Whitehouse, John R.W., 1921-2000 : John R.W. Whitehouse was born in England in 1921. While employed as a laboratory assistant for a battery manufacturer in Redditch, he studied electrical engineering in the extension programme of the Birmingham Technical College during 1940-1942. Following service in the training programme of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) during 1943-1946, Whitehouse studied at Ruskin College and Lincoln College of Oxford University (BA, 1946-1949, and MA, 1955). A recipient of a Trades Union Congress scholarship at Ruskin College, he was active in the Workers' Education Society and in the Oxford University Labour Club and Group.
Whitehouse was stationed with the RAF in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Ontario during 1943-1944. He married Brenda Sinker in Hamilton, Ontario, in July 1944. Returning to Canada in 1949, he wrote articles on the British Labour government for the "Hamilton News", a newspaper produced by striking employees of the "Hamilton Spectator". Whitehouse was soon hired as an educational representative for the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) in the Toronto area, and in 1950 he became the union's Canadian education and publicity director, a position he held until 1968. His responsibilities included: the development and delivery of labour education programmes to TWUA local unions across Canada; assisting other labour organizations with weekend institutes and summer schools; staff training; producing the Canadian editions of the union's periodical, "Textile Labor"; and organizing the union's Canadian conferences. In addition to his principle duties as education and publicity director, he often also did organizing work and served on grievance arbitration boards. In 1954, Whitehouse worked with TWUA Local 858 in Milltown, New Brunswick, to re-organize the closed Textile Sales Ltd. mill there (formerly owned by Canadian Cottons Ltd) as a workers' co-operative. During his career with the TWUA, Whitehouse was also active in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the New Democratic Party. He contested the federal riding of Peel in the 1957 and 1958 general elections, and the Ontario riding of Humber in the 1963 provincial election. While on the staff of the TWUA, Whitehouse was elected as a vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Labour at its 1966 and 1967 conventions.
During 1968 to 1974, Whitehouse established the School of Labour Studies and Industrial Relations at the Niagara College of Applied Arts and Technology in Welland, Ontario. This credit-granting labour-education programme was linked to the labour movement through an advisory committee, composed of representatives from several unions and labour councils. Whitehouse was appointed head of the new school and assistant dean in 1970, and in 1972 he became dean of the college's new School of Community Education (which included the labour studies programme).
In 1974, Whitehouse was appointed chief of the Workers' Education Branch of the International Labour Organisation (ILO; a tripartite agency of the United Nations) in Geneva, Switzerland, in which capacity he was responsible for its global workers' education programme. He undertook missions to several countries to assist in the establishment of labour education programmes. During 1980-1987, he served as director of the Canada Branch Office of the ILO's International Labour Office, based in Ottawa, Ontario. (A unit of the ILO, the International Labour Office is responsible for research, investigations, technical co-operation, and publications; the Canadian branch was established during World War II, when the ILO was temporarily based at McGill University.) Whitehouse also worked with the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), and participated in a study on adult education in China, contributing a report on peasant and worker education in that country in 1981. He continued to serve as a special representative for the ICAE after his 1987 retirement from the ILO.
Whitehouse began part-time graduate studies in adult education at the Ontario College of Education in 1965, while working for the TWUA. Concentrating on the area of labour education, he completed his Master of Education at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in 1969. He continued with doctoral studies at OISE, with the internationally-renowned theorist of adult education, J. Roby Kidd, serving as his advisor on a thesis dealing with the history of labour education in Canada. Whitehouse abandoned his doctoral studies some time after moving to Switzerland in 1974. Concurrent with studies at OISE, Whitehouse also served as a member of the college's board of directors.
Throughout his career with the TWUA, Niagara College, and the ILO, Whitehouse has been recognized as a leading Canadian advocate of college-based labour education. Active in numerous adult education organizations and in the education committees of Canadian labour federations, Whitehouse has had numerous speaking and writing engagements in Canada and internationally on issues in labour education. John Whitehouse died in December 2000.
