45 Min Canadian History Exam Taking

210 A History of the Canadian Peoples

cultural disruption, recovery from which would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.

The Fraser River gold rush presaged a new element in the resource economy of British North America: exploitation of the rich mineral wealth of the north- ern part of the continent. New technologies provided a constantly expanding market for British North America’s mineral wealth. They also brought new means of extracting it from the ground. By the 1850s copper ore was being mined along Lake Superior, and petroleum was discovered in southwestern Ontario in 1855. Production of crude oil in Canada by 1863 ran to 100,000 barrels a year. Unlike timbering, mineral production tended to be extremely capital-intensive, requiring specialized scientific knowledge. Until the twentieth century, production involved only a few minerals located conveniently for transportation in bulk. Coal seams on both coasts were obvious targets. The continent’s burgeoning industrialization would demand ever-larger quantities of minerals, and the future potential was indisputable.

Responsible Government and the Reorientation of Politics The British government gradually resolved the con- stitutional problems of the commercial period in British North America over the decade following the unification of Upper and Lower Canada in July 1840. Legislative union did not by itself satisfy Lord Durham’s other major recommendation for Canada, the right of the assembly to decide policy and its implementation through control of “the persons by whom that policy was to be administered” (quoted in Craig, 1963: 141). Part of the problem was that nobody at the time understood the importance of political parties or how they could work in responsible government. Colonial governors served as party brokers rather than conceding responsible gov- ernment. Finally, in 1848 the governor of Canada, Lord

men. It is almost invariably found in conjunction with a system of “flumes” or wooden aqueducts of various extent, running parallel with the claims on a creek or river. It is necessary, in separating the earth from the gold which is mixed with it, that each sluice should be supplied with a fall of water, and if the stream contigu- ous to the mine run on too low a level to supply this want, miners . . . are often compelled to go consider- able distances in quest of water sufficiently elevated to afford the object desired. Flumes are thus brought into requisition, and by openings made in that side of them opposite the mine, water is admitted to the sluice, which is placed at such an angle that the water may have forced enough to carry off the earth, while leaving the gold behind.

Sluice-boxes are of various sizes, and are fitted closely together so as to form a strongly built and extended trough. The fall of the water in the sluice-box is adjusted to allow sufficient time for the riffles and quicksilver to arrest the gold as it passes, and the supply from the flume is regulated by a slide in the opening on the side of it. The bottom of each sluice is usually intersected with strips of wood, and in the interstices of this grating quicksilver is spread to intercept the fine gold in its descent, nuggets and grains of coarse gold being caught by the grating itself. The sluice is supported on trussels so as to raise or lower it to the level convenient for shoveling in the earth. Several miners introduced “dirt” on either side, and others assist in loosening the heap and removing large stones, so that the gold may be easily precipitated. . . .

Source: Matthew Macfie, Vancouver Island and British Columbia: Their History, Resources and Prospects (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1865), 267–70.

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Elgin (1811–63), called on the leaders of the Reform par- ties, recently successful at the polls, to form a ministry. Louis LaFontaine (1807–64) and Robert Baldwin (1804– 58) had allied their respective parties in 1842 on a Reform platform. In placing himself, as a representative of the Crown, above party politics and leaving govern- ment in the hands of leaders selected by their parties, Lord Elgin inaugurated responsible government in the Province of Canada.

The victory of responsible government in Canada did not begin the story or end it, however. Nova Scotia— where Joseph Howe had been agitating for responsible government as a Reformer since 1836—finally achieved it after an election on 5 August 1847, which focused on that single issue. The Reformers were victorious, and when a Reform administration took office in late January 1848, the province became the first colony to achieve responsible government. Prince Edward Island acquired responsible government in 1851 and New Brunswick in 1854. A British attempt at alternative con- stitutional arrangements complicated the situation in Newfoundland. In 1842 Britain gave the colony a legisla- ture composed partly of elected and partly of appointed members, thus amalgamating the old council and assem- bly into one body. The experiment was not popular and never had a proper chance to work. The older Consti- tution returned in 1848. Newfoundlanders immediately began agitating for “a form of Government . . . with a departmental Government and Executive Respons ibility similar in character to that form lately yielded to . . . Nova Scotia” (quoted in Gunn, 1966: 315). The British reluc- tantly gave in to this demand in 1855.

The lower provinces, even including Newfoundland, were sufficiently homogeneous to be able to live with a two-party system. Canada was not so fortunate. It could and did create four parties, two for each section. The Reform alliance of Baldwin and La Fontaine was largely illusory. It quickly transpired that Canada East (the unofficial designation for the former Lower Canada) had slipped back into old voting patterns removed from Reform. The principle of governing by a coalition from each of the two sections of the united province was inherently unstable. By the mid-1840s the French had become enamoured of the principle of the “double majority,” in which the province would be governed by

an assembly majority in each of its two main sections. Such an arrangement naturally appealed to French Canada’s growing sense of nationality. It also required the parallel growth of political parties in the two sec- tions. Two factors emerged to complicate matters for the Province of Canada.

One was the rise of a new political movement in Canada West at the end of the 1840s. A radical Reform group known as the Clear Grits, with whom the mod- erate Reformers gradually merged, appeared under the leadership of George Brown (1818–80). Centred in the western districts, the Grits were the heirs of William Lyon Mackenzie rather than of Robert Baldwin. They were democrats, populists, geographical expansionists, and opponents of close connections between church and state in a Protestant rather than a true secularist sense. Furthermore—and ominously—they were hos- tile to French Canada in traditional anglophone ways. In 1840, when the population of Canada East had been greater than that of Canada West, each section of united Canada got 40 seats in Parliament. When the census of 1851 showed that the population of the anglophone sec- tion was growing more rapidly, George Brown adopted “representation by population”—“rep by pop”—as a cam- paign slogan when he stood as an independent Reformer in the general election of that year. He won easily. “Rep by pop” came to epitomize the brassy reformism of the Clear Grits.

The growing pressures of the Grits contributed to, but did not by themselves produce, the second development of the 1850s. This was the gradual with- drawal of French Canada into its own agenda, centred on the development of nationalist aspirations and the preservation of French-Canadian culture and society. The leaders of the Catholic Church took upon them- selves the mantle of nationalism. They used the Grits to separate nationalism from reform. In the context of Canada West, the Grit espousal of “voluntaryism”—the separation of church and state—was directed chiefly against the Anglican Church. Such ultra-Protestantism had even more implications for the Catholic Church. Voluntaryism was not quite the same as secularism. The voluntaryists sought to free the state from “reli- gious privilege,” but could contemplate with equanim- ity the passage of legislation controlling the availability

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212 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Probably the least well known of the principal “Fathers of Confederation,” Samuel L. Tilley (1818–96) was born in Gagetown, New Brunswick, the son of Loyalist par- ents. He was locally educated at the Church of England’s Madras school and then a grammar school before apprenticing as a druggist in Saint John, opening a drug store in the city in 1838. Tilley entered public life as a consequence of his religious beliefs, which demanded that he support various reforms, particularly the elim- ination of alcohol from society. He became in 1847 a leading figure in the New Brunswick branch of the Sons of Temperance, originally an American organiz- ation, which expanded into British America, utilizing

his earlier experience with the Saint John’s Mechanics Institute to great effect. For Tilley, prohibition and sup- port for the local business community went hand in hand. He supported protection for infant industries, railway construction, and the New Brunswick Colonial Association (which debated a “Federal Union of the British North American Colonies” and advocated honest government for the province). Tilley entered provincial politics in 1850 as a Reformer, and became provincial secretary when Reform won a majority in 1854. In office, he fought for financial control of the province by the Executive Council and for prohibition, becoming so unpopular that he was defeated in the election of 1856. Unhappy out of politics, however, he ran successfully for the legislature as a Reformer in 1857, returning to the office of provincial secretary in a government headed by Charles Fisher. As secretary, Tilley proved an indus- trious administrator and demonstrated a real skill at financial management. In 1861 he led a cabinet revolt against Fisher (who had been involved in an unsavoury land scandal), ending up as Premier.

In the early 1860s, Tilley joined Nova Scotia’s Joseph Howe as a principal promoter of Maritime railroads, particularly for a rail connection between the region and the province of Canada. His efforts on behalf of an intercolonial rail line led him inexorably to advocacy of the political union of the British American colonies. In August of 1864 he insisted that the colonies should be bound together from Atlantic to Pacific, for “that was the destiny of this country and the race which inhabited it.” He attended both the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences in 1864. Not surprisingly, he opposed Maritime Union and seconded John A. Macdonald’s motion at Quebec for a federal union. Although he returned from Quebec aware that there was “a strong current running against Federation,” he was surprised at the extent of the government’s defeat (and his own) in the election of 1865. Tilley led the pro-Confederation forces in the 1866 “union

Samuel L. Tilley, politician, Montreal, QC, 1864. William Notman photo, I-13477.1. © McCord Museum.

Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley

Biography

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of alcoholic beverages during the Sabbath (which they held sacrosanct). While God might not be eligible to hold land or be exempt from taxation, he could be used to justify state intrusion in matters of morality. Such ideas were very much at odds with the principles of French-Canadian religious nationalists. The result was an alliance between the latter and the Upper Canadian opponents of the Grits.

The rise of denominational divisions as major factors in politics was not confined to the Canadas, although the sectional situation—Roman Catholicism in Canada East and evangelical Protestantism in Canada West—gave such matters a special edge in that province. To a considerable extent, denominational politics reflected the growing democratization of the political process. As the interest, involvement, and size of the electorate grew, politicians turned to issues that appealed to the voter. Denominations also reflected ethnic background and regional strengths. Infighting among religious denominations constantly tussling for advantage transferred easily into the political arena. In Nova Scotia such struggles had occurred for years over the creation of institutions of higher learning. No denomination could allow another an educational edge, and the result was the creation of a series of colleges and universities, one for each major denomination (and one for each ethnic branch of Catholicism in the prov- ince). By the 1850s the venue for denominational dis- agreements had shifted to public education. In Prince

Edward Island the question began over Bible-reading in the schools, a practice pressed by the evangelical Protestants and opposed by the Roman Catholics. The “Bible Question” helped realign Island politics as Catholics and liberal Protestants, backed by the old Tories, joined against evangelical Protestants. By 1858 the principal issue in that year’s election was between Protestantism and Romanism, and the result was a Protestant party and a Catholic party. In Newfoundland as well, the contending political parties wore denomina- tional as well as ethnic faces, the Liberals backed by the Irish Roman Catholics and the Tories supported by the English Protestants.

In Canada, John A. Macdonald (1815–91), the Scots- born lawyer from Kingston, came gradually to domin- ate the anglophone Conservatives. Macdonald was not a man to allow abstract principle, such as the double majority, to stand in the way of power. In 1856 he was able to forge a new coalition among the moderate (some said very pragmatic) Tories he led and the Bleus of French Canada, led after 1859 by George-Étienne Cartier.

This alliance enabled the Tories to remain in power despite Grit victories in Canada West. It also led George Brown’s Globe to comment in August of 1856 that “If Upper and Lower Canada cannot be made to agree, a federal union of all the provinces will probably be the result.” By 1863 most of Canada’s leading politicians had come to concur on the need for some other form of union.

or disunion” election, backed by the British govern- ment and the Roman Catholic Church, and in a nega- tive sense by a Fenian raid at the mouth of the St Croix River in April. One Nova Scotia confederate wrote him, “All the Saints in the Calendar must have been on your side.” He took pro-Confederation resolutions passed by the New Brunswick legislature to England in July 1866, and then had to wait impatiently for the Canadians to join him. Tilley’s reward for his service was the inferior post of Minister of Customs in the Macdonald govern- ment. Nevertheless, Tilley operated efficiently with the customs until 1873, when he briefly became Minister of Finance before the government fell. He then returned

to New Brunswick as its lieutenant-governor. In 1877 he re-entered politics, winning a seat in Saint John in 1878 and becoming Minister of Finance in the Macdonald government, a post in which he served until 1885. Tilley’s second term as Minister of Finance saw him put in place the tariff structure that implemented the “National Policy,” and he was a strong supporter of the CPR. He was appointed again as lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick in 1885, serving until 1893. Tilley was never very well known outside his native province dur- ing his lengthy public career, but his persistent advo- cacy of political union and his financial skills made him essential both to New Brunswick and to Canada.

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214 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Born at Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Lower Canada, George-Étienne Cartier (1814–73) attended the College of Montreal beginning in 1824 and started legal train- ing in 1831. Becoming a lawyer in 1835, he had already gravitated towards the radicals, and he was clearly a Patriote in 1837, present at the battle of St-Denis. He then fled to the United States until October 1838, when he returned to Montreal and apparently was rehabilitated.

After a number of years of feverish legal activity, he entered the legislature in 1849 and subsequently worked increasingly for the Grand Trunk Railway, with which his name was always associated. He did not enter

the debate on the Rebellion Losses Bill. Cartier became associated with the moderate reformers and entered the MacNab-Taché government as provincial secretary for Canada East in 1855. He won an election caused when his acceptance of office required him to seek a fresh mandate from the voters after vociferous opposition from the radical Rouges, and in the Taché-Macdonald cabinet of 1856 he became Attorney General for Canada East. When Taché withdrew from politics in 1857, he joined with John A. Macdonald to form a government. The two remained close political associates until his death. He was part of the “double shuffle” of 1858, in which a defeated government returned to office by briefly accepting different portfolios and then resum- ing their former ones. In the years before 1862, when he and Macdonald were defeated on a militia bill, he was the guiding force behind a number of legislative meas- ures that reshaped united Canada, including municipal reform, educational reform, and legal reform.

He returned to power in 1864 and became part of the Grand Coalition committed to the unification of British America. He was the chief spokesman for French Canada in the various discussions that pro- duced the Quebec Resolutions, maintaining that only Confederation would do as an alternative to American annexation and insisting on the importance of a separ- ate province for French Canada in which religious and linguistic rights would be preserved. He was also, of course, a strong advocate of a transcontinental railroad. When he entered the first cabinet of the Dominion he refused an honour inferior to Sir John A. Macdonald’s knight of the Order of the Bath, and subsequently accepted a baronetcy. He served initially in both the federal and the provincial houses of Parliament, but was clearly Macdonald’s chief lieutenant in Quebec and co-leader of the government.

Cartier played a central role in the negotiations that brought the Red River Settlement into Canada, and was

Sir George-Étienne Cartier. Notman & Son, LAC, C-02162.

George-Étienne Cartier

Biography

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2156 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

The New Imperial Relationship The imperial government conceded responsible gov- ernment in British North America because it had little choice, given its unwillingness in the era of free trade to devote unnecessary amounts of money to colonial administration. There was a feeling in both the Colonial Office and in the Parliament that the separation of col- onies, particularly colonies populated with large num- bers of British emigrants, was inevitable when those colonies had reached a point of sufficient “maturity.” An equally strong feeling was that the costs of imperial administration were an unnecessary drain on the pub- lic purse. Britain was responsible for the direction and financing of the land and sea defences of British North America. Under free trade and responsible government, Britain reduced its military establishment in British North America and attempted with mixed success to convince the colonials to take up the burden. When the American Civil War endangered the stability of the continent, the imperial authorities would respond by attempting to strengthen colonial defence through pol- itical and constitutional revisions. The “mother country” also had considerable authority in the West, and was in charge of Aboriginal policy everywhere.

Victorian Society The relationship between political unification and social change was a complicated one. There were some obvious connections, however. A number of major themes dominated the society of these years. First, there was an unmistakable sense of geographical move- ment, as we have already discussed, mainly out of the

older and more settled rural districts. Second, the class structure of society began to take shape and to solidify. The chief changes were the appearance of a new busi- ness class, the emergence of a working class associated with urbanization and industrialization, and the rapid professionalization of certain educated and skilled segments of the middle class. Along with the develop- ment of social classes went a strengthening of certain caste lines associated with class but not identical with it; many of these lines emphasized ethnicity. Finally, an enormous expansion of voluntary organizations of all sorts occurred, at least partly to maintain personal iden- tities and a sense of belonging in a time of great mobility and social change.

unquestionably more sympathetic to Louis Riel and his “rebellion” than were most of the Macdonald cab- inet members in 1870. He probably made promises to the delegates from Red River that he could not honour, but he was unable to gain approval for an amnesty for

Riel and his government, despite Riel’s relinquishment of a nomination to Parliament in 1872 in his favour. Cartier was a genial man who at the same time brooked no opposition to his will, especially in terms of political and religious innovation.

John A. Macdonald, c. 1883–4, oil portrait by Thomas Horsburgh, from a photograph by William James. LAC, C-097288.

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216 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Most British North Americans uprooted them- selves at least once, and many were constantly on the move. Wilson Benson, an immigrant of the 1830s, tells the story in his autobiography. Beginning in Ireland at age 15, Benson changed his district of residence 11 times (six times in Ireland and Scotland between 1836 and 1838 and five times in Canada West between 1838 and 1851) before finally settling on a farm in Grey County in 1851 at age 30. He bought the farm not with his sav- ings but with an inheritance from Ireland. Benson had changed jobs 29 times in those years and apprenticed to

at least six different trades in the 1830s and 1840s before finally settling down to farming. In his later years, he also kept a store in his community. On the whole, tran- sients like Wilson Benson were not economically suc- cessful. In both urban Hamilton and rural Peel County, Upper Canada, there was a remarkable correlation between transience and poverty. Whether such people failed because they were continually on the move, or constantly moved in search of a better life they never found, is debatable. So, too, is the question of whether their failure was so deep-rooted as to be transmittable to

The Orange Order was founded as the Loyal Orange

Association in the 1790s in County Armagh in response

to the increasing disorder in Ireland. Protestants in

Ulster created local societies devoted to the memory

of William of Orange, who had intervened in Ireland

militarily in 1688 to replace James II and to guarantee

the Protestant succession in England, thus guarantee-

ing the position of the Protestant minority in Ireland.

William’s great victory at the Battle of the Boyne in

1690 was celebrated every 12 July with a parade and

commemoration, including the festooning of every-

thing imaginable in the colour orange.

In Ulster the Order existed as a hierarchy of

local lodges devoted to the maintenance of the

Protestant faith and loyalty to the Crown of England,

and included a good deal of secrecy and costumed

ritual similar to the Masons. In British America the

Order downplayed its secrecy and emphasized vari-

ous fraternal aspects, including life insurance and

support for families of members. The first lodge in

Canada was founded in Brockville, Upper Canada,

in 1830 by Ogle Gowan, and thereafter it spread

rapidly. By the later 1830s the Order had over 100

lodges, most of them in Upper Canada. Probably the

most important ingredients in its Canadian spread

were its transcendence of Irish ethnicity in favour of

a non-denominational Protestantism encompassing

immigrants from all over the British Isles, its identifi-

cation with deep-seated fears of Roman Catholicism

in many parts of British America, and its various fra-

ternal aspects.

At its height the Orange Order probably had no

more than 50,000 actual members, but its degree

of popular support in Newfoundland and New

Brunswick, as well as in Protestant Upper Canada/

Ontario, made it seem much more ubiquitous.

The Order had begun by opposing Irish Roman

Catholicism through demonstrations and violence. Its

leaders insisted that its enthusiasm was mainly a dis-

play of support for the Crown, but the Crown during

the 1860 visit of the Prince of Wales to British America

made clear that waving an orange flag did not find

any favour with the monarchy. The Order gradually

transferred its hostility from Irish to French-Canadian

Catholics and, in Manitoba especially, to the Métis led

by Louis Riel. After Confederation the Orange Order

became much more constrained in its public demon-

strations, but it always maintained a stance of hostility

to Roman Catholicism and support for British values

(especially the monarchy) in Canada.

BACkGROUNDER The Orange Order

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2176 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

their children. In any case, the success stories in terms of the accumulation of wealth usually involved those who remained more or less permanently in one place.

The need for a sense of belonging in an era of change and mobility helps explain the enormous expansion in the number of private associations devoted to non-oc- cupational and non-economic goals. Despite the growth of the state, even in Canada it did not weigh heavily on the lives of British Americans. Political allegiances were not as important to the average person as family, religion, and fraternal commitments. Churches con- tinued to be important. They were increasingly dom- inated—especially on the Protestant side—by women, who made up the bulk of the attending congregations. Women also supported their own religious organiz- ations with their own money, kept separate from the larger funds of the church, and these organizations offered many women their first glimpse of independent administration. British Americans also found a place in the temperance societies, which had begun in the 1820s but really expanded in the 1840s under the Sons of Temperance, a fraternal organization that served “no liquor stronger than tea.” The temperance movement crusaded against drunkenness, but it was also a way of reacting against new immigration—mainly Irish—and asserting a sense of Protestant hegemony.

By 1870 few British Americans—whether urban or rural—could be found who did not belong to a good number of voluntary societies beyond their churches. In earlier eras, private fraternal organizations had supple- mented or provided public services such as water, light, fire protection, and library facilities. By 1870, many organizations had virtually relinquished charitable and public goals in favour of entertainment and companion- ship for their members. Some of the new societies were created to provide a framework for sporting activities such as curling, lacrosse, or baseball.

Rural overpopulation produced some migrants who would settle and tame undeveloped regions and others who would provide a labour force for industrial- ization. While the farming pioneers remained small- scale commodity producers indeterminately related to the class structure, the urbanized workforce swiftly turned into a landless working class. At the other end of the scale, merchants turned into bankers, financiers,

and industrialists, and became far wealthier. Over the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the older social structure of elites and non-elites disappeared, to be replaced by one far more clearly stratified.

Successful businessmen were highly esteemed in the era of economic transformation, achieving their high status partly by self-ascription and partly by their acknowledged economic and political power. Nowhere was the power more evident than at the municipal level, where businessmen formed a mutually supportive coterie that took the lead in all aspects of life in the city, including its development and land market. Most busi- ness leaders in this period were self-made men, not in the sense that they had risen from rags to riches, but in that they had achieved their position in the commun- ity by their own efforts. Scots were over-represented in business ranks, where Protestantism predominated. The new wealth was in finance and manufacturing. The wealthier business leaders of Montreal and Toronto began to adopt extravagant lifestyles that were in many respects comparable to those of their American counterparts.

As Canadian cities began the shift from commer- cial entrepôts to industrial and financial centres, they already contained significant inequalities in terms of wealth and income. In Hamilton, for example, the most affluent 10 per cent of the city held 88 per cent of its propertied wealth, drew nearly half its income, and controlled about 60 per cent of its wealth. On the other hand, the poorest 40 per cent earned only about 1 per cent of the city’s total income and controlled about 6 per cent of its total wealth. A close relationship existed between wealth and emerging class status, and between class status and ethnicity. The last was an important determinant of status both because ethnic groups like the Southern Irish carried over their Old World poverty into the New World and because the poorer immi- grants tended to arrive later when opportunity was less fluid. The Irish were by far the largest element of the working-class poor in Hamilton and were the most sub- stantial non-Francophone part of the poor in Montreal.

Nevertheless, before 1860 rich and poor in both Hamilton and Montreal lived in close proximity to each other. Only as cities grew larger and developed an expanding middle class that could afford to move out of

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218 A History of the Canadian Peoples

the urban centre and a working class desperate for hous- ing would the industrial city emerge with its clear div- isions between rich and poor and between one economic function and another. In the pre-industrial city the role of women and children in the labour force was fairly limited. Industry could and did employ both women and children for some of the simple repetitive tasks that supplemented the machines, however. Factory owners found that children worked for low wages. Families often insisted that employers take on the entire family, so they would earn enough to live, and the income of all members of the family—including older children—was crucial for survival. In the last analysis, the major char- acteristic of families on the unskilled side of industrial- ization was their vulnerability to poverty. Not all the working-class poor worked in factories. Opportunities for women were strong at the lower end of the labour force in domestic service, and increasingly as well as in business and clerical occupations. The mid-Victorian Age saw changes in the retail trade as well as in manu- facturing. In 1840 retail establishments were relatively small. By 1870 general merchandising had begun to spawn the department store: the T. Eaton Company was founded in Toronto in 1869.

The relatively small physical size of cities before 1865 made residential segregation relatively difficult, and as various British ethnic communities turned into British North Americans, they came to share loyalty to their new homeland and to a common Empire and mon- archy. At the same time, an increase of certain forms of ethnic conflict was imported from the British Isles. Ireland was a major arena for such conflict, as Protestants and Catholics in that land became constantly more aware of their antipathies for one another. The success of the Orange Order was a sign of the problem. As Irish immigration turned into a flood—especially after the potato famine drove thousands of impoverished and embittered Irish Catholics across the Atlantic—the Irish groups were increasingly forced into contact with one another. Irish ethnic differences were not simply con- fessional or geographical. They also were class-driven. In most places the Catholic Irish were both the latest and the poorest arrivals, forced to take the worst lands (often as tenants) in the countryside or the worst jobs in the cities. The Irish were looked down upon, and often

responded with anger to their treatment. The Irish had a long-standing tradition of parades and public events to celebrate their major ethnic holidays, a tradition they brought to North America. Such occasions, particularly in New Brunswick, the Ottawa Valley, and the city of Toronto, which had especially large Irish Catholic popu- lations, produced continual ethnic tensions.

Between rich and poor, the middle class—although it ranged from small urban merchants to small-town industrialists to well-to-do rural farmers—came increas- ingly to be anchored by members of the educated profes- sional occupations. Professionals’ relative dependability of income tended to set them apart. Guaranteeing that dependability through professionalization was the chief development within the middle classes in this period. The numbers of qualified practitioners were increased through formal education, and at the same time strin- gent licensing requirements were imposed, often set by the occupation itself. The doctors took the lead. An attempt to legislate the creation of a College of Physicians and Surgeons of Upper Canada failed in 1840, although another similar attempt in Canada East in 1847 was more successful. Perhaps significantly, doctors were one of the first groups to organize nationally: the Canadian Medical Association formed in the very year of Confederation. Lawyers engaged in a similar policy, with most provin- cial law societies formed between 1846 and 1877.

Outside the class structure entirely were women, Aboriginal peoples, people from Asia, and blacks (or Negroes, as they were then called). In Victorian Canada the woman, as the bearer and nurturer of children, was regarded as belonging in the home as wife, helpmate, and mother. Women had few legal rights. A woman could not expect automatically to inherit a deceased husband’s property. In most provinces, a husband could sue a wife for divorce on grounds of adultery, but a wife could sue a husband only if he were adulterous and had committed some other heinous offence. The courts expected women to reform violent husbands rather than to prosecute them. Mothers had a better chance to rights of guardianship over children even if they were unwed. Despite the domestic ideal, many women worked. The most invisible women workers were the domestic ser- vants. The typical domestic servant in the census of 1871 was a single woman in her twenties who lived in

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2196 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

the house and could both read and write. The most pres- tigious occupation to which most women could aspire was that of schoolteacher. Actively recruited into the teaching ranks, they then remained at the lower end of the ranges of both salary and responsibility. There was little opportunity for entry into the professions. Emily Howard Stowe (1831–1903) obtained a medical degree from the New York Medical College for Women in 1867, but she could not achieve proper accreditation until 1880. The first woman lawyer would not appear until the next century.

Blacks and Chinese joined the Aboriginal peoples in suffering from widespread racial prejudice and dis- crimination in British North America. Chinese migration before 1870 was relatively small, and confined to British Columbia. But thousands of blacks fled the United States for freedom north of border, often encouraged by blacks like Harriet Tubman. After 1840 governments pressured the Indigenous peoples of the settled provinces to become freehold farmers. While governments recognized some Native rights, that alone did not lead to much protec- tion. In 1850 the Canadian Parliament passed legislation

Orange Order parade along King Street, Toronto. Parades were important public occasions in nineteenth-century British America, and were often the occasion for violence. Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, T13222.

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220 A History of the Canadian Peoples

that operationally defined who was and who was not an “Indian” within the meaning of the Acts involved. The process of legislating for Aboriginals rapidly escalated after 1850. In 1857 the legislature of Canada passed the Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes in the Canadas. It contained many provisions that ran against the expressed wishes of the Aboriginals. Canadian policy became devoted to removing Natives from the paths of settlement, by coercion and compulsion if necessary. Most of these policies—which defined “Indians,” made them citizens when properly educated, and provided for land grants—passed on to the Dominion of Canada from the Province of Canada in 1867.

Few British North Americans believed that the state would come to their assistance in times of trouble. For some, politics and government were a source of employment or patronage, but for the average person the government (whether local, provincial, or federal) existed mainly to act as an impartial and somewhat distant umpire. Government mostly affected events outside the citizen’s personal experience. Nevertheless, the exodus from older settled districts with traditional agrarian and resource-oriented economies into towns and cities demonstrated two points. First, it showed the extent to which the older mercantile economy was fail- ing to support the rate of population growth. Second, it showed the extent to which new economic development was essential. By the 1860s politicians were extremely conscious of out-migration, particularly to the United States. Territorial expansion westward was one solution. A more sophisticated economy was another. In the view of many political leaders across British North America both seemed to require new political arrangements.

The Creation of Cultural Infrastructure The conscious cultivation of mind, creativity, and aes- thetic taste—which is what most people have in mind when they think of “culture”—is obviously something that does not come easily to a pioneer society living on

the edge of a vast wilderness and spending most of its energy on survival. Such culture requires a complex infra- structure in order to flourish. While small parts of that infrastructure had been in place almost from the begin- ning of settlement in North America, the elaboration of substantial institutional support for culture was slow to develop. The years between 1840 and 1870 were import- ant in terms of that elaboration, if only because they wit- nessed such a striking growth in urban populations. Only a few illustrative examples can be discussed here.

Until the 1830s most newspapers had been pub- lished weekly, but biweekly editions for papers in the larger cities began in the late 1830s. The Saint John News introduced a penny edition in 1839, and dailies started in the 1850s. Most early papers were four page- sheets and had relatively small circulations, printing no more than 1,000 copies, although readership could be far greater. Susanna Moodie described the typical newspaper of her day as “a strange mélange of politics, religion, abuse, and general information,” adding that it “contains, in a condensed form, all the news of the Old and New World, and informs its readers of what is passing on the great globe, from the North Pole to the Gold Mines of Australia and California” (quoted in Rutherford, 1982: 38). One modern content analysis of four papers from this era corroborates this description (Rutherford, 1982: 39). George Brown published the first daily in 1853, printing it on a steam-powered cylinder press, and he reached a hitherto unheard of circulation of 28,000 by 1861. In British North America Brown was a pioneer in the regular serialization of popular fiction, including the works of Charles Dickens. He also aggres- sively covered the arts, especially in the local commun- ity. All newspapers, especially the dailies, benefited from the introduction of telegraphy to British America in the late 1840s.

In history everything connects. Critical to the emer- gence of the daily newspaper and the development of a larger and more sophisticated arts community was the introduction of mass education. This began in the 1840s, especially in anglophone British North America. Mass education was a product of the introduction of publicly supported schooling combined with the principle of universality. The result was that increasing numbers of people learned to read and write, and this increased the

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2216 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

Petition of a Number of Colored Inhabitants of the City of Montreal

Document

Respectfully Sheweth, That the undersigned Petitioners, loyal and dutiful

subjects of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, and residing in the City of Montreal, Canada East, are desir- ous of proving their attachment to the British Crown under which they hold their rights and privileges as Free Citizens, in common with their brethren of European origin, humbly and respectfully solicit the Authority of Your Excellency as the Representative of Her Majesty in this part of Her Dominions, to allow your Petitioners to raise and organize from themselves a Volunteer Militia Company of Foot, in class B, to be dominated, if it should please Your Excellency, the Colored Company of Montreal Volunteer Rifles; to be drilled & exercised in conformity with the regulations of the Service in all respects.

That Your Petitioners pledge themselves should Your Excellency feel disposed to favor their views, to cloth themselves at their own expense, in a neat and appropriate uniform (subject to the approval of Your Excellency), and to conform in every way to the Militia Rules & Regulations,

That Your Petitioners venture most respectfully to bring to Your Excellency’s notice, that in the West

India Island belonging to Her Majesty, there exist many Companies of Militia composed entirely of the Colored population, who have at all times been found ready to do their duty when called on; and that the Regular Colored Colonial Regiments in the West Indies volunteered their Services to a man on the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny; thus proving that the Colored race, under a free and enlightened Government like that of Great Britain, are second to none in loyalty, fidelity and truthfulness to their Country and their Queen.

