary and secondary sources of the subject under inquiry (Gibson et al., 2013). Both approaches also embrace ambiguity and complexity (Gibson et al., 2013). However, ficto-feminism departs from critical biography with its explicit focus on feminism. The personal engagement with the subject and mode of writing that emerges is thus different as well. Ficto-feminism results in a form of narration which reads as previously undiscovered documentary-style biographic materials, infused with new insights and modelled by a feminist agenda (with feminist informed questions).

As a methodological strategy, ficto-feminism combines aspects of autoethnography (Boncori and Smith, 2019; Ellis, 1999; Ellis et al., 2010; Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Mills and Mills, 2018; Styhre and Tienari, 2013), fictocriticism (Brewster, 1996; Gibbs, 2003, 2005; Jiwa, 2013; Linden, 2012; Pullen et al., 2017) and collective biography (Davies et al., 2013; Gannon and Davies, 2006; Page and Speedy, 2012; Williams, 2022b, 2022a). Ficto-feminism is an explicitly feminist method for feminist historical inquiry, and it is distinguishable by the writing that emerges from its application. This form of writing is embodied, affective and full of resonance (Cassell et al., 2018; Cunliffe, 2002, 2003, 2016). This prowoman, polemical form of writing also contributes to the feminist body of scholarly activity emerging in management and organizational studies, called writing differently (Ahonen et al., 2020; Kaasila-Pakanen et al., 2023; Winham et al., 2024). Writing differently is characteristically defiant in both subject and style (Boncori and Smith, 2019; Gilmore et al., 2019; Pullen, 2018).

In practice, ficto-feminism draws on literary strategies to reconfigure historical traces into a new biographical account (Williams, 2022c, 2026). Elsewhere, I have explained Ficto-feminism’s composition in the following way:

As a starting point, I configure a set of questions which helps to curate source material. This allows me to navigate primary and secondary sources through a lens that serves my scholarly interests as a feminist scholar interested in management and organizational studies and management history (Williams, 2024). The second step is to craft a conversation using literary strategies that result in a narrative that is persuasive and personal, critical, and narrative. I fill in gaps in available first voice accounts with either my own voice or that of others who have written about her. I am entirely sensitive to the editorial power I hold in such an effort, so everything that I do is visible to the reader, including where I have included other voices, where I have cited Eileen Tallman-Sufrin directly, and where I have added my own thoughts. As a reader, this is not meant to distract you but rather to anchor your sense of where source material can be found.

Ficto-feminism is an embodied approach. As such, both the author and the subject are in the foreground of the writing. In this way, the method challenges both the neglect of women as subjects but also of women as writers of history while simultaneously challenging the typical way history is written. The subjectivity which is present in the writing is embraced as a potent tool for advocacy. Sinclair writes of embodied approaches as emergent feminist pathways where embodied encounters invites agentivity, pleasure and optimism (Sinclair, 2019).

By writing in narrative form, I am also trying to humanize Eileen Tallman-Sufrin so that we might have a sense of who she was. This is especially important for a historical figure like Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as she tended to write in a passive voice and often used “we” instead of “I”. I also play with time, so that you will see chroniclers, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s own voice and mine joined in a single point in time. Finally, I set the conversation in an imaginary setting. In so doing, I hope that she (my subject and protagonist) is harder to ignore. I am challenging the related disciplines of labour, management and history’s propensity to ignore and neglect critical female figures – in this case, a crucial actor in Canada’s labour history.

In terms of doing history work and why a feminist retelling is necessary, ficto-feminism responds to the provocation of Joan Wallach Scott and is herein used as a method for addressing women as neglected subjects and voices in history (Wallach Scott, 2004, 2011, 2020). This includes an understanding that women are generally absent as both subjects and writers of history. In 1983, Wallach Scott suggested that the call of Virginia Woolf for a history of women (written 50 years before) had been answered with a proliferation of biographies and studies of women’s various contributions and that such contributions were happening alongside the development of the women’s movement and academic feminism. Essentially, women were becoming more visible and less hidden in the 1970s and 1980s (Wallach Scott, 1983, 2004). However, she criticizes the various strategies that underpin this work as incomplete, as it is particularly challenging to join women’s history with established history and achieve equal ground. In her later work (Wallach Scott, 2004), she reasserts this claim by saying “neither women’s history nor women historians are fully equal players in the discipline” (p. 11). In 2008, she again calls for new ways of doing historical inquiry by feminists by saying: “It’s not that women aren’t given a history, of course they are. […] the history of women has kept ‘women’ outside of history” (Wallach Scott, 2008, p. 1424) ^[1]. In 2020, she moves away from a critique of metanarratives to hone her claim by sharing concrete instances where the materiality of lived experience can be envisaged and judged as exclusionary and reaffirms her call for subjugated knowledges (Wallach Scott, 2020). Wallach Scott has inspired many to rethink history, from how it is done to creating feminist histories (La Greca, 2016). My work responds to this call and converses with other feminists who are finding novel ways to reconfigure, challenge, critique and contribute feminist historical accounts of women and by women (Bettin and Mills, 2018; Calas and Smircich, 1996, 2020). One of the key challenges of creating feminist histories identified within the literature is finding a bridge between criticism and narration (La Greca, 2016), something that ficto-feminism aims to do.

