User:Rverzuh

Writer, Photographer, Documentary Filmmaker, Historian
Ron Verzuh is a Canadian writer, historian, photographer and documentary filmmaker. His book Underground Times: Canada’s Flower-Child Revolutionaries was among the first published studies of the underground press and counter-culture in Canada.

He is the retired director of communications for the Canadian Union of Public Employees where in 2008 he completed a 25-year career as a trade union activist. He also served as CUPE’s first international solidarity officer, administering its Global Justice (formerly Union Aid) Fund.

He was the originator of CUPE’s “Keep Medicare Healthy” campaign and “Medicare Check-up,” a 30-minute video associated with the national campaign. He also developed numerous other campaigns dealing with anti-racism, economic equality and social justice issues. He is the author of the anti-racist song “Include Me!” and the creator of the “CUPE Canary,” a symbol of health and safety in the workplace that is used around the world to promote Canada’s Day of Mourning for workers who have died or been injured on the job. His “Tolerance” button, which was produced to counter racism in schools after the 9/11 tragedy, won a national award as best moving billboard.

He was the founding editor of Goodwin’s, “Canada’s National Alternative Magazine,” and a rural British Columbia alternative magazine called The Arrow. He has also edited several social issues magazines most notably Perception at the Canadian Council of Social Development and Transition at the Vanier Institute of the Family.

He obtained his PhD in history from Simon Fraser University, his master’s degree in Canadian studies from Carleton University, and his bachelor’s degree in English literature from Simon Fraser University.

His doctoral dissertation is entitled “Divided Loyalties: A Study of a Communist-led Trade Union in Trail, British Columbia, 1943-1955.” His MA thesis, “Proletarian Spirits: A Social History of the English-language Labour Press in Canada to 1900,” was published in 1988 by Steel Rail Publishing as Radical Rag: The Pioneer Labour Press in Canada.

He has been a columnist for content, Canada’s media magazine, and Canadian Consumer He is the author of several monographs, including Changing Images: British Trade Union Communications Under Thatcherism, Selling Labour Down Under: Australian Union Communications in a Time of Peril, and Remembering Salt: How a Banned Hollywood Movie Brought the Spectre of McCarthyism to Rural British Columbia.

He has also published many essays and articles on subjects ranging from the labour movement to travel, literature, news media, film, food and politics. These have appeared in publications and on websites in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Many of them can be seen at his web site: www.ronverzuh.ca.

Ron Verzuh is married and currently lives in Eugene, Oregon.