From 1868 to 1978, the Dupuis Freres department store serviced the French Montreal community from its headquarters on St. Catherine Street, east of Saint Laurent. This thesis looks at the management strategies of Dupuis Freres through its employee newspaper, Le Duprex, from 1926 to 1946, and then at their collapse with the Dupuis Freres strike in 1952. The Dupuis Freres management retained the loyalty of its employees by using a combination of paternalism and welfare capitalism. The company supported a union, organized leisure activities, provided sales incentives and rewarded loyalty financially and socially. In addition, the store integrated its French Canadian and Catholic identity with its employees' understanding of their work to impart cultural meaning to their employment. Dupuis Freres equated support for the company with the success of the French Canadian people, and its connections with the Catholic clergy added a sacred element to its enterprise. Dupuis Freres strike in 1952 divided French Canadians along class lines, and those who supported the workers were seen by neo-nationalists as doing so at the expense of French Canadian survival.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.20445 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Matthews, Mary Catherine. |
| Contributors | Morton, Suzanne (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of History.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001610887, proquestno: MQ43913, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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