I grew up in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). I was partly drawn to this study and Eileen Sufrin-Tallman because Eaton’s was a household name during my youth. I have had my own experiences at the Eaton Centre, the flagship department store. For Torontonians and those further afield, the Eaton Centre was a destination, not simply a shopping experience. It was a big deal to travel downtown and shop or wander around the Eaton Centre, a feat that often took a full day as the centre spanned 5 city blocks. As a little girl, the trips that I took to the Eaton Centre were quite magical. It was an occasion important enough to dress up for, and it often included lunch in one of the many posh eating establishments housed within the centre. I can still clearly recall the work of famed Canadian artist, Michael Snow, entitled Flight Stop (1979). It was a sculpture of 60 Canada geese that hung from the ceiling in an awe-inspiring flight formation. At Christmas time, the centre was transformed with decorations on a scale which is hard to fathom, particularly through the eyes of a little girl. For me, the Eaton Centre was more than a set of shops; it is a fixture in my memory, comprised of many happy experiences. However, beyond those early rose-colored memories, and through the development of this study, I uncovered a richer and more sombre view of both the patriarch and the company.

Founded in 1869 by Timothy Eaton, the retailing empire was a dazzling business and the Eaton’s family was referred to as a “royal family,” while workers were referred to as “Eatonians” (Smith, 1984). With fresh views of organizational practice, the Eaton’s were proponents of a shorter workday, closing their doors every day at 8 p.m., while other retailers often stayed open until 10 p.m. They provided employees with “housing, private hospitals and exclusive summer camps” (Smith, 1984). In 1923, Eaton’s built a summer camp for female employees, named Shadow Lake. It included a golf course, tennis courts and horseback riding and came with a fee of $5 per week (this was more than 50% of weekly wages at that time). During the Great Depression (1929–1939), Eaton’s weathered the economic crisis by cutting more than 5,000 jobs from a workforce that had grown to be more than 30,000 (and some might argue it could have been more). By then, workers were earning an average weekly salary of $10. During the Second World War (1939–1945), Eaton’s continued to pay employees who joined the Armed Forces, making up the difference between military wages and their own.

However, Eaton’s also has a darker history, often critiqued for low wages, paternalism and discriminating and humiliating labour practices (Smith, 1984). Additionally, 50% of Eaton’s workers were women and many from Eaton’s manufacturing factory were Jewish and working in sweatshop conditions (Aylward, 1991; Tallman-Sufrin, 1983). Between 1948 and 1952, led by Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, Eatonians tried and failed to form a union. It was neither the first nor the last of such efforts, but it was certainly the most memorable. In 1984, some of the Eaton stores did manage to form a union, but after an unsuccessful strike, there was a vote to decertify (Smith, 1984). There was a fierce boycott campaign which gathered steam in 1985, and after a strike lasting more than six months, the union ended up accepting a contract which had been rejected several months earlier. The union was also criticized for failing to exploit the critical issue which galvanized unionization in the first place, and this included the exploitation of women workers: “There was an old-style male leadership that did not understand the importance of having the women’s movement back up the strike and having it identified as a women’s strike” (Laurell Ritchie, vice president of the Confederation of Canadian Unions as cited in Doyle Driedger, 1987).

The chain controlled nearly 60% of all department store sales in Canada in the 1930s, but by the 1970s, the company was losing money, partly attributed to an unsuccessful expansion campaign. By the 1980s, due to the recession coupled with stolen market share by the Hudson’s Bay Company (aka HBC), Sears, Zellers and Walmart, the company was struggling (Aylward, 1991; Santink, 1990). In 1997, Eaton’s market share was a little more than 10%. At its peak, the retailer employed 70,000 employees, with more than 180 locations (Lewis, 1997). By 1999, nearly all of Eaton’s stores had closed (Aylward, 1991; Lewis, 1997; Santink, 1990). To read more about the rise and fall of Eaton’s, I recommend Joy L Santink’s book Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store (Santink, 1990). Santink had access to Eaton’s archives from Fredrik S Eaton, and its archivists Judith McErvel and Fay Wood, making her book one that relied significantly on primary sources. Additionally, Sandra Elizabeth Aylward completed a thesis in 1991, which is based on both archival data and interviews with Tallman Sufrin and specifically investigates patriarchy in trade unionism at Eaton’s (Aylward, 1991).

In reading book reviews of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s, The Eaton Drive (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983), as well as other accounts about Eaton’s in general, I am struck by some of the personal anecdotes. Accounts are peppered with fond memories of Eaton’s (much like my own). For example, Robert Lewis, editor at Maclean’s Magazine wrote in 1997 about the heyday of Eaton’s, from the scope of the store’s services, to the vastness of its workforce: “if you didn’t work at the CN shops, you worked at Eaton’s” adding “there are few Canadians of a certain age who did not recall some incident or gift or association” (Lewis, 1997). Mercedes Steedman (1984) writes in her review of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s book, of her own experience working at Eaton’s and her mother’s before hers. She shares durable phrases about its patriarch, like “old man Eaton was good” and the enduring myth of “his kindness, his concern for the welfare of his staff” (Steedman, 1984, p. 233). She acknowledges that these ideas are clearly at odds with the sexual discrimination and inequity that drove the movement to unionize. Tallman-Sufrin herself notes that Timothy Eaton’s public image was one of paternalism and acts of kindness and generosity (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983). However, critics of Eaton note his particular form of management and capitalism was differentiated by gender (Aylward, 1991).

I suspect many Canadians fondly recall Eaton’s; be it related to their own shopping experiences, work experiences, or even their longstanding sponsorship of Toronto’s Santa Claus Parade, or the hefty catalog that would arrive in anticipation of the Christmas shopping season. Thus, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s contributions sit on an interesting organizational backdrop, grounded in a particular retailing history and consumer ethos. This is one of the reasons that I think management and organizational scholars ought to be interested in Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as a key leader in one of the largest and longest organizing efforts in Canada and involving one of the largest department stores which was also one of the largest employers in Canada.

