“neither boy nor man”: Transnational Trade Identity in Canada’s Typographical Trade Press, 1860-1900

“‘neither boy nor man’: Transnational Trade Identity in Canada’s Typographical Trade Press, 1860-1900” is situated at the intersection of literary, periodical, print historical, and labour studies. Examining the eight printing trade journals produced in central and eastern Canada during the later nineteenth century (Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick), this project contributes a Canadian dimension to extant scholarship on printing trade journals, which has mostly attended to British and American publications. This study of Canadian printers’ trade journals offers important insights for understanding how the Canadian trade was situated as a node within the printing trade’s transnational network. Journeymen hand typesetters working in the Canadian newspaper trade of the later nineteenth century identified various threats to their aristocratic trade identity: apprentices, amateur labourers, and tramp printers; rising literacy rates and the middle-class worker; women; the work of Black, Indigenous, and Chinese compositors; and the introduction of machines in typesetting. Situating these perceived threats within the context of local and transnational/transatlantic histories of printing, I demonstrate how journeymen used narrative, poetry, correspondence, humour, and visual devices as defensive tools to reinforce and protect the trade’s aristocratic labour identity and to associate the work of typesetting with masculinity, skill, superior intelligence, and whiteness. Due to Canada’s position within the British Empire and its proximity to the United States, the exclusionary discourses that Canadian journeymen compositors cultivated and circulated were shaped by both national and transatlantic labour discourses. Further, I argue that these representational strategies were largely misplaced, given that the actual threats of deskilling and technological unemployment resided not with half-trained compositors, women, and other apparent dangers to the trade, but in the structural conditions of print capitalism and of waged labour more generally. The textual and historical analysis of the labour discourses found within Canadian printing trade journals that I present in this dissertation demonstrates that Canadian journeymen were ultimately concerned about what changes to the economic and technological landscape of their trade at the end of the century would mean for their status as men whose identities were intrinsically tied to waged work, skill, and craftsmanship.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor dc:publisher

Carleton University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Pelletier, Sarah Francoise

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © 2026 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, distribution to students, research and scholarship. Theses may only be shared by linking to the Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be copied without proper attribution to the author; no part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

10.22215/etd/2026-16997

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:carleton.scholaris.ca:20.500.14718/45154