Your petitioners, in conclusion, would most respect- fully entreat Your Excellency to grant them a favorable reply to this their earnest Petition, to be allowed to par- ticipate as Citizens, in the duties of the Militia Force of this valuable Colony; and should your Excellency under all the circumstances of Your Petitioners case, view the same in a favorable light, they, as in duty bound will ever pray—

Proposed Strength of Company 1 Captain 3 N.C. Officers 1 Lieutenant 1 Bugler 1 Ensign 59 Rank & File [signed with 38 names]

One way of showing loyalty to Canada in the nineteenth century was by offering to organize a militia company, as did a number of blacks in Montreal in 1860. We do not know whether the petition was successful.

Source: Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 227–8.

To His Excellency Sir Edmund Walker Head, Governor General of British North America and Captain General and Governor in Chief of the Provinces of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Island of Prince Edward, &c. &c.

The humble Petition of a number of the Colored Inhabitants of the City of Montreal, Canada East,—Montreal, 19th February 1860.

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222 A History of the Canadian Peoples

François-Xavier Garneau (1809–66) was born in Quebec (City) into a quite poor family, his father a man of shift- ing occupations. He was educated at local schools until age 12, when he entered a Lancastrian school for two years. His family was unable to afford the Séminaire de Québec, and Garneau instead became an assistant to the clerk of the Court of King’s Bench before apprenticing as a notary in 1825. Throughout his life he was conscious of his lack of formal education. While an apprentice, he read widely and taught himself Latin, Italian, and English. In 1828 his employer recommended him as a travelling companion for an Englishman who visited the United States. Three years later, on his own initia- tive, he visited England and France. While in London, he accepted an appointment as Denis-Benjamin Viger’s secretary, meeting many of the leading politicians of the time. He returned to Lower Canada in 1833, publishing

poetry and briefly editing a newspaper. Then, in 1834, he returned to the practice of notary and became an ardent nationalist.

By 1837 Garneau had determined to write the his- tory of Canada, but he was apparently not active in the rebellions. In 1842 he was appointed as French trans- lator to the Legislative Assembly, a post that gave him much free time and access to a number of libraries. Locating sources was one of the hardest problems for a historian when Garneau began his work. The first vol- ume of his Histoire du Canada, taking events to 1701, appeared in August of 1845. It was heavily criticized for being unsympathetic to religion. At about this time he used his friendship with Edmund O’Callaghan (a Patriote who somehow became state archivist in New York) to consult documentary material copied from French archives. The new documents greatly enhanced the second volume of the Histoire, published in April 1846. Continued publication was hampered for some years by ill health, but volume 3 of the Histoire appeared in 1849, getting the story to 1792. Garneau disarmed his critics in this volume by declaring the unity of reli- gion and nationality. For several years he worked on revision of the first three volumes (published in 1852, with an account of the period 1792–1840 appended). Here Garneau offered a narrative sympathetic to the Patriotes and highly critical of the Union of the Canadas. In 1855, Francois-Marie-Uncas Maximilien Bibaud, the son of Michel Bibaud, who had written a history hostile to the Patriots, wrote a piece attacking Garneau, referring to his work as “charlatanism in hist- ory.” This attack could not undermine his growing repu- tation as French Canada’s leading historian. Garneau, with the help of his son, prepared one more edition of the Histoire. It appeared in 1859, polishing the style and adding more documentation. A year later Andrew Bell produced an English translation. Garneau complained that the translation was too free and distorted his work,

François-Xavier Garneau. Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec.

François-Xavier Garneau

Biography

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2236 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

but it remains the version by which Garneau is known to English Canada. Self-taught and extremely conscious of his formal educational deficiencies, Garneau saw the history of French Canada as one of survival against “the Anglo-Saxon race.” His work stood at the time as

a denial of Lord Durham’s sneering remarks about the lack of culture in French Canada. He remains today, for most French-speaking Canadians, the leading French- Canadian author of the nineteenth century and French Canada’s greatest historian.

The Victorian era was fond of graphic illustrations of progress. Here four schoolhouses illustrate the improvements made from the early days of settlement to the 1860s. Such images were intended to show not just that education was available in the early settlements, but also to show how quickly it came into line with that of established communities, evolving from one-room structures to more significant structures. Beyond the buildings themselves, what other elements of these illustrations suggest that progression? Top: two “First Settlers’ School-houses”; bottom left: “Country District School-house”; bottom right: “Village School-house.” From H.Y. Hind, The Dominion of Canada: Containing a Historical Sketch of the Preliminaries and Organization of Confederation (1869).

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224 A History of the Canadian Peoples

audience and market for the arts and culture. Census data from 1861 suggest that more than 90 per cent of the population of Canada West could read, a tribute to the early introduction of free schooling. The figures were lower in Canada East, where over one-third of the popu- lation could not read in 1861, and in the Maritimes, where 22.6 per cent could not read and 32.7 per cent could not write. The 1871 census indicated that only just over 12 per cent of Ontarians could not write; the figure for Quebec was 45.8 per cent and for the Maritimes 23.3 per cent. The data suggest that French Canada remained a much more oral society than English Canada. Naturally, the younger members of society were more literate than their elders, and males in most places were more literate than females. Raw literacy data do not tell us much about how indi- vidual people employed their skills, but combined with increases in the number of libraries and the availability of books and newspapers, the figures suggest a marked increase in the audience for cultural productions.

The Road to Confederation The political problems of the Canadas were the immedi- ate stimulus for Canadian politicians to begin to explore the possibility of a larger union with the east- ern provinces, beginning at the famous Charlottetown Conference of September 1864. Such a solution did not come out of thin air, however. Politicians had dis- cussed the political unification of the provinces of British North America on and off since the days of the Loyalists. Few of the early proposals were very elabor- ate. Most gave no consideration to whether the proposed union would result in an independent national state. Most came from Tories concerned with enhancing the power of the Crown or providing a basis for economic development. By the 1850s, however, particularly in the Canadas, some sense was emerging of “a true Canadian feeling—a feeling of what might be termed Canadian nationality, in contradistinction to a feeling of mere colonial or annexation vassalage,” as the Montreal Pilot put it on 6 April 1850. Sometimes these sentiments were couched in high-flown rhetoric. Often economic

or cultural protectionism dominated the phraseology, but a new Canadian nationalism was growing in power after mid-century. It flourished partly on changing communications technology that made it possible to transmit fast-breaking news across the provinces in moments. The royal tour of Prince Albert in 1860 sug- gested that British North America was already in some senses a political entity.

Neither the bind of the double majority nor the beginning of national sentiment was sufficient, how- ever, to propel British North Americans to national unification. As so often had been the case, events in the United States provided the catalyst. The American federal union broke apart with surprising suddenness in 1861. The southern states seceded into their own Confederacy. The American Civil War began. Many Canadians quietly rooted for the Confederacy despite its maintenance of slavery. Britain adopted an official policy of neutrality. The British watched warily while public opinion in the northern states, whipped up by American newspapers, talked openly of finding com- pensation for the lost Confederacy by annexing British North America.

Britain could hardly leave its North American col- onies unprotected. Defending them at great expense was not something the British faced with relish, how- ever. By the 1860s the British ruling classes believed that colonies like British North America would inevit- ably separate from the mother country. Why not hasten the process and save money? An independent British North America could organize its own defences. In 1864 the military situation in the United States turned more dangerous for British North America, as the Union forces gained clear victories over the Confederacy. In several respects the efforts of the Canadians to create a larger union fitted very well with British desires for reduced colonial responsibility and expense. The full weight of the still considerable influence of the British colonial system came down on the side of unification.

In Canada the difficulty of agreeing to military mobilization was one of the many factors that led George Brown to propose a political coalition with his ene- mies. The understanding rested on a commitment to a British–American federal union. This Great Coalition—a ministry formed by a union of the Conservatives under

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2256 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

The Blackfoot Confederacy, or the Siksikaitsitapi,

lived a nomadic lifestyle bounded by the Great Sand

Hills of Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains.

Buffalo hunters, the Blackfoot were one of a num-

ber of western First Nations who came into contact

with European material culture long before they

encountered a person of European origin. As with

many Plains tribes, the most important of these was

the horse. The horse and other objects of European

origin were adapted to fit into their daily lives.

One of the best ways to see that adaptation is

in the clothing they wore. The Blackfoot made intri-

cately beaded shirts that were intended to show

their accomplishments and prowess. Used to display

identity, the shirts, originally made of hide, sinew,

and other animal materials, eventually began to

incorporate European materials such as beads and

cloth. European tools, like scissors, came to be used

in the construction of these objects, and images of

guns and other trade goods were incorporated in

the quillwork and patterns displayed on the shirts

themselves. Quillwork was incredibly difficult to

produce, and was considered a sacred, female art

among the Blackfoot. The patterns and preparation

of quills required exceptional skill. Some shirts were

also painted, with details of horses captured and

enemies defeated.

The histories of those shirts that survive are

complicated. The one pictured above, for example,

is today a part of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s ethno-

graphic collections. It was given as part of a cloth-

ing exchange to Sir George Simpson of the Hudson’s

Bay Company at Fort Edmonton in 1841. The shirts

sometimes were exchanged for “chiefs’ coats,” often

scarlet cloth coats with lace on cuffs and collars. The

exchange of garments was part of creating diplo-

matic trade and political alliances between groups.

While tensions still arise surrounding the owner-

ship and repatriation of material culture of this type,

collectors and collections like the one at Pitt Rivers

Museum are responsible for the survival of many of

these forms of First Nations heritage. Simpson’s sec-

retary, Edward Hopkins, ended up in possession of

these shirts, and after he took them back to England

in 1870 they were purchased in 1893 by the museum.

Today, these objects are being given new life, informing

groups like the Blackfoot of the skills and traditions of

their ancestors. Modern technology has allowed the

plant materials used for quill dying to be identified. They

have also allowed the Blackfoot to reclaim the history

and narratives of some of their ancestors, as the shirts

serve as a form of document into the owner’s history.

Material Culture

This hide shirt, with its quillwork rondell, was part of the formal attire of the Blackfoot. Worn for ceremonial occasions and in warfare, the shirt displays the honours and history of the wearer. Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1893.67.2.

Blackfoot Shirt

Continued...

Source: Laura Peers, “kaahsinnooniksi Ao’toksisawooyawa: Reconnections with the Historic Blackfoot Shirts,” Pitt Rivers

Museum, http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/blackfootshirts/index.php/about-the-shirts/index.html.

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226 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Macdonald and the Bleus under Cartier, with the Grits led by Brown, announced in the Canadian Parliament on 22 June 1864—broke the political deadlock. The new gov- ernment moved on a variety of fronts over the summer of 1864. Most important was to prepare the outlines of fed- eral union for a conference of Maritime delegates called at Charlottetown in September to discuss Maritime union. The Maritime region contained a good deal of abstract support for unification with Canada, tempered by two realities: any Maritime participation in a larger union must not work to the disadvantage of the provinces, and many felt strongly that the Maritimes were doing pretty well within the existing imperial structure. Historians sympathetic to central Canada have tended to view the Maritime defence of local interests as parochial. Such an interpretation misses the point. One problem with the Canadian initiative was that Canada was so much bigger and more powerful than the other provinces that almost any union would seem more like annexation than con- federation. The Maritimes, moreover, were already part

of a larger political and economic system known as the British Empire. Many Maritimers had travelled on sailing ships to the far corners of the world, and in many ways Maritime voters were far more cosmopolitan than the Canadians. At the time, the case against Confederation was quite reasonable. Unification seemed an impractic- able visionary scheme, proposed by politicians in the Province of Canada to meet their needs. It was not neces- sarily in the best interests of the other colonies.

Considerable ingenuity was required in 1864 to explain to delegates from smaller constituencies how the Canadian proposal really worked to their benefit. The union as finally developed was somewhat different from the one initially proposed. The biggest difference was in the place of the provinces. The Canadians ori- ginally intended to create a strong central government by consolidating all the provincial legislatures (and their powers) into one grand Parliament. This proced- ure of legislative union was how Great Britain had ear- lier incorporated Scotland and Ireland. The Canadians

The Charlottetown Conference, September 1864. Charles Tupper is standing against the pillar on the left and D’Arcy McGee against the pillar second from the left, with George-Étienne Cartier in front of him; seated next to Cartier is John A. Macdonald. George P. Roberts, LAC, C-000733.

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2276 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

granted the need for local governments to deal with local matters. They did not intend those local govern- ments to be fully articulated provincial governments, certainly not provincial governments capable of form- ing a counterweight to the central federal one. Neither Scotland nor Ireland (after union) had separate political administrations based upon legislatures, although both still had local governments. The Maritime delegates at Charlottetown responded to visions of greatness, fuelled by food, drink, and much convivial conversa- tion. They agreed to the Canadian scheme. By the time of the Quebec Conference a month later, many had sober second thoughts.

Prince Edward Island took the lead at Quebec against the Canadian steamroller. The smallest province of British North America, the island had fought annex- ation to Nova Scotia for almost a century. It found it hard to give up its autonomy to proposals that reflected Canadian dominance. When John A. Macdonald moved that the three sections of British North America—Canada West, Canada East, and the four Atlantic provinces— each have 24 members in the Senate, he gave away the game. In the American Senate, each state had two sen- ators regardless of population; in the Canadian Senate, the four smaller provinces would have only one-third of the senators among them. Eventually the Quebec Conference in October 1864 accepted this arrangement, offering Newfoundland an additional four senators. Prince Edward Island also made a big issue—without any success—over getting one more member of the House of Commons than its population allowed (six instead of five). A further and telling debate came over the power of the local governments. The majority case was that Canada’s fundamental principle had always been that “all the pow- ers not given to Local should be reserved to the Federal Government” (quoted in Waite, 1962: 95). But a number of Atlantic delegates were not happy. The subsequent debate over the Quebec resolutions was not over the principle of union but over its terms. While it would be convenient to see the matter of terms as a petty haggling over details, some of the details were fairly important.

Another Canadian principle was legislative sover- eignty. “We the People” would not create this union, as in the United States. Instead, an Act of the British Parliament would create Canada. Conveniently enough, this denial

of popular sovereignty meant that Confederation did not go before the public in the form of an election, a ratifi- cation convention, or a referendum/plebiscite. But at the same time, the union had been worked out totally in a parliamentary context. The public debate on the Quebec resolutions did not always take into account the niceties of political theory. Critics understood the basic thrust of the proposals well enough, however, and the debate did affect their interpretation and ultimate implemen- tation. While the Canadians had initially intended to reduce the provincial governments to municipal pro- portions, both French Canada and the Maritimes made clear that the provinces would have to survive rela- tively intact. The proponents of union in Canada East emphasized that Confederation meant giving French Canadians their own province, with—as the Courrier de St-Hyacinthe put it in September 1864—the two levels of government both “sovereign, each within its jurisdic- tion as clearly defined by the constitution.” An informal adjustment addressed this matter. On the other hand, the opposition fulminated unsuccessfully to the end over the refusal of the proponents of Confederation to take the scheme to the people.

Newspapers, pamphlets, and debates held in the legislatures of each of the provinces discussed the Quebec resolutions. What these demonstrated most of all was the success of the proponents of union in capturing most of the positive ground. Critics could reduce the proposals to rubble, but had little to put in their place. For Canada, the absence of alternatives was particularly striking. The debates also demonstrated that the Quebec resolutions were, on the whole, far more acceptable to Tories than they were to Reformers. Although the debates in the Canadian Parliament were lengthy and long-winded, the ultimate result was approval. The eastern provinces could stand pat, however, and some did. Newfoundland—convinced it would be little more than “the contemptible fag-end of such a compact” with Canada after an election fought on the question in 1869—remained outside Confederation until 1949. Prince Edward Island felt insufficiently com- pensated for “the surrender of a separate Government, with the independent powers it now enjoys.” It would not join until 1873.

The situation in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia was more complex. In the former province, a coalition of

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228 A History of the Canadian Peoples

opponents to union headed by A.J. Smith (1822–83) blew away the pro-Confederation government of Samuel Leonard Tilley (1818–96) in an 1865 election. A year later another election was held against the background of threatened invasion by thousands of Irish nationalists (the Fenians), many of them veterans of the American Union army who had kept their arms when disbanded. The threat was sufficient to return Tilley to office. The new administration moved an address favouring Confederation, not, it must be noted, as embodied in the Quebec resolutions but “upon such terms as will secure

the just rights and interests of New Brunswick, accom- panied with provision for the immediate construction of the Intercolonial Railway.” When this motion carried, opposition disappeared.

In Nova Scotia, which owned one ton of sailing ship for each of its 350,000 inhabitants, there was much con- certed opposition to union. Joseph Howe led the oppon- ents of Confederation. He attacked the union’s Canadian origins from the vantage point of someone perfectly con- tent with the British Empire. Confederation smacked too much of Canadian self-interest. It gave Upper Canada

In Nova Scotia Mr. Howe has organized an active and

formidable opposition to the Union of the Lower Prov-

inces with Canada and although Messrs. Archibald and

McCully who have been the leaders of that opposition

to the present government have co-operated with us

most earnestly and are sustained by the uncommitted

group of that party, yet the great body of the oppos-

ition will unite with Mr. Howe to defeat confederation

and obtain power. On the other hand the Government

have rendered themselves and many of their supporters

extremely unpopular by carrying a measure providing

for the support of education by direct taxation. Many of

the Bankers and most wealthy merchants who formerly

sustained us[,] under the impression that confederation

will injure their position[,] have transferred their support

to Mr. Howe. The financial position of Nova Scotia is in

the most flourishing condition and the opponents of

confederation excite the masses of the people by the

assertion that their taxes will be increased to sustain

the extravagance of a Canadian Government and to

defend the long line of exposed Canadian frontier while

the best interests of the Maratime [sic] Provinces will be

sacrificed by a Government in whose Legislature their

influence will be overborne by numbers. Just at the time

when the friends of confederation were endeavouring

to meet these arguments Mr. Galt proposed a Bill largely

increasing the expenditure and the people of Nova

Scotia are deeply annoyed at finding that the fisheries of

the Maratime [sic] Provinces have been sacrificed by the

adoption of the Canadian policy to issue fishing licenses

to foreigners. Able agitators thus effectively armed

with the means of inflaming the popular mind against

Canada are obtaining numerously signed petitions to the

Imperial Parliament against confederation and there can

be no doubt that an appeal to the people would result in

the reversal of the resolution to the Legislature in favor of

the Union and the defeat of the measure for many years.

Indeed so strong is the feeling against Canada on the

question of the fisheries that I have reason to fear that

any delay in consummating the Union may involve the

members of the Legislature by whose votes a majority

was obtained to sanction the Union memorialising Her

Majesty in opposition to any action being taken thereon

until it has been submitted to the people.

Charles Tupper to Lord Carnarvon, 28 July 1866 Charles Tupper, Premier of Nova Scotia, explains his province’s resistance to union with Canada.

Source: G.P.L. Browne, ed., Documents on the Confederation of British North America (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969), 192–3.

Contemporary Views

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2296 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

rep by pop and Lower Canada provincial autonomy, but offered nothing to Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia legisla- ture never did approve the Quebec resolutions. The gov- ernment, led by Charles Tupper (1821–1915), introduced a motion calling for a “scheme of union” in which “the rights and interests of Nova Scotia” would be ensured (quoted in Pryke, 1979: 27). It passed by a vote of 31 to 19. Unlike their counterparts in New Brunswick, the oppon- ents of Confederation in Nova Scotia did not melt away. They eventually went on to elect full slates of candidates provincially and federally that promised to take Nova Scotia out of the union in which it had become involved.

Although neither Nova Scotia nor New Brunswick ever actually approved the Quebec resolutions—which all but the most ardent unionists recognized would con- sign the smaller provinces to national impotence—the fundamentals laid down at Quebec became the basis of the new Constitution. Small wonder that the region later complained about the deal they had made. In November 1866 delegates from Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick met in London to work out the final details, essentially the Quebec resolutions with more money for the Maritimes and the Intercolonial Railway. All agreed that the name of the new country should be that of its principal progenitor, thus openly declaring the primacy of Canada in the arrangement and causing confusion ever afterwards for students of Canadian history. The resulting legislation, the British North America Act, passed quickly through the British Parliament in 1867. The MPs barely looked up from the order paper as they voted. The Queen signed the bill into law on 29 March 1867, with the date of proclamation 1 July. Governor General Lord Monck (1819–94) called upon John A. Macdonald, the man everyone most closely associated with the union, to be the first Prime Minister.

On the morning of 1 July—a day of celebration and military parades in all four provinces—the new country was proclaimed in the recently completed Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Macdonald received a knighthood. The ceremonial launching of the new nation did not, however, guarantee its success. Much work still would be needed to make Canada an integrated nation.

The road to Confederation was a complex one, with many paths coming together. The British cut British North America free from their mercantile system. The

British North Americans naturally were drawn to the continental economy, and began to build railroads and industrialize. The Province of Canada cast covetous glances westward, where the hold of the Hudson’s Bay Company was weakened by the beginnings of settle- ment. A unified Canada was not only more powerful but also a leader in achieving responsible government and in producing a new imperial relationship. Immigration to British North America continued, producing much mobility, which in turn led to a need for roots. Population growth brought a new cultural infrastructure. By the 1860s, the Canadians were ready to take the lead in cre- ating an expanded nation, which they did against the judgement of many in the Atlantic region.

Although 1 July 1867 would be celebrated a cen- tury later as the date for Canada’s 100th birthday, it was in the larger sense only an interim point. The new union consisted of four provinces—Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—carved from the three that had created it. Sir John A. Macdonald’s gov- ernment was conscious that a lot of British territory on the continent had been excluded. The new government was also quite obviously the old Canadian coalition, with a few Maritime faces added. Its organization was the former Canadian departments. It used buildings erected in Ottawa for the old Province of Canada. If the new administration seemed familiar, so did many of its policies.

Adding New Territory One of the earliest legislative actions of the new Canadian government in December 1867 was the pas- sage of resolutions calling for transcontinental expan- sion. Most of the legislators regarded such expansion as the nation’s inevitable right, a sort of Canadian version of manifest destiny. As a result, in 1868 a ministerial delegation went to London to arrange the Hudson’s Bay Company’s transfer of the Northwest to Canada. While complex negotiations continued, the Canadian government began building a road from Fort Garry to Lake of the Woods. This was part of a proposed road and water system linking Red River with Canada. The road builders established informal connections with Dr John

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230 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Christian Schultz (1840–96), the influential leader of the local faction that had been agitating for Canadian annexation for years. Nobody paid any attention to the Métis who constituted the bulk of the local population of the settlement. The Canadian delegation in London finally worked out a deal for the transfer. The British government received the territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company (the Canadians put up £300,000 and agreed to substantial land grants for the Company) and subsequently transferred it intact to Canada.

Since the arrangements for the West were made without bothering to inform the Red River people of their import, it was hardly surprising that the locals were suspicious and easily roused to protest. The Métis were concerned on several counts. The road-building party had been involved in a number of racist incidents. There was transparent haste on the part of the Canadian government to build a road and to send in men to sur- vey land. This rush suggested that Canadian settlement would inundate the existing population without regard for their “rights.” Canada made clear that it intended to treat the new territory as a colony. Furthermore, some of the road builders bought land cheaply from the Aboriginal peoples—land that the Métis thought was theirs. The Métis quickly perceived the Canadians as a threat to their way of life, perhaps even to their exist- ence. The Canadian government received a number of warnings in 1869 that trouble was brewing. The warn- ings came from the Anglican archbishop of Rupert’s Land, Robert Machray (1831–1904); from the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, William Mactavish (1815–70); and from Bishop Alexandre Taché (1823–94), the Catholic bishop of St Boniface. Ottawa received all such reports with little or no interest. Subsequent events were largely a consequence of avoidable Canadian blun- ders and insensitivities. In colonial thralldom itself until only a few years previously, Canada had little experience in managing imperial expansion. It handled the project very clumsily, and the entire nation would pay dearly for its mistakes.

In October 1869 a leader of the Métis emerged in the person of Louis Riel (1844–85), a member of a leading family in the community. His father, for whom he was named, had successfully led a Métis protest in 1849 against the Hudson’s Bay Company,

which had won the right to trade freely in furs. The young Riel spoke out publicly against the surveys. He then led a party that stood on the surveyors’ chains and ordered them to stop. In the meantime, William McDougall (1822–1905) was on his way from Canada to assume office as lieutenant-governor of the North- West. A newly formed National Committee of the Métis resolved that McDougall should not be allowed to enter the country. The Métis made it clear that they would oppose him by force if necessary. Canada responded to the unrest by refusing to take over the territory until it was pacified. Riel escalated the conflict. In early November he and a large band of armed Métis took possession of Upper Fort Garry, the Hudson’s Bay Company central headquarters. The Métis then invited the anglophone inhabitants of the settlement, most of whom were mixed bloods themselves, to send delegates to meet and co-ordinate policy. Riel managed to get tacit consent for the establishment of a provisional government and approval of a “list of rights.” On 7 December he and his men surrounded Dr Schultz’s store, taking Schultz and 48 Canadians to Fort Garry as prisoners. The next day Riel issued a “Declaration of the People,” announcing a provisional government. He declared that the people of Red River wanted to be allowed to negotiate their own entry into Confederation on the basis of the “rights” already agreed to by the residents. William McDougall made a fool of himself with an illegal proclamation of his gov- ernment—Canada having refused to take possession of the territory—and then returned home.

Louis Riel marshalled his forces brilliantly. A con- vention of 40 representatives, equally divided between the two language groups, debated and approved another “list of rights.” The convention endorsed Riel’s provisional government. It appointed three delegates to go to Ottawa to negotiate with the Macdonald government. So far, so good. But in early March, Thomas Scott, a prisoner who was an Orangeman, got into trouble with Riel and his guards. A Métis court martial condemned Scott to death without offering him a chance to be heard. Riel accepted the sentence, commenting, “We must make Canada respect us.” The “murder” of Scott would have enormous repercussions in Orange Ontario, which was looking desperately for an excuse to condemn the Red River

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2316 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

This letter, dated 6 October 1869, represents the ear-

liest written statement of the Métis case for oppos-

ition to Canada. The letter was probably drafted by

Louis Riel. It claims no authority except “the people

themselves,” meeting in an assembly composed of

two representatives of each parish. The letter claims

“indisputable rights” that are unspecified.

St Boniface, 6 Oct., 1869

Dear Mr Editor,

. . . Several newspapers of Upper and Lower

Canada have freely published their views on what

inconveniences might arise in the organization . . .

[of a territorial government by Canada for Red River].

And now that the Canadian people have heard these

different discussions, would they not be glad to know

what the people of Red River themselves think of all

that? Here it is:

They do not appear to be at all ready to receive a

Canadian governor. A Council chosen and constituted

outside the country cannot hope, we think, to see its

decrees highly respected. One perhaps can judge by

the demonstrations which the Métis population of

Red River has just made. Each parish has elected two

representatives in order that they might pronounce in

its name on the proceedings of the Canadian govern-

ment with respect to the people of Red River, and the

following are the resolutions that these representa-

tives have passed in their first assembly:

1. These representatives declare in the name of the

Métis population of Red River that they are loyal

subjects of Her Majesty the Queen of England.

2. These representatives acknowledge themselves,

in the name of the Métis population of Red

River, beholden to the Honourable Hudson’s Bay

Company for the protection which they have

received under the government of that Company

whatever the nature of that government may have

been.

3. The people of Red River having till now upheld

and supported the government of the Honourable

Hudson’s Bay Company, which has been estab-

lished in the country by the Crown of England,

the said representatives declare, in the name of

the Métis population of Red River, that Snow and

Dennis have disregarded the law of nations in

coming to carry out public work here in the name

of an alien authority without paying any attention

to the authority to-day existing in the country.

4. The Honourable Hudson’s Bay Company being

about to lay down the government of Red River,

the said representatives declare, in the name of the

Métis population of Red River, that they are ready

to submit to that change. But at the same time,

being settled, working and living on the lands

which they have assisted the Company [to open

A Red River Letter

Louis Riel, a carte-de-visite portrait taken in Ottawa following his election as member of Parliament for Provencher, Manitoba, in 1873. Notman Studio, LAC, 1957-049, C-002048.

Continued...

Contemporary Views

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232 A History of the Canadian Peoples

up, the people] of Red River, having acquired in the

above manner [indisputable rights in that country,]

the representatives of the Métis population of Red

River loudly proclaim those rights.

5. The colony of Red River having always been

subject to the Crown of England, and having

developed in isolation, through all the hazards

of its situation, the said representatives declare

in the name of the Métis population of Red River,

that they will do everything necessary to have the

privileges accorded so liberally by the Crown of

England to every English colony respected on

their behalf.

There, Mr Editor, is what we would like to com-

municate to you. And those who take the liberty to

send these things to you will not be the last to ensure

that the rights of the people of Red River may be

respected.

—TWO MÉTIS SETTLERS OF RED RIVER

Source: Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, 28 Oct. 1869, as translated in W.L. Morton, ed., Alexander Begg’s Red River Journal

(Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1956), 411–13. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

This photograph shows Louis Riel at the centre of his provisional government sometime in early 1870. In the top row, left to right, are Bonnet Tromage, Pierre de Lorme, Thomas Bunn, Xavier Page, Baptiste Beauchemin, Baptiste Tournond, and Thomas Spence. In the middle row are Pierre Poitras, John Bruce, Louis Riel, John O’Donoghue, and François Dauphenais. In the front row are Robert O’Lone and Paul Proulx. Although Canada had not annexed Red River in December 1869 as planned, it never admitted that the provisional government was legal. LAC, PA-12854.

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2336 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

In April of 1868, a young man named Charles Mair

headed to Ottawa to see his first book through the

press. He soon fell in with an old friend, Henry J.

Morgan, a clerk in the office of the secretary of state

and author of the 1862 book Sketches of Celebrated

Canadians. Morgan introduced Mair to three other

visitors to Ottawa: George Taylor Denison III, William

Alexander Foster, and Robert Grant Haliburton. All

five men were writers, all were bachelors, and only

Haliburton was over 30. They quickly discovered their

common interests and fell into the habit of spend-

ing the early evening listening to the parliamentary

debates in the House of Commons before returning

to Morgan’s rooms at the Revere Hotel to discuss

public affairs over smokes and drinks. During the

period between 15 April and 20 May 1868, the five

young bachelors formed a secret society later called

“Canada First.” Inspired by the assassination of D’Arcy

McGee, they agreed on the evil of provincialism and

the need to inculcate a new “national spirit.” They

also agreed on the necessity of securing for the new

Dominion the vast territory west of Ontario. Except for

Haliburton, who was from Nova Scotia, the remaining

four were Upper Canadians who were sensitive about

being colonials and who wanted increased Canadian

autonomy under an imperial umbrella.

Like many Canadians of their day, the five young

men also believed in the innate superiority of white

Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Haliburton was one of the

earliest exponents of the notion that Canadians were

the heirs of the Aryan northmen of the Old World.

He told the Montreal Literary Club in March 1869 that

the new Canadian nationality comprised “the Celtic,

the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian elements,” and

embraced “the Celt, the Norman French, the Saxon

and the Swede.” Canada Firsters looked down their

noses at Aboriginal peoples and the Métis. They

saw the French as the great “bar to progress, and

to the extension of a great Anglo-Saxon Dominion

across the Continent,” as the Toronto Globe put it on

4  March 1870. They were utterly contemptuous of

“half-breeds.”

Canada First remained only a debating soci-

ety until the spring of 1870, when it determined to

orchestrate public sentiment to the execution of

Thomas Scott by the provisional government of Red

River headed by Louis Riel. The reaction in Ontario to

Riel before Scott’s death had been fairly quiet, but by

denouncing the execution of Scott, a member of the

Orange Lodge, in editorials planted in leading news-

papers—it was “like putting a match to tinder,” George

Denison later wrote—the Canada Firsters managed to

inflame Protestant Ontario against Louis Riel and his

Métis followers.

In a huge public meeting in Toronto in April,

Canada First introduced three resolutions that were

passed easily. The first endorsed resistance of the

usurpation of power by “the murderer Riel.” The

second advocated decisive measures to suppress the

uprising, and the third declared that it would be gross

injustice to negotiate with emissaries of a govern-

ment who “have robbed, imprisoned and murdered

loyal Canadians, whose only fault was zeal for British

institutions, whose only crime was devotion to the

old flag.” As a result of the Canada First intervention,

negotiations between Ottawa and Red River had to

be conducted unofficially, the military expedition to

Red River was allowed to go forward, and the leaders

of the Red River resistance received no amnesty for

their deeds in 1869–70.