Although this article cannot contemplate on the broader labour historical context in which the Eaton Drive took place and its longitudinal effects, there are some important points to consider with respect to this study. During the Second World War, the Federal Government passed PC 1003, a wartime order-in-council. This was made possible due to political wins by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a party forerunner of the present-day New Democratic Party, with strong affiliation with the labour movement. After the Second World War, Canada enshrined the principles of PC 1003 in the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigations Act of 1948. This was Canada’s version of America’s Wagner Act of 1935. The Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigations Act was the precursor to the current Canada Labour Code. By 1950, nearly every province in Canada had a provincial labour code with similar guidelines (McQuarrie, 2015). The provisions included compulsory bargaining and the right of employee representatives to be certified as bargaining agents by a labour relations board (McQuarrie, 2015). It also protected workers from discrimination by employers (Doorey and Braley-Rattai, 2020). This was legislative recognition of employee and inherent union and labour rights. Other notable developments in Canada’s labour history at this time include the adoption of the Rand formula, which was used by 90% of Canadian unions by 1950 and included automatic deductions of union fees on pay cheques and marked the importance and formality of union activities in representing the interests of workers (Doorey and Braley-Rattai, 2020).

Canadian unions in this period also started to develop in tertiary industries, and this included white-collar industries. Eileen Tallman-Sufrin began in what is largely consider the secondary industries of production, such as steel and lumber before she was recruited to lead the Eaton Drive. Primary industries were resources-based, such as forestry, fishing and mining. Tertiary industries were service industries, and they increased in the Canadian economy alongside globalization, where international pressures came to bear on both working conditions and competitive performance (McQuarrie, 2015).

By the 1960s, unionization across Canada was growing rapidly, and this, in part, was due to the extensive organizing in the public sector. There remained key Canadian concerns, however, including increasing bureaucratization and centralization in unions, which were largely the artefact of earlier challenges in organizing efforts across a vast geography. Additionally, America continued to hold significant influence over Canada’s unions (as American parent unions of Canadian branches with Canadian membership representing small percentages of the union’s total membership). After the Second World War and continuing into the 1950s and 1960s, unions in Canada grew and consolidated. For example, the All-Canadian Congress of Labour and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged in 1940. The Trades and Labour Congress and Canadian Congress of Labour merged to form a single Canadian Labour Congress. The Canadian Union of Public Employees was formed in this period and professional employees obtained certification to have their associations recognized by unions (McQuarrie, 2015).

Engagement of women in unions developed in this period as well, with significant gains, but also persistent obstacles. This paper in part explores these gains for white-collar women workers in Ontario at Eaton’s. Perceptions that female workers were unwilling to participate in union activities because of their commitments outside of work led to disparities in membership but also wages (McQuarrie, 2015). Women were also less likely to be elected to leadership roles as union officials. This has led to a history with a significant gender imbalance relative to women’s engagement in formal work environments. This imbalance has also fostered perceptions that unions are gender neutral and universal and consequently, women’s issues outside of the norms are deemed special interests and thus not prioritized (McQuarrie, 2015). Several critiques point to unionization efforts failing to meet the needs of workplace equality (see, for example, Creese, 1999). Another key concern is full recognition of both domestic and paid work (see, for example, Sangster, 2000). Therefore, women as contributors to labour movements are largely absent from labour history sections of today’s widely used Canadian textbooks (see, for example, Doorey and Braley-Rattai, 2020; McQuarrie, 2015). In the next section, I take a closer look at Canadian labour history scholarship.

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the white-collar sector was accelerating in terms of organizing (Roberts, 1981). By the 1960s in Canada, there was a noticeable turn in focus to Canada’s labour history, coupled with the expansion of the universities and university education (Morton, 2000). This changed the discourse on labour history with a proliferation of scholarship. Up until that point, though much labour conflict filled news headlines and editorials, little of our labour history was written about. Additionally, early texts were problematic: “Charles Lipton’s egregiously flawed Trade Union Movement of Canada as the textbook of choice in the labour history courses that blossomed in Canadian universities during the early 1970s” (Morton, 2000, p. 18). It is perhaps this reason that Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s firsthand account is such a rich offering. Much of what I can find about Canada’s labour history is either in books or in Labour/Le Travail (first published in 1976), an increasingly influential labour journal.

Industrial relations historian, Desmond Morton, reflects on the state of Canadian labour history during this period in Labour/Le Travail (Morton, 2000). He discusses the influence of Herbert Ames on the study of the working poor in Quebec, Ross McCormack on the study of pre-war labour politics in Winnipeg and Donald Avery who investigated the role of European immigrants in Central and Eastern Canada. In terms of histories of labour movements and strikes, Morton cites the work of David J Bercuson on the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, the biggest strike in Canadian History as representing a shift in the way strikes were examined from a scholarly perspective (as an event). Morton states that “by the mid 1970s, no one could claim that the history of Canadian working people and their organizations was stifled for lack of sources” (pp. 21-22).

