Dawn Fraser: Echoes From Labor's War

For those who are interested in reading more by and about Dawn Fraser, we highly recommend Echoes From Labor’s Wars: The Expanded Edition, published in 1992 by Breton Books. It includes the Introduction by Frank & Macgillivray, all of the poems from the 1976 edition, plus additional poems and articles by Fraser, including an autobiographical essay. All this for only $9.95! It can be ordered directly from Breton Books.

Dawn Fraser, whose story is told in the following pages, first published a collection of his poems about the miners’ struggles in Cape Breton under the title Echoes From Labor’s War, in 1926.

Many years later, David Frank and Donald Macgillivray collected those poems and some others, with explanatory notes written by Fraser in the 1940s, and wrote an extensive introduction on Fraser’s life and work. That book, Echoes From Labor’s War: Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s, was published in 1976 by New Hogtown Press. It is no longer in print.

David Frank and Donald Macgillivray have kindly granted the Socialist History Project permission to post their Introduction and their selection of Fraser’s poetry on this website.

CONTENTS

• Introduction, by David Frank and Donald Macgillivray
• He Starved, He Starved, I Tell You
• I Write Not What I Wish to Write, But rather What I Must
• Out of My House. No Child of Mine Will Be a Boy Scout
• The Widow in the Ward
• The Applicant
• The Reward
• The Case of Jim McLachlan
• Honest, Bell, What Did Bruce Say?
• The Hair-Breadth Escape of Red Malcolm Bruce
• Tell My Friend the Prison Warden I Hadn’t Time to Call
• Hey, Jim and Dan
• Away, False Teachings of My Youth
• Merry Christmas to You, Jim
• The Wearing of the Red
• To Forman Waye
• Send the Bill to Besco
• "Go West, Young Man, Go West"
• Cape Breton's Curse, Adieu, Adieu
• The Parasites
• Mon Pere
• Conclusion