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Just in time for Labor Day (or Labour Day, depending which side of the border you live on), Ancestry.com‘s
Canadian genealogy site, Ancestry.ca, offers this
list of unusual occupations gleaned from its Canadian census collection (1851-1916):

• Danise Barzano, living in Ottawa in 1901, gave her occupation as “baseball field”
  (“terrain de baseball”).
• Saint John, New Brunswick, resident John Corbett offered his job title as “lunatic
  keeper” in the 1901 census.
• Also in 1901, Torontonian Mary Brown was a “pig nurse.”
• William H. Butler of Ottawa was a “bell hanger” in the 1881 census.
• Also in 1881, John Dade was working as a “lamp lighter” in Toronto.
• John Middleton, a 19-year-old resident of Algoma, Ontario, was listed as “criminal”
  in 1901.
• The 1901 occupation for Georgia Wilcox, a 38-year-old BC resident, was “idiot”—a
  historic reference for a patient in an asylum.

You’ll find even more odd and archaic job titles in these free FamilyTreeMagazine.com
articles:

• Quiz:
  match up old-fashioned jobs with what the work entailed
• Genealogy Q&A: What’s
  a smack owner?
• 21 old names for
  occupations
• top 10 sources
  for finding your ancestors’ employment information

Interested in learning more about your ancestor’s work? Learn how using these resources:

• December
  2011 Family Tree Magazine, with a guide to researching the employment of
  ancestors in the railroad, mining, automotive and other industries
• April
  2005 Family Tree Magazine (digital edition), with a guide to researching
  ancestral employment records of all sorts.