BACkGROUNDER Canada First

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234 A History of the Canadian Peoples

uprising. The three-man delegation from Red River, headed by Abbé Noël Ritchot (1825–1905), gained sub- stantial concessions from the Canadian government. If honoured, they would guarantee some protection for the original inhabitants of Red River against the expected later influx of settlers and land speculators. In what the Canadians always regarded as an act of extortion at the point of a gun, the Métis obtained the Manitoba Act of 1870. This legislation granted provincial status to a Manitoba roughly equivalent to the old Red River settle- ment, with 1.4 million acres (566,580 ha) set aside for the Métis and bilingual services guaranteed. The remainder of the North-West became a territory of Canada. One of its government’s principal tasks was to extinguish Aboriginal title through the negotiation of treaties with the Indigenous peoples. These agreements would open the way for settlement by people of European origin.

In May 1870 the Canadian government sent a so-called peaceful military expedition to Red River. The troops occupied the province for Canada in late August, forcing Riel and his associates to flee for their lives. The Scott execution provided the Canadian govern- ment with the excuse to deny Riel and his lieutenants an official amnesty for all acts committed during the “uprising.” Those who negotiated with Canada always insisted that such an amnesty had been unofficially promised. The result was that Louis Riel went into long- term exile instead of becoming premier of the province he had created. (An amnesty was granted Riel in 1875, on the condition that he be banished from the country for five years.) Whether the government would keep better faith over its land guarantees to the Métis was another matter.

After the postage-stamp province called Manitoba was taken out, the remainder of the territory transferred to Canada by the Hudson’s Bay Company—the North- West Territories—was initially administered under the original legislation passed by the Canadian Parliament in 1869 to deal with the West. It clearly envisioned a region held in colonial tutelage, with both govern- ment and natural resources under the strict control of Canada. The lieutenant-governor of Manitoba also served as lieutenant-governor of the Territories. The tem- porary legislation of 1869 was renewed without change in 1871. Not until 1872 were the Territories actually

given even an appointed council. It consisted of 11 mem- bers, only two of which resided in the region. The other nine lived in or near Winnipeg, and initial meetings of the council were held there. Only in 1905—long after a second rebellion, in 1885—was provincial status finally granted to the Territories, which became Saskatchewan and Alberta.

While the question of Rupert’s Land dragged slowly to its conclusion, the Canadian government was presented with an unexpected (although not totally unsolicited) gift. It consisted of a request from British Columbia—to which Vancouver Island had been joined in 1866—for admission into the new union. The initia- tive from the Pacific colony had originated with the Nova Scotia-born journalist Amor De Cosmos (William Alexander Smith, 1825–97), a member of the colony’s legislative council. As early as March 1867 he had introduced a motion that the British North America Act, then about to be passed by the British Parliament, allow for the eventual admission of British Columbia. Entry into Confederation would introduce responsible government and resolve the colony’s serious financial difficulties, which resulted partly from the interest on debts incurred for road building during the gold rushes. Union with Canada received an additional impetus when—coterminous with the passage of the British North America Act but quite independent of it—the American government purchased Alaska from the Russians. The purchase touched off demands in the American press for the annexation of British Columbia as well. Officially the British notified the colony in November 1867 that no action would be taken on its relationship with Canada until Rupert’s Land had been duly incorporated into the new nation.

Union with Canada was debated by the British Columbia Legislative Council in March 1870. This debate was different from earlier ones in the eastern legislatures, for the British North America Act was already in place and in operation. British Columbia could not hope to influence the shape of Confederation, only to decide whether it would enter the union and upon what terms. The debate was a bit curious. The opponents of Confederation wanted the issues of popu- lar elections (in an elected assembly) and responsible government cleared up in advance of union, while the

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2356 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

pro-confederates—the government party—were quite satisfied with the local status quo.

Negotiations between British Columbia and Canada took place in the late spring of 1870. The Canadians were generous to a fault. Of course, British Columbia

could have responsible government. Of course, the debt would be wiped out. Of course, there would be subsidies and grants, as well as federal support for the naval sta- tion at Esquimalt. And, of course, British Columbia could have a rail link with Canada, to be begun within

Confederation Complete

Document

To-day, British Columbia passed peacefully and, let us add, gracefully into the confederated empire of British North America. Perhaps it would be more proper to put it thus: To-day the confederated empire of British North America stretches to the shores of the Pacific, “whose limpid waters” to quote the poetic language of Mr. J. Spencer Thompson, “leave in baptismal welcome to brow of the new-born Province which forms the last link in the transcontinental chain—the last star in the constellation which is destined hereafter to shine so brightly in the northern hemisphere.” To-day the great scheme of Confederation in British North America may be regarded as practically complete. It is true that two islands of the Atlantic (Prince Edward and Newfoundland) still stand aloof. But Confederation can get on without them much better than they can get on without it. . . . To-day British Columbia and Canada join hands and hearts across the Rocky Mountains, and John Bull the younger stands with one foot on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific—with his back to the North Pole and his face looking southward—how far we will not now venture to predict. Let the larger political union which we celebrate to-day be symbolic of a union of parties, of purpose and of action. Let the people of this Pacific Province accustom themselves to think of the Dominion as a second edition of Great Britain, and let all learn to regard each other as a band of brothers upon whom has devolved the honor and the responsibility of laying the foundations of empire. There is a feeling in the minds of some that the day which celebrates the

nuptials of British Columbia and Canada at the same time celebrates the divorce of the former from the parent empire, and this feeling may tend to damp the enthusi- asm of such as are the subjects of it: and we readily con- fess that, did not ground for the idea exist, we would sympathise with the feeling it is calculated to beget. Not only is there no ground for the idea, but the reverse is actually true. Instead of the union we celebrate weak- ening those bonds which connect us with the parent empire, it will impart additional strength and vitality to them. It will release us from the red tape and seal- ing wax of Downing street, it is true—but then, it will draw us nearer to the throne. It will do more. It will draw together all the peoples of British North America into one common brotherhood and beget a national senti- ment, a sentiment more truly British than would be compatible with isolation and discontent. Let the union we celebrate be suggestive of a drawing together, a har- monizing and a nationalizing of all those sometime discordant elements which have culminated in local faction; and while joining hands with Canada in the grand and patriotic work of building up a second British Empire on this continent, let us join hands among our- selves in a friendly but firm resolve to begin our new pol- itical life a united and harmonious band for the purpose of making British Columbia—what Nature designed her to be—the Queen Province of the Dominion. With one common nationality, one common interest, one object should now actuate every heart and obliterate all those lines created by the factions of the past.

Source: From The British Colonist (Victoria), 20 July 1871

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236 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Source: From The Patriot (Charlottetown), 3 July 1873.

Dominion Day in Charlottetown

Contemporary Views

On Tuesday, whether for weal or woe, Prince Edward

Island became a province of the Dominion of Canada.

At 12 o’clock noon, the Dominion flag was run up on

the flag staffs at Government House and the Colonial

Building, and a salute of 21 guns was fired from

St.  George’s battery and from HMS. Spartan now in

port. The Church and City bells also rang out a lively

peal, and the Volunteers under review at the City Park,

fired a feu de joie. So far as powder and metal could

do it there was for a short time a terrible din. But

among the people who thronged the streets there

was no enthusiasm. A few moments before 12, Mr.

Sheriff Watson stepped forward on the balcony of the

Colonial Building and read the Union Proclamation.

He was accompanied by two ladies and about half a

dozen gentlemen. The audience below within hear-

ing consisted of three persons, and even they did not

appear to be very attentive. After the reading of the

Proclamation was concluded, the gentlemen on the

balcony gave a cheer, but the three persons below—

who like the Tooley street tailors who claimed to be

“the people of England,” at that moment represented

the people of Prince Edward Island,—responded never

a word. Most of the shops in the city were shut, and

a good deal of bunting was displayed. HMS Spartan,

and some of the merchant shipping in the harbor,

were gaily decked with flags. At night the Colonial

and new Post Office Buildings were illuminated, and

presented a fine appearance. A few sky rockets were

also fired off from the top of the latter building about

10 o’clock, with good effect. But  the most beautiful

sight of the day was the illumination of the Spartan,

between 9 1/2 and 10 o’clock. With her ports all lit

up, and various kinds of lights in the rigging, she was

really an object worth looking at. . . .

We have already remarked that there did not

appear to be any enthusiasm among the people.

Probably no effort the Government could have put

forth would have made the celebration of Dominion

Day a grand success, but we beg leave to express the

opinion the arrangements were very lame indeed.

The public were not notified that the Sheriff was to

read the union Proclamation in front of the Building at

12  o’clock, consequently no person was there except

two or three people who happened to be passing by at

the time. Had one of the “able men” been called upon

to prepare an oration for the occasion, and due notice

thereof given there might have been a crowd on Queen

Square to listen to both it and the proclamation. . . .

The great majority of the people of the Island,

it is pretty evident, have accepted Confederation

as a necessity. They did not take up the question

con amore and when the day arrived that the union

was a fait accompli, they had not a cheer to give.

Many of our citizens look upon last night’s illumin-

ation as but the complement of the one which took

place when the Railway Bill was passed. We have a

shrewd suspicion that their view of the case is tol-

erably correct; but now since Confederation is a

fact—since the Island is now part and parcel of the

Dominion, the duty of our people is to make the

best of their position. We are now with the Sister

Provinces in regard to political institutions; let us

perform our part so that we may do more than

merely keep pace with them in the march of intelli-

gence and reform.

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2376 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

Continued...

. . . [A] general election was ordered; Confederation

being the burning question, everyone rampant on

one side or the other; of course the American ele-

ment being against the Union. At this time no dis-

tinct terms had been proposed, but if I recollect

rightly De Cosmos and the colored man Gibbs and

[John Norris] had been to the “Yale Convention”; a

Convention for the purpose of an organization for

Confederation purposes. The Convention was ridi-

culed and lambasted by opponents—the colored

man [Gibbs] having a good share. By the bye I had

been a means of getting the coloured man elected

to the House of Assembly and really he was in some

measure a superior man and very gentlemanly withal.

I think he claimed being a West Indian.

I came out against Confederation distinctly,

chiefly because I thought it premature—partly from

prejudice—and because no suitable terms could be

proposed. The tariff was a sticking point: although

we had at this time a tariff but could change it to suit

ourselves. Our income too would be diminished and

there at this time appeared no means of replenishing

it by the [British] North America Act. Our population

was too small numerically. Moreover it would only be

a confederacy on paper for no means of communi-

cation with the Eastern Provinces existed, without

which no advantage could possibly ensue. Canada

was looked down upon as a poor mean slow people,

who had been very commonly designated North

American chinamen. This character they had achieved

from their necessarily thrifty condition for long years,

and indeed they compared unfavourably with the

Americans and with our American element, for at

this time and previously very many liberal-handed

and better class of Americans resided here, many in

business—some on account of the Civil War neces-

sitating their remaining even after the frightful inter-

necine killing had ceased. Our trade was either with

the U.S. or England—with Canada we had nothing

to do. Of course my being an Anti-confederationist,

led to my being dubbed an Annexationist, but really

I had no idea of annexation, but merely wished the

Colony to be let alone under HM Govt and to fight her

way unhampered. I had nothing whatever to do with

annexation petitions, and do not know who signed

them—tho I have heard that some who now hold or

have held official positions have done so. This peti-

tion doubtless went to the President of the U.S. but

no one has ever been able to see a copy of it since,

altho it is said to exist in Victoria somewhere. There is

no doubt the Americans had a contempt for Canada

and this feeling extended to the colonists.

I suppose the election was one of the fiercest

ever fought in Victoria, everyone seemed crazy, I

among the number—these were the days of great

excitements. I had the British and American elements

and Jewish element on my side and after a time

the election came on. Numberless ladies wore my

colours, red, white and blue, in shape according to

their taste, the men likewise. Ladies were at the win-

dows waving their handkerchiefs, every hack in the

place was frightfully busy. The polling went actively

on, but there were no rows, or if there were, they

were insignificant. Various committees had districts

The Reminiscences of Dr John Sebastian Helmcken In 1892, Dr John Sebastian Helmcken (1824–1920) of British Columbia wrote in manuscript a lengthy collection of his memories. The manuscript ended up in the Provincial Archives of British Columbia in Victoria, and was edited for publication by Dorothy Blakey Smith, appearing in print in 1975. Here Helmcken discusses the election of 1868, fought over the issue of Confederation. His use of what we would regard as racist language was quite common in the nineteenth century.

Contemporary Views

Continued...

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238 A History of the Canadian Peoples

under control; they had to get the voters up and were

responsible therefore. The cry went round that both

sides had a number of voters locked up and were

feeding them with whisky, to get them into proper

trim; altho this accusation was not strictly true, still

voters came to the polling place, where the Courts

of Justice now stand, in files. Notwithstanding all this

there were no rows outside the polling places, the

matter was too serious for this. At length 4 o’clock

struck—the polls closed; everyone tired—thirsty,

hoarse and expectant. The Anti-confederates had

won handsomely. . . .

Source: Reprinted with permission of the Publisher from The Reminiscences of Doctor Sebastian Helmcken by Dorothy

Blakey Smith. © University of British Columbia Press, 1975. All rights reserved by the Publisher.

two years and completed within 15 years. The promise was audacious, although Canada obviously needed a transcontinental railroad to match the lines rapidly being constructed across the United States. The terms were far better than expected, and on 20 July 1871 British Columbia entered Confederation as the sixth province. While in most respects the new province remained isolated until the completion of the rail link in 1885, Confederation encouraged the development of a new land policy for the province. The provincial govern- ment opened its Crown lands to massive pre-emption and free land grants; the largesse of British Columbia would far exceed that of the federal government.

Prince Edward Island’s acceptance of terms in 1873 was almost anticlimactic. The tiny province had tried to survive without much support from the British, who made clear their lack of enthusiasm for a Crown colony. The imperial refusal to pay the salary of the lieutenant-governor was seen as a “confederate screw unfairly put upon us.” Both the Americans and the Canadians actively wooed the island. In the end, it entered Confederation in the wake of a profligate policy of railway construction, which many saw as a scheme to force it into union. As well as offering to take over the debt and the railway, Canada agreed to guarantee continuous communication with the mainland and to help buy out the last of the old landed proprietors. Only one island MLA, the crusty farmer Cornelius Howatt, refused to vote for the Canadian offer.

Unlike Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland was not persuaded to join the union at all. In 1869 Newfoundland held an election fought on the issue of Confederation with Canada. The economy improved in

the period before the election, while the opponents of Confederation employed every argument in their rhet- orical arsenal. These included rumours that Canada would use Newfoundland children as wadding for their cannons. The 1869 election went decisively against the pro-confederates. The island’s Catholics opposed union. In one Catholic area, a pro-confederate candidate was greeted by priest and populace carrying pots of pitch and bags of feathers. The Protestant vote split equally. In the end the election returned nine confederates and 21 antis. The confederates blamed their defeat on the nasty cam- paign tactics of the opposition, but Newfoundland’s union with Canada was not a matter of high priority for anyone. Both the British and Canadian governments acquiesced in Newfoundland’s continued autonomy—despite spor- adic union discussions as in 1887 and 1895—until 1949.

While adding new territory, the Canadian gov- ernment also had to pacify Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This was especially true of Nova Scotia, where pledged anti-confederates took both federal and provincial seats in the election that accompan- ied union. The British government refused to allow reconsideration of the initial decision to join Canada, chiefly on the grounds that such important political actions should not be taken at the whim of local elec- torates. The leading anti, Joseph Howe, eventually accepted that there was no alternative to accepting confederation. In February 1869 Howe ran as a pro- confederate in a federal election in Hants County, which was hotly contested. He won with a comfortable majority and headed off to Ottawa, joining the federal cabinet within weeks. In some ways this grudging acquiescence in a situation with which he did not

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2396 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

agree may have been the most important political act of his career.

By 1873 Canada as a nation stretched from east coast to west coast, but not from the American border to the Arctic. Early in 1874, however, the British government received inquiries about the ownership of the Arctic Islands in Cumberland Gulf. Uncertain about its claim to sovereignty, the Colonial Office decided to transfer the land of the Arctic Islands to Canada, providing Canada was “prepared to assume the responsibility of exercis- ing surveillance over it as may be necessary to prevent the occurrence of lawless acts or other abuses.” The Hudson’s Bay Company denied that it had ever claimed the territory, and so had not sold it to Canada in 1870. The government of Alexander Mackenzie told Britain in November of 1874 that it was “desirous” of assuming Arctic responsibility, but wanted more information. The

documents relating to the transfer were finally tabled in the Canadian House of Commons in 1878, and a joint address to the Queen from the Canadian Senate and House of Commons accepted the transfer, but asked for an imperial Act of Parliament with precise details about the boundaries. Still uncertain about title, the British were not anxious for imperial legislation, and Canada ultimately agreed to an Order-in-Council, which stated that as of 1 September 1880 all British territory in the North, except Newfoundland and its dependencies, was “annexed to and form part of the . . . Dominion of Canada.” The Canadian government was not told about the British reservations over title, and would not learn of them for another 40 years. On the other hand, during the years after 1880 Canada did not do much to exer- cise sovereignty over the vast region of the North it had apparently acquired.

Quebec

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Canada in 1873.

901491_06_Ch06.indd 239 12/18/15 3:53 PM

240 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The Development of National Policies As well as completing the creation of a transcontinental nation, the Macdonald government gradually impro- vised some national policies with which to govern the new Dominion. Confederation was encouraging to foreign investment. From its inception, Canada was able to import large amounts of capital to help create its infrastructure. Between 1865 and 1869 Canada raised $16.5 million in Great Britain, a figure that rose to $96.4 million in 1870–4, $74.7 million in 1875–9, and $69.8 million in 1880–4.

The government obtained some recognition of Canadian diplomatic autonomy by its acquiescence to the Treaty of Washington in 1871. Outstanding issues with the Americans included the Alabama claims. The Alabama was a Confederate raider built in Britain for the southern states. The Americans, half-seriously, demanded the ces- sion of British-American territory in compensation for the losses it inflicted on northern shipping. In 1871 the British government made Macdonald a member of an inter- national joint commission set up in 1870 to deal with the fisheries question. The British made clear they were will- ing to surrender Canadian interests in the fisheries to set- tle outstanding Anglo–American differences. Macdonald signed the resulting treaty. On the domestic front, the banking system of the new nation grew rapidly from 123 chartered bank branches in 1869 to 279 in 1879 and 426 by 1890. Two major pieces of national legislation were the Dominion Notes Act of 1870 and the Bank Act of 1871. The former allowed the government to issue circulating notes of small denominations, only partly backed by spe- cie. The latter exerted control over the banking system. The Bank Act specified capital requirements for banks, prohibited new foreign-owned banks, and supplied gen- eral regulation. Canada accepted the international gold standard, but the government would share the issuance of currency (and the control of the creation of money) with the banks until well into the twentieth century.

One of the major new developments of the Macdonald government was a new federal system of justice for the new nation commensurate with Confederation’s div- ision of the administration of justice between federal

and provincial governments. It began in 1868 with the establishment of a Department of Justice, creating the post of Minister of Justice to administer it as well as an Attorney General; the Minister of Justice was given the task of reviewing provincial legislation and the attorney general the supervision of the criminal law. Other reno- vations to the administration of justice followed. The creation of a national penitentiary system also began in 1868, with the enactment of a statute that envisioned a prison system where punishment and deterrence were meted out through discipline and rewards (Swainger, 2000). The Canadian government established the North- West Mounted Police in 1873 to act as its quasi-military agent in the West. It modelled the NWMP on the Irish constabulary. Its officers, drawn from the elites of eastern Canada, believed in a notion of public stability that asso- ciated crime and violence with the “lower orders” and the Aboriginal peoples. The Mounties kept ahead of settle- ment and have always been seen as the chief instruments of a more peaceful process of western expansion than occurred in the neighbouring United States. Certainly, in Canada there was less overt violence, but this was often owing to the early exertion of state power and control.

Much capital would be invested in railways. The opportunity for railway expansion was one of the prin- cipal arguments for Confederation. Railways were a prime target of foreign investors. The Macdonald gov- ernment was slow to move on a transcontinental line, chiefly because of the enormous expense involved in building so far ahead of population needs. To some extent, the offer to British Columbia cast the die. There followed an unseemly scuffling over a charter, awarded in 1873 by Parliament to the Canada Pacific Railway Company of Sir Hugh Allan (1810–82). Then the Pacific Scandal broke. Allan had provided the government with money for its 1872 election campaign. Macdonald was unable to steer totally clear of the corrupt dealings. In November 1873 the government resigned. Replacing it was a Liberal government headed by a Scottish-born former stonemason, Alexander Mackenzie (1822–92). He sought to build a transcontinental line more grad- ually, using public funds. He also encouraged private interests to hook up with American western lines. Trains began running from Minnesota to Winnipeg late in 1878.

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2416 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

Born in London, Upper Canada, to evangelical Angli- can parents from Northern Ireland, Edward Blake (1833–1912) attended Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto (BA, 1854), where he developed a reputation for fierce intellectuality and intensely hard work. These would combine with a moral rigidity to disable him frequently in later life. Becoming a lawyer specializing in equity, he became highly successful and wealthy at an early age; he was lecturing in equity at the University of Toronto before his thirtieth birthday. A conscience-driven Anglican, he was soon sought after as a politician, winning both provincial and federal seats in the first elections after Confederation. In 1869 he introduced into the Ontario legislature motions oppos- ing change to the British North America Act without

consultation with the provinces, an early statement of provincial rights.

In 1871 he became Premier of Ontario, but in 1872 was forced to decide between federal and provincial politics when dual representation was abolished. He chose the Dominion, and began a curious federal career of refusing to take on positions of responsibility that he desperately wanted, beginning with the leadership of the Reform Party in March 1873. His problem was continual nervous collapse, brought about by overwork and personal anxiety—contemporaries said he suffered from neurasthenia—exacerbated by aggravation at not being offered positions he thought he deserved because of concerns about his instability. Given his extreme ego, this was a recipe for trouble. During the 1870s he consorted with the Canada First movement and was a firm opponent of Louis Riel, but he would tempor- ize on Riel in 1885–6. In 1874 he made an unsuccess- ful attempt to replace Alexander Mackenzie as Prime Minister, following up with a notorious speech at Aurora, Ontario, which staked out his political creed, including expanded suffrage, imperial federation, and Senate reform. In 1875 he became Minister of Justice, subsequently declining the appointment as first Chief Justice of the newly created Supreme Court. He resigned his post in 1877 because of ill health, returning to pol- itics in 1880 as leader of the Liberal Party. As leader he dealt unsuccessfully with the discontent of Catholics and French Canadians, continually threatening resig- nation until finally stepping down in June 1887. Out of office, he became a firm opponent of the unrestricted reciprocity that captured many Liberals at this time. In 1892 he unexpectedly removed himself from Canadian politics by accepting a seat in the British Parliament as an Irish Nationalist, serving until 1907. Blake’s weak- nesses were many, and could not be overcome by sheer intelligence and hard work.

Edward Blake. LAC, D #20738, Ewing, C-30444.

(Dominick) Edward Blake

Biography

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242 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Mackenzie’s government was also largely respon- sible for the initial funding of western railway construc- tion. It gave the railway companies large land grants along the right of way. Although Canada developed a seemingly generous homestead policy by which pioneers could receive free land grants in return for developing the land, the generosity was deceptive. Almost no homestead land was available within easy access to the rail lines. Most early settlers ended up purchasing their land, either from the railways or from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Mackenzie’s government had a number of posi- tive achievements to its credit. It resolved the Louis Riel question in 1875 by granting the Métis leader an amnesty, conditional on his residence in exile for five years. It established the Supreme Court of Canada that same year, and subsequently created the office of the Auditor General. But the real importance of the Mackenzie government was its demonstration that the nation could be governed without serious upheaval by another political party with different policies from the one led by Sir John A. Macdonald. Mackenzie was a man without charisma, however, and many critics thought he spent too much energy micromanaging the budget.

The probity of his government did not save Alexander Mackenzie in 1878. Sir John A. Macdonald returned to power. Recognizing the temper of the times, Macdonald worked hard to restore in the public mind a sense of identification between his party and the pro- cess of nation-building. Decisiveness and flamboyance were part of the image. Even before the election was called, Macdonald had his platform. He introduced into the House of Commons a resolution “That this House is of the opinion that the welfare of Canada requires the adoption of a National Policy, which, by a judicious readjustment of the Tariff, will benefit and foster the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing, and other interests of this Dominion” (quoted in Easterbrook and Watkins, 1962: 238). The Tory leader invented neither the policy nor the term used to describe it. Both went well back into the history of the Province of Canada, which had begun using a tariff as an instrument of both protection and revenue in the late 1840s. Nor did John A. Macdonald ever articulate the version of the National Policy as it was later lovingly described by economic historians and textbook writers. But he certainly rec-

ognized some relationship involving tariffs, manufac- turing, employment, and national prosperity. He also wanted a transcontinental railway and the accompany- ing western settlement necessary to make it a reality. All these features had been and remained a traditional part of Canadian economic expansionism.

What Macdonald achieved was masterful in its own way. He succeeded in persuading a large number of Canadians in all provinces that policies strongly driven by the economic self-interest of some of the people in some of its constituent parts were in the best interest of the nation as a whole. He then persuaded the electorate that his party was the one that had successfully built the nation and would continue to do so. The fact that the opposition party took the lead in developing a dif- ferent and less overt version of nation-building helped in this identification.

The responsibility for immigration policy had been divided between the Dominion and the provinces by the British North America Act. Both the Macdonald governments and the Mackenzie government sought to develop federal supremacy over immigration policy, in large measure to make possible the rapid settlement of the West. The Dominion also began to set rules indi- cating which immigrants would be acceptable. The fed- eral Parliament passed its first immigration legislation in 1869 and, in 1872, prohibited the entry of criminals and other “vicious classes.” That same year Parliament passed the Dominion Lands Act, which created home- steading privileges on western lands. The Dominion then began extensive advertising in Europe for new settlers. While the Canadian government discouraged the Métis from settling in concentrated blocks of land, in the mid-1870s it negotiated with several European groups, including the Mennonites and the Icelanders, for group settlement in Manitoba.

The first successful arrangements for block settle- ment were conducted by the Canadian government with Russian Mennonites beginning in 1872 and 1873. These Mennonites were European Quakers commit- ted to pacifism who had originated in Prussia and Poland in the sixteenth century. They were driven out of their homes by threats of military conscription in Frederick the Great’s Prussia, finding an asylum in Russia, where Catherine II offered them generous

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2436 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

conditions of resettlement, including land, freedom of religion, their own schools, and permanent exemption from military service. By 1870s the Mennonites were again threatened, this time by a rising Russian nation- alism that resented a people set apart. The Canadian government offered inducements similar to the earlier Russian ones: exemption from military service, reli- gious liberty, control of education, free homesteads of 160 acres, and the right to purchase additional land at one dollar per acre. Canada set aside two blocks of townships for the Mennonites in southern Manitoba. One block of eight townships was on the east side of the Red River southwest of Winnipeg, and another block of twelve townships (“The West Reserve”) was located along the international boundary west of the Red River. The blocks of reserves signalled to the Mennonites that they could live in their own com- munities (and hold land in common) apart from their neighbours; about 8,000 Mennonites settled in 1874 in southern Manitoba.

In 1879, a federal Order-in-Council prohibited the entrance of paupers and destitute immigrants. Not long afterwards, the government began to admit large numbers of Chinese immigrants (over 15,000), approximately half of them as labourers on the trans- continental railroad. In 1882, a public response to Russian pogroms led to the admission of a contin- gent of 247 Jews leaving London for Manitoba and the North-West to establish a “New Jerusalem” in what would become Saskatchewan. They did not receive land until 1884, by which time their numbers had been greatly reduced, and the settlement soon failed. By the early 1880s demands for further restrictions on the number of immigrants surfaced in Canada, particu- larly of those outside previous Canadian experience regarded as “unassimilable.” Sir John A. Macdonald told the House of Commons in 1883 that “It will be all very well to exclude Chinese labour, when we can replace it with white labour, but until that is done, it is better to have Chinese labour than no labour at all” (quoted in Magocsi, 1999: 359). As soon as the rail- road was completed, Macdonald gave in to pressures from British Columbia and elsewhere to deal with the Chinese, who were blamed for a variety of social and economic evils. A Royal Commission on Chinese

immigration in 1885 recommended restrictions on the number of Chinese workers, and Macdonald instituted a head tax of $50 on every Chinese person entering the country. His legislation also restricted the number of Chinese people who could be carried on individual vessels entering Canadian ports. (On 22 June 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to the Chinese community for this policy, which con- tinued until 1923.) The federal legislation was added to numerous provincial statutes (especially in British Columbia) to limit the rights of the Chinese in Canada.

The Quest for Regional and National Identity The British North America Act had no guarantees that political unification would necessarily create a nation. After 1867 Canadians made various attempts to locate themselves in their world. Some of these attempts were political and constitutional. Others were cultural, with intellectuals and artists playing their part by providing rhetorical flourishes as well as creating national institu- tions in which the arts could operate.

The development of nationhood in the years after 1867 did not mean that all Canadians shared in the same vision (or version) of the meaning of the nation. One of the major questions was whether Canada was an indissoluble new creation or the product of a compact among the provinces that they could modify or even leave. Since the time of the debate over Confederation in the 1860s, people had disagreed over the nature of the union. While most Canadians in 1867 saw the British North America Act as creating a strong cen- tral government, provincial legislatures still existed. They would quickly assert more than the merely local power accorded them by the Quebec resolutions. One of the arch-critics of Confederation, Christopher Dunkin (1812–81), had prophesied in 1865 that “In the times to come, when men shall begin to feel strongly on those questions that appeal to national preferences, prejudi- ces and passions, all talk of your new nationality will

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244 A History of the Canadian Peoples

People from Iceland had been coming to Canada from

the early 1870s, prompted by both volcanic eruptions

and grassland shortages in their homeland and a gen-

eral population excess pressing on available resources.

The first arrivals had come to Ontario and Quebec, but

were attracted west by promises from the Canadian

government of an autonomous settlement in the

west. The land they chose was on the west side of

Lake Winnipeg, about 15 miles wide and 40 miles long

stretching from present-day Selkirk to Hecla Island and

including the modern community of Gimli. This territory

was beyond the then northern boundary of the prov-

ince of Manitoba, and the newcomers were allowed

autonomous settlement, “the Republic of New Iceland,”

with its own laws and judicial system. The Canadian

government accepted a provisional council (“Thing”) set

up by the  Icelanders, and allowed them to produce a

fully articulated system of self-government. This entity

became part of Manitoba when the boundaries  of the

province were expanded in 1881, but self-govern-

ment remained until 1887. Although the territory the

Icelanders chose was good for fishing on Lake Winnipeg,

it contained some of the poorest agricultural land in the

region. The Icelanders were struck by epidemic disease

and spring flooding, and in the later 1870s a religious

dispute emerged as well. Many moved to the United

States or to Winnipeg. Most who remained made a living

by fishing. Icelanders were generally well-educated and

committed to preservation of their language. Schools

and newspapers were established in New Iceland within

months of settlement, and the community over the next

half-century would produce a number of poets, journal-

ists, and writers who employed the Icelandic language

before the area was absorbed gradually into Manitoba.

BACkGROUNDER The Republic of New Iceland

Many Icelanders who settled in Manitoba hoped to make a living through agriculture, but due to flooding and disease, as well as settlement on marginal land for farming, most were unsuccessful. Archives of Manitoba, New Iceland 312 (N11314).

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2456 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

sound but strangely. Some older nationality will then be found to hold the first place in most people’s hearts” (quoted in Waite, 1963: 511). Even Sir John A. Macdonald had admitted in Parliament in 1868 that “a conflict may, ere long, arise between the Dominion and the States Rights people” (quoted in Cook, 1969a: 10).

Ontario initially spearheaded the provincial-rights interpretation of the new union. The seeds of this interpretation were inherent in the constitutional arrangements, and the movement could have begun anywhere. As early as 1869 Ontario became distressed at “the assumption by the Parliament of Canada of the power to disturb the financial relations established by the British North America Act (1867), as between Canada and the several provinces” (quoted in Cook, 1969a: 11). Not surprisingly, the old Reform Party of Canada West, in the persons of George Brown, Edward Blake (1833–1912), and Oliver Mowat (1820–1903), took the lead. They demanded—in Blake’s phrase of 1871—“that each government [Dominion and provin- cial] shall be absolutely independent of the other in its management of its own affairs” (quoted in Cook, 1969a: 13). The Rouges of Quebec soon joined in the same call, adding the identification of French-Canadian “national” rights to Ontario’s “provincial” ones. Before long, Liberals in most provinces—many of whom had either opposed Confederation or been lukewarm about it—had embraced provincial rights.

