author
Aku Päiviö
1879–1956
A Finnish Canadian poet and journalist, he brought working-class life and socialist ideals into vivid, plainspoken verse. His writing grew out of migration, labor politics, and the Finnish immigrant world in North America.
1 Audiobook
Hiiliä
by Aku Päiviö
About the author
Born in Kärsämäki, Finland, in 1879, Aku Päiviö became known as a Finnish Canadian journalist, poet, and socialist. He was an important figure in the Finnish Canadian labor movement, remembered especially for writing that connected political conviction with the everyday lives of workers and immigrants.
His poems and other writing were shaped by Marxist ideas and by a strong belief in education as a way to improve the lives of working people. That background gives his work a direct, purposeful energy: even when the subject is personal or lyrical, there is often a sense of community, struggle, and hope behind it.
Sources available here agree on his birth year and Finnish origins, but not all of them match on the year of his death. The strongest source found in this search says he died in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, on May 9, 1967, so it is safest to treat the commonly repeated 1956 date with caution.