Ebook: Being Neighbours: Cooperative Work and Rural Culture, 1830–1960

How neighbours working together in cooperative work bees played a vital role in agricultural progress, the viability of the family farm, and rural culture.

Drawing on the writing of over one hundred diarists, this book takes us into the heart of informal neighbourhood labour exchanges known as “bees” and the context of farm families’ daily lives in Southern Ontario. It sheds light on the workways of rural people and on how neighbouring was a dynamic and progressive aspect of agricultural change, as well as a key element in fashioning rural culture.