Provincial rights often seemed interchangeable with Ottawa-bashing for local political advantage, lacking in any other principle than the desire to pres- sure Ottawa into fiscal concessions. In its early years, Quebec did not dominate the movement. There was little insistence that Confederation was a cultural deal between two distinct societies. In 1884, for example, the Honourable Honoré Mercier (1840–94) tabled reso- lutions in the Quebec legislature stating merely that “the frequent encroachments of the Federal Parliament upon the prerogatives of the Provinces are a permanent menace to the latter” (quoted in Cook, 1969a: 31). The ensuing debate involved no more cultural nationalism than one backbencher’s assertion that “le Québec n’est pas une province comme les autres” (quoted in Cook, 1969a: 33). Although the Riel affair of 1885 (discussed

later in this chapter) pushed Quebec towards the brink of arguments of cultural distinctiveness, when Mercier (by this time Premier of Quebec) invited the provinces to the Interprovincial Conference in 1887 to re-examine the federal compact, broad agreement could be reached on demands for better terms and constitutional change by the five provinces attending without the need for such concepts.

Provincial rights involved on one level a political- constitutional struggle over revenue and power. On another level they were a reflection of the continued iden- tification of the people of Canada with their province of residence as much as, if not more than, with their nation. The educational structure of Canada certainly encour- aged this identification. In all provinces education passed from private to public financial support at the same time that schooling became increasingly universal. However, section 92 of the British North America Act left educa- tion completely in the hands of the provinces. It is almost impossible to talk about any integrated national move- ments. Indeed, education would become one of the most divisive issues in the new nation. A major question was whether provinces would have a single public school sys- tem for all students or would support separate religious (and linguistic) education as well. Educational divers- ity was still the norm after Confederation. There were, at best, provincial educational systems and norms, not national ones.

Although a sense of nationalism was beginning to develop, it did not pose a serious challenge to provincial loyalties. The movement calling itself Canada First, for example, did not have a program that was particularly attractive outside Protestant circles in Ontario. Canada First was an exclusive secret society rather than a broad-based organization. It did not help that its vision of Canada was really that of Canada West writ larger. While Canada First’s notions were compatible, to some extent, with the westward thrust of Canada West, they were, fortunately, not totally typical of the conscious development of Canadian nationalism. The French- Canadian poet Octave Crémazie (1827–79), for example, lamented ironically that Canada’s major literary lan- guages were entirely of European origin. He continued: “if we spoke Huron or Iroquois, the works of our writ-

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246 A History of the Canadian Peoples

ers would attract the attention of the old world. . . . One would be overwhelmed by a novel or a poem translated from the Iroquois, while one does not take the trouble to read a book written in French by a native of Quebec or Montreal” (quoted in Rasporich, 1969: 225). The search for an essential “Canadian-ness” went on in many cor- ners of the new Dominion. It was nowhere so success- ful as in the somewhat remote New Brunswick town of Fredericton, home of the University of New Brunswick. There the rectory of St Anne’s Parish (Anglican) pro- duced Charles G.D. Roberts (1860–1943), while not far down the road lived his cousin Bliss Carman (1861–1929). Along with Ottawa’s Archibald Lampman (1861–99) and Duncan Campbell Scott (1862–1947), these men comprised the first school of Canadian poets, designated “Confederation Poets” by modern literary critics. Roberts, Lampman, Carman, and Scott brought Canadian themes into their writing, notably the local or regional landscape, with some degree of skill and sensitivity. As Crémazie had suggested, however, the European origins of their literary influences limited their efforts.

While many intellectuals and artists sought ways to articulate Canadian-ness in their work, others took a more prosaic route towards the realization of a Canadian national identity. Curiously enough, it was the paint- ers, not normally known for their political acuity, who took the lead in organizing national groups to main- tain professional standards and publicize Canadian achievement. The Ontario Society of Artists, formed in 1872 and incorporated in 1877, was at the forefront of this effort. The OSA was instrumental in the formation of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1880—in collaboration with the Governor General, Lord Lorne (1845–1914)—and in the establishment that same year of the National Gallery of Canada. One of the founders of this organization wrote, “We are bound to try to civil- ize the Dominion a little” (quoted in Williamson, 1970: 64). The year 1880 was doubly important in art circles, for in that year the Canadian Society of Graphic Art was also founded.

The first president of the Royal Canadian Academy, the painter Lucius O’Brien (1832–99), was art director of an elaborate literary and artistic celebration of the young nation. Picturesque Canada (1882) was based on

the highly successful books Picturesque America and Picturesque Europe. It was the idea of two Americans, the Belden brothers, who had established themselves in Toronto. The editor of the project—George Monro Grant (1835–1902), principal of Queen’s University— stated in the preface: “I believed that a work that would represent its characteristic scenery and history and life of its people would not only make us better known to ourselves and to strangers, but would also stimu- late national sentiment and contribute to the rightful development of the nation.” The two large volumes of Picturesque Canada—which can sometimes be found in second-hand bookshops—contain 540 illustrations. They included wood engravings based on paintings and, for the West, photo engravings of photographs that offered serene vistas fulfilling the promise of the title. The descriptive texts by Grant, Charles G.D. Roberts, and others presented an idealized, complacent view of the cities, towns, and regions of Canada, praising the present and pointing to a glorious future.

The Royal Society of Canada was founded in 1882 to promote research and learning in the arts and sciences. Lord Lorne again provided much of the impetus, replicating a British institution to establish the importance of cultural accomplishments in creating a sense of national pride and self-confidence. The first president, J.W. Dawson (1820–99), principal of McGill University (another Nova Scotian transported to cen- tral Canada), emphasized in his presidential address a sense of national purpose. Dawson stressed especially “the establishment of a bond of union between the scat- tered workers now widely separated in different parts of the Dominion” (quoted in Royal Society of Canada, 1932: 91–2). Thomas Sterry Hunt (1826–92), a charter member and later president, observed that “The occa- sion which brings us together is one which should mark a new departure in the intellectual history of Canada” (Royal Society of Canada, 1932: 91–2). He added that “the brightest glories and the most enduring honours of a country are those which come from its thinkers and its scholars” (Royal Society of Canada, 1932: 91–2). However romantic that praise might sound, what mat- tered was Hunt’s emphasis on the country as a whole. Like the Royal Canadian Academy, the Royal Society had its headquarters in Ottawa.

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2476 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

Religion and the Churches The mid-Victorian period was a crucial era for Roman Catholicism in Canada. Within French Canada the per- iod witnessed the emergence of the Church as the lead- ing voice of French Canada’s national aspirations and the assumption of local leadership by the curé. It also saw the Church take on the ultramontane character that would remain with it for many years. In Quebec, the man who symbolized the ultramontane Church in the mid-Victorian period was Bishop Ignace Bourget (1799–1885). Bourget was consecrated coadjutor to the Bishop of Montreal in early 1837, on the very eve of rebellion, and succeeded to the see in 1840. He died in June 1885, on the eve of the second Riel uprising, although he had retired a few years earlier. Bourget was always an active defender of both the papacy and the position of the Church in Canada. He introduced the Roman liturgy and fervently opposed the principles of the European revolutions of 1848. Gradually, he became the leading opponent of liberal thinking in the prov- ince, particularly as it was represented by the Institut Canadien in Montreal. Bourget carried on a lengthy bat- tle against the Institut and especially its library, which contained many prohibited books. Equally important was his expansion of the ecclesiastical administrations of his diocese, so that nearly every parish had a priest and nearly half the priests had an assistant. The clergy were now able to mobilize public opinion, and they did in 1868 when they helped raise 507 Zouaves in Quebec (and over $100,000 to support them) to serve in the papal army. Quebec bishops strongly supported the doctrine of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870.

English-speaking Catholicism had succeeded by 1840 in separating itself from francophone control. At about the same time, the hierarchy had also re-established its control over the laity, which had previously assumed con- siderable autonomy in the absence of local bishops and clergy. Anglophone bishops from the Maritime region were among those who attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the issue of papal infallibility from being decided at the Vatican Council. Contemporaries often overlooked the importance of Anglophone Catholicism in the nineteenth century.

Only in Canada West/Ontario were Protestants in such a clear numerical ascendency and position of power that the regional culture assumed obvious Protestant dimensions. This Ontario culture, especially as it expanded westward onto the prairies, began to be confused with Canadian cul- ture in some circles.

By 1840 Protestantism everywhere in British North America had largely cut itself free from its foreign origins in either Great Britain or the United States. The major development of the mid-Victorian period, notably in an Ontario where Protestantism emerged as a distinct and all-embracing culture, was the construction of a broad alliance among the major denominations: Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist. The gradual elimination of the major points of public friction between the estab- lished churches and the dissenters made this possible. The result was a Victorian Protestant culture in Ontario that emphasized the relationship between social stabil- ity and Protestant morality. A firm belief in God and his millennium formed the basis for the latter. Gradual social change was progressive, offering a way of under- standing the events and changes that swirled around the individual in the Victorian era. The moral code was strict, but chiefly voluntary and individualistic.

The churches, especially the Protestant ones, were also a key to the growth of a vast network of clubs, soci- eties, and charities. By the mid-nineteenth century women members were implicitly challenging the male governance of the churches. Evangelically oriented churches frequently employed their ladies auxiliary groups to sponsor missionary activity. By 1885 there were 120 Baptist Women’s Missionary Aid Societies scattered across the Maritimes. Women generally used their own money to support their religious organizations, which kept separate accounts and offered many women their first opportunity at independent administration.

Cultural Life The creation of the nation did not directly affect all aspects of cultural life. Indeed, most culture in Canada existed quite apart from political considerations. Despite their new self-consciousness about the need for cultural achievements to match their political accomplishments,

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248 A History of the Canadian Peoples

most Canadians probably did not appreciate how much progress was being made in many cultural spheres. Only a brief sampling of cultural activity in Victorian Canada—focusing on painting, theatre, music, organ- ized sports, and literature—can be included here.

Painting was the most vibrant and productive of the arts in the era immediately after Confederation, with many artists producing large numbers of canvases, some of them key works in the history of Canadian painting. The beginning of the period coincided roughly with the end of a tradition of landscape painting that had become dominant partly in response to the developing quest for national identity and the topographical beauties of the new country that were still being discovered. Lucius O’Brien (1832–99) and John A. Fraser (1838–98) were two of numerous painters who travelled west in 1880 at the invitation of the Canadian Pacific Railway to paint the Rockies. O’Brien’s most famous painting, however, is Sunrise on the Saguenay (1880). It is a remarkable depic- tion of the sublime in nature, while in its poetic, moody treatment of the romantic scene it is also an outstand- ing Canadian example of a style, popular in the United States, that came to be called “luminism.” This paint- ing was hung in the inaugural exhibition of the Royal Academy, of which O’Brien was the first president, and deposited in the new National Gallery of Canada.

Homer Watson (1855–1936) and his friend Horatio Walker (1858–1936) both came to concentrate on Canadian landscapes that romanticized rural scenes. Oscar Wilde, after seeing Watson’s work in Toronto, called him “the Canadian Constable.” In fairness to Watson, he was no imitator, since at the time he had never heard of Constable. Walker, who was born in Listowel, Canada West, wintered in New York and summered on the Île d’Orléans just north of Quebec in the St Lawrence. He specialized, with great commercial success, in strik- ing, sentimentalized interpretations of Quebec farm life in the style of the French painter Jean-François Millet. Walker himself described his preoccupations:

The pastoral life of the people of our country- side, the noble work of the Habitant, the mag- nificent panoramas which surround him, the different aspects of our seasons, the calm of our mornings and the serenity of our even-

ings, the movement of ebb and flow of our tides which I have observed on the shores of my island which is truly the sacred temple of the muses and a gift of the gods to men: such are the preferred subjects of my paintings. I have passed the greatest part of my life in trying to paint the poetry, the easy joys, the hard daily work of rural life, the sylvan beauty in which is spent the peaceable life of the habitant, the ges- ture of the wood cutter and the ploughman, the bright colours of sunrise and sunset, the song of the cock, the daily tasks of the farmyard, all the activity which goes on from morning to evening, in the neighbourhood of the barn. (Quoted in Harper, 1966: 204)

By 1880 young Canadian painters sought to study in the academies of Paris, the centre of the art world of the time. There they learned to paint large, richly detailed, subtly coloured, naturalistic canvases fea- turing the human figure and sentimental subtexts. Robert Harris’s studies of everyday life were exem- plars of this approach. They included: The Chorister (1880), showing a young man singing in a church choir; Harmony (1886), a portrait of a young woman (his wife) playing the harmonium, a popular musical instrument in rural Canada; and A Meeting of the School Trustees (1885), in which a young Prince Edward Island teacher, identified as Kate Henderson, doubtless with “new- fangled ideas,” faces the suspicious gazes of four male trustees.

Perhaps the most important development in Canadian theatre in this period was the extension of railroad con- struction, which would make possible extensive touring across the nation by theatrical and vaudeville companies. By the 1880s, most Canadian cities could look forward to visits by professional performers, which undoubtedly raised the standard of presentation and provided models worthy of emulation. At the same time, the arrival of pro- fessionals and the raising of standards could be damag- ing to local amateurs, who had previously dominated the theatrical scene and occasionally even produced home- grown plays and musicals.

Although only a few trained musicians existed in British North America, the mid-Victorian era saw the

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2496 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

development of a widespread musical life. Garrison bands and choral groups were the chief components. In British Columbia the band of the Royal Engineers brought new standards of musical performance when it arrived in the colony in 1859. From that year until 1863 (when it was reposted to Britain) it entertained as militia band, fire-brigade band, brass band, and even a dance band. In British Columbia, as elsewhere, brass bands were the most common and popular instrumental ensembles throughout the nineteenth century. Few band musicians were professional or professionally trained. A number of brass bands were organized in the province in Aboriginal communities and residential schools. At least 33 sprang to life between 1864 (when the Oblates

founded the St Mary’s Mission Band near Mission City) and the end of the century. In Red River, a brass band from St Boniface played as the Métis provisional gov- ernment raised its new flag in December 1869.

By the time of Confederation, larger cities were producing substantial numbers of musical societies, chiefly choral in their orientation. In 1864, for example, the Mendelssohn Choir and the Société Musicale des Montagnards Canadiens, as well as Les Orphéonistes de Montréal, joined the Montreal Oratorio Society. Montreal also helped produce the first well-known Canadian composer, Calixa Lavallée (1842–91), best known today for the music to “O Canada.” He made his debut at the piano in Montreal at age 13, spending much

Luminism was a North American style that focused on detail and emphasized the striking vistas of the continent. The vastness of the natural landscape compared to the human element of the boats, especially when compared to the growing industrial cities of Europe, made Canada seem wild and vast. “Sunrise on the Saguenay,” oil on canvas, 1880, by Lucius O’Brien. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo © National Gallery of Canada, 113.

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250 A History of the Canadian Peoples

time in the United States until he went to Paris in 1873. Returning to settle in Quebec, Lavallée wrote a grand cantata for the reception of Governor General Lord Lorne and his wife. It concluded with a stirring contrapuntal arrangement of “God Save the Queen” and “Comin’ thro’ the Rye.” Unable to make a living in Canada, the com- poser spent the last years of his life in exile in the United States. Although Canada was not often generous to its professional musicians, it embraced amateur musical performance with gusto. Most music-making occurred in the home, with people gathering around the piano to sing hymns and popular songs of the day.

The mid-Victorian period in Canada saw a continued development of organized sports and games. Most were imported, although some (like lacrosse) had local ori- gins. Lacrosse had begun as an Aboriginal game called baggataway or tewaarathon, and was played by many tribes under various rules. In 1833 the First Nations near Montreal played lacrosse, and in 1856 the Montreal Lacrosse Club was organized, to be joined by two others before 1860. A Montreal dentist, William George Beers (1843–1900), codified the game in Montreal and pro- moted it across the country. Lacrosse flourished between 1868 and 1885, achieving great success as a spectator

“A Meeting of the School Trustees,” oil on canvas, 1885, by Robert Harris. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Here the artist captures the dynamic of many a school district in Canada in this period. Purchased 1886, #6. Photo © National Gallery of Canada, 6 R.

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2516 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

sport until it was overtaken by baseball and hockey. Snowshoeing, which became very popular as an organ- ized winter activity in the 1860s (often among the sum- mer lacrosse crowd), was another obviously Aboriginal development. The Montreal Snow Shoe Club was organ- ized in 1843, and in Winnipeg a snowshoe club, begun in 1878, was the major winter diversion for members of the city’s elite by the early 1880s.

The formulation of rules for these and other sports occurred in most cases between 1840 and 1880, which was the great era of codification of sports. Precise dates are very contentious, with many communities advan- cing their own claims for “firsts.” Certainly by 1880 most sports and games familiar to us today had reached a stage of rule development that would have made them comprehensible to a modern Canadian. What is import- ant about the development of sports is not simply the introduction of standardized rules, techniques, and equipment, but the sheer scope and ubiquity of sporting activity on the part of both participants and spectators. While many Canadians participated, many more gath- ered to watch sporting activity. The development of any of the major games followed roughly the same path of regularization, which made it possible for teams from one place to play teams from another.

By 1885 two aspects of sports in Canada had evolved: participation and spectacle. Sports still had not achieved an overt political meaning. There was not yet the creation of either national leagues or national teams to play in international competitions. Expansion, sophistication, and growing organization matched the development of the nation. The mobility of the population moved vari- ous sports and games around the country and made the standardization of rules both possible and necessary. The development of official rules and growing hierarch- ies of teams and players pointed to the future.

The Struggle for the West Sincere efforts were made in the new Dominion to encourage a sense of nationhood transcending the lin- guistic barriers between French and English and the

geographical barriers of the provinces and the regions. Nevertheless, the new Canadian nationality remained fragile, more than a bit artificial, and very racist. In addition, at least outside French Canada, it tended to express the prejudices and values of British Ontario. The crucible for the new Canada, many believed, was in the vast expanse of territory west of the Great Lakes. Here its limitations were most clearly evident.

The interests of the Canadian government in the North-West Territories, especially under Sir John A. Macdonald, were focused on agricultural settle- ment. This would provide both an outlet for excess eastern population and the means of encouraging the development of a truly transcontinental nation. The process of settlement and government policy pushed the Aboriginal inhabitants of the region out of the way as quickly as possible. The federal government con- tinued the pre-Confederation policy of the Canadas by establishing an Indian Department and insisting on the rule of law in its westward expansion and in its dealings with the Native peoples. Foremost in the rule-of-law approach were the creation of the North- West Mounted Police and the working out of treaties with the First Nations that extinguished Aboriginal claims to the land as first inhabitants in exchange for reserves on the most marginal and least attractive land. Eleven “numbered” treaties were negotiated between 1871 and 1930, the first five of which were land ces- sion agreements covering most of the Canadian West, except for British Columbia. As well as reserves, the Aboriginals received cash money, allowances for blan- kets and tools, seed and livestock, and the right to hunt on land not otherwise used by Canadians. The govern- ment’s hope was to convert the First Peoples into set- tled farmers, and its rhetoric featured an insistence on its humanitarianism and paternalism, under which a good deal of racism and prejudice flourished. As one Indian Commissioner wrote in 1887, the government was engaged in “the slow and tedious work of uplifting a savage race and eradicating the nomadic and other inherent tendencies which centuries of a wild and barbarous life have firmly planted” (quoted in Titley, 2009: 207). While the Aboriginal people might eventu- ally aspire (with Canadian government assistance) to full citizenship by assuming all the characteristics of

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252 A History of the Canadian Peoples

the European colonizers, in the meantime they would be denied full citizenship and given a special inferior status experienced by no other Canadians.

Administration of the treaties and of Dominion “Indian policy” in the West left a good deal to be desired. The Aboriginal peoples were obviously caught in an inexorable process that was going to change forever their traditional way of life. The buffalo were rapidly dis- appearing, the victims of overhunting and of the arrival of settlement and new technology. Most Aboriginal leaders saw the handwriting on the wall clearly enough. They did not get anywhere near enough help from the Department of Indian Affairs, however. The government expected the Aboriginals to be able to become self-suffi- cient virtually overnight. It did not supply the reserves with enough food to prevent starvation and disease, and it complained when the Natives slaughtered their live- stock for something to eat. The reserve land tended to be marginal, the assistance supplied was inadequate—

often for financial reasons—and the attitude of many of the government’s Indian agents was unsympathetic. By the early 1880s, the North-West was a virtual pow- der keg of Aboriginal discontent. Cree leaders in what is now Alberta sent a letter to John A. Macdonald (who was Minister of the Interior and head of Indian Affairs as well as Prime Minister) complaining of destitution and noting that the motto of their people was: “If we must die by violence let us do it quickly.” The winter of 1883–4 was particularly harsh and severe, and many were starving. Some Indian agents wrote to Ottawa, but noth- ing was done. In June 1884, Big Bear and his followers, with many others, travelled to Poundmaker’s reserve to hold a big meeting. They discussed the serious state of affairs, after which some 2,000 Aboriginals held a Thirst Dance, a religious ritual.

Like the First Nations, settlement drove the Métis to the margins. By 1885 Ontario-born settlers outnumbered the Métis five to one in Manitoba, and only 7 per cent of

Caughnawaga (Kahnawake) Mohawks, lacrosse champions of Canada, 1869; photo by James Inglis. This photograph makes clear that Aboriginals were skilled and successful lacrosse players. James Inglis, LAC, C-001959.

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2536 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

the population of the province was of mixed-blood origin. Many Métis drifted farther west, to the Saskatchewan Valley, where they formed small mission settlements including Qu’Appelle, Batoche, and Duck Lake. The buf- falo were becoming scarce everywhere. Government sur- veyors caused uncertainty and fear, as they had in Red River a decade earlier. Over the harsh winter of 1883–4, many Métis and Aboriginals starved. The Métis turned in despair to Louis Riel. He had apparently put his life back together after years of exile in the United States and hos- pitalization for mental disturbance in 1876–8 at Longue Pointe, Quebec. He became an American citizen and was teaching in St Peter’s, Montana (where he had married), when a delegation from the Saskatchewan country vis- ited him on 4 June 1884. They told him of the grievances that were burdening the peoples of the region, explained that agitation was developing against the Canadian gov-

ernment, and pleaded with him to return to Canada to lead them. Why Riel agreed to do so is one of the many mysteries surrounding his life. However, within a month he and his family were in Batoche. By December 1884, Riel and W.H. Jackson (secretary of the Settlers’ Union) had finished drafting a long petition (with 25 sections), which they sent to Ottawa. It concluded by request- ing that the petitioners “be allowed as in [1870] to send Delegates to Ottawa with their Bill of rights; whereby an understanding may be arrived at as to their entry into confederation, with the constitution of a free province.” Ottawa acknowledged the petition, but gave no other response.

In March 1885 events took a menacing turn. Riel’s military leader, Gabriel Dumont (1836–1906), inter- cepted a small NWMP detachment near Duck Lake. The engagement turned into a full-fledged battle in which

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The numbered treaties, 1871–1921. Adapted from J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian–White Relations in Canada, rev. edn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 166.

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254 A History of the Canadian Peoples

fatalities occurred on both sides. Riel called upon the First Nations to assist him, and there were incidents of Aboriginal violence connected less to Riel’s resistance than to younger warriors’ discontent with conditions. Poundmaker’s people broke into buildings in Battleford, terrifying settlers. The Cree warrior, Wandering Spirit (Kapapamahchakwew, c. 1845–85), one of Big Bear’s war chiefs, led a band that attacked Frog Lake, killing nine. Prime Minister Macdonald determined to crush this rebellion quickly, sending an armed force under Major General Frederick Dobson Middleton (1825–98) by way of the new Canadian Pacific Railway. The Canadian force of 800 men arrived at Batoche on 9 May. They quickly defeated Riel and about 200 Métis. The upris- ing was over by 12 May. Dumont and others fled to the United States. The government arrested Riel. In order to achieve this result, the Canadian government had mustered “5,546 soldiers in three columns, 586 horses, 2 Gatling Guns, 6,000 Snider Enfield, 50 calibre rifles, 2 field hospitals, 70,000 Gatling Gun rounds, 1,500,000 rifle cartridges and 2,000 cannon shells,” at a cost of $4,451,584.38 (Barnholden, 2009: 13).

A formal charge of high treason, carrying the death penalty, was laid against Riel on 6 July. (Despite the fact that Riel was an American citizen, the Canadian gov- ernment held with the British government that he was also a British subject, since British citizenship acquired through birth could never be renounced.) Even if Riel was a foreign national, however, he could still be tried for treason. The government chose to focus responsibil- ity for the rebellion on Riel, which would allow leniency towards most of his followers. The trial began on 28 July in Regina, where feelings ran high. It was a political trial, infamously coloured in many ways by Macdonald’s determination to have Riel found guilty and executed.

Riel passionately denied a plea of insanity intro- duced by his lawyers, realizing that to be declared insane (i.e., not responsible for his actions) would dev- astate his reputation and impugn his honour. The six- man jury (operating under the law of the North-West Territories) found him guilty but recommended mercy. It is not clear whether the jury brought in the mercy rec- ommendation because it felt Riel’s resistance was par- tially justified or because it did not really believe that he was responsible for his behaviour. In any case, because

the charge was high treason, a guilty verdict brought a mandatory death sentence. The Canadian government could have heeded the jury’s recommendations, but refused to do so. Ottawa dismissed two appeals, and Riel was hanged at Regina on 16 November.

If Riel was treated without sympathy by the Canadian government, the punishments meted out to the First Nations, who were regarded as having joined Riel’s resistance rather than acting on their own initia- tive, proved to be equally severe. The Macdonald gov- ernment used the occasion of the rebellion and the violence committed by the leaders of the First Nations to crush the Aboriginal protests against the failure to observe the negotiated treaties. Eight warriors, includ- ing Wandering Spirit, were executed in late November of 1885, and before the courts were finished more than 50 others had been sentenced to imprisonment. Among the leaders, Poundmaker stood trial for treason and was sentenced to three years in prison. Released after a year, he died four months later. Big Bear received a sim- ilar sentence, but was released after a year and a half because of poor health and died soon after. The trials were most improper, conducted without full translation against people who understood little English and less of the law being employed. Few were properly represented in court. Most First Nations leaders and people tried to remain clear of the Métis uprising, but this did not save them from a subsequent campaign of repression by Assistant Indian Commissioner Hayter Reed, who argued that the rebellion had abrogated the treaties and who introduced a series of policies that made the First Nations totally dependent on the largesse of Canada.

The execution of Louis Riel had a lasting impact on Canada. In Quebec it strengthened French-Canadian nationalism and helped turn voters away from the Conservative Party, which they had supported since Confederation. On 22 November 1885, at a huge gather- ing in the public square in Montreal called the Champ de Mars, Honoré Mercier, the Liberal leader in Quebec, joined Wilfrid Laurier in denouncing the government action. Mercier insisted: “In killing Riel, Sir John has not only struck at the heart of our race but especially at the cause of justice and humanity which . . . demanded mercy for the prisoner of Regina, our poor friend of the North- West.” Laurier added: “Had I been born on the banks of

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2556 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

The fact that little is known of Big Bear’s lineage— his parents were probably Salteaux but he became a leader among the Cree—tells us much about the fluid- ity among First Peoples on the Canadian Plains in the nineteenth century. Big Bear (c. 1825–88) was appar- ently brought up in a “homeguard” family near Fort Carlton in present-day central Saskatchewan, later moving as a chief to reside near Fort Pitt. Around 1870 he moved south to the Plains, and reportedly partici- pated in the last major Aboriginal battle in the region at Belly River (near present-day Lethbridge, Alberta) in October of that year. He was one of the few chiefs who rejected friendly overtures from the Canadian govern- ment in the 1870s, suspecting that the next step would be peace treaties in which the First Nations would surrender land and end up on reserves. Regarded as a troublemaker, he did not attend the negotiations for Treaty Six in August 1876, and was the first important chief to refuse to sign a treaty. Increasing numbers of dissident warriors joined him over the next few years as the number of buffalo coming north decreased, and then, after 1879, disappeared from the region. Still resistant, Big Bear and his people moved to Montana and hunted the remaining buffalo until late in 1882, when Big Bear capitulated and signed Treaty Six in return for food. For the next several years, he argued with Indian Department officials before host- ing a Thirst Dance, a ritual explicitly forbidden by

the Canadian government, at Poundmaker’s reserve in April 1884. Several thousand First Nations war- riors gathered, many later confronting the RCMP and nearly provoking an open battle. Big Bear made clear in August of 1884 that he wanted the signed treaties revised and renegotiated by one chief speaking for all the tribes. That same month he met with Louis Riel. But the government paid little attention.

When news of a Métis victory at Duck Lake reached the First Nations camped at Frog Lake, Big Bear’s son, Ayimasis (Little Bad Man), and the war leader Wandering Spirit emptied the Catholic church and despite Big Bear’s shouts of “Stop! Stop!” killed most of the worshippers and priests present. The subsequent trial (for treason-felony) was told that Big Bear had said afterwards, “it is not my doings and the young men won’t listen, and I am very sorry for what has been done.” Others testified that the warriors paid no attention to Big Bear. The judge instructed the jury of six that the old chief could be called innocent only if he had removed himself from the band when it rose up in violence. The jury took 15 minutes to bring in a sentence of guilty, with a recommendation for mercy. Big Bear was sentenced to three years in the Stony Mountain prison near Winnipeg, dying shortly after his release in 1887, probably of tuberculosis. He was one of the last of the traditional chiefs to oppose European civilization, but despite his conviction and jail sentence, he had not done so with guns.

Big Bear (Mistahimaskwa)

Biography

the Saskatchewan . . . I would myself have shouldered a musket to fight against the neglect of governments and the shameless greed of speculators.” The two leaders dis- agreed over Mercier’s proposal that French Canadians leave the two major parties and form one of their own. Laurier insisted that Mercier’s proposal would destroy Confederation. Symbolically, French Canada took the execution of Riel to represent the final exclusion of the

francophone from the West. Few spoke of the symbolic meaning for the Aboriginal peoples of the shearing of Big Bear’s long hair when he was in captivity, or of the execution of Wandering Spirit.

The military defeat of the Métis, the humiliation of the First Nations, and the public execution of Louis Riel in November 1885 were only part of the reason why that year and that month were so significant, not only

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256 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Canada in 1882.

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2576 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

in the history of the West but in the history of Canada. In November 1885 workers drove the last spike at Craigellachie in eastern British Columbia, marking the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The CPR had been resurrected in 1881 as a hybrid corporation controlled by private capitalists and financed largely by the state, which, along with public subsidies, gave it about 25 million acres (10,117,500 ha) of land along its right of way. Contemporaries actively debated the

question of building in advance of settlement, particu- larly given the inducements needed to persuade hard- headed businessmen to proceed with construction. The Macdonald government defended the railway on the grounds of national interest. Since this concept is not measurable in dollar amounts, it is impossible to know whether the price was too high. Even before the line was completed, Macdonald used it to send troops west to help suppress the Métis uprising of 1885.

I have reason to be thankful to see His Excellency and

since this [treaty] medal was put on my neck from the

Great Mother I am thankful—& all my tribe—to see the

Great Mother’s representative here that I will speak

for her as I speak for my children. I am a poor man

and now will express my views on this subject, but

as I look round I do not see anything I could live by. I

see nothing, all that I used to live on has gone. Where

I used to get my [living] was the animal the buffalo,

and also I had horses, now the buffalo and the horses

have left me. I say with that I am a poor man.

You may have seen the poverty of the land as

regards the animal—that was my hunting ground. I

used to find them all I wanted. Now it is a solitary wil-

derness. I find nothing there, when I look at all this I

see but one thing left, that is to work the ground. I am

too old to work but I think of my children & grandchil-

dren they may learn.

The first thing [we want] is some strength, i.e.,

farm implements & cattle—these are necessary. If we

don’t progress faster than in the past years, we shall

move very shortly and my Grandchildren will not see

it for we walk very slowly now. Why I say this is that

the crops we have raised the half was spoilt as sick-

ness came on us and my people could not work. I

remember right on the treaty it was said that if any

famine or trouble came the Government would see

to us and help. My trouble arose from partly star-

vation and sickness. The remedy I ask for now. We

want nets, we want guns. I ask for these only for liv-

ing. There is another thing we lack. When I take a flail

to thrash I lose part of my wheat. I want a thrash-

ing machine. A thrasher and a reaper and the power

to work them. There is no end to my losses. I loose

[lose] in the thrashing. I have miles sometimes to go

through the snow to have my grain ground, and I am

only about to bring back a handful. I make no doubt

that his Excellency will sympathize with us, that he

will open his heart towards the trouble of his Indian

Children. What we want is speedy help on my farms. I

have no more to say. I wish to be remembered to the

Great Mother & to the Princess and please remember

me in the cold winter days & give me covering for my

women and children.