And though Morton cites Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, it is in a cursory manner. He does argue that women have found more representation and an “overdue voice in scholarly discourse” (p. 33). When commenting on women as “a force” in Canadian Labour and its history, he acknowledges:

This expansion of women as writers and scholars in labour history was largely made during the 1980s and 1990s. During this time, Ruth Frager considered the experiences of Jewish women in Toronto during the Great Depression, Joan Sangster introduced a feminist perspective to women working in small factory towns, and Sylvie Murphy considered the role of the women’s auxiliary in the local of the International Association of Machinists (Morton, 2000; Palmer, 2000). In his book focusing on insights at the turn of the millennium, Palmer (2000) acknowledges a growing “gender-based appreciation of labouring life” (p. 7) while acknowledging that the advances in labour and working class history during the 1980s and 1990s came through the “expansion of women’s history” (p. 32). And though both Morton and Palmer believe that women have found their place in scholarly discourse, it can certainly be argued that it is far from equal.

Women, fighting for equality on several fronts have made anaemic gains as “age-old patterns of capitalistic accumulation and women’s exploitation seem to be irrepressible” (Sangster, 2000, p. 127). As recently as 2018, Joan Sangster and Julie Smith commented on the ongoing need to fight sexism through labour activism in relation to the #MeToo movement or feminism’s 4th wave (Sangster and Smith, 2018). Labour leaders and scholars like Madeleine Parent focused on organizing those left behind by other efforts; the unorganized, the marginalized and the workplaces that tended to be difficult to organize (Sangster, 2012). Through the work of women, union movements have become a forum for working-class politics, problematizing the relationship between class conflict and capitalism, and understanding the oppression of women and racialized individuals to paint a different anti-capitalist vision (Sangster, 2012).

An excellent example of female authorial voice and feminist focus in Labour/Le Travail is Julia Smith’s (2014) article examining the history of Service, Office and Retail Worker’s Union of Canada (SORWUC), which she posits is a “grassroots, socialist feminist union” (Smith, 2014, p. 24). She examines the historical contributions of the union to labour organization in Canada from a poststructuralist epistemology. She also engages with Joan Wallach Scott and her notion about gender as a category of analysis (Wallach Scott, 1986). Gender is further conceptualized as a source of knowledge about sexual difference, taking a more generic class and gender analysis of the history of labour movements into one more concerned about discursive processes in which class and gender are constructed.

Another notable thinker and is Donica Belisle. In 2003, she wrote about Canadian consumer history and commodity-centred capitalism in Labour/Le Travail. Her historical examination considered the evolution of the relationships between wage and consumer interests over time and their effects on “material and cultural life” (Belisle, 2003, p. 183). Belisle also contributes her thoughts on Canada’s labour history to journals outside of Canada. In 2007, she wrote about paternalism at Canada’s largest department stores in the Journal of Women’s History and specifically explored the relationships these organizations had both with female consumers and their employees. She highlights that in the period between 1890 and 1960, paternalism was the “chief mode of social organization” (Belisle, 2007, p. 59). This article unsurprisingly contains a critique of Eaton’s, as both one of Canada’s largest merchandisers and as an employer. Along with Eaton’s, Simpson’s and HBC took a similar approach in conveying a particular ethos to the public (familial, benevolent, with affectionate fatherly overseers). She highlights that in Eaton’s case, this paternalism held women back from advancing to supervisory roles because they were not seen as leadership material. Additionally, “assumptions of feminine inferiority also justified paying lower wages to women than men” (p. 65). Belisle does credit Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as head organizer for the Eaton Drive of 1948–1952 but given what little personal information is available about Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, Belisle’s remarks are understandably limited:

This heavily edited quote is the only reference to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin directly. As with other such examples, the discourse quickly moves on from Eileen Tallman-Sufrin to the Drive itself. Significantly, however, Belisle challenges the domain for labour discourse to bring it outside labour journals (to ones that focus on women’s history), much like my attempt herein (to move the discourse from labour to management and organizational studies and management history).

In another article penned by Belisle in the Canadian Historical Review (2005), she engages with the subject of Eaton’s again and specifically the period of the Eaton Drive. Belisle describes Eileen Tallman-Sufrin (then Eileen Tallman) as “a talented Steelworker organizer with white-collar unionization experience” (Belisle, 2005, p. 648). Drawing chiefly on Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s own book, Belisle recounts key moments in the drive under Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s leadership, including the Drive’s social-democratic brand of unionism that was both modern and efficient, better for workers and for citizens (p. 648). However, her account is limited when it comes to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin herself. I think Belisle encountered the same limitations I did when reading about Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. She hides behind her work. The Eaton Drive is her achievement, and she relegates her role and a sense of who she was to the background.

I found other hints of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin in scholarship, but not many. For example, I was touched to see a reference to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin in an article penned by Shirley Tillotson, in the Canadian Historical Review (1991). She thanks Eileen Tallman-Sufrin for comments she provided on an earlier draft of her manuscript exploring human rights, women organizing and pay equity (Tillotson, 1991). Similarly, in Aylward’s (1991) doctoral thesis entitled Experiencing Patriarchy: Women, Work and Trade Unionism at Eaton’s, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin is thanked for sharing her story (Aylward, 1991). These are just small indications that Eileen Tallman-Sufrin was working behind the scenes, supporting other women in their scholarship about labour organizing in Canada. In my imagined encounter with Tallman-Sufrin, I was inspired by these traces and could see that if she were alive today, she might similarly help me with my research and writing.

However, as you can see, there are very few scholars and their exchanges for me to draw on to create a portrait of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. Here, I have attempted to pull the disparate pieces together with not just a focus on Eaton’s or unionization, but on Eileen Tallman-Sufrin and the context in which she demonstrated her talents and contributions. I think she ought to be acknowledged as a key player in Canada’s labour history, not just the Drive, not just Eaton’s, but her. If you read Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s The Eaton Drive (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983), you get a detailed account of the organizing effort, but not of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin ^[2]. On the back of her book, there is a picture of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, at her typewriter, working. She is not looking at the camera; she is focused on her work. She seems to be explicitly saying both through her writing and her absence from it that it is not about her, it is about the work. I cannot help but think that in so doing, she has also contributed to her own illusiveness. It shows up in Belisle’s attempts to write about her and in other attempts which simply leave her out.

