Finnish Pancakes With a Side of Canada’s Labor History (Published 2015) (2024)

THUNDER BAY, Ontario — Carved in stone high above the door to the Hoito restaurant here is a motto in Latin: Labor Omnia Vincit — Work Conquers All.

Founded as a cooperative in 1918, the basem*nt restaurant is a vestige of a period in Canadian history when radical labor unions urged general strikes as part of their campaign for economic and social revolution. It is also a symbol of the several waves of immigrants from Finland who flocked here to work in this paper-mill town, railway junction and port on Lake Superior.

But in some ways, it is food that has conquered all. Even in its heyday as a political hotbed, the place was best known as a destination for a solid meal. Today the Hoito is arguably Canada’s most famous pancake house, particularly beloved for its formidable Finnish pancakes.

While the Hoito has never left the basem*nt of the Finnish Labour Temple, an imposing Edwardian pile, it has long been the hall’s most vital element. The building opened in 1910 as a joint venture of the New Attempt Temperance Society, a local Finnish group, and the Finnish branch of the Socialist Party of Canada. The party, said Michael Beaulieu, a labor historian at Lakehead University here, was effectively a front for the Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary union better known as the Wobblies.