“All That I Used to Live on Has Gone” At a meeting with the visiting Governor General of Canada, the Marquess of Lorne, at Fort Carlton in 1881, Chief Ahtahkakoop of the Plains Cree addressed Lord Lorne.

Source: “Report of the Marquis of Lorne’s Trip,” quoted in Deanna Christensen, Ahtahkakoop: The Epic Account of a Plains Cree Head Chief, His People, and Their Struggle for Survival 1816–1896 (Shell Lake, Sask.: Ahtahkakoop Publishing, 2000), 422–3.

Contemporary Views

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258 A History of the Canadian Peoples

With rumours of armed trouble rife across western

Canada, a contingent of militia from Winnipeg was

mustered and ordered west before the encounter

at Duck Lake near Prince Albert, where a column of

Mounties and special constables were badly beaten

by a force of Métis commanded by Gabriel Dumont.

After Duck Lake, Major General Frederick Middleton,

arriving in Winnipeg via American rail lines, left the city

with the 90th Rifles, 260 strong and badly equipped.

The railroad got the troops only as far as Qu’Appelle,

whence they marched north to Fort Qu’Appelle to

practise firing rifles before heading further north

to Batoche, a village on the east bank of the South

Saskatchewan River, where Middleton had decided to

confront the Métis.

The troops made about 25 miles a day under

adverse conditions. It was over 200 miles from the

end of the railway line to the Métis strongholds,

and so the CPR played very little active role in the

campaign. By 24 April they had made Fish Creek

and found signs of smouldering Métis campfires in

a ravine between bluffs. The troops suffered heavy

casualties from a crossfire from Métis sharpshoot-

ers, who disappeared into the bush of a ravine and

withdrew as their ammunition ran out. Middleton

camped on the site of this first battle for 12 days,

waiting for reinforcements from eastern Canada and

a detachment manning a Gatling gun.

The village of Batoche was a scattered settlement

of houses and outbuildings on both sides of the river,

connected by a ferry operated on a cable. On 5 May

the paddlewheel steamer the Northcote arrived on

the river and was ambushed by the sharpshooters,

then damaged severely when its smokestacks hit the

ferry cable. Middleton had 800 men, most of them in-

fantry but including about 100 horsemen. He also had

four field guns and the Gatling gun. Gabriel Dumont

later estimated he had 200 effectives (Métis), and per-

haps 200 Aboriginal warriors to fight with him. Louis

Riel and Dumont disagreed over tactics. Riel prayed

for divine assistance, while Dumont dug into rifle pits

across a two-mile front.

The initial encounters impressed General Middle-

ton, but he was afraid to fall back because he doubted

his inexperienced troops could sustain their discipline

in retreat. The Canadians held their ground, con-

structing a little fort of wagons in the midst of the

prairie. Middleton wanted a decisive victory and was

prepared, if necessary, to starve out Batoche. He or-

dered his troops to fire away, but did not yet order an

assault. Finally Middleton ordered a battle plan for 12

May. He would attack the village from two sides, using

mounted troops from the north and the infantry from

the south. The men on horseback were to be the feint,

the infantry assault the major attack. The feint went

well, but the infantry attack did not occur, apparent-

ly because the order to advance had not reached

Colonel van Straubenzie, the officer in charge.

In the meantime Middleton had met emis-

saries from Riel, asking him to stop shelling the

BACkGROUNDER The Battle of Batoche

The construction of the CPR was a spectacular feat of engineering, partly thanks to the managerial skills of William Van Horne (1843–1915). The CPR was built chiefly on the backs of 6,500 Chinese coolie labourers especially imported for the job. Many died, and those who survived

were summarily discharged when the work was com- pleted. With the CPR finished, the Canadian government moved swiftly to limit Chinese immigration. With the Plains peoples and their Métis allies totally subjugated, Canada was open for settlement from coast to coast.

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2596 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

Conclusion

By the 1860s the united province of Canada was ready to take the lead in creating an expanded nation. The two Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova

Scotia were reluctantly joined to the new union (with Prince Edward Island soon following suit), and United Canada itself became the two provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Now Canada began casting covetous glances westward, and over the next few years pro- duced a transcontinental nation. The West was to be

Saskatchewan River

‘A’ Company 90th

Gun Batteries

10th

‘C’ Company 90th

‘D’ Company 90th

Camp

Boulton ’ s Scouts

Intelligence

C orps

‘E’ ‘F’

Indian Camp

V illage of B A TOCHE

Metis Fi r e Position

Me tis

Fi r e P

osi tio

n

Me tis

Fi r e P

osi tio

n

Metis Fi r e Position

Metis Fi r e Position

BATOCHE

Fought 12 May 1885

‘B’ Company

MIDLANDERS

Battle of Batoche. The battle took place over several days, and included several different stages. What does this map/ diagram tell us about the battle? Source: Bruce Tascona and Eric Wells, Little Black Devils: A History of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles (Winnipeg: n.p., 1983), 50). Courtesy of The Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

houses harbouring women and children. Middleton

responded by telling them to gather the women and

children in a house marked with a white flag, which

would not be shelled. But he would not negotiate

and would only accept unconditional surrender. It

was never clear who gave the infantry the order to

advance, but once the order was given the troops

quickly overran the rifle pits and headed for the vil-

lage. The battle was over within half an hour. Batoche

was taken and the resistance melted away.

On this last day the army lost five  dead  and  25

wounded, while the Métis casualties were never count-

ed. Mounted riders quickly brought the  news  of the

victory back to the telegraph lines and then east to

a victory-starved Canada. The army soon rounded

up the Aboriginals who were independently fighting

the settlers, the NWMP, and the Canadian military. The

Last Stand of the Aboriginal West had ended.

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260 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Big Bear (centre) trading at Fort Pitt, an HBC post on the North Saskatchewan River, 1884. In the same year the post was taken over by the North-West Mounted Police. In April 1885, in the course of the uprising, Big Bear’s band attacked the fort, which they evacuated and then burned. O.B. Buell, LAC, PA-118768.

Riel in the prisoner’s box. He addressed the court twice during his trial, once after all the evidence had been presented (when he spoke for more than an hour) and once before sentence was pronounced. O.B. Buell, LAC, 1966-094, C-001879.

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2616 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

A CPR construction crew laying track at Malakwa, BC, early 1880s. This photo does not show any of the Chinese workers who laboured on this project. This was likely an intentional decision. LAC, C-001602.

The first transcontinental passenger train arrives at the foot of Howe Street in Vancouver, 23 May 1887. These trains were not the only way to access the Pacific coast. Notice that the station has been built right up to the harbour and the development that runs along the shore. City of Vancouver Archives, LGN 460.

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262 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Confederation and the Canadian Senate

One of the curious features about Canadian Confed- eration is that it has generated virtually no historiog- raphy. A handful of books and articles appeared during the Centennial years of the 1960s, but those were mainly interested in explaining how a bunch of disparate col- onies had managed to achieve unification rather than exploring historical questions in any depth. There was much learned discussion of the federal principle. After this spate of material there was virtual silence until Christopher Moore’s 1997 study, 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal. This strange history helps to explain, as Moore observed, why the existing studies failed to address usefully issues of current interest. One of those questions is: why is the Canadian Senate so useless? The simple answer is: because the Fathers designed it that way. Why they did so is a rather more complicated and interesting business.

The delegates to the Quebec Conference met on Monday, 10 October 1864, in the second-floor library of the Legislative Council. The conference continued a dia- logue begun at Charlottetown a month earlier between representatives of Canada and those of the Maritime provinces of British America, with a view to unification. The dialogue was in some ways unequal. The Canadians met regularly in caucus and planned their moves in con- cert. The average Maritime delegates had no such organ- izational support. As a result, the Maritimers were often simply overwhelmed—or bullied—into agreement by the force of Canadian prior agreement, perhaps chivvied along a bit by champagne and rich dinners. According to PEI’s Edward Palmer, “for the first few days, the lead- ing delegates of the lower provinces exhibited caution and vigilance upon every question affecting the inter- ests of these provinces.” But after the Senate debate, compromise in favour of Confederation was much more common. Many thought Charlottetown had resolved the broad outlines of a scheme to establish a new nation; all that remained were the details. But these details were

not easily agreed upon. The biggest problem faced by the delegates was the disparity in size between Canada and the lower provinces, even when the latter were combined. Maritimers understandably feared being swallowed up by the behemoth. To assuage Maritime concerns, Canada had conceded at the outset that it would forgo its preference for a single elected legisla- ture to form a two-tiered (or bicameral) structure, with an upper house formed on principles more favourable to the Maritimes.

On 16 October John A. Macdonald introduced the Canadian proposal for the Senate, offering sectional equality among Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes combined into one unit. The Maritimers seemed to accept unification, but argued for more senators. As Andrew Macdonald of PEI insisted, if there was to be representation by population in the elected chamber, “the upper house should be more responsible of the smaller provinces, as it was to be the guardian of their rights and privileges.” He proposed that each province should have an equal number of representatives, as was the case in the American Senate. Why Macdonald’s proposal did not win more favour from the Maritimes contingent is not clear, Instead, Canada proposed addi- tional seats if Newfoundland joined the union. After several more days of debate, the delegates unanimously agreed that senators would be appointed for life by the federal government. As Christopher Moore observes, such a method of appointment would assure that the Senate would not be a powerful independent body. And such, it turned out, was exactly the point. In the 1850s most provinces had toyed with the idea of an elective upper house—Canada had even accepted one in 1856. But most British Americans were still fascinated by the concept of responsible government, and responsible government could not work properly if both houses of a bicameral legislature were equally powerful. Money bills had to originate in the House of Commons. The

Historiography

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2636 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

Bolger, Francis. Prince Edward Island and Confederation, 1863–1873. Charlottetown, 1964. The standard study.

Bradbury, Bettina. Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal. Toronto, 1993. An exciting work on early industrialization in Montreal from the twin perspectives of women and the working classes.

Buckner, P.A. The Transition to Responsible Government: British Policy in British North America 1815–59. Westport, Conn., 1985. Now the standard study, based on detailed research and elegantly argued.

Bumsted, J.M. The Red River Rebellion. Winnipeg, 1996. A revisionist account.

Courville, Serge, and Normand Séguin. Rural Life in Nineteenth-Century Quebec. Ottawa, 1989. A middle- level synthesis of an important topic.

Curtis, Bruce. Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836–1871. Sussex and London, 1988. A revisionist work that argues the importance of edu- cational policy for state formation in this period.

Daschuk, James. Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. Regina, 2014. A controversial study arguing that the First

Nations were deliberately starved in the West in the 1870s and 1880s.

Gagan, David. Hopeful Travellers: Families, Land, and Social Change in Mid-Victorian Peel County, Canada West. Toronto, 1981. The product of a huge quantifi- cation project, this book attempts to explain the rela- tionship between land and mobility in rural English Canada.

Galbraith, John S. The Hudson’s Bay Company as an Imperial Factor.Toronto, 1957. The classic statement of the imperial role of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the nineteenth century.

Grant, Shelagh D. Polar Imperative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America.Vancouver, 2010.

Greer, Allan, and Ian Radforth, eds. Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Canada. Toronto, 1992. A collection of essays informed by inter- national thinking about the nineteenth-century state.

Hodgetts, J.E. Pioneer Public Service: An Administrative History of the United Canadas, 1841–1867. Toronto, 1955. A pioneer work decades ahead of its time.

Katz, Michael. The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City.

delegates could accept an upper house of “sober second thoughts,” but not a strong Senate.

As George Brown argued in Toronto shortly after Quebec, he doubted whether “two elective chambers, both representing the people and both claiming control over the public finances,” could possibly work in con-

tinual harmony. There was considerable agreement— indeed virtual unanimity—at Quebec that the demands of responsible government could only be met by con- structing a weak Senate, and such was what the Fathers of Confederation put together, however strange a legis- lative body resulted from their efforts.

Short Bibliography

an anglophone colony of Canada. Not only were First Nations, Métis, and Chinese cast aside as quickly as possible, but French Canadians were not expected to settle there in any substantial numbers. National con- solidation was arguably complete in 1885, but much Canadian “nationalism” still bore the distinctive mark

of the Ontario WASP. Two cultures, French and English, were in firm opposition to each other, and other cul- tures were thoroughly marginalized. Trying to satisfy the nation’s two main components would continue to be the most challenging task facing the Canadian gov- ernment for many years.

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264 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Cambridge, Mass., 1975. The first attempt to apply American quantitative methodology on a large scale to a Canadian subject.

Lewis, Robert. Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850 to 1930. Baltimore, 2000. A study from a geographer’s perspective of the growth of industrial Montreal.

Lucas, Sir Charles, ed. Lord Durham’s Report on the Affairs of British North America, 3 vols. Oxford, 1912; reprinted New York, 1970. The scholarly edition of the complete Durham Report.

Masters, D.C. The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. Ottawa, 1963. Still the standard account of this important treaty.

Metcalfe, Alan. Canada Learns to Play: The Emergence of Organized Sport 1807–1911. Toronto, 1987. An important work that documents the development in Canada of organized sport in the nineteenth century.

Monet, Jacques. The Last Cannon Shot: A Study of French-Canadian Nationalism. Toronto, 1969. The classic study of the emergence of nationalism, under the watchful eye of the Church, in Lower Canada/ Canada East.

Pryke, Kenneth. Nova Scotia and Confederation 1864– 1873. Toronto, 1979. The standard account.

Saddlemyer, Ann, ed. Early Stages: Theatre in Ontario 1800–1914. Toronto, 1990. A collection of pioneering essays that demonstrate how much is to be learned about Canadian culture in the nineteenth century if one chooses to look.

Shelton, W. George, ed. British Columbia and Confed- eration. Victoria, 1967. A useful collection of essays.

Shippee, L.B. Canadian–American Relations 1849–1874. New Haven, 1939. Still the best overall study of the topic.

Tucker, Gilbert. The Canadian Commercial Revolution 1845–1851. Ottawa, 1970. The most useful survey of this question.

Waite, Peter B. The Life and Times of Confederation, 1864–1867: Politics, Newspapers, and the Union of British North America. Toronto, 1962. Still the best account of the central period of unification.

Winks, Robin. Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years. Montreal, 1971. Old, but still the standard work; a thorough account of Canadian–American relations during the war years.

Zeller, Suzanne. Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation.Toronto, 1987. A work with a controversial argument—that science helped unite British North America—and a good deal of material on colonial science.

Study Questions 1. Explain how Britain’s espousal of the free trade doctrine affected markets for Canadian wheat in the late

1840s.

2. Explain why the free trade doctrine led to the Reciprocity Treaty between British North America and the

United States. How did this lead to more railway-building and the rise of industrialism in British North

America?

3. Identify three reasons why people in Canada West were so anxious to move into the Canadian West.

4. Outline the political consequences of the move to responsible government in Canada East.

5. Why did volunteer and fraternal organizations become so popular in British North America?

6. Explain how the infrastructure of an educational system and a publishing industry contributed to Canadian

cultural production during this period.

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2656 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

7. What is important about George Brown’s observation that the Maritime delegates agreed that union was

desirable “if the terms of union could be made satisfactory”?

8. Give two reasons to explain why people in the Maritimes might think of Confederation as a “Canadian plot.”

9. How would you have felt about Canadian policy towards the West if you were a settler living in Saskatchewan

in 1885? If you were an Aboriginal person?

Visit the companion website for A History of the Canadian Peoples, fifth edition for further resources.

www.oupcanada.com/Bumsted5e

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Becoming Modern, 1885–19157

Trolley cars became a principal mode of urban transport in the 1890s. The single-truck car shown here is from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Trolleys varied from city to city and were adapted to their specific urban environments. Note that this car has a mesh guard attached to its front and to its back, suggesting that there was a reasonable chance that it would encounter humans or animals on its tracks. City of Vancouver Archives, H-303

901491_07_Ch07.indd 266 12/16/15 12:31 PM

1886 W.S. Fielding introduces legislation in Nova Scotia calling for secession from the union. The

first CPR transcontinental arrives in Manitoba.

1887 Honoré Mercier leads nationaliste Liberals to victory in Quebec. St Catharines opens first

electric streetcar system in Canada.

1890 Manitoba government abolishes public funding for Catholic schools. CPR builds rail

line through Maine to connect Moncton with

Montreal.

1891 Sir John A. Macdonald dies. 1892 A great fire destroys St John’s, Newfoundland. 1896 Wilfrid Laurier leads the Liberal Party to a

national electoral victory. Gold is discovered in

the Klondike. The Manitoba Schools Question

becomes a national issue.

1898 A national referendum is held on prohibition of alcoholic beverages. Newfoundland completes

a railway across the island.

1899 Canadian Northern Railway is incorporated. Alaska Boundary Dispute is referred to an

international tribunal. Canada agrees to send

volunteer troops to South Africa.

1900 Art Museum of Toronto is founded. Prohibition legislation is passed on Prince Edward Island.

1901 The first wireless message transmitted across the Atlantic is received on Signal Hill near

St John’s, Newfoundland.

1902 Ernest Thompson Seton founds Woodcraft Indians.

1903 Alaska Boundary Dispute between Canada and the United States is handed over to a joint

commission of six “impartial jurists of repute.”

1905 Saskatchewan and Alberta are created as provinces out of the North-West Territories.

Ontario Conservatives finally win political

control of the province.

1906 Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission is created. 1907 Development of Marquis wheat. Canadian

Department of Interior begins paying bonuses

to European immigrant agents for labourers.

Canadian Art Club is founded in Toronto.

1908 Border crossings established at 38 points across the US–Canada border.

1909 Department of External Affairs is created. 1910 Steel Company of Canada is created by an

amalgamation of smaller firms.

1911 Robert Borden’s Conservatives take over federal government in the Reciprocity Election.

Marius Barbeau is appointed as anthropologist

in the Museum Branch of the Geological Survey

of Canada. Noranda gold/copper mine opens

in Quebec.

1912 Social Services Council of Canada is organized. Quebec’s boundaries are extended

to Hudson Bay.

Timeline

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268 A History of the Canadian Peoples

I n the years after Confederation, Canada became one of the richest nations in the world in terms of gross national product and per capita income. Given the advantage of hindsight, historians from comparably sized countries—such as Mexico, Brazil, or Argentina— can only envy Canada’s privileged position of wealth, if not power, in this critical period. From the late 1870s to the end of World War I, Canada was among the top 10 of the world in industrial development. Though the country possessed rich agricultural and natural resour- ces, much of the key to its success lay in the exploita- tion of these advantages by a burgeoning industrial sector. Canadians often saw only the weaknesses of the Canadian economy. From the vantage point of most of the world, however, Canada was rich, powerful, highly industrialized, and “progressive,” even if still a part of the British Empire. It possessed a vibrant labour move- ment. Before the Great War, Canada had created a self-sustaining internal economy and a dynamic foreign trade. While the nation was transforming its economy, it was also altering its society and culture. There was another round of immigration, and Canada became an increasingly urbanized country. This was also the great era of reform, both political and social. As well, there was a great national debate over Canada’s place within the British Empire. The political system that made all these developments possible operated through the mediating influence of political parties.

As a result of both its geographical position and its colonial situation, Canada before 1914 was able to enjoy relative isolation from the turmoil of international politics, concentrating on its own domestic develop- ment. Like Americans, most Canadians were relatively inward-looking, even isolationist, in their attitudes towards the wider world. Most French Canadians saw themselves as an autonomous people without close European or international connections, while Canadians of British origin felt varying degrees of loyalty to Great Britain, which looked after most inter- national affairs in the name of the Empire. Canada’s corps of diplomats was tiny, confined to Washington, London, and Paris. After 1909 a small Department of External Affairs supervised and co-ordinated the nation’s sporadic formal relations with the world. While most Canadians felt no need to be citizens of the world

before 1914, they were not necessarily ignorant of it. The larger daily newspapers covered foreign affairs far more assiduously than their modern equivalents, for example.

The Developing Political and Constitutional System The Fathers of Confederation had not written political parties into the Canadian Constitution. Nevertheless, by the mid-1880s a two-party system had evolved at both the federal and provincial levels that would remain unchanged until World War I. Indeed, this period was in many respects the golden age of Canadian party politics. Party affiliation was a serious matter. Being a Liberal or a Conservative was a commitment passed on from father to son; small towns had parallel Liberal and Conservative business establishments, including funeral parlours. The seeming vitality of the two-party system disguised, to some degree, the underlying ten- sions of Canadian federalism. Before 1914, however, the parties appeared flexible enough to contain various cur- rents of conflict and disagreement. Both national par- ties developed consensual systems capable of holding together differing ideologies, sections of the country, and interest groups.

The key to the successful functioning of the national parties—and the allegiances of their adherents—was in large part the power of patronage. Both parties, in office, distributed honours and jobs to their leading support- ers, carefully apportioning rewards to those whose qualifications were judged solely in terms of political service and loyalty. The patronage system rewarded chiefly those members of the Canadian professional and business elites (mainly from the so-called middle class) who ran the two parties. The system diminished ideological and regional differences, offering French Canadians their own opportunities for advancement. Patronage thus encouraged a stable party system in which matters of principle were less important than the division of the spoils of victory.

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2697 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

Despite their consensual utility, Canadian polit- ical parties had considerable difficulty in mediating the relationships between the federal and provincial levels of government. The rise of a strong movement for provincial rights, initiated by Ontario, joined by Quebec, and supported on occasion by all provinces, was almost inevitable. The chief, although not sole, bone of contention would be economic development. Provinces insisted that they, not the federal gov- ernment, should control development within their boundaries. What was unexpected was the support for provincial rights provided by the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council, the court of last resort for federal–provincial disagreements. In a series of land- mark decisions stretching from the 1880s to the Great War, the Judicial Committee consistently reduced the power of the federal government and enhanced that of the provinces. Both anglophone and francophone voters tended to support this readjustment of Confederation. They saw the provinces as a check on the federal govern- ment’s power, and they consistently supported provin- cial parties that wanted to confront Ottawa. Thus there was nothing unique about the 1887 victory in Quebec of the nationaliste Liberal government of Honoré Mercier (1840–94). W.S. Fielding (1848–1929) had won for the Liberals in Nova Scotia in 1884 on a platform of prov- incial rights. In 1886 Fielding introduced legislation calling for the secession of Nova Scotia from the union. Obviously, provincial parties could not afford too close an identification with their federal counterparts, par- ticularly while the latter were in power. Only with the success of Laurier’s Liberals in 1896 did the Ontario Tories escape the albatross of a federal Conservative Party, for example. By 1905 they won control of the province, which they would seldom relinquish over the remainder of the century.

A great irony of Confederation was that French Canada continued as the region upon which national political success had to be built. Until the death of Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891, the Conservatives had suc- cessfully appealed to Quebec with a judicious combin- ation of local political patronage and national political policies. The execution of Louis Riel late in 1885 threat- ened that appeal, but the government’s Quebec ministers held firm. The Grand Old Man’s successors, including

J.J. Abbott (1821–93), John S. Thompson (1844–94), and Charles Tupper (1821–1915), simply did not have the magic. In 1896 Wilfrid Laurier (1841–1919) became the national chef. He had put together a coalition of provin- cial Liberal parties by softening the potential issues of division. Laurier’s agonizing over the Manitoba Schools Question of the early 1890s, when his distaste for a uni- lingual policy for Manitoba schools was matched only by his refusal to prevent provinces from running affairs within their own general mandate, was a pure reflection of his approach. Laurier saw national unity and national harmony as identical and, not surprisingly, viewed a bicultural state as essential.

The Conservatives of Robert Borden (1854–1937) replaced Laurier’s Liberals in 1911. The Tories split the Quebec vote while sweeping Ontario, thanks in large measure to the support of the Ontario provincial party. Key issues in the 1911 election were American reciprocity and imperial naval defence. Borden’s vic- tory was a triumph for Canadian imperial sentiment, anti-continentalism, and middle-class reform. Borden had set out his Halifax Platform in 1907, calling for civil service reform, public ownership of telephones and telegraphs, a reformed Senate, and free mail delivery in rural areas. Borden spoke for the “progressive” forces of Anglo-Canadian society and reform, which had been marshalling strength since the mid-1880s. Laurier had enacted some of Borden’s planks, including civil ser- vice reform in 1908, but the Conservatives still claimed the close imperial connection and had added the pro- gressive mantle. Borden achieved some of his imper- ial vision only with the beginning of the Great War. The Conscription Crisis of 1917 completed the process, which began in 1911 with the defeat of Laurier, of the political isolation of French Canada. At the same time, neither the West nor the Maritimes were content, as events after the war’s end soon demonstrated.

The Economic Infrastructure Control of capital through chartered banks headquar- tered chiefly in central Canada was one of that region’s

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270 A History of the Canadian Peoples

great advantages. Unlike the United States, Canadian banking was always highly centralized. In 1914 in Canada there were only 26 banks operating 2,888 branches. Some of the larger banks (the Royal Bank, the Bank of Commerce) had more than 300 branches each. From the beginning, Canadian chartered banks focused less on serving local customers than on facili- tating the transfer of commodities and funds. Their credit facilities, especially for outlying districts of the nation, were quite limited. The banking industry itself wrote Canadian banking legislation. The Canadian Bankers’ Association was an organization of a few powerful men.

Although in 1913 Montreal-headquartered banks held half of the assets of all Canadian banks ($788 million of $1.55 billion), Quebec contained considerably fewer branch banks per capita than the remainder of the nation. The result was the founding by Alphonse Desjardins (1854–1920) of the caisses populaires, often run by curés in association with Catholic parishes. Financial institutions to compete locally with the chartered banks did develop, not only in the form of caisses populaires but as gov- ernment savings banks, local savings banks, and credit unions. Their economic power was limited, however, and the chartered banks continued to grow. Banks with head offices in central Canada refused to make local loans and

The family heritage of Wilfrid Laurier (1841–1919), born in a small Quebec village outside Montreal, dated back to seventeenth-century Quebec. As part of his education,

Laurier lived for two years with an English-speaking family and attended an English-speaking school. His facility in both languages was subsequently one of his great political strengths. After education at l’Assompt- ion College and McGill University, he was called to the Quebec bar.

From his earliest days Laurier was a Liberal, and after election to Parliament in 1874 he soon joined the Mackenzie cabinet. Laurier was an outspoken critic of the ultramontane wing of the Catholic Church in Quebec and defender of both the Liberals as a party of moderation and of the laity as entitled to make their own choices free of clerical pressure. Like many French- Canadian Liberals of his generation, he not only wanted a non-denominational party but was also attracted to British history and to the British Constitution.

Somewhat chastened by political failure in the early 1880s, his career was rejuvenated by the execution of Louis Riel, whose constitutional grievances he cham- pioned. But Laurier resolutely refused to become a racial and religious nationalist, and he advocated conciliation between French and English. He exploited the clumsi- ness of both the Conservatives and French-Canadian

Wilfrid Laurier, c. 1882. Topley Studio Fonds, LAC, PA-013133.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Biography

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2717 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

set local interest rates at high levels. Sir Edmund Walker (1848–1924), president of the Bank of Commerce, labelled regional complaints “local grievances against what we regard as the interests of the country as a whole” (quoted in Naylor, 1975, I: 103).

Transportation continued to be an essential ingredient of development. As in the age of the first rail- way boom of the 1850s, railways were both a means of development and a field of investment. Substantial rail- way construction involved significant public subsidies, often in the form of land grants along the right of way, as well as other boons. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) received from the government the completed line

from Fort William, Ontario, to Selkirk, Manitoba, as well as the line from Kamloops to Port Moody in BC. Moreover, it received a cash payment of $25 million, plus 25 million acres (10,117,500 ha) “fairly fit for settle- ment,” and various tax exemptions on its land. In addi- tion, it had a monopoly position. Nor was the Canadian Pacific the only railway so favoured. Dozens of railways incorporated in Canada during these years. Local com- munities fought desperately for railways, seeing them as links to a prosperous future. Sir William Mackenzie (1849–1923) and Sir Donald Mann (1853–1934) con- structed a second transcontinental line, the Canadian Northern Railway, which passed considerably to the

clerics over the Manitoba Schools Question, insisting that he could effect a satisfactory compromise, which he did.

Once elected to office as Prime Minister in 1896, with the strong backing of Quebec voters, he appointed a strong cabinet composed mainly of prov- incial leaders with progressive ideas. Fortunately for the Liberal government, Canada was entering a period of great growth and economic boom, especially in the West, providing a tide upon which almost any gov- ernment could have ridden successfully. The Liberals became involved with Canadian big business interests over the construction of two new transcontinental railroads, but eventually came to grief over military and imperial policy, issues that still divided English and French Canada. Laurier survived the Boer War by allowing English Canadians to participate as vol- unteers and by stifling all initiatives for closer imper- ial co-operation. He even managed to deal with the problem of increased German naval construction by introducing a Canadian navy instead of Canadian contributions to the British one.

One issue that helped defeat his government in 1911 came unexpectedly, when the United States

offered Canada a reciprocal economic arrangement and Laurier accepted it enthusiastically. To its surprise, the Liberal government discovered that Canadians were not willing in boom times to pay the price of a potential loss of national sovereignty in return for American advantages, although the loss of Quebec support on imperial issues was probably more import- ant, as was a perception that the Liberals had lost their reformist edge and were less progressive on social issues than were the Conservatives. Laurier supported Canadian entrance into World War I wholeheartedly, but refused to co-operate in 1917 with the govern- ment over conscription or to join a coalition govern- ment committed to the question. He was deserted by many English-speaking Liberals, and in the election of November 1917 his support was reduced almost solely to Quebec seats.

Laurier was well known as a conciliator who sought compromise and opposed political extremism and sec- tional division in word and deed. In retrospect, one of his most important achievements may have been his refusal to allow his nation to become more closely inte- grated into the British Empire.

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north of the CPR. Everyone outside central Canada complained about the high costs of freight, but all Canadians relied on the railway. Passenger travel was swift and relatively inexpensive.

Energy was another essential. Canada always pos- sessed rich potential energy resources. Coal never pro- vided much advantage, but abundant water power did. Changing technology at the close of the nineteenth cen- tury enabled major natural waterfalls to be harnessed and others to be created through dams. Development for hydroelectric power was substantial in the early years of the twentieth century. No province had greater potential for hydroelectricity generation than Quebec. Unlike Ontario, which established the Ontario Hydro- Electric Commission in 1906 under the chairmanship of Sir Adam Beck (1857–1925), Quebec permitted its hydroelectric development to be carried out by private enterprise. The process of exploiting electricity, both for light and for power, was one of the great unsung technological developments of the age. Industry could use water power as an alternative to fossil fuel. Cheap hydroelectric power became an advantage for Canadian industry. The manufacturing community saw cheap power as essential to its growth and development. Hydroelectricity lit Canadian homes at relatively low cost. It fostered the growth of electric-powered public transportation, such as the tram and the trolley.

The period between 1880 and 1919 was a great age of science and technology throughout the Western world. Most fields of scientific endeavour transformed out of all recognition the basic theoretical assumptions that had dominated humankind for generations. The number of inventions that altered in practical ways how people lived and worked was astounding. Canada played little role at the frontiers of pure science. Its record in the technical application of science was somewhat better, as the activities of the Dominion Experimental Farms system (created by Ottawa in 1886) demonstrated. The great achievement of Canadian agricultural research in this period was the development of Marquis wheat in 1907 by Charles Edward Saunders (1867–1937). In both science and technology, however, Canada was for- tunate to be able to borrow heavily from Great Britain and the United States. Most Canadian technical accom- plishment came through adapting imported technology

to Canadian conditions, although a number of useful Canadian inventions were introduced in this period.