Most attempts, which include Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, seem to say very little. For example, an article from 2013, penned by James Naylor in the Canadian Historical Review, references Eileen Tallman-Sufrin briefly in the following way:

Similarly, in the memoirs of Canadian political leader and labour lawyer, David Lewis, who is known for helping to build the New Democratic Party in Canada (1961) and serving as national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in Canada (aka CCF^[3]) (1936–1950), there is a brief reference to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, which reads as follows:

Both limited accounts point to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s extraordinary leadership but fail to create an impression of who she was and how she accomplished what she did.

A key source for this paper was a booklet edited by Wayne Roberts ^[4] which was developed with the assistance of extensive interviews with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin (Roberts, 1981). Wayne Roberts built the Labour Studies program at McMaster University and his scholarship engaged with the exploitation of labour under capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries with a particular focus on women’s history (Sobel, 2021). I also draw on an interview with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin completed by Sara Diamond in 1979 (Diamond and Tallman-Sufrin, 1979) ^[5]. Diamond is President Emerita at OCAD University (aka Ontario College of Art and Design) and an influential thought leader in British Columbia’s labour, feminist and arts movements ^[6]. In reading her transcript, I finally had a sense of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s own voice, speaking candidly of herself as a person beyond her work (Diamond and Tallman-Sufrin, 1979). I believe that this interview may have been part of a larger project for Diamond, published in 1980, entitled Women’s Labour History in British Columbia: A Bibliography, 1930–1948. This project was a bibliography of sources for research on the history of women’s activity as trade unionists (Diamond, 1980). Additionally, copies of articles related to the Eaton Drive can also be found in the Special Collections in Public Archives Canada ^[7].

To help set up the next section, I will introduce some key biographical information. As previously stated, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin led the battle to unionize the original Eaton’s, considered Canada’s largest department store in history, and Canada’s third-largest employer at the time. Afterward, she remained active in labour-related work and was ultimately enlisted to conduct a study by the federal government, which remains the most comprehensive, comparative examination of federal and provincial labour relations Acts in Canada, outlining provisions for settling labour disputes and legal obligations (Tallman-Sufrin, 1970). Her book, The Eaton Drive (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983), which is widely cited, regrettably shares little beyond that brief chapter of her life, save a small résumé in the appendix (Williams, 2022c). The Eaton Drive reads as a case study and textbook (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983; Farrell, 2001). As I have illustrated, labour literature has much to say in terms of the influence of the Eaton Drive (but not explicitly about Eileen Tallman-Sufrin), and a single article published on section15.ca (Farrell, 2001) is cited repeatedly (see, for instance, Monroe, 2017).

When I was writing Historical Female Management Theorists (Williams, 2022c), I had hoped to include a chapter on Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, but regrettably did not feel that I had sufficient information at that time to proceed. I had already been researching Eileen Tallman-Sufrin for some time but compared to other historical female figures that I had engaged with, my information about Eileen Tallman-Sufrin seemed somewhat paler in comparison. This is what I found:

In the next section, I present a fictitious interview with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. To create this imaginary conversation, I combine quotes from the raw transcript with Diamond (Diamond and Tallman-Sufrin, 1979) with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s own writings (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983), and other archival traces including the booklet, Where angels fear to tread: Eileen Tallman and the labour movement which is based on eight hours of taped interviews, lengthy correspondence and reminiscences from Tallman-Sufrin over 20 years (Roberts, 1981). This new composition of sources is curated with feminist aims and it is presented in narrative, verbatim form.

It is 1991 and I am due to talk to Eileen over the phone this afternoon. She lives in White Rock, British Columbia where she retired in 1972 with her husband, Bert Sufrin (an economist and fellow CCF worker). I have been invited to call her at home just after 1 p.m. my time in Halifax, Nova Scotia (9 a.m. her time). She agreed to speak with me with the understanding that I would record the conversation and that I would be focusing my questions on her leadership within Canada’s labour organizing history and her insights into women in organizing efforts in Canada.

She picks up after the second ring and invites me to call her Eileen. The following is a verbatim transcript of that conversation, where unspoken thoughts and ethnographic field notes of mine appear in italics. I use “KSW” to refer to myself and ETS to refer to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. I also use italics to signal when I am speaking directly to the reader (through unspoken text), either adding additional insights or considerations:

I am curious about her organizing strategies because her book reads very much like a textbook for organizing and thus positions her as an educator as well as an organizer.

She speaks indirectly to her ability to raise awareness and capacity around organizing which speaks to her leadership and communication skills.

Again, I take note of the persuasive skills she would have had to use to build solidarity and to achieve necessary membership capacity. Roberts describes this period of time when Eileen began organizing Eaton’s as follows.

I think that naturally, we as management and organizational scholars tend to consider how we enact values in leadership roles and she speaks directly to not only her internal values but her outward facing principles of honestly, empathy, hard work and a commitment to social justice. We do know that Eileen was a socialist and a feminist. She has said: “I became a socialist because I was very much aware of the tragic waste of unemployment in society […] I saw at first hand the privation of families on relief” (Tallman-Sufrin as cited in Roberts, 1981, p. 10).