Population growth was also necessary for economic development. Immigration provided much of that growth for Canada in this period, as in others. Between 1880 and 1920 nearly 4.5 million immigrants arrived in Canada, mainly although not exclusively from Europe and the United States. Beginning in the mid-1890s, the origins of the newcomers shifted perceptibly. Most of the earlier immigrants came from the British Isles, while after 1896 large numbers came from Eastern and Southern Europe. In addition, Americans again began arriving in Canada in large numbers, their destinations the “Last Best West” in Alberta and Saskatchewan. By 1901, 34 per cent of the newcomers to the prairie West came from other coun- tries than Canada, with 33 per cent from the United States and 22 per cent from Britain. During the peak dec- ade of immigration (1905–14), nearly 2.8 million people immigrated to Canada, with the numbers about equally divided among Central and Eastern Europe, the United States, and the British Isles. (A small number of Asians and people from the Near East were included in the total. Most of the Near East immigrants came from Lebanon and were listed as “Syrians” in the official records. (Many of the victims in April 1912 on board the ill-fated passen- ger liner Titanic were “Syrians” travelling in steerage on their way to Canada.) Between 1901 and 1911 alone, the Canadian population grew by 43 per cent. In the 1911 census, over 20 per cent of all Canadians enumerated had been born abroad. While many of the newcomers settled on farms, fully 70 per cent joined the labour force in industry and transportation. Canadian business and government specifically recruited many of the newcom- ers, often on a contract basis, to provide an industrial workforce. In 1907 the Canadian Department of the Interior began paying bonuses to European immigra- tion agents for people who had labour experience, such as farmers, navvies, or miners. Much of this industrial workforce ended up in Canada’s cities.

While the typical newcomer to Canada in these years continued to be the unassisted immigrant, arriv- ing under his or her own power, either alone or as part of a family group, several other categories need to be singled out for special attention, particularly British “orphans” and European contract labourers.

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Canadians were generally more willing to accept immigrants from the British Isles than from any other place, although resentment was common against those Britons who looked down their noses at their “colonial cousins.” On the other hand, many Canadians objected to the activities of British philanthropists and philan- thropic institutions in employing Canada as a dumping ground for unwanted children of the urban poor. These children were recruited as cheap labour, mainly for Canadian farms and as domestic servants. The majority were young boys, but a substantial number were young girls. Nearly 100,000 of these “home children” were sent to Canada before the Great War, most of them recruited in British slums. Many were encouraged to go by their parents; others were literally seized from parents and sent overseas “for their own good.” The results were

mixed, with the worst experiences probably suffered by children of both genders who were sent into rural homes, where many were badly exploited by their sup- posed benefactors. This immigration was constantly accompanied by opposition to its continuance. Much of the opposition to child immigration came from the Canadian labour movement, especially between 1888 and 1895. It was concerned less with the treatment of the victims than with their presence as an unregulated low-wage component of the workforce.

Perhaps the most colourful of the philanthropists involved in child “rescue” was the Dublin-born Thomas John Barnardo (1845–1900), who was personally respon- sible for sending more than 30,000 youngsters to Canada. Barnardo, always known as “Doctor” Barnardo, actually scoured the streets of London for waifs, col- lecting thousands of pounds from the British public for his charity work. He used the money less to improve existing conditions than to expand the scope of his activities. Barnardo was a lightning rod for complaints of abuse and victimization. His activities were criticized on a number of occasions, and he came to take care that records were kept, using photographs and letters from children to demonstrate how well they were getting on. As for the children, one modern study of Barnardo children has concluded that some evidence exists that 9 per cent of the boys and 15 per cent of the girls were actually abused (Parker, 2009: 221). (In February 2010, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with a group of former immigrants and others to apologize for their treatment [Boycott, 2010].)

Despite the emphasis on agricultural settlement and the concerns about the assimilability of non-British immigrants, a number of Canadian corporations insisted on their need for willing workers. For these companies, headed by the railroads, British immigrants were not desirable because they complained about wages and working conditions; farmers were unsuitable because they left their jobs at harvest time. The CPR turned increasingly after 1901 to contract workers, often from southern Italy. According to Donald Avery (1995: 30), these workers—sup- plied by labour agents working in Europe—could “live for a year on the wages they earn in six months.” The railroads liked Bulgarians, Poles, and Italians because by working hard and living simply, they were “peculiarly suited for

The Canadian Bank of Commerce building at 25 King Street West, designed by R.A. Waite and erected in 1889–90, was one of several new office buildings in Toronto that had some claim to architectural distinction and even grandeur. At seven-and-a-half storeys, it soared over neighbouring three- and four-storey buildings, and reflected the influence of the first skyscrapers in New York and Chicago. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1497, Item 21.

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the work.” A massive national railway construction pro- gram between 1900 and 1914 was sustained by 50,000 to 70,000 immigrant navvies (unskilled construction work- ers) per year. Mining corporations were equally attracted to Slavic and Italian workers, and by 1913 more than 300 labour agencies were recruiting more than 200,000 work- ers per year from abroad for labour in Canada. Several foreign governments protested the treatment of their nationals by labour agencies and Canadian employers, and both organized labour and nativist groups opposed the contract workers as being scabs. More than half of these workers were sojourners, who intended to use the savings from their earnings to return to their homelands, but a substantial minority would remain in Canada permanently. The Italians brought several new elements in their cultural baggage. Several secret societies mod-

elled on the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta provided a range of services to immigrants, sometimes also engaging in extortion activities that were attributed by the Canadian media to the “Black Hand.” A few Italians were also anarchists; one of their leaders, Luigi Galleani, was deported from Canada in 1903.

Another Round of Industrialization Financial centralization and growing industrial cap- acity, particularly the shift from the processing of primary goods into the secondary manufacturing of finished goods, were major economic developments in Canada in the years 1880–1919. Continued industrial- ization always involved more than the construction of new and larger factories. Canadians needed to extend and rationalize transportation facilities. They had to mobilize investment, exploit resources, and recruit a labour force. Despite the National Policy, Ottawa did not maintain control over, or ownership in, the Canadian economy. The country’s emergence on the international scene increased its vulnerability to world economic conditions and economic cycles. Moreover, its industrial development was distinctly uneven, with industrial growth well above the national average in Ontario, at the national average in Quebec, and well below the national average in the Maritime and western provinces. Larger urban centres, such as Montreal and Toronto, expanded constantly, while smaller commun- ities fell steadily behind.

One of the keys to Canadian economic growth between 1885 and the Great War was an influx of foreign investment. Few nations depended so heav- ily on foreign capital to fuel economic growth as has Canada throughout its history. Investment in this era—particularly in the boom years 1900–13—was significant. Like other countries, Canada used most of its imported capital to finance large development pro- jects, such as railways and hydroelectric generation. Canada’s imports of capital came in the two forms of indirect (portfolio) investment and direct investment. These two types of investment reflected the respective

A 1907 poster exhorting immigrants to settle in western Canada. This poster well illustrates the mentality of western development in the first years of the new century. How would you describe this mentality? LAC, C-30621.

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activity of Canada’s two largest financial partners. Much of the portfolio investment came from Great Britain. Much of the direct investment came from the United States. In terms of the foreign domination of the economy that resulted, the two types of investment were quite different. Direct investment resulted in far greater control. At the time few Canadians agonized overly much about the extent or the origin of foreign ownership. Foreign control did not become a serious issue in Canadian economic theory or public life before the late 1950s. Until then, almost all Canadians might have agreed with the American entrepre- neur Frank Clergue, who declared in 1901 that “for- eign money injected into the circulating medium of Canada” would “remain forever to the everlasting blessing of thousands of its inhabitants” (quoted in Bliss, 1972: 38).

As students now learn routinely in introductory economics courses, portfolio investment represents money borrowed against securities, in this period mainly bonds. Bonds are a relatively safe investment. They do not carry management implications. The British preferred portfolio investment in Canada because their prosperous citizens wanted to clip coupons in their old age. Government (federal, provincial, municipal) and the railways did most of Canada’s borrowing in Britain. The money went to finance transportation networks and public works. Little was available for private enterprise, almost none for venture capital. In the first years of the twentieth century, Canadian entrepreneurs exploited the British investment market in new ways. The chief innovation was the promotion of bond issues for giant industrial operations created from the merger of smaller companies. Nobody was more successful at merging than William Maxwell Aitken (1879–1964, later Lord Beaverbrook), son of a New Brunswick Presbyterian minister. His great triumph came in 1910 with the cre- ation of the Steel Company of Canada (Stelco), the bonds for which his Royal Securities firm sold in London. “I believe in consolidations,” Aitken told Maclean’s maga- zine in 1911. “They are more efficient. They give bet- ter service to the consumer. In a large country such as Canada, they reduce the distribution costs. They are good for the consumer” (quoted in Marchilson, 1996: 181). He was the most visible and sharpest oper-

ator in a movement that saw 58 giant corporations cre- ated in Canada between 1909 and 1912.

The United States was an importer of British capital before World War I and had little available for overseas portfolio investment. The Americans invested directly in Canada to gain access to Canadian raw materials and the Canadian market. They went heavily into the resource sector. They also invested in Canadian manu- facturing to gain maximum access to the Canadian mar- ket. Less than half of American direct investment was in manufacturing, but the total amount involved was over $100 million by 1910. The protective tariff played an important role in encouraging American branch- plant investment. Early Canadian protectionism sought to foster employment. Canadians did not worry much about the outflow of profits or the influx of foreign man- agers. Canadians generally accepted that Canadian businessmen and investors were not very adventurous, preferring familiar fields and allowing the Yankees to take the chances. Far from endangering the Canadian identity, American investment fostered it. The alterna- tive was immigration to the United States.

The Americans preferred to locate their branch plants in southern Ontario. This choice came for a var- iety of reasons. Americans were active in the heavy industries of Ontario, partly because Ontario was so close to the industrial heartland of the United States south of the Great Lakes. Moreover, Ontario deliberately encouraged Americans to invest in the processing of raw materials by allowing them virtually free access to the province’s natural resources. Ontarians believed that they had all the requirements for self-sufficiency within their own borders. The province required that resources taken on Crown land be processed in Canada. “Debarred from the opportunity of cutting logs for export, it is an absolute certainty that the American lumberman, in default of other sources of supply, will transfer his saw- mill enterprises to Canadian soil” (quoted in Nelles, 1974: 217). American preference both contributed to and reflected the industrial development of Ontario.

After 1885 manufacturing replaced commerce as the chief propellant of urban growth in Ontario. Much of the new industrial plant involved sophisticated techno- logical applications, often imported from the United States. Ontario became the centre of the Canadian iron

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276 A History of the Canadian Peoples

and steel industry. The transformation of the older iron industry into the steel industry was symptomatic of the process that was occurring. Coal replaced charcoal as the source of heat. The refining process turned into two steps, first involving open-hearth furnaces and then a steam-driven rolling mill. The result was a product with a slightly higher carbon content. Its name was steel. Mechanization occurred at every step in the manufac- turing process. “Gigantic automation” was the watch- word at huge installations like Stelco’s Hamilton plant and Algoma’s Sault Ste Marie operation. Steel rails were the most common standard product. Ontario’s manufac- turing grew in a number of smaller urban centres.

Quebec manufacturing relied far less on heavy industry (and vast capitalization) than did manufac-

turing in Ontario. It depended far more on an indus- try based on labour and fussy mechanization, such as clothing, wood products, textiles, and food processing. Part of the explanation for the difference may reside in labour availability. Part may have been the availabil- ity of cheap hydroelectric power in Quebec after 1900. Quebec had eliminated Ontario’s early advantage in sec- ondary over primary manufacturing by 1915. Montreal provided the greatest concentration of Quebec’s manu- facturing sector. By 1900 workers in that city repre- sented about half the manufacturing labour in the province. It is easy to overemphasize the notorious lag between the two central Canadian provinces. They were more like one another than they were like the remain- der of the nation. The industrial disparity between the

Workers at looms, c. 1908. As this photograph indicates, most workers in the textile industry were women, working in crowded conditions on the shop floor. City of Toronto Archives, James Collection, Fonds 1244, 137.

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Manufacturing Output, 1870–1890

Document

Percentage Change in Manufacturing Output, 1870–1890

One of the developments of the post-Confederation period was the tendency for the industrial output of the Maritime region to lose ground to Ontario and Quebec. The following table documents the change in output by province in various industrial sectors between 1870 and 1890.

Industry Nova Scotia New Brunswick Quebec Ontario

All factories 128 42 104 116

Farm production (butter, cheese, and

cloth)

60 67 50 34

All manufacturing 120 44 101 113

Consumer goods 160 95 100 119

Durable goods 30 –10 83 61

Intermediate goods 214 50 120 162

Chemical products 210 3 149 410

Clothing 224 49 125 277

Coal & petroleum products 164 321 365 –5

Food & beverages 361 292 122 82

Iron & steel products 142 21 92 90

Leather & fur products –1 –12 50 41

Nonferric metal products 348 204 191 854

Nonmetallic mineral products 114 121 186 215

Printing 54 111 86 177

Paper products 48 –52 313 254

Rubber goods n.a. n.a. 202 4,311

Transport equipment 3 –38 154 26

Tobacco products –78 64 162 263

Textiles 505 443 406 150

Wood products 213 2 64 153

Source: Kris Inwood, “Maritime Industrialization from 1870 to 1910,” Acadiensis 21, 1 (Autumn 1991): 147. Reprinted by permission.

central provinces and the others grew continually in the years before 1914.

While the absence of industrialization in the Canadian West was a consequence of the recentness of its settlement,

this did not apply to the Maritime region. Here rural stagna- tion joined a crisis in the shipbuilding industry. The growth of new technologies was partly to blame, but the problem was mainly a failure of the Maritime shippers’ nerve. The

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278 A History of the Canadian Peoples

shippers always viewed their ships as instruments of trade. Instead of reinvesting their capital in a modern shipbuild- ing industry, they and the business community of the region made a desperate effort to exploit the internal mar- ket. They accepted the National Policy and tried to work within it. The attempts at continentalism seemed initially successful in the 1880s, but rapidly turned to failure.

The reasons for the ultimate Maritime failure remain uncertain. Most Maritime entrepreneurs seemed to lack the financial resources to withstand the ups and downs of the economic cycles. They tended to blame many of their problems on high railway freight rates. At about the same time that the region’s business community was moaning about railway rates, outside capital moved in and began buying up locally based companies. Montreal capitalists did most of the damage. They bought up and dismantled many burgeoning industries still servicing the local market.

Maritime entrepreneurs, convinced that they were at a substantial geographical disadvantage in competing with central Canada, ceased trying in most sectors after 1895. Instead, the region turned to the panacea of iron and steel. Surely the presence of local raw materials would make this industry a competitive one. Unfortunately, central Canadian interests soon took over the Maritime steel industry. By 1911 Montreal controlled much of the region’s industrial enterprise. Toronto, on the other hand, moved into the region’s wholesale and retail marketing sector. Between 1901 and 1921 the number of regional businesses that were branches of central Canadian firms more than doubled, from 416 to 950. The net result of both sorts of takeovers was a regional loss of economic autonomy. Outsiders siphoned capital away from the Maritimes, and when times got tough they closed stores and factories. The region was systematically deindustrialized and decom- mercialized. It would never recover its economic vitality.

Most of the businessmen who operated the indus- trializing economy were immigrants or sons of immi- grants, with Scots farmers over-represented in both categories. Few had begun at the bottom of the social scale. French Canadians were seriously under-represented among large-scale entrepreneurs and industrialists, even within their own province. Most French-Canadian busi-

nesses remained small in scale, family-controlled, and confined chiefly to the province of Quebec. These busi- nessmen did share an overall philosophy. They insisted on government involvement in large schemes of public development, such as railways. They accepted govern- ment power to grant monopolies of public service through charters or access to Crown lands through advantageous leases. They sought to minimize competition wherever possible, even if public regulation was the price paid for the reduction. Small businessmen who could not combine institutionally to control trade, such as the small retailers, fought hard for early closings and price-fixing. Business rhetoric about competition had less to do with extol- ling the virtues of free enterprise than with complain- ing about unfair competition. The business community insisted that what it wanted was a “living profit,” a reason- able return on investment of time and capital.

While few business leaders believed in policies of laissez-faire in the relationship between the state and business, the situation was quite different when it came to labour organizations. From the view of business, organ- ized labour was an illegitimate combination designed to erode the right of the individual to run his business as he saw fit. Nevertheless, the growth of industrializa- tion was conducive to expanding worker militancy. The Canadian state proved relatively receptive to the rights of labour to organize. Whereas in the United States public policy was almost universally hostile to labour organization, in Canada laws that legalized union activ- ity were put on the books beginning in the 1880s. Many of the late nineteenth-century labour organizations in Canada were foreign imports, chiefly from the United States. If Canadian labour got much of its structure from the Americans, it drew much of its practical experience from Great Britain. The Noble and Holy Knights of Labor spread from the United States across Canada in the 1870s.The Knights were all-inclusive reformers, as their agenda suggested. For Canada as a whole, the Canadian Labour Congress formed in 1883 as an umbrella organ- ization for local trade councils, and in 1892 it became the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada.

In this period most labour conflict revolved around the right to organize and the recognition of unions. Government acceptance of union activity in some ways

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increased the frequency of conflict. Moreover, the civil authorities frequently intervened in labour conflicts, usually in the name of public order and often on the side of management. Such intervention often produced violence. Strikes were certainly common everywhere in Canada, especially after 1900. In Ontario’s 10 largest cit-

ies, between 1901 and 1914, there were 421 strikes and lockouts involving 60,000 workers. In the Maritimes, 324 strikes occurred between 1901 and 1914. Except in the Far West, the majority of the workers involved in these confrontations were skilled rather than unskilled. By 1914 approximately 155,000 Canadians belonged to

Declaration of Principles of the Knights of Labor (1883) Document

1. To bring within the fold of organization every department of productive industry, making know- ledge a standpoint for action, and industrial moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness.

2. To secure to the toilers a proper share of the wealth that they created; more of the leisure that right- fully belongs to them; more society advantages; all of the benefits, privileges and emoluments of the world; in a word all those rights and privileges necessary to make them capable of enjoying, appre- ciating, defending and perpetuating the blessings of good government.

3. To arrive at the true condition of the producing masses in their educational, moral and financial con- dition, by demanding from the various governments the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics.

4. The establishment of co-operative institutions, pro- ductive and initiative.

5. The reserving—of public lands—the heritage of the people—for the actual settler. Not another acre for railroads or corporations.

6. The abrogation of laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor; the removal of unjust tech- nicalities, delays and discriminations in the admin- istration of justice; and the adopting of measures

providing for the health and safety of those engaged in mining, manufacturing and building pursuits.

7. The enactment of laws to compel chartered corpora- tions to pay their employees weekly, in full, for labor performed the preceding week, in the lawful money of the country. The enactment of laws giving mechanics and labor- ers the first lien on their work for their full wages.

8. The abolishment of the contract system on national, state and municipal roads or corporations.

9. The substitution of arbitration for strikes, whenever and wherever employers and employees are willing to meet on equitable grounds.

10. The prohibition of the employment of children in workshops mines and factories, before attaining their fourteenth year.

11. To abolish the system of letting out by contract the labor of convicts in our prisons and reformatory institutions.

12. To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work. 13. The reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day,

so that the laborers may have more time for social enjoyment and intellectual improvement, and be able to reap the advantages conferred by the labor-saving machinery which their brains have created.

Source: Labor Union (Hamilton), 1883, as quoted in Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 399–400.

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280 A History of the Canadian Peoples

organized labour unions, many of them affiliated with American internationals.

Natural Resources If Canada was to avoid eternal international balance-of- payment deficits (the plague of Third World countries in our own era) it obviously needed commodities to export. It found many of these in the natural resour- ces sector. To a considerable extent Canada’s resources were the old mainstays of the colonial staple economy, now produced under different guises. Resources not

only earned money abroad, they encouraged manufac- turing at home.

Agriculture

As if on some master schedule, the Canadian wheat economy continued to expand without pause. Fields of operation moved from central Canada to Manitoba and slightly later to the North-West Territories (which became the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905). Between 1870 and 1890 thousands of farmers, chiefly from Ontario, poured into the West. The num- ber of acres of occupied land went from 2.5 million to

“Steel mills at Sydney, Cape Breton,” oil on canvas, 1907, by the railway magnate Sir William Cornelius Van Horne. Built between 1900 and 1905, these two plants attracted hundreds of workers, creating an instant city. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, gift of the artist’s grandson, William C. Van Horne. Photo: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Brian Merrett.

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over 6 million (1,011,750 to 2,428,200 ha) in the years 1881–91, while the acres of land under cultivation exploded from 279,000 to 1,429,000 (112,911 to 578,316 ha) in the same 10-year period. The opening of the CPR was critical for the production of western wheat. So, too, was the appearance of new wheat strains capable of mat- uration in the short prairie growing season.

Before the mid-1890s the typical prairie settler was an Ontario-born farmer who came west to make a new start. Despite the passage of the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, which made a fair amount of homestead land available, most farmers preferred to purchase land from companies set up by the great corporate benefac- tors of government land grants, especially the railways. Farmers believed (with some legitimacy) that homestead land was less likely to acquire rail transportation than was land owned by the railway itself. Although home- stead land was free to the male settler (women could not apply for homesteads), successful farming still required substantial capital investment. Conservative estimates of the costs of “farm-making” ranged from a minimum of $300 (the annual wage for an unskilled labourer) to $1,000. Most farmers brought money with them from the sale of land back east. The western farmer was a mar- ket farmer. Although the family grew as much food as possible for personal consumption, the farmer’s instinct was to increase constantly his acreage under production. Before World War I, mechanization was limited mainly to harvesting. Animals (horses and oxen) did most of the ploughing and cultivation. Nevertheless, the indi- vidual farmer managed to cultivate considerable quan- tities of land, limited mainly by the size of his labour force. In 1898 Ontario-born A.J. Cotton (1857–1942) har- vested a crop of over 17,000 bushels of top-grade wheat in Treherne, Manitoba.

Before the 1890s, western settlement was ham- pered by several factors. In the first place, the American West seemed a more attractive option to most potential new arrivals, with a longer growing season and bet- ter transportation networks. Between 1871 and 1891, more people from Canada had departed to the United States than had come to Canada from abroad. In the second place, Canadian immigration authorities had concentrated on recruiting British farmers, with only limited success. People with agricultural backgrounds

in Britain were, on the whole, doing well and not anx- ious to move. Finally, the large private land companies that had received large land grants were not anxious to select their lands and release them onto the market, speculating that land would increase in value after the country was better settled. Beginning in the 1890s an open and aggressive Canadian immigration policy, con- ducted by both the federal and provincial governments, brought new settlers to the prairies. In 1896 a new Minister of the Interior (with responsibility for immi- gration) took office. Clifford Sifton (1861–1929) was an Ontario-born Manitoban who believed in massive agri- cultural immigration as the key to Canadian prosper- ity. The trick, he held, was to find suitable immigrants and to get them onto the land. Sifton decided to take his immigrant farmers from wherever in the world he could find them, rather than concentrating on people from the United Kingdom. He was prepared to recruit in Eastern Europe, especially on the steppes of Russia where grain cultivation was well established. Sifton saw a quality immigrant as a “stalwart peasant in a sheep-skin coat born on the soil, whose fore-fathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children” (quoted in Petryshyn, 1985: 21). He was also prepared to recruit in the United States, which no longer had an unsettled frontier of its own, despite a previous Canadian reluctance to encourage American settle- ment. Changing conditions in both Eastern Europe and the United States worked to Canada’s advantage.

The Ukrainians and Doukhobors Ukraine is a vast territory on the central and southern plains of Eastern Europe, and during the later nine- teenth century 85 per cent of this territory was part of the Russian Empire, while 15 per cent belonged to the Austrian Empire. The first settlers from Ukraine to Canada had come in the early 1890s, joining Mennonites and Hungarians as early arrivals from these European empires. In 1895, Dr Joseph Oleskiw, a Ukrainian aca- demic who taught agriculture, visited Canada and proposed an extensive Ukrainian immigration to the Canadian West, which Clifford Sifton did his best to implement. Between 1896 and 1914, about 170,000 Ukrainians—chiefly from the overpopulated Austrian

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provinces of Galicia and Bukovyna—entered Canada, mainly settling on the prairies. In their homeland, these people had been experiencing increasing subdivision of their land and declining productivity because of lack of capital resulting from heavy taxation. By 1900, half of the landholdings in the provinces of Galicia and Bukovyna were less than two hectares in extent, and many small landholders were heavily in debt. The Ukrainians would probably have preferred to go to the United States, but they faced increasing immigration restrictions and an often hostile reception from the Americans, who no longer had any unsettled agricultural land to distribute to newcomers. Many of the immigrants came to Canada because of a secret agreement between the Canadian

government and the North Atlantic Trading Company, which directed immigrants to Canada in return for under-the-table payments on a per capita basis. Indeed, steamship and railway companies were probably more successful recruiters of immigration outside the British Isles than was the Canadian government.

Canada may have been a second choice, but at least it encouraged Ukrainians to settle and it could make land available to them. Most Ukrainian immigrants were poor but not destitute. Like generations of immi- grants before them, they had sold their land and pos- sessions to purchase their passage. Like all immigrants of the time, they found the transatlantic passage in steerage to be a difficult experience. As their own his-

In western Canada, farmers’ instincts were to increase acreage as much as possible, creating large, profitable farms. Here, farmers are seen breaking land in Pincher Creek, Alberta. Despite the width and size of the plows illustrated here, they are still being drawn by horses. Note the size of the crew apparently required for this operation. Glenbow Archives, NA-2382-9.

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torians have emphasized, the situation the Ukrainians entered in Canada was little different from that at home: bare survival on the land and an early death for those who failed. But they were stubborn—and hopeful. Many new arrivals found the quarter-section homestead concept—160 acres or one-fourth of a square mile township, the standard survey unit in the West—to be beyond their comprehension, partly because of its size and partly because of the difficulty of reproducing compact village communities like the ones they had left.

The first Ukrainians typically emigrated without many of their natural leaders, especially parish clergy- men. They were particularly assisted by three members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia—Joseph Oleskiw, Kyrole Genik, and the Reverend Nestor Dmytriw—employed by the Canadian government as “overseers” and advisers. These three men produced a substantial body of writ- ing to assist the new arrivals. They emphasized the need for capital to establish a farm, the adoption of Canadian styles of dress, and the acquisition of free land. Canadian society received the Ukrainians with considerable sus- picion, chiefly because they were obviously non-British “foreigners” who spoke an alien language and practised different customs. Those who settled in the cities (espe- cially Winnipeg’s North End) in ethnic slum commun- ities were almost visible. But the willingness of the new arrivals to work hard was in their favour, at least before the onset of the Great War. After 1914, Austria-Hungary joined Germany as the enemy, and many Ukrainians in Canada became “enemy aliens.”

Usually considered separately from the Ukrainians, although originating from the same region, the Doukh- obors were a sectarian movement that broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the eighteenth century. The Doukhobors (the term literally means “spirit wrest- lers”) became a Quaker-like pacifistic group that empha- sized the brotherhood and sisterhood of all men and women and the validation of their beliefs not in books but in the “book of life.” With the aid of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, the Doukhobors came to western Canada in search of refuge from Russian persecution. The first con- tingent was granted recognition as conscientious object- ors by the Canadian government on 6 December 1898. Over the next few years, more than 7,500 Doukhobors arrived in Canada to settle on tracts reserved for them in

what would become Saskatchewan and Alberta. They were joined by their leader, Peter Verigin (1859–1924), in 1903. In 1907 the Canadian government backed away from an earlier commitment to allow the Doukhobors to live and work communally, insisting instead on individual home- steading and an oath of allegiance. As a result, under the leadership of Verigin, communal-living Doukhobors bought land in the Interior of British Columbia and moved into the Kootenay region, where they would subsequently struggle with the authorities over their beliefs.

The Americans Although the Canadian press would occasionally com- plain about the “Americanization” of the West and other places, most Americans had always been regarded as desirable settlers who “understood the ways of the continent and its institutions” (Troper, 1972: 12). Many Americans, of course, had started their lives in British America before moving to the United States earlier in the century. Some exceptions to the favourable atti- tude towards Americans prevailed, however. Many Canadians objected to the polygynous marriage prac- tices of the Mormons, who were one of the earliest groups of immigrants into Alberta in the 1880s, and few Canadians showed any enthusiasm for the admission into their country of American blacks from Oklahoma and elsewhere. In addition to the Mormons, American cattle and sheep ranchers arrived before the 1890s, but following the well-publicized “closing of the frontier” in the United States during that decade the Canadian government made a real effort after 1896 to recruit American farmers of European origins for what would become known as “The Last Best West.”

Canadian agents openly sought wealthy immi- grants. One common form of recruitment was through personal correspondence from successful settlers to prospective ones, organized by the Department of Immigration. Much of the settlement in Saskatchewan and Alberta occurred in the so-called Palliser’s Triangle, a dry-belt region with marginal rainfall. American farm- ers were alleged to be the best settlers of such land, as they were familiar with the techniques of dry-land farm- ing. In a series of land rushes, thousands of American farmers settled the dry belt in the years between 1906

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284 A History of the Canadian Peoples

and 1914. They prospered because there was adequate rainfall during this period, but later they abandoned the region when drought conditions returned.

By 1921 over 44 million acres (17,806,800 ha) of the prairies were under cultivation. According to one set of calculations, the wheat economy in 1901–11 contributed over 20 per cent of the growth in per capita income in Canada. While wheat was the big prairie crop, other crops were possible. Before the arrival of farmers, much of southern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan was the domain of ranchers, who grazed their cattle on open range leased from the federal government. At the height of the cattle boom in 1898, Canadian ranchers exported 213,000 live head. Most cattlemen were American, but a

substantial minority were British, and polo-playing was common in early Alberta. Although ranchers insisted that much of the range land was unsuitable for farming because of water shortages, their obvious self-interest in an open range negated the force of much of their argu- ment. Nevertheless, water remained a major potential problem in much of the West.

Mines and Timber

In 1890 Nova Scotia was the leading mining province in Canada, chiefly because of its rich coal resources. After that year, three factors hastened a great shift in Canadian mineral extraction. One was the development of new

Ukrainian (Galician) immigrant family in Quebec, 1911. While immigrants came from many parts of the world to Canada, a number of programs were directed at Eastern Europeans. Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton desired these “stalwart peasants in sheep-skin coats,” such as those pictured here, to farm the West. Photo by W.J. Topley, LAC, PA-10401.

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technologies to extract ore. Another was the increasing availability of railway transportation to remote areas. Most important of all, the international market created a new demand for metals that Canada had in abundance: copper, nickel, and silver. Almost overnight, Ontario and British Columbia became the leading mineral producers.

Although the most famous mining rush of the per- iod was to the Yukon’s Klondike district for gold, the Klondike was hardly typical of the mining industry. More representative were the mining towns that sud- denly sprang up and equally rapidly closed down in the mountains of British Columbia and Alberta. Like most Canadian mines, these required considerable machin- ery and expertise to exploit, well beyond the resources of the individual miner. Well-capitalized corporations opened such mines, employing money and technology often imported from the United States. In Quebec, the most buoyant segment of the mineral industry between 1900 and 1920 was asbestos fibre, used chiefly in con- struction material consumed in the United States. The Canadian mining industry greatly benefited from the military requirements of the Great War.

In the forest industry, the decline through perma- nent depletion of the white pine forests of eastern Canada pushed the centre of activity to the West. British Columbia had millions of acres of Douglas fir and cedar. The province started harvesting in the coastal regions close to water, but soon pushed inland. Most of its production went to American markets. The remain- ing forests of eastern Canada proved valuable for their softwood. The pulp and paper industry expanded rapidly, driven by an insatiable American demand for inexpensive newsprint. By 1915 wood pulp and paper represented one-third of the value of Canadian exports, virtually equal to wheat and grain in the overseas mar- ket. Quebec produced nearly one-half of Canada’s wood pulp and paper.

The resource sector produced its own version of labour militancy. The sector was difficult to organize by traditional means. In mines and lumber camps, the distinction between skilled and unskilled labour had little meaning. Nevertheless, worker alienation was often extreme. In British Columbia, unrest was par- ticularly strong among miners, who worked for large

absentee corporations under difficult conditions. In this kind of environment, syndicalists and radicals (such as the Wobblies or the Impossibilists) did very well. They preached the need for the organization of all workers into general unions and the destruction of capitalism by revolution.

Urban and Rural Canada In 1881 Canada had a population of 4,325,000, of whom 3,349,000 lived outside urban centres. Forty years later, of the nation’s 8,788,000 inhabitants, only 4,811,000 resided in non-urban areas, and 1,659,000 lived in cities with populations over 100,000. While the non- urban population had grown over these years from 3,349,000 to 4,811,000, the number of city dwellers had burgeoned from 974,000 to 3,977,000. Urban growth was obviously a major trend of the period 1880–1918. Canada developed some very large metropolitan cen- tres, but their residents did not constitute the entire urban population. If 1,659,000 Canadians lived in cit- ies of over 100,000 in 1921, another 2.2 million lived in smaller centres, with 1,058,000 in towns of 5,000 to 29,999 people and 765,000 in towns of 1,000 to 4,999. Canadian urban growth in this era produced all sorts of new problems for the nation. At the same time, urban development was not the entire story for these years. As the statistics well demonstrate, before 1921 more Canadians continued to reside in rural than in urban areas. Rural Canada, although its earlier dominance was gradually eroding away, was still very important to the national ethos. Moreover, the very sense of the grad- ual loss of traditional rural values was critical for the Canadian psyche.

The City

As with most other aspects of Canadian development in this period, urban growth was uneven across the regions. Maritime cities grew fairly sluggishly. None could establish regional dominance. Indeed, Halifax lost ground as central Canada siphoned off its financial

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286 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The 1889 Royal Commission on the Relations of Labor

and Capital documented through first-person testi-

mony that a substantial number of children of both

sexes between the ages of 10 and 14 were employed

full-time (10 hours a day, six days a week) in the factor-

ies of Ontario and Quebec. They were paid between

$1.00 and $2.00 per week, depending on their age and

production during a time when the typical working-

man earned $7.00 per week and females somewhat

less. These children were subjected to heavy discipline,

including corporal punishment. They were frequently

fined when they fell behind quotas, and one factory

even had a “black hole” in which a child could be con-

fined for hours or even days. Laws against the use of

child labour, especially children under the age of 14,

existed but were not enforced any more than were

the laws calling for compulsory school attendance.

Parents supported the employment of their children,

even insisted upon it, as part of a “family economy”

that helped sustain many in the working classes of the

nation. The absence of any clear concept of child-

hood beyond the early years helped contribute to the

presence of children in factories and elsewhere in

the Canadian industrial workforce, but such a pattern

was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the

employment of children in Victorian Canada. Most of

Canada remained agricultural, and in this sector of

the economy the dominant economic institution was

the family farm, which operated on the assumption

that every family member beyond the earliest years

worked to contribute to its survival and prosperity.

Unlike the child factory workers, many of whom

probably turned their earnings over to their fam-

ilies, the children working on the farm received no

wages. Also unlike those employed in factories, of

course, some of those children who worked on

the family farm had a prospect of an inheritance at

the end of the day, although usually only the older

males and almost never the females benefited in this

way. According to one recent study of prairie child

labour in the Victorian period, the Canadian West

could not have been successfully settled without the

heavy use of child labour. “Children contributed to

production,  took part in paid employment or other

money-raising activities, worked at domestic and

subsistence tasks, and thereby increased the sup-

ply of cash, food, and other necessary commodities

to the family” (Rollings-Magnusson, 2009: 133–4).

Indeed, settlement in Canada in any period was based

on the exploitation of the unpaid labour of the family,

including both women and children.

BACKGROUNDER Child Labour in Victorian Canada

Although there were laws in place to protect child labourers, such as the children seen here separating the ore from the rock in a Quebec copper mine, these laws were not enforced. © McCord Museum.

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institutions. In Quebec, Montreal continued its path to the status of the Dominion’s premier city, with Quebec City and other towns lagging far behind. In Ontario, Toronto was clearly the “Queen City,” although a num- ber of smaller cities (Hamilton, London, and Kingston) were vibrant. Ottawa inhabited a world of its own as the nation’s capital, as it always would. The most spectacu- lar urban growth rates were in the West, which in this era spawned two major cities, Winnipeg and Vancouver, and two contenders for such a rank, Edmonton and Calgary. While western settlement usually suggests farms and agriculture, urban development in the West was strong from the outset. Land speculation drove local pretensions, and many communities aspired to be regional entrepôts. In the Prairie provinces the urban population grew from 103,000 to 606,000 between 1900 and 1916. City dwellers, who represented 25 per cent of the region’s population in 1901, had increased to 35 per cent only 10 years later. By 1921 in British Columbia, Vancouver (117,217) and Victoria (38,727) contained 25 per cent of the population of that Pacific province.

The larger cities of Canada most clearly exposed the social problems of the later Victorian and sub- sequent Edwardian eras. The greatest problem was poverty. Existing evidence suggests that up to half of the Canadian urban working class lived below, or at best around, the poverty line. Most working-class fam- ilies were glad to supplement the father’s income with the earnings of wife and children in menial occupa- tions. Given the grinding conditions of their lives, it is not surprising that many sought refuge in alcohol. Unbalanced diets and malnutrition were only the start of the problems of the poor. Their housing was typically overcrowded, with poor sanitation and a lack of open yards and spaces.

Home ownership was difficult, even for the mid- dle classes, because mortgages were hard to obtain and were only of short duration, often no more than three or four years. Malnutrition and deplorable housing condi- tions combined to produce high overall death rates and high infant mortality rates in Canada’s largest cities. The mortality differentials between the poor and the pros- perous were substantial, ranging from 35.51 deaths per 1,000 in 1895 in one working-class ward in Montreal to less than 13 per 1,000 “above the hill.” Infant mortality

rates in Canadian cities were little different from those in places like Calcutta and Bombay. The children of the urban poor often got little schooling. Moreover, the poor resisted pressures for compulsory education.

If the city had social problems, it also made pos- sible a rich and varied cultural life. Before 1918 cultural life maintained an amateur tradition of considerable vitality. The major development in Canadian urban culture in this era was not so much the appearance of first-rate artists as the creation of an institutional infrastructure that might eventually enable them to emerge. The city made possible the development of cultural institutions in the form of both organiza- tions and buildings to house them. The construction of museums, for example, was characteristic of the age. The Art Museum of Toronto appeared in 1900, the Royal Ontario Museum in 1912 (it opened in 1914). Equally characteristic of the era was the formation of artistic organizations. The Canadian Art Club (1907) was organized in Toronto, although its founders had no idea how to achieve their goal of introducing new Canadian painting to the entire nation. Formal art and music schools were organized in most of the lar- ger urban centres, offering regularized instruction to neophyte painters and musicians. Theatrical buildings became a measure of a city’s status. As early as 1891 Vancouver had a 1,200-seat opera house. Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre (1906–7) seated 1,525, and Winnipeg’s Walker Theatre (1907, recently renovated as a theatrical venue) seated 2,000 in splendid com- fort. These buildings operated continuously, housing mainly professional touring companies and local ama- teurs. Homegrown professional theatre emerged first in Montreal. There were 10 different professional compan- ies at work in Montreal in the 1890s. In 1899 alone these companies gave 618 performances of 109 plays.

The extent of the growth of urban Canada between 1880 and 1919 was largely unanticipated. The large city cut against most of the dominant ideologies of the time, which were traditional and rural. The insti- tutions of urban government were not well integrated into the overall Canadian political system. The British North America Act did not leave much room for the governance of cities that would have budgets and rev- enues as large as those of the provinces in which they

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288 A History of the Canadian Peoples

were located. Urban government and urban politics operated outside the structures of Confederation, with their own agendas and distinct party labels. Most cities were slow to abandon property qualifications for vot- ing. Local merchants and real estate promoters tended to dominate city councils, even in cities with a relatively democratic franchise. The ward system produced muni- cipal politicians who curried favour with the electorate through corrupt practices ranging from the purchasing of votes to offers of “jobs for the boys.”

No urban centre could expect to prosper in this era if it was not on a main-line railway. Contemporaries clearly recognized this reality. During the several out- bursts of railway expansion—particularly between 1906 and 1915, when more than 14,000 new miles (22,530 km) of railway track were laid in Canada—efforts by aspir- ing communities to become depots and junction points were prodigious. Conversely, rumours of new railway construction were sufficient to create a village where none had existed previously. The extremes to which communities would go to publicize themselves in order to attract railways were occasionally ludicrous and often

expensive. Agricultural fairs, as well as the presence of town bands and sports teams, publicized communities. A marching brass band and a baseball team were two of the best advertisements an “up-and-at-’em” town could enjoy. “Bonusing”—financial inducements for railways and business entrepreneurs alike—was a way of life in this period.

If urban growth relied on railway networks, it operated in a context of fairly blatant and open land speculation. The attempted creation of every new city in western Canada began with a land boom. This stage of development usually ended with a collapse in land prices that required years of recovery. Many small businessmen in the West made a decent living selling out in one community just ahead of the bust and moving to a new townsite further down the rail line. The false fronts on western small-town stores were symbolic of the transitory nature of commitment. Speculation in land involved not merely businessmen—or the West. Almost all segments of local communities across Canada joined in real estate speculation whenever they could. Indeed, the attempt to turn a profit by investing in undeveloped

The “foreign” quarter of Winnipeg, c. 1909. Archives of Manitoba, Immigration 17, N7936.

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2897 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

land must surely be one of the most enduring features of Canadian life. Speculation was different from develop- ment. The former involved the holding of land for future profit, the latter the translation of land—often acquired at bargain prices—into immediate profit as sites for houses or factories.

Town and Suburb

In the larger urban centres land speculation and develop- ment were inseparable from the process of suburbaniz- ation. This trend combined with urban expansion away from the commercial core of most cities. There were

three distinct motives for suburban expansion. Different types of suburbs were the result. The first motive dom- inated among the prospering business and professional classes, who moved to new residential suburbs to escape the noise, odours, and bustle of the central city. Horse droppings on busy city streets, for example, were a major problem before the Great War. Some of these suburbanites were attempting to separate themselves from the growing slums of the industrializing city. The architectural style most closely associated with the new suburban elites grew out of the English Arts and Crafts movement and became known as the English Domestic Revival. A second motive for suburban growth was the

Interior of slum home, Winnipeg, c. 1915.What assumptions can we make about the subjects and surroundings in this photograph? Archives of Manitoba, Foote 1491, N2438.

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290 A History of the Canadian Peoples

quest for lower land costs and lower taxes outside the central city. The result was the development of a number of industrial suburbs, such as Maisonneuve in Montreal, which flourished outside the city but were still within its orbit. The third motive was proximity to work. As indus- trial development moved into the cheaper outskirts, workers were forced to follow their jobs into often inad- equate new housing. During this period, most large cit- ies in Canada grew by a continuous process of absorbing outlying communities.

The genuine Canadian small town tended to fit one of two models. It was either a community serving a surrounding rural area, sometimes with a manufactur- ing plant or two, or a single-resource community, often remotely located, that had formed around a mine or

mining/smelter operation. The resource town consisted almost exclusively of single males, with only a handful of women. There were precious few sources of entertain- ment other than booze and gambling. Many resource towns, though not all, were company towns. Such com- munities were both violent and restive, often centres of labour unrest.

The service community, on the other hand, was the centre of economic, social, and recreational life for its district. Before the advent of radio and television, the social life of small-town Canada bustled impressively. Organizations of all kinds proliferated and flourished. Most towns had a variety of lodges and an endless round of meetings, dances, and “occasions.” These occasions included concerts, plays, sermons by visiting evangelical

It will be remembered that, according to our indus-

trious census, the total number of poor families was

reckoned at 888 in “the city below the hill.” Half of

this number were by the writer selected as material

for a second and more searching investigation, with

a view of more fully examining the characteristics,

conditions and causes of our west-end poverty. Four

hundred and thirty-six families were sought for, and

the first fact that was brought to the notice of the

investigator was that 46 families, or 10 1/2 per cent

of the above number, had left their former abodes,

within the two months between the first and second

canvass, drawing attention to one of the sad fea-

tures of poverty’s lot, viz., the constant necessity to

move on because of inability to satisfy the claims of

the landlord. If this ratio were maintained, and each

month saw 5 per cent of the poor evicted, in a year

not half these families could be found at the former

addresses.

A second fact, made apparent by the special

investigation, was that our west-end poverty was not

the result of recent immigration. Quite the reverse

from what would have been the case in New York or

Chicago, hardly a dozen families were discovered that

had not been residents of the city for at least three

years. The vast majority were old residents who had

lived in Montreal for the greater part of their lives.

The presence of poverty, then, in the nether city is

not chargeable to any considerable influx of foreign

elements.

Herbert Brown Ames on Poverty in Montreal In 1897 the Montreal businessman Herbert Brown Ames published a series of articles in the Montreal Star that subsequently appeared as a book. The articles were based on his careful survey of social conditions in part of the west side of Montreal. The district he had selected probably offered a fair sample of working-class residences in Montreal at the end of the nineteenth century.

Contemporary Views

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preachers, and lectures on temperance or exotic places. By the end of the Great War, most towns had a “movie house” or a hall that exhibited motion pictures on a regular basis. Many small towns had exercised the local option permitted by liquor legislation and “gone dry.” Small-town social relations were often strained, particu- larly between the middle classes and those who worked in the factories that many eastern small towns possessed. In the West, class conflict often pitted farmers against hired hands or the crews of threshing contractors. The possibility of outbreaks of violence was never far away.

Even more serious were the gender constraints inherent in the structure of small towns. Masculinity dominated the life of the town, in terms both of family relationships and especially of extracurricular activity.

Local sports were controlled by notions of manliness, and most athletic organizations catered only to men. Local fraternal organizations were equally mascu- line and exclusionist, although occasionally they had women’s auxiliaries. One of the most important under- lying tensions in many (although not all) small towns was between church-related and other voluntary organ- izations. The church organizations were dominated by women and often sought reform, including prohibition of alcohol and elimination of gambling. The mascu- line-dominated voluntary structure was often, by impli- cation, the chief target of these reformers. The attentive and careful reader can find all these tensions exhibited in the novels of small-town life that dominated Canadian literature in these years.

In the case of 323 families inquiries were made

as to the causes, assigned by the people them-

selves, for their indigent condition. With 109 families,

or 34 per cent the reply was “irregularity of work.”

The wage-earners were not without vocations but

their employment was intermittent and often work

ceased altogether for considerable periods. With

87 families or 28 per cent the answer was that the

wage-earners had no work whatever, nor did there

seem to be any immediate prospect of getting any.

With 27 families, or 9 per cent, old age had unfitted

and with a like number sickness had prevented the

worker from earning the requisite support. Out of

these 323 families, among the poorest of the poor,

62 per cent claimed to be able to better their condi-

tion were employment regular and abundant. That a

certain percentage of the answers given did not state

the real facts of the case is quite probable. Few are

the families that will admit to a stranger that drink,

crime or voluntary idleness is the cause of their mis-

ery, though in 7 per cent of the cases visited drunk-

enness was clearly at the bottom of the trouble. Still

it is the belief of the investigator that the undeserving

among the poor form a far smaller proportion than is

generally imagined.

As to the composition of the family, out of 390 fam-

ilies, 86 were found wherein the head of the household

was a widow, and 54 cases where the husband was

too old or too ill to work, making in all 140 families, or

36 per cent of the whole, that might be called “decapi-

tated” family groups. In about two-thirds of the  fam-

ilies, or in 64 per cent of the cases examined, there was

an able-bodied man in the house, oftimes more than

one, a man able to work and professing to be willing to

do so. If these proportions may be taken as fairly indi-

cating the average among the families of the poor, it is

evident that at least one-third of them are in indigent

circumstances through no fault of their own. . . .

Source: H. Ames, The City Below the Hill, pp. 74–6. © University of Toronto Press, 1972.

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292 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Rural Canada

A number of major changes occurred in Canadian agri- culture during the period from 1880 to 1914. The most obvious was the enormous expansion of farming in the prairie West, concentrating single-mindedly on grain cultivation. Elsewhere, the era saw a major shift in east- ern Canada towards specialized farming. In central Canada, farmers moved into specialized high-quality consumer production, becoming increasingly depend- ent on off-farm processing, particularly of cheese, but- ter, and meat. By 1900 Ontario had over 1,200 cheese factories, which captured over half of the British mar- ket. Ontario cheese makers were renowned around the world. Quebec farmers had greater difficulty in making the change because of the marginality of much of their land. Specialty farming was very remunerative for those able to engage in it. The aristocrats of farming were the dairy farmers and the fruit farmers. Along with special- ized farming came new technology, although the ubi- quitous tractor did not replace the horse until after the Great War. More important were mechanical harvesters, centrifugal cream separators, and the introduction of refrigeration. Technology was essential to specializa-

tion. It was also capital-intensive. Not all farmers could make the shift. Those who could not often stagnated or failed absolutely. Between 1891 and 1921 the Maritime region lost 22,000 farms and 1,556,709 acres (630,000 ha) of farmland under cultivation. Unmodernized farms could not continue to support the entire family. By 1911 the Farmer’s Advocate could refer to the “perennial debates as to ‘Why the Boys Leave the Farm’.” While urban migration was one response, another was that farmers—and farm women—moved into the traditional resource industries of the nation. Males went to sea to fish or into the woods to cut timber. Females worked seasonally in factories, processing farm products or fish.

Contemporaries often blamed the growing rural exodus on the social and cultural attractions of the city. While it might thus be tempting to visualize rural Canada as a vast wasteland of isolated and unlettered country bumpkins, such a view would be most inaccurate. Isolation did exist, as did educational limitations. On the other hand, a relatively efficient and inexpensive postal service provided contact with the wider world. People read books and discussed them at clubs that met in local churches. Clergymen often talked about controversial books and topics from their pulpits. Many farm families received at least one daily newspaper through the mail— seldom on the day of publication, but usually only a day or two later. Canadian dailies in this era provided more substantial fare than today. International coverage was much fuller, and many papers saw themselves as “papers of record,” often reproducing verbatim accounts of court trials and important meetings. In the spring of 1919, for example, the Winnipeg Tribune carried a full stenograph- er’s report of the debates at the labour convention in Calgary, which agreed to “an Industrial Organization of all workers.” Most rural folk also relied heavily for their edification on farm journals such as the Grain Growers’ Guide (1908–28) and more general magazines like the Christian Guardian, the voice of the Methodist Church; it was begun in 1829 by Egerton Ryerson and continued under that name until 1925. The wide range of letters to the editor included in most of these periodicals suggests both their circulation and their vitality.

If rural Canadians had access to considerable infor- mation, they were also surprisingly able to get together socially with each other. The school and the church

Although most athletic organizations catered only to men, by the turn of the twentieth century, hockey was being regularly played by women as well as men. Here is the Rossland, British Columbia, Ladies’ Hockey Team, c. 1900. Rossland Museum Archives, RHMA02-18-997.

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2937 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

The Town Directory of Treherne, Manitoba, 1895

Document

Town Directory 1895

E. Hamilton’s our high school master; D. Hamilton puts on the plaster; Revds. McClung, Fraser and George Fill On Sundays do our pulpits fill; T.J. Lamont’s our town M.D.; One blacksmith’s name is Thos. Lee; Rogers sells dry goods and coffees; Alexander keeps post office; D. Williams and J.K. McLennan Sell dry goods, cod, haddock finnan, Ben Englewain repairs the clocks; Our miller’s name is Jas A. Cox; James Telford Reid’s our legal light One retired farmer’s called John White; ’Tis G.A. Anderson that carried The business on for Massey-Harris; And S.L. Taylor sells the pills, That sometimes cure and sometimes kill; C.W. Barkwell is town baker; Ed Roberts is the undertaker; Tom Roberts helps his brother Ed

Sell furniture and house the dead; Joe Straube is town hardware man; In athletics Paulin leads the van; One livery’s kept by the Parker Brothers; And John Perrie keeps the other; Jas. Stevenson keeps the “Manitoba,” With parlor, dining-room, and lobby; Fred Rocket keeps the “Rocket House”; Our tailor’s name is Harry House; D. Harvie harness makes and collars Watt Smith irons wagons, sleighs and rollers And general blacksmith shop controls; His carriage maker’s William Bowles; Andrew Ross supplies the butcher meat; Malcolm McClarty shoes the feet; H. Watson, Senior health inspector; James McAdam’s tax collector; Claude Somerville’s mill engineer; John Coulter is mill charioteer; James Emmond sues for delinquent debts, And William Frame does serve the writs; Robson deals in lumber, lime, and bricks . . . .

In 1907 Alan Ross, a local poet in Treherne, Manitoba, published a small volume of his verse. It included the following poem, the subject of which is self-explanatory.

Source: Alan Ross, Poems (Treherne, Man.: The Treherne Times, 1907), 18.

were two local institutions that served other functions besides providing formal education and worship servi- ces. School districts were usually the only sign of public organization in vast regions of rural Canada that were otherwise politically unorganized. The community jealously guarded its schoolhouse, which, from coast to coast, was typically of one room. The most common Quebec school in the 1913 census had one room, built at a cost of $1,200. Whether Protestant or Catholic,

francophone or anglophone, rural Canadians took their religion seriously. Sermons provided topics for daily conversation. The activities of various auxiliary groups connected with any church, particularly the picnics and socials, were very popular. Winter did not shut down social life in rural areas, but permitted it to flower. The demands of the farm were much lighter in winter, while snow and ice provided a decent surface for horse-drawn sleighs and carrioles to travel about the countryside. “A

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294 A History of the Canadian Peoples

working day . . . was from about 4:30 a.m. to 11 o’clock at night,” reported one western farmer, “but this was only in seeding and harvesting time. In the winter we used to really have fun” (quoted in Voisey, 1988: 158).

A number of diaries and journals kept by rural Canadians in this period have recently appeared in print. They provide two revelations for the modern reader. The first is the sheer volume of social inter- change, especially among the young, that actually occurred. The second is the extent to which Canadians of this era actively participated in their own entertain- ment rather than being amused as passive spectators by the activities of others. Canadians of both sexes and all ages routinely spent social evenings singing hymns and other songs. They created and performed their own skits and joined together in active games such as charades.

Rural life was not all bucolic pleasure, of course. The real reason for the rural exodus was not isolation but exploitation and lack of economic opportunity. The underside of life on the family farm was the exploitation and abuse of those who would not in the end inherit a substantial share in the property. The system was par- ticularly hard on women, who usually did not share in the ownership of the farm and who seldom received remuneration for their labour. Western farmers espe- cially were hostile to “anachronistic” legal concepts such as dower rights. The homesteading system was generally unsympathetic to the rights of women to set up as independent farmers. For many women every- where in Canada, the daily routine was even more continually demanding than it was for men. Women’s responsibilities included not only the kitchen garden and the smaller livestock, such as chickens and pigs, but care of the family itself. One consequence of the shift into specialized farming was that parts of the farm operation previously consigned to women that provided them with a small income (“egg money”) were taken over by the males. Canadian rural society con- tinued to be inherently patriarchal in its organization. Men owned the land and usually made the decisions, including when to uproot and resettle, often against the wishes of their wives. The figure of the rural patriarch as an intensely self-righteous, land-hungry, materialistic tyrant became a common motif in Canadian fiction of this and a slightly later period.

Despite the darker side, a vast majority of Canadians continued to hold rural values and to think of the nation largely in pastoral terms. Those who read Canadian poetry or looked at Canadian art found little but Canadian nature. Foreigners inevitably saw Canada as a completely undeveloped country and Canadians as an agricultural people. In the hands of the poets, Canadian nature was chiefly benign. Writers of prose sometimes depicted nature differently, often in terms of the victory of hardy settlers over the harsh landscape and climate. Many Canadian writers and painters of this period romanticized the farm and farming, none more so than Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne of Green Gables summed up a major conflict of the era: the problem of reconciling the bucolic beauty and tranquility of the rural landscape with the need to leave it in order to fulfill one’s ambitions. For large numbers of Canadians of this era, growing up meant leaving the farm.

Another form of romanticization of rural life was the collection of its folklore and folksongs. Marius Barbeau (1883–1969) was the first great Canadian col- lector of folk traditions, beginning in 1911 when he was appointed an anthropologist at the Museum Branch of the Geological Survey of Canada (now the National Museum of Canada). Barbeau recorded and preserved in archives thousands of songs and narratives that document not only the folk traditions of rural Quebec but also those of the Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia. The folkways and songs that Barbeau and others collected were part of the traditional rural experience of Canada. They preserved almost nothing of urban origin. The collectors desperately gathered up dialects, riddles, tall tales, and children’s rhymes, all of which told more of the daily life of the people than most other historical evidence. Underlying the desperation was the fear that these traditions would disappear in the rapidly changing society of the period.

The dominance in Canada of the myth of agricul- ture carried over into the various efforts of the period to turn Aboriginal peoples into “peaceable agricultural labourers.” Agrarian ideology had the advantage of both justifying the dispossession of the Native peoples of their hunting grounds and providing them with an alter- nate way of life. Before the Great War most Canadians regarded agriculture as “the mainspring of national

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2957 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

Quebec

United States of America

Alaska (USA)

Ontario

Manitoba

Alberta

District of Mackenzie

Saskatchewan

British Columbia

District of Keewatin

District of Ungava

Yukon Territory

N ew

foundland

Nova Scotia

NB PEI

District of Franklin

Montreal

Ottawa

Toronto

Vancouver Victoria

Quebec Winnipeg

Regina

Edmonton

St L

aw re

nc e

R.

A t l a n t i c O c e a n

P a c i f i c O c e a n

H u d s o n B a y

N

S

E W

0 500

kilometres

1,000

A r c t i c C i r c l e

Quebec

United States of America

Alaska (USA)

Ontario

Manitoba

District of Alberta

District of Athabasca

District of Mackenzie

District of Saskatchewan

District of Assiniboia

British Columbia

District of Keewatin

District of Ungava

District of Franklin

Yukon Territory

1898

N ew

foundland

Nova Scotia

NB PEI

Montreal

Ottawa

Toronto

Vancouver Victoria

Quebec

St L

aw re

nc e

R.

A t l a n t i c O c e a n

P a c i f i c O c e a n

H u d s o n B a y

N

S

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0 500

kilometres

1,000

A r c t i c C i r c l e

Provinces

Northwest Territories

Yukon Territory

Newfoundland

Disputed Area

Provinces

North-West Territories

Yukon Territory

Newfoundland

Disputed Area

Canada in 1898 and 1905.

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296 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Basket socials may not be a form of amusement

peculiar to Prince Edward Island, but in all events, I

have never seen a place where they attained to such

prominence, among the various schemes for getting

money, as in this province. . . .

Often it happens that in country villages a debt

is to be paid by a congregation, either a balance

due on their church or perhaps for a new organ.

Instead of raising the necessary amount by pri-

vate subscription, the people decide upon a basket

social, and word is sent to everyone. Upon hearing

this the young ladies all begin to prepare baskets

containing ample lunch for two people. These they

carry, carefully wrapped in many sheets of paper,

to the hall on the night of the social, and hand over

to the committee in charge. The baskets are sold

by auction, and the purchaser of each must share

its contents with the young lady who brought it.

Of course every young man is anxious to get the

basket prepared by his “best girl”: but as the names

are not announced until after the baskets are sold,

many mistakes are made, and the remarks some-

times uttered, by fond lovers who have paid a high

price for the wrong one, look much better in print

when expressed by a dash.

Let us try to imagine ourselves in a hall in almost

any country settlement on the evening devoted to

one of these popular meetings. . . . The committee,

composed of elders of the church, were kept busy

finding seats for the ladies; taking care of the bas-

kets handed to them, and doing the many little things

necessary at all such entertainments. Now, however,

we see them placing a row of chairs on the platform,

and pushing the organ into a more convenient pos-

ition. Hardly had this been done when there enter

from a side door a number of ladies and gentlemen,

who proceed to occupy the chairs. This is the village

choir, and during the past week they have been prac-

ticing pieces to be sung to-night. . . .

Cheers, whistles and stamping of feet greeted

the choir, who arose and, to the accompaniment

of a hard-breathing organ, sang “Jingle Bells.” The

first verse was sung amid perfect silence, but in the

second the crowd caught the rhythm of the piece and

kept time to it with their feet, especially in the chorus,

when a string of sleigh bells was used to make the

effect more realistic. A recitation, “Curfew shall not

ring to-night,” given by a young lady, followed the

chorus, but as most of the audience knew the piece

by heart, very little attention was paid, and the greater

portion of the piece remained almost unheard. But

amid the din the speaker’s voice could be heard every

now and then, and bravely she struggled through

until, with the saving of the lover, the piece ended and

the “Amen corner” burst into thunderous applause.

Then came a fine-looking soloist—tenor in the choir

and local auctioneer. He began “Ten thousand leaves

are falling,” but having pitched the song in too high a

key, his voice broke and he stopped, his failure being

greeted by frantic howls and advice from one of the

“A Basket Social in P.E. Island” “Preserve me from ‘pie socials’,” wrote Lucy Maud Montgomery in her journal on 4 April 1899. “They are the abomination of desolation.” The following more positive view was expressed by “Welland Strong” (presumably a nom de plume) in a 1901 issue of the Prince Edward Island Magazine. Whoever the author may have been, he or she was quite right in thinking that the social was not distinctive to the Island, but appeared everywhere in rural Canada.

A Basket Social in P.E. Island

by Welland Strong

Contemporary Views

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2977 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

greatness” and farming as a way of life that uplifted one “morally and emotionally” (Carter, 1990: 20). Scientists saw agriculture as a crucial step in the ladder of prog- ress. They perceived other ways of using the land, such as mining or lumbering, as tainted and inferior. The government displaced Aboriginals by treaties, then removed them to reserves and encouraged them to farm. Exhortation was not the same as useful practical assist- ance. Native Canadians on the prairies needed a good deal of help to shift from a semi-nomadic hunting/gath- ering existence to a settled agricultural one, and they did not consistently receive assistance. Government aid was sporadic, cheese-paring, and patronizing. After 1885 coercion replaced subsidization as the federal gov- ernment’s major weapon to impose agriculturalism on the reserves. Not surprisingly, the policy failed.

A final illustration of nature’s appeal for Canadians came in the various back-to-nature movements. One form involved mounting crusades to preserve Canada’s natural environment in the face of encroaching civilization. The fight for the conservation of Canadian wildlife involved the establishment of game reserves and legislation to curb indiscriminate hunting. The crusade’s major vic- tories came with the establishment of large numbers of national and provincial parks across Canada in the years before the Great War. Another expression of the back-

to-nature movement was the summer cottage, which flourished among urbanites who could afford one by the early years of the twentieth century. Many refugees from the farm resolved their ambivalences through the sum- mer cottage or summer travel, often into the wilderness. Thus, alongside the burgeoning Canadian cities came the growth of summer cottages and resort hotels, located at lakeside or seaside, and frequently directly served by rail. Weekend train services poured middle-class Canadians by the thousands into the Laurentians of Quebec, the Muskoka, Algonquin Park, and Haliburton districts of Ontario, and from Winnipeg into the Lake of the Woods district. The Canadian fascination with the summer cottage had taken firm hold before the Great War. During this same period, the establishment of a national park system had begun with the creation of Rocky Mountain Park (later Banff National Park) in 1885, and this and other parks in the Rocky Mountains (Yoho, Glacier, Jasper, Waterton Lakes) of British Columbia and Alberta were conveniently reached by rail and, in some cases, the railways built expensive, sumptuous hotels to accommodate sojourners from the city.

While some Canadians settled temporarily into cottage or tourist hotel, others became fascinated with the recreational possibilities of wilderness travel. The waterways of Ontario and Quebec grew crowded

small boys to “start her at five thousand.” The pro-

gramme went on; chorus following reading, and solo,

chorus, the last few numbers being rendered ’midst

an almost deafening noise and shouts of “Bring on

the baskets.”

When it ended the choir moved to one side of the

platform, the schoolmaster who was to act as secre-

tary and treasurer took his place at the table, and the

auctioneer stepped forward holding in his hand the

first basket, now unwrapped and decorated in a most

fantastic manner with flags, flowers and coloured tis-

sue paper. . . . After all the baskets have been sold,

the names of the purchasers and ladies are read off

by the secretary, and the baskets opened by them.

Usually besides various kinds of cake and pie, the

basket contains glasses and a bottle of home-made

wine; but in case this has been left out, and also for

the benefit of the older people, the committee fur-

nish plenty of tea. When the lunch has been disposed

of, the men go to the nearest stables for their horses,

which have been left there, while the young ladies

gather their belongings, get muffled up ready for the

drive home and, while waiting for their friends, sing a

verse of “God save the King.”

Sleigh after sleigh drives up to the door, the

women and girls depart, and in a very few minutes

no one remains in the hall save the members of the

committee—counting over the money they have

made and writing a report of the social to be pub-

lished in the papers next day.

Source: The Island Magazine 46 (Fall/Winter 1999): 7–12. Reprinted with permission.

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298 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Wed. June 29 [1892]. Well here it is just a beauti-

ful day, fine and just warm enough to be pleasant.