Here, I am trying to get a sense of who she was beyond the work, and I am unsurprised at her level of commitment or the fact that she would have had to navigate some unconventional domestic arrangements for the time. This is always interesting territory for feminists.

Most of what I have read almost explicitly focuses on the Eaton Drive, but of course Eileen would have developed her skills over time.

Eileen further mentions in her interview with Sara Diamond regarding taking on the opportunity to lead the Eaton Drive as “another case of rushing in where angels fear to tread” (Tallman-Sufrin and Diamond, 1979, p. 31). This appears to reference a little-known booklet by the same name, edited Wayne Roberts and published a couple of years after Diamond’s interview (in 1981) (Eileen Tallman-Sufrin and Roberts, 1981). This is not a widely available book, and it only runs 37 pages. A copy is available at Library and Archives Canada, and I was able to borrow a copy from McMaster University. Her path to organizing is well explained in her reflections in this volume.

She had a plan. Her efforts were clearly thought out and drawing on proven strategies, but she applied them on a massive scale to a previously unorganized workforce of largely women.

I know she had a phenomenal team, and this speaks to the seniority she had coming into this role. However, I also have the sense that the team grew overtime and that her leadership expanded beyond the team to include additional organizers from other unions.

This scope is significant to consider. The campaign lasted four years, and was unprecedented in terms of size, scope, length of time and nature of the workforce.

Around this time, she was working closely with David Lewis who at the time was serving as the organizing team’s lawyer. David Lewis was a key architect of the New Democratic Part of Canada, a member of parliament and retired as a professor at Carleton University (Lewis, 1981). As previously mentioned, David Lewis speaks about Eileen in his memoirs and acknowledges that the team Eileen led was extremely competent in terms of organizing and communicating (Lewis, 1981).

I can’t imagine the level of disappointment, but as I will speak briefly to in the discussion, I believe her efforts spurred the movement forward tremendously and I can see a throughline to both changed conditions in pay equity and changes in legislation.

Here, I shift our conversation to key feminist concerns.

Here, Eileen reveals one of her key concerns in organizing with the objects of the women’s movement, namely, to have equal pay for equal work and for jobs to be categorized based on the job not the person or their sex.

Eileen references many women in her book who were vital to the effort, so I ask who she thinks ought to have broader recognition. I think it is important to consider here that women were likely recruited to leadership roles because of women leaders like Eileen. Representation matters.

Olive Richardson is described by Belisle as “an experienced clerical worker” (Belisle, 2005, p. 648). Margorie Gough is likely Marjorie Gow (Chaussé). She was a Steelworker organizer, recruited to the campaign. She is described in the Eaton Drive by Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as “a diminutive elf with several years’ union work behind her” (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983, p. 40). She was hired to do publicity for the Eaton Drive. Eileen Tallman-Sufrin credits Gow with having a “witty way with words” which she clearly felt was a critical part of the publicity strategy (Tallman-Sufrin, 1983, p. 77). Eileen Tallman-Sufrin describes May Colston as an employee of Eaton’s at the College Street store who assisted with the campaign, working part-time “and did an excellent job” (Tallman-Sufrin and Diamond, 1979, p. 45). Grace Hartman was the first woman to lead a major labour union in North America. There is a documentary produced by CUPE and released in her memory in 2023 (CUPE, 2023). Grace is an inspiring figure in her own right.

I feel that this is lesser-known aspect of Eileen’s accomplishments. Again, it speaks to her utility as a leader, her confidence and experience.

She speaks little about direct sexism that she would have almost certainly experienced. I suspect that as was typical of the time, she felt there was a certain degree of sexism she would have had to endure and move beyond to do her work.

I bring this up because I think it speaks to the fantastic level of solidarity building amongst women in organizing in the 1950s when we tend to focus on the shift in discourse and contributions of women in labour in the 1970s and 1980s.

I also get the unmistakable impression that this global-level affinity group, established a new level of solidarity that was both important and enduring for Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. Though she eschews questions about gender barriers, this comment seems to point to the importance of female solidarity and unique experiences of women as organizers and in organizing efforts and clearly positions her as a leading voice from Canada.

Edith Lorensten was the Director of the Legislative Branch, Canada Department of Labour, Ottawa Ontario in 1969. If not for the forward included in the book, detailing that the project was authored by Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, there is no other indication of her involvement. I find this fascinating and bewildering. I will speak to what I think was the influence of this text in the discussion, but to be fair, the influence is unclear.

Between 1941 and 1971 the Canadian Labour movement experienced a significant shift in membership and this is owed in large part to the growth in the public sector and the increased participation of previously marginalized groups, including women, whose membership increased significantly during this time (Smith, 2014). Women working for wages jumped from just over 800,000 to over 3 million in this period, representing 19% of the paid workforce in 1941, 38% in 1971. However, women continued to be offered lower wages, more part-time work and were limited to certain occupational categories with little security (Smith, 2014). It is in this context, that the Eaton Drive represented one of the first opportunities to unionize a predominantly female workforce in a new sector. So while union efforts were more successful in the public sector, this was not the case in other predominantly female industries (Smith, 2014). For example, “by the early 1970s 43% of male workers were unionized compared to just 27% of women workers” (Smith, 2014, p. 33). Again, these figures are also with respect to White workers ^[9].

Following this period, there was a proliferation of women writing about labour and women in labour. The two aforementioned volumes are excellent examples of this proliferation of feminist contributions to labour scholarship in the 1980s, namely, Linda Briskin and Patricia McDermott’s edited volume, Women Challenging Unions: Feminism, Democracy and Militancy (Briskin and McDermott, 1993) and Union Sisters: Women in the Labour Movement by Briskin and Yanz (1983). I believe these volumes point to the legacy and influence of organizing action like the Eaton Drive and leadership like Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s.

The first chapter in Briskin and McDermott’s collection, penned by McDermott, discusses the Eaton strike in 1984 (the action that came after the first Eaton Drive). It contains first-voice accounts from women strikers. McDermott offers the view that while the strike was not successful in achieving a more favorable contract, the movement itself was successful in “mobilizing Canada’s labour movement more than anything had done in years” (p. 23). The strike was also responsible for financial penalties to Eaton’s and a fairly successful national boycott of Eaton’s, which affected Eaton’s social reputation (Briskin and McDermott, 1993). Perhaps more importantly, it inspired the creation of the Women’s Strike Support Coalition, which brought together women from labour and women’s movements. This coalition lobbied for changes to labour legislation and held numerous support rallies. In 1985, they lobbied for strikebreaker legislation in Ontario, which the coalition felt was needed to address the way that strikes were “reinforcing the existing imbalance of power […] affect[ing] every worker in the province” (Women’s Strike Support Coalition, 1985). The 1984 strike had persisted for six months. Strike-breaker legislation would have pressured employers to resolve the matter sooner and protected the strikers during the negotiations. Only recently, the Federal Government adopted an anti-strike-breaker law (in the summer of 2024), which stipulates which types of replacement workers and in general, bans employers from using replacement workers to do the work of unionized employees during strikes or lockouts. There appears to be a throughline from Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s initial action and today’s reforms. Tallman-Sufrin’s leadership on the first Eaton’s Drive laid the foundation for today’s reforms.

Briskan and Yanz’s volume from 1983 highlights some of the enduring challenges of women workers in unionizing efforts, including equal pay. Why equal pay continues to be an issue in Canada is an enigma they posit partly relates to the kind of work that women typically did (in the 1980s) which was not recognized as having the same value (gendered roles). They detail the entangled history of women’s political movements and labour movements. And even though their volume looks back at the 70 years of women workers leading up to their volume’s publication date (1983), it is worth noting that women in Canada still make 13.3% less per hour than men (Wiggins, 2020). Progress on both pay equity and employment equity remains slow (World Economic Forum, 2019). However, these were the issues that inspired Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, and she fought hard for change.

Contributors to Briskin and Yanz’s volume also detail a few key considerations for women and unions in Canada. These include a strong economic dependence on male partner incomes, retaliation for union activity and involvement, the double day of labour, a patriarchal family ideology which directs loyalty away from work, and competition with male actors within unions, which interferes with bargaining. They argue that these and other factors contributed to women not seeing the same benefits from unions or the same gains (Cumsille et al., 1983). And if women could not reasonably rely on the same gains, why then engage? These concerns would have been present if not for more sensitive considerations in the 1940s and 1950s during Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s Eaton Drive (1948–1952). Indeed, it is remarkable to consider that Tallman-Sufrin navigated through these patriarchal norms for women workers as a woman leader in a significant unionizing effort.

Throughout labour history, women have also faced enormous barriers to their participation in union and strike activity. Eileen Tallman-Sufrin attempted to form a union for Eaton’s white-collar, female workers at a time when it had never been done before, and the scale was enormous. Canadian women faced both sexist intimidation if they tried to engage, and if they did not, the explanations for their non-involvement were also sexist (e.g. women are more “timid”). Frager (1983) details explanations for why women engaged in union activity or not, often ignoring the realities of the situation for women who had to face the double-edged sword of exploitation and domination. This not only limited women’s desire to protest but also their form of protest, which tended to be leaving instead of fighting. Additionally, Frager (1983) outlines that women workers bore additional burdens over their male counterparts, which not only compounded the nature of discourse at the bargaining table, and different issues of importance, but also their capacity to participate (e.g. demands of domestic unpaid labour such as childbearing, childrearing, and housekeeping). If women were able to navigate the barriers of prejudice, vulnerability and society expectations, there were further issues with respect to achieving true “solidarity from their ‘fellow’ workers and ‘brother’ unionists” (p. 50).

Why did Eileen Tallman-Sufrin suspend deference to established authorities and social pressures to take up action in this crucial post-war period? A clue exists in the writings of Lynn Williams, International Secretary, United Steelworkers of America, who muses that it was Eileen’s “intelligence, and her spirit of total commitment, a range of extraordinary organizing experiences and skills, virtually unmatched and certainly not exceeded at that time” (Williams, in Sufrin and Roberts, 1981, p. 3). Often referred to as a David and Goliath tale, it signifies the potential implications had the Drive been successful. How might it have influenced the future developments in the labour movement in Canada? It signaled the hard-fought ground which lay ahead and which would not be easily won, “large ends required large means” (Roberts, 1981). However, in the moment, during the Drive, there remained a tremendous sense of optimism. It was also a training ground for new organizing techniques and appeal strategies and there was a lot on the line, including the engagement of a large campaign team, thousands from other unions who were assisting with both time and money and this created social momentum. And though the Drive was not successful, it was a defining moment of Canada’s labour movement and its development.

Her own reasonings for challenging industry and authority were centred on achieving the rights of women in the labour movement (Roberts, 1981). Eileen Tallman-Sufrin defined herself as an activist in the labour movement and she was thoroughly committed to gaining ground for all working people, but especially women (Roberts, 1981). In terms of epistemic justice, Eileen saw just treatment as requiring knowledge, understanding and participation of women in the labour movement, which necessitated their voice and representation. Contu (2020) describes epistemic justice as requiring intellectual activism that responds to political questions, inscribed with the weight of history, social, economic and exploitive relations present within capitalism (Contu, 2020). In this respect, Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s own subject position, her commitment to social change, and her skills and experience as a labour advocate illustrate not only how she intellectually engaged with key labour policy and practice, but also how she countered and challenged them through vigilant, organized resistance. I believe that Eileen Tallman-Sufrin was driven by the aims of social justice. She acknowledges in her own writing that the forces that propelled workers towards collective action was low wages, pay policies that discriminated based on age, sex and marital status (Aylward, 1991; Tallman-Sufrin, 1983). She believed that ending pay based on age, sex or status (equal pay for equal work) also followed a commitment to not classifying people, but rather jobs (Aylward, 1991). I also believe that this is what gave her the power and perseverance to continue to resist.

In trying to take stock of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s influence on the labour movement and labour policy in Canada, certain traces are helpful. Jason Russell (Russell, 2013) comments on Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s ability to surface management’s negative view of unions and hostility in the post-war decades in Canada. In particular, he points to heightened militance in unions in Canada in the 1970s, just around the time Tallman-Sufrin published Labour relations legislation in Canada (Tallman-Sufrin, 1970). He also acknowledges that unionization was not the cause of long-lasting labour unrest in the retail sector during the Eaton Drive (Russell, 2013). Rather, we must look at management.

A reunion of RWDSU 1000 (Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union) in Toronto in 1982, attended by Eaton workers from the Drive (1948–1952), speaks to the ongoing commitment and attachment the workers had in solidarity with the movement, the Drive and each other (Aylward, 1991). It also speaks to Eileen Tallman-Sufrin’s legacy. Eileen Tallman-Sufrin enlisted a previously ununionized workforce in a previously unionized industry. She navigated gendered expectations for both the women she organized but also for herself. Remarkably, there are few traces that speak to the significance of this accomplishment and the ones that do speak more to the effort than to Tallman-Sufrin as a key change agent.

The purpose of a study like this, which capitalizes on the utility of ficto-feminism, is that it generates the equivalent of new documentary-style source material, by offering a feminist reading of previously less consider or unconsidered primary and secondary sources. It forces a reexamination of established history and its gaps and opportunities. Ficto-feminism also achieves a bridge between criticism and narration, a key challenge in creating feminist histories (La Greca, 2016). It is my hope that this study also inspires more engagement with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin and her career and legacy by introducing her to management and organizational scholars and management historians.

Eileen Tallman-Sufrin led one of the most ambitious drives in Canada’s labour history, with one of the largest employers in Canada. Additionally, the effort was unprecedented in size and consisted of a previously ununionized white-collar, largely female workforce. Further, she is responsible for engaging thousands of women in organizing, including in leadership roles. She also offered training and penned a book which unlike herself has become a taken-for-granted contribution to labour history (and labour education) in Canada (The Eaton Drive). Additionally, she helped contribute to other women making scholarly contributions to Canada’s labour history. These accomplishments alone are sufficient in terms of justifying broader recognition, but she also went on to write one of the most comprehensive comparative studies of labour relations legislation in Canada.

It is hard to say why Eileen Tallman-Sufrin is not a more prominent figure in labour history, but of course that lack of prominence in labour history certainly informs her lack of consideration in management and organizational studies and management history. The gendered nature of both Canada’s labour history and related scholarship is certainly a contributing factor. But is she unseen, invisible, hidden, lost or hiding? I am not entirely sure. Through my investigation, I believe that the reasons for her relative obscurity are as follows:

• she was not a prominent figure in her own writing, often writing in a passive voice and foregrounding the activity of the work instead of her role in it;

• women’s organizing history is limited and Canadian women’s organizing history even more so; and

• women writing on labour history in Canada is also limited, and accelerated decades after The Eaton Drive; and

• sexism in the labour movement in Canada was profound.

These points reinforce the key contribution of this study, which is the creation of a new discrete history of one women’s economic and labour contributions.

Additionally, applying a ficto-feminist approach accomplishes two very important things:

1. it raises the profile of a figure such as Eileen Tallman-Sufrin and her accomplishments; and

2. it reveals that some historical methods are exclusionary in practice.

Additionally, as foregrounded in this study, the authorial voice of those who write these histories also has a place, particularly in novel historical methodologies (including feminist methods). New histories by and about women are both disruptive and necessary.

Though I believe the key factors I have named explain why Eileen Tallman-Sufrin is not a more prominent historical actor in Canadian labour history, it is inexcusable considering the prominence of Eaton’s as an organization, and the Drive itself as the longest drive in history. It is unfortunate and confusing that the leader of this effort is neglected.

In conclusion, I reiterate Joan Wallach Scott’s call that invites feminists to rhetorically challenge history by turning political questions about inclusion and exclusion into historical ones (Wallach Scott, 2008). If politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics, then women as a fixed category of meaning will always be limited, and our history as women (and writers of women’s history) will remain “outside of history” (Wallach Scott, 2008, p. 1424). Therefore, for feminist historical inquiry, the ontological foundations must begin with women not only as the object of historical investigation but also as the site of new knowledge and ways to access it (Wallach Scott, 2008). This includes women as subjects but also as sense-makers and authors. Critical biographical approaches, which are ontologically and epistemologically anchored in feminist thinking, methods and modes writing, are a key strategy for developing new histories and novel accounts that not only challenge our limited view of the past but also inspire new debates and new ideas.