This is the third day of our holidays and I can’t say

I have enjoyed them very much so far. Yesterday it

poured rain from dinner time until tea time, but still

I was not very lonely because there is such a house-

ful of us. Besides, Aunt Rose (who came over a week

ago tomorrow) came up and stayed all day, and she

is just splendid company. In the morning I did my

housework up and then trimmed May’s sailor hat,

and after dinner I got Winnie’s ready for trimming and

then made lemon filling for my Washington pie which

I made yesterday and made frosting for it also. And I

practised some and read some of a book called Little

Journey in the World by the same author of Baddeck

and That Sort of Thing. Mr. Bailey and Eddie White,

Fred Henderson and Leonard Webster came up and

spent the evening. We had lots of fun as usual over

those Tiddlywinks. We had two tables, and when

one side missed they had to go to the other table,

and the best players kept their same places. There

were Mr. B. and Nell, Win and Fred, Leonard and

Bois, and Eddie and I. After playing we had a lot of

music. Leonard sang “They are After Me” and some

other songs, and Mr. Bailey gave us a solo, then we

had some Charades. We also made up an orchestra

just for fun. Mr. B. played on the mouth organ (he

plays just beautifully on it), and Leonard had the tam-

bourine, Bois a tin whistle, Eddie another, and May

the table bell, and Winnie played one piano and Nell

accompanied her on the other, while I had the zither.

Oh but we had fun over that.

Monday morning (day before yesterday) was

fine but the afternoon was wet. I wrote a long let-

ter to Ted before dinner. She wrote Nell and I while

she was on her journey that they had stopped for

a while at a little place a hundred miles from Port

Arthur. Her mother told me yesterday that they both

liked it in Winnipeg very much and Lottie was feeling

very well only tired and sleepy. It is just three weeks

I think from Monday since they left. For the past

month back, part of the Lodge members were get-

ting up a drama for the Lodge called The Social Glass.

Nettie Evans, Mrs. Lodge, and Floss White and Eddie

McDonald, Mr. Russell, Mr. Butler, Mr. Colwell, and

Mr. Belyear and Es Hamilton are the ones that took

part in it. So they gave it to the public last Monday

evening. It was just fine. They had a full house and

the band played between every act, some very pretty

selections. They all took their parts splendidly. Hardly

anybody knew Flo, when the curtain rose, and she

was dressed as a bride in a light blue dress and her

hair done up and flowers in it and she looked just

sweet but so womanly. Es Hamilton was too comical

for anything as Bob Brittle. Oh he was grand. Nettie

Evans as Nettie Nettlebee could not have been bet-

ter. It just suited her to a tee. “She did love to make

folks happy.” Will Butler was splendid as Fairly. He

acted the delirium tremens fine and all the rest were

good too. Though it was ridiculous and comical in

lots of places, yet it was sad when you thought it was

just real life. This social glass at first and then it gets to

more and more until your own life is ruined by it and

many many others.

Sadie Allen’s Diary, Summer 1892

Source: Mary Biggar Peck, ed., A Full House and Fine Singing: Diaries and Letters of Sadie Harper Allen (Fredericton: Goose Lane Press, 1992), 66–7.

with weekend canoeists enjoying a brief respite from the pressures of the city. Ernest Thompson Seton (1860–1946), who founded an organization called Woodcraft Indians in 1902, promoted a junior version

of this outdoor activity from his apartment in New York City. Some of the best publicists for the canoe and the wilderness were painters, especially those who eventu- ally formed the Group of Seven in 1920. Its members,

Contemporary Views

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2997 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

mainly English-born Torontonians making a living as commercial artists, had begun travelling north into the Georgian Bay and Algonquin wildernesses as early as 1911. This group captured the iconographic essence of wilderness Canada: a bleak and sombre but none- theless curiously beautiful landscape of Jack pines, rock outcroppings, and storm-driven lakes, totally uninhabited by people.

Other Identities We can easily make too much of the political and religious arena. The elaboration of competing and occasionally incompatible identities by and for its cit-

izens characterized the Victorian Age. As well as their national and provincial loyalties, most Canadians had firm allegiances to their ethnic origins, whether these were French Canadian, Acadian, or British. French Canada further elaborated its cultural identity in this period, and the Acadians began self-consciously to develop one. As for those people whose origins were in the British Isles, they simultaneously thought of themselves as British as well as Welsh, Scottish, Irish, or English. Indeed, British Canadians may well have thought of themselves as more British (as opposed to Welsh or Scottish) than did their compatriots at home.

The state did not weigh heavily on the daily lives of most Canadians in this era, although the administrative state had begun its development before Confederation.

“Odabin Cottage,” the summer house of Charles Howard Millar, the local postmaster, Drummondville, Quebec, c. 1903. Canadians’ fascination with the summer cottage had already taken hold before 1914. Except for some ostentatious present-day “cottages” on some lakes, this cottage of more than a century ago is little different from those that Canadians rush to in the summer months today. Such cottages are perhaps most notable for how they blend into—as opposed to stand out from—the surrounding natural environment, in this case even with the decking built around small trees. © McCord Museum.

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300 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Taxation had not yet become ubiquitous and occurred mainly as tariffs and duties. Moreover, the state—as represented by province, nation, or city—did not nor- mally provide social benefits or solace when people got sick, lost jobs, retired, or died. For some, politics and gov- ernment were a source of employment or patronage. For most Canadians, however, government had very little to do with their lives. For many people, political allegiance to the state was therefore not as important as loyalty to the caring institutions: family, ethnic group, religion, and fraternal organization. Churches and religion were most important. Canada was a Christian country and few of its citizens openly defied Christian norms and values. By the 1880s the mobility of many Canadians contributed to the tendency to belong to a good many other voluntary organizations beyond the church. In an earlier period, voluntary organizations supplemented or provided municipal services such as water, light, fire, and libraries as well as charity. By the 1880s some organizations had begun providing entertainment and companionship for their members.

Technically independent of the churches, but closely connected in overlapping membership and social goals, were reform organizations like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Letitia Youmans (1827–96), a pub- lic school teacher and Sunday school teacher in the Methodist Church, founded the first Canadian local of the WCTU in December 1874 in Picton, Ontario. The WCTU spread rapidly across Canada in the 1880s, preaching that alcohol abuse was responsible for many of the social problems of contemporary Canada and campaigning for public prohibition of the sale of alco- holic beverages. Most of its membership came from the middle class, and much of its literature was directed at demonstrating that poverty and family problems among the lower orders could be reduced, if not elim- inated, by cutting off the availability of alcohol to the male breadwinner.

Canadians of the time tended to associate Orangeism with political matters—organizing parades on 12 July, opposing Roman Catholics, objecting to the 1870 execution of Thomas Scott—and with the Irish. Nevertheless, the Orange Order’s real importance and influence continued to rest on the twin facts that its membership united British Protestants of all origins

and that it served as a focal point on the local level for social intercourse and conviviality. As a “secret” society, it had elaborate initiation rites and a ritual that appealed to men who spent most of their lives in drudgery or dull routine. Lodges provided a variety of services for members, including an elaborate funeral. But if local fraternity was the key to Orangeism’s success, its public influence was enormous. In 1885 John A. Macdonald’s government would prefer to risk alienating Quebec by executing Louis Riel than alienating Orange Ontario by sparing him.

The Orange Order was not the only fraternal organ- ization that grew and flourished in Canada. Because most of these societies were semi-secret, with rites based on Freemasonry, they appealed mainly to Protestants. The Masons themselves expanded enormously during the mid-nineteenth century. They were joined by a num- ber of other orders, such as the Independent Order of Oddfellows (founded in England in 1813 and brought to Canada by 1845), the Independent Order of Foresters (founded in the United States in 1874 and brought to Canada in 1881), and the order of the Knights of Pythias (founded in Washington, DC, in the early 1860s and brought to Canada in 1870). The Knights of Labor was an all-embracing labour organization that owed much to the lodges. Fellowship and mutual support were the keys to the success of all of these societies. Their success led to the formation in 1882 of the Knights of Columbus as a similar fraternal benefit society for Roman Catholic men, although the first chapters in Canada were prob- ably not founded until the early 1890s. While few of these societies admitted women directly, most had adjunct or parallel organizations for women. By the 1880s many Canadians belonged to one or more of these societies. Membership offered a means of social introduction into a new community, provided status and entertainment to members, and increasingly supplied assurance of assist- ance in times of economic or emotional crisis.

Culture In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, most Canadians continued to amuse themselves at home by making music and playing numerous parlour games. Outside

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3017 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

the home, the amateur tradition remained strong. In most fields of artistic endeavour, Britain and the United States remained the dominant influences. Perhaps the outstanding original achievements in Canadian cultural production in this period occurred in fiction. Three developments stand out. One was the creation of the Canadian social novel. A second was the rise of a major figure in Canadian humour to carry on the ear- lier tradition of Haliburton and McCulloch. The third development, related to the previous two, was the emer- gence of several Canadian authors as international bestsellers. Some of these authors were women. All the successful authors were at their best in writing about the values of rural and small-town Canada at the end of the nineteenth century.

The best example of the social novel—also a novel of ideas—was The Imperialist by Sara Jeannette Duncan (1862–1912). Duncan had been born in Brantford and educated at the Toronto Normal School. She then became a pioneering female journalist, working for a long list of newspapers in the United States and Canada. In 1888 she and a female friend began a trip around the world, which she subsequently fictionalized. In 1904 she produced The Imperialist, a novel intended to describe the Imperial Question from the vantage point of the “average Canadian of the average small town . . . whose views in the end [counted] for more than the opinions of the political leaders” (quoted in Klinck, 1965: 316). Duncan drew on her childhood experiences in Brantford to describe conditions in Elgin, a “thriv- ing manufacturing town, with a collegiate institute, eleven churches, two newspapers, and an asylum for the deaf and dumb, to say nothing of a fire department unsurpassed for organization and achievement in the Province of Ontario” (Duncan, 1971 [1904]: 25). The opening chapter began with an account of the celebra- tions in Elgin on 24 May, the Queen’s Birthday. Duncan interwove the issue of imperialism with the social values of late Victorian Canada. For her protagonist, young politician Lorne Murchison, Canada’s continu- ation as a British nation was of moral rather than stra- tegic importance.

Duncan was perhaps the first Canadian writer to rec- ognize the literary potential of small-town Canada, espe- cially for satirical purposes, but she was not the greatest.

Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) had been born in England, but grew up on a farm near Lake Simcoe. Educated at Upper Canada College, the University of Toronto, and the University of Chicago, Leacock published a successful college textbook, Elements of Political Science, in 1906. He produced his first volume of humorous sketches, Literary Lapses, in 1910, and two years later published Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. This was an affectionate satirical look at life in Mariposa, a fictionalized version of Orillia, the nearest town to his boyhood home. Leacock per- fectly captured the hypocrisy, materialism, and inflated notions of importance possessed by Mariposa’s residents. He followed this triumph with a much more savage sat- ire of a North American city, obviously the Montreal in

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) sold the rights to her highly successful novel Anne of Green Gables to an American publisher for $500. Anne has gone on to become a mythic Canadian heroine, equally popular in Japan as in Canada itself. Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island. Lucy Maud Montgomery 3110-1.

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302 A History of the Canadian Peoples

which he lived and taught (at McGill University). The work was entitled Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914). In this book, which he pretended to set somewhere in the United States, Leacock began the transference of his satire from Canada to North America. He moved on from these early works to produce a volume of humorous sketches virtually every year, increasingly set in an inter- national milieu. His books were very popular in Britain and the United States. Many critics feel that Leacock’s

best work was his early Canadian satire, in which he scourged Canadian pretensions.

Duncan and Leacock both achieved international reputations as writers of fiction, and they were joined by several other Canadians in the years between 1900 and 1914. One was the Presbyterian clergyman Charles W. Gordon (1860–1937), who under the pseudonym “Ralph Connor” was probably the best-selling writer in English between 1899 and the Great War. Born in Glengarry

The Spell of the Yukon

Document

I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it— Came out with a fortune last fall,— Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?) It’s the cussedest land that I know, From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it To the deep, deathlike valleys below. Some say God was tired when He made it; Some say it’s a fine land to shun; Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it For no land on earth—and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason); You feel like an exile at first; You hate it like hell for a season, And then you are worse than the worst. It grips you like some kinds of sinning; It twists you from foe to a friend; It seems it’s been since the beginning; It seems it will be to the end.

British-born Robert W. Service (1874–1958) was the most popular poet in Canada at the end of the nineteenth century, best known as the “poet of the Yukon.” His poem, “The Spell of the Yukon,” reprinted below, suggests his attraction.

The Chilkoot Pass. This iconic photograph suggests some of the difficulties gold seekers endured to reach the Yukon. © World History Archive/Alamy.

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County, Canada West, and educated at the University of Toronto and Edinburgh University, Gordon became minister of a Presbyterian church in Winnipeg, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Ralph Connor’s first three books, published between 1899 and 1902, sold over five million copies. One of these, Glengarry School Days: A Story of Early Days in Glengarry (1902), was probably the best book he ever wrote. Like Duncan and Leacock, Connor excelled at the evocation of small-town life and

mores, drawing from his personal experiences as a boy. He was not a great writer but knew how to sustain a narrative and to frame a moral crisis. Some of his work—including novels in which clerical examples of muscular Christianity faced a variety of frontier challenges—obviously struck a responsive chord in an international audience. Connor’s heroes triumphed over sin, anarchy, and unregenerate people by sheer force of character, Christian conviction, goodness, and even physical strength; they represented

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim; I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer—no sweeter was ever; The sunshiny woods all athrill; The grayling aleap in the river, The bighorn asleep on the hill. The strong life that never knows harness; The wilds where the caribou call; The freshness, the freedom, the farness— O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you, The white land locked tight as a drum, The cold fear that follows and finds you, The silence that bludgeons you dumb. The snows that are older than history, The woods where the weird shadows slant; The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery, I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back—and I will.

They’re making my money diminish; I’m sick of the taste of champagne. Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish I’ll pike to the Yukon again. I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight; It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before; And it’s better than this by a damsite— So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting So much as just finding the gold. It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

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A wooden church in the French Gothic style located

on Prince Edward Island, St Mary’s Church in

Indian River was designed by William Critchlow Harris

(1854–1913), perhaps the leading architect in the

Maritime  provinces in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries. Harris was born near Liverpool,

England, and immigrated with his family to the Island

in 1856. One of seven children, he attended Prince

of Wales College and spent his life in the Maritimes,

a residential choice that may have cost him the

opportunity to achieve a national or even inter-

national reputation as did his elder brother Robert

Harris, the painter. Harris began designing churches

in 1880, most of them located on PEI or in Nova

Scotia. Although he frequently built with stone, his

most characteristic and iconic churches are, like St

Mary’s, renderings in wood of buildings in the Gothic

style. Indeed, his adaptation of wood to a Victorian

vocabulary was his most original contribution to the

architectural landscape of the region. The buildings

stand out today partly because they are painted in

bright colours. Harris began working in High Victorian

Gothic, but gradually shifted to French Gothic, as

exemplified in St Mary’s. A keen amateur musician,

Harris’s churches were invariably acoustical triumphs,

in effect musical instruments rendered as buildings.

This church was decommissioned by 2009 and is

presently used as a concert hall. Harris’s designs were

distinguished by multi-paned pointed-arch Gothic

windows and often by circular side-towers, as well

as clipped gable roofs and bargeboards with drilled

holes as decoration. The tower at Indian River also

contains representations of the 12 apostles, perhaps

a tribute to the Cathedral at Chartres. Harris’s willing-

ness to adapt wood to the Gothic style is an obvious

repurposing of a specific material culture tradition

to Canada. The use of classic architectural forms to

produce distinctively regional churches is a repeated

theme of colonial encounters, but in St Mary’s we see

that trend continuing even after Canada has become

an established nation. That the building now hosts

concerts and other musical events is a holdover from

the interests of its architect, but also an adaptation of

the space to present needs.

Material Culture

St Mary’s Church. © Bill Gozansky/Alamy.

St Mary’s Church, Indian River, Prince Edward Island

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3057 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

what his generation saw as the forces of civilization and progress. Fellow Presbyterian Nellie McClung (1873–1951) also had great success with similar material, even less art- fully rendered, in books such as Sowing Seeds in Danny (1908); her fame was more in the political arena.

A much superior artist was Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942), whose Anne of Green Gables also first appeared in 1908. Montgomery’s books lovingly described rural life and presented some of the standard dilemmas faced by her readers, ranging from growing up to having to leave the farm.

Imperialism, Reform, and Racism Contemporaries often characterized Canadian political life in this era in terms of its lack of ideology and its pre- dilection for what the French observer André Siegfried called the “question of collective or individual interests for the candidates to exploit to their own advantage” (Siegfried, 1907: 142). Lurking only just beneath the sur- face, however, were some serious and profound issues. First was the so-called Canadian question, which bore in various ways upon the very future of the new nation. It often appeared to be a debate between those who sought to keep Canada within the British Empire and those who wanted it to assume full sovereignty. Into this discus- sion other matters merged subtly, including the “race” question and the reform question. The former involved the future of French Canada within an evolving Anglo- American nation. The latter concerned the institution of political and social change through public policy. Debate and disagreement over the three loosely linked issues—imperialism, Anglo–French antagonisms, and reform—kept political Canada bubbling with scarcely suppressed excitement from the 1880s to the beginning of the Great War. Canada’s involvement in the military conflict of Europe would bring those issues together, although it would not resolve them.

Imperialism

The period from 1880 to 1914 saw a resurgence of imper- ial development around the world. The French, the

Germans, even the Americans, took up what Rudyard Kipling called the “White man’s burden” in underdevel- oped regions of the world. About the same time, Great Britain began to shed its “Little England” free trade sentiments. The world’s shopkeeper discovered that substantial windfall profits came from exploiting the economies of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, espe- cially the last. Canada first faced the implications of the resurgence of Britain’s imperial pretensions in 1884 when the mother country asked it to contribute to an expedition to relieve General Charles Gordon, besieged by thousands of Muslim fundamentalists at Khartoum in the Egyptian Sudan. Sir John A. Macdonald’s immedi- ate response was negative, but he ultimately found it politic to allow Canadian civilian volunteers to assist the British army. By the end of the century Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office in London was advocating that Britain’s old settlement colonies be joined together in some political and economic union, the so-called Imperial Federation.

Encouraged by a new infusion of immigrants from Britain—nearly half a million between 1870 and 1896 and a million between 1896 and 1914—many anglophone Canadians began openly advocating Canada’s active participation in the new British Empire. Their sense of imperial destiny was not necessarily anti-nationalistic. They saw no inconsistency between the promotion of a sense of Canadian unity and a larger British Empire. “I am an Imperialist,” argued Stephen Leacock in 1907, “because I will not be a Colonial.” Leacock sought “some- thing other than mere colonial stagnation, something sounder than independence, nobler than annexation, greater in purpose than a Little Canada” (quoted in Bumsted, 1969, II: 78). Such pan-Britannic national- ism came to express itself concretely in demands for Imperial Federation. It was most prevalent in the prov- ince of Ontario.

Unfortunately for the imperialists, not all Canadians agreed with their arguments. Several strands of anti- imperial sentiment had emerged by the turn of the cen- tury. One strand, most closely identified with the political journalist Goldwin Smith (1823–1910), insisted that the geography of North America worked against Canadian nationalism. Smith advocated Canadian absorption into the United States. Fear of this development led many Canadians to oppose a new reciprocity agreement with

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306 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Born in Chatsworth, Ontario, Nellie McClung (née Mooney) (1873–1951) moved with her family to Manitoba in 1880. After attending normal school in Winnipeg, she taught in rural Manitoba for many years. She was active in temperance work and in suffrage agitation. In 1896 she married Robert Wesley McClung, a druggist, who prom- ised, Nellie later reported, that “I would not have to lay aside my ambitions if I married him.” Her emergence to prominence began when she entered an American short story competition in 1902 and was encouraged by an American publisher to expand the story into the novel that became Sowing Seeds in Danny, a lighthearted look at village life on the prairies published in 1908. The book sold over 100,000 copies, was in its seventeenth edition at the time her death, and brought her both fame and fortune.

She and her husband moved to Winnipeg with their four children in 1911, where she helped organize the Political Equality League in 1912. Frustrated with the difficulty of arousing male politicians to suffrage reform, after some humiliating experiences she turned herself into a first-rate platform speaker. In 1914 she organized the Mock Parliament of Women, in which women played all the political roles. McClung herself was Manitoba Premier Rodmond Roblin, one of the major opponents of women’s right to vote. McClung and her associates, sup- porting the Liberal Party, were unable to defeat Roblin’s government in the 1914 election, but it soon fell under the weight of a construction scandal. The Liberal govern- ment of Tobias Crawford soon made Manitoba the first province in Canada to grant women the right to vote.

Meanwhile, the McClungs had moved to Edmonton, where Nellie again led the fight for female suffrage. She was also a strong supporter of the war effort and the Red Cross. In 1921 she was elected to the Alberta legislature, where she championed a host of radical measures of the time, ranging from mothers’ allowances and dower rights for women to sterilization of the mentally unfit. She was defeated in 1926 when her temperance stance became unpopular. Nellie subsequently helped in the successful fight for Canadian woman senators. The McClungs moved to Victoria in 1933. In her west coast years, she became a CBC governor (1936–42), a delegate to the League of Nations (1938), and an advocate of divorce reform.

Throughout her life she was an active Methodist and subsequently a member of the United Church, and was prominent at the national and international levels in her church work. Apart from her first novel, none of her subsequent fiction has withstood the test of time very well. McClung did better with her autobiograph- ical memoirs, all of which were highly regarded and reprinted. Like many early feminists, she was clearly a figure of her own time. She supported the Great War with almost bloodthirsty enthusiasm and was an active advocate of eugenics.

Nellie McClung. CP PHOTO.

Nellie Letitia McClung

Biography

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3077 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

the United States in 1911. Another strand, led by John S. Ewart (1849–1933), insisted on Canada’s assumption of full sovereignty. Ewart argued that “Colony implies inferiority—inferiority in culture, inferiority in wealth, inferiority in government, inferiority in foreign rela- tions, inferiority and subordination” (Ewart, 1908: 6). Yet another perspective was enunciated by Henri Bourassa (1868–1912), who advocated a fully articulated bicultural Canadian nationalism. He wrote, “My native land is all of Canada, a federation of separate races and autono- mous provinces. The nation I wish to see grow up is the Canadian nation, made up of French Canadians and English Canadians” (quoted in Monière, 1981: 190). The Bourassa version of nationalism was considerably larger than the still prevalent traditional nationalism of French Canada. As the newspaper La Vérité put it in 1904, “what we want to see flourish is French-Canadian patriotism; our people are the French-Canadian people; we will not say that our homeland is limited to the Province of Quebec, but it is French Canada.”

The most common confrontations over the role of Canada within the Empire occurred in the context of imperial defence. At Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebra- tion in June 1897, Laurier had fended off a regulariz- ation of colonial contributions to the British military. The question arose again in July 1899 when the mother country requested Canadian troops for the forthcom-

ing war in South Africa against the Boers. When the shooting began on 11 October 1899, the popular press of English Canada responded with enthusiasm to the idea of an official Canadian contingent. But news- papers in French Canada opposed involvement. As La Presse editorialized, “We French Canadians belong to one country, Canada: Canada is for us the whole world, but the English Canadians have two countries,

Professor Stephen B. Leacock, Montreal, 1914. Leacock was both a successful Canadian writer of humorous fiction and a skilled polemicist on the subject of Imperialism for Canada. © McCord Museum.

We speak of “our Empire.” Have you ever considered

how little we Canadians count in that Empire, the most

wonderful fabric of human organization that has ever

existed. Of course, as far as land is concerned, and

water, and rocks, and mines, and forests, we occupy

a large portion of the Empire. As to population we are

only seven millions out of over four hundred millions.

As to imperial powers, we have none. The people of

the British Kingdom, forty millions in number, possess

as their sole property the rest of that Empire. Suppose

you except Canada with her seven millions, Australia

with her four millions and a half, New Zealand with one

million, and South Africa, with a little over one million

of white people: apart from those semi-free states, the

whole empire of India, the hundreds of Crown colonies,

and those immense protectorates in Africa or Asia, no

On Imperialism and Nationalism One of the opponents of Canadian imperialism was Henri Bourassa (1868–1952). In 1912 he explained his position in an address to the Canadian Club.

Continued...

Contemporary Views

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308 A History of the Canadian Peoples

one here and one across the sea.” The government com- promised by sending volunteers, nearly 5,000 before the conflict was over. The defence issue emerged again in 1909, this time over naval policy. Under imperial pressure, Canada finally agreed to produce a naval unit of five cruisers and six destroyers. Both sides attacked Laurier’s compromise Naval Service Bill of January 1910. The anglophone Tories insisted it did

not provide enough assistance for the British, while in Quebec nationalists and Conservatives joined forces to fight for its repeal.

Reform

The reform movement of this period was rich and var- ied in its interests. It ranged from the women’s suffrage

more belong to us than they belong to the Emperor of

Germany, or to the President of the French Republic.

We have no more to say as regards the government,

the legislation, the administration, the revenue and the

expenditure, and the defence of that territory, compris-

ing four-fifths of the total population of the Empire, than

have the coolies of India or the Zulus of Matabeleland!

I am not saying this in disparagement of the system; I

am simply putting our position as it is. At the present

time, the seven millions of people in Canada have less

voice, in law and in fact, in the ruling of that Empire,

than one single sweeper in the streets of Liverpool, or

one cabdriver on Fleet Street in London; he at least has

one vote to give for or against the administration of that

Empire, but we, the seven million Canadians, have no

vote and no say whatever.

When I hear splendid phrases, magnificent ora-

tions, sounding sentences, about that “Empire of ours,”

I am forcibly reminded of the pretension of a good

fellow whom I had hired to look after the furnace of a

building of which I had the management in Montreal.

Every year, when the time came to purchase the coal

for the winter, he used to exclaim, with a deep sense

of his responsibilities: “How dear it costs us to keep

up our building!” Our right of ownership, of tutelage,

of legislation, in the British Empire is exactly what the

right of partnership of that stoker was in that building.

. . . [A]t the sixth Imperial Conference, the dele-

gates from Australia, representing a courageous,

intelligent, progressive British community, with a

high sea trade amounting in imports and exports to

$650,000,000 a year, asked the representatives of the

British  Government why the British authorities, with-

out even thinking of asking the opinion of Canada, of

Australia, of South Africa, and of New Zealand, had

concluded with the great maritime powers the inter-

national treaty known as the Declaration of London,

which may affect beneficially or otherwise the trade of

the world in future naval wars. They enquired also if it

would be possible to have at least one representative

from the self-governing British colonies on the Board

of Arbitration, eventually to be constituted, under the

terms of that treaty, to adjudicate upon the seizures

of trade and ships in times of war. Sir Edward Grey,

undoubtedly one of the ablest men in British public

life to-day, showed there, I think, his great tact and his

extraordinary command of words and of diplomatic

means. But, when all the courteous terms and all the

frills were taken off, his answer amounted to this: On that

board the negro President of Hayti could sit, the negro

President of Liberia could sit, but the Prime Minister of

Canada or of Australia could not sit, simply because

Hayti and Liberia are nations, whilst Canada or Australia

are not nations. He explained that the colonies were

not consulted because they exist only through Great

Britain, and that the moment Great Britain accepted that

treaty it applied to us as to her. Undoubtedly true and

another evidence, I think, to show that in the “imperial

partnership,” in the enjoyment of that imperial citizen-

ship of which we hear so much, there still remains a

slight difference between the British citizen in England,

Scotland and Ireland, and the British citizen of Canada:

one is a member of a sovereign community, the other

is the inhabitant of a subjected colony.

Source: H. Bourassa, Canadian Club Addresses 1912 (Toronto: Warwick Bros & Rutter, 1912), 78–80.

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3097 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

movement to various efforts at social and humanitarian change. Mainstream Canadian reform movements had some features in common, however. Their leaders were members of the middle and professional classes who shared assumptions of the age about regeneration and social purity. Those of Protestant backgrounds tended to predominate, particularly in temperance/prohibition, public health, education, and women’s suffrage. Women,

because of their general nurturing role in society, played a major role in most reform movements. These women were often less concerned with restructuring gender roles in society than with the need for inculcating middle-class virtues or with helping the poor. French- Canadian women were significantly under-represented in most national reform movements, partly because of the political isolation of Quebec and partly because the

The average age of school children is from six to six-

teen years. During this time both mind and body are

undergoing development. Throughout school per-

iod the growth of the body is continued until almost

completed. There are unusual demands, therefore,

upon the functions of absorption and assimilation.

The food must be abundant, and of the charac-

ter to furnish new tissue, and to yield energy in the

form of heat and muscular activity. The food should

also contain salts of lime to meet the requirements

of formation of the bones and teeth. Many children

acquire habits of dislike for certain articles of food,

which become so fixed in later life that they find it

very inconvenient, especially when placed in circum-

stances, as in travelling, where one cannot always

obtain the accustomed diet; it therefore is unwise

to cultivate such habits, which are often a serious

obstacles to normal development. . . . An important

consideration in school diet is to avoid monotony,

which becomes so common from economic rea-

sons, or more often from carelessness. It is much

easier to yield to routine and force of habit than to

study the question. The hours for study and for

meals should be regulated that sufficient time will be

allowed before each meal for children to wash and

prepare themselves comfortably without going to the

table excited by hurry, and they should be required to

remain at the table for a fixed time, and not allowed

to hastily swallow their food in order to complete an

unfinished task or game. An interval of at least half an

hour should intervene after meals before any men-

tal exertion is required. Constant nibbling at food

between meals should be forbidden; it destroys the

appetite, increases the saliva, and interferes with gas-

tric digestion. . . . [C]hildren should have their meals

made tempting by good cooking and pleasant var-

iety, as well as an agreeable appearance of the food.

Meat which is carved in unsightly masses and vege-

tables which are sodden and tasteless will be refused,

and an ill attempt is made to supply the deficiency in

proper food by eating indigestible candy, nuts, etc.

Children often have no natural liking for meat, and

prefer puddings, pastry or sweets when they can

obtain them; it is therefore more important that meat

and other wholesome foods should be made attract-

ive to them at the age when they need it.

A Few General Rules Regarding Diet for School Children Adelaide Hoodless (1858–1910) was the leading advocate of domestic science in Canada before the Great War. She was also the inspiration for the organization of Women’s Institutes, and with her friend Lady Aberdeen (the wife of the Governor General) she was the co-founder of the National Council of Women of Canada, the national YWCA, and the Victorian Order of Nurses. In 1898 she published a textbook entitled Public School Domestic Science, from which the following is an excerpt.

Contemporary Views

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310 A History of the Canadian Peoples

ideology of the traditional society greatly limited the place of women in that province.

The suffrage movement did emphasize the gender question. It addressed women’s political powerless- ness by attempting to win for them the right to vote. The movement was chiefly an urban one, dominated by well-educated women who saw political power as necessary to bring about other legislative change. The suffragist leaders were almost exclusively Canadian or British-born and belonged to the mainline Protestant churches. Well over half of these women were gainfully employed, mostly in journalism and writing. The suffra- gists gradually lost contact with working-class women, who were suspicious of the class biases in both the suf- frage and reform movements. They also failed to gain the support of farm women because they did not under- stand rural issues, especially the concern over rural depopulation. Many rural women became involved in their own organizations designed to deal with their own problems, such as the Women’s Institutes. Adelaide Hoodless (1858–1910) founded the first Institute at Stoney Creek, Ontario, in 1897. (In Henry James Morgan’s biographical compilation The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, 2nd edn, 1912, Hoodless is listed under the entry for her husband John, who was an obscure furniture manufacturer in Hamilton.) Women’s Institutes promoted appreciation of rural living, as well as encouraging better education for all women for motherhood and homemaking. In 1919 the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada organized with its motto “For Home and Country.”

One female reform organization, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, had both rural and urban memberships. Founded in 1874 in Picton, Ontario, the WCTU claimed 10,000 members by 1900 and had an influence far beyond that number. Despite its name, the WCTU wanted prohibition, soon seeing the elimination of alcoholic beverages as a panacea for many of the ills currently besetting Canadian society, such as crime, the abuse of women and children, political corruption, and general immorality. The WCTU was only one of sev- eral members of the Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic. Like most Canadian reform movements, prohibition required state inter- vention to be effective, and this eventually led some of its supporters to women’s suffrage. Laurier held a

national referendum on prohibition in 1898. Although its supporters won a narrow victory, the Prime Minister refused to implement national legislation because only 20 per cent of the total electorate had supported the principle. The prohibitionists turned to the provinces, succeeding in getting legislation passed in Prince Edward Island in 1900 and in Nova Scotia in 1910. The local option was even more effective, since it involved local communities where prohibitionist sentiment could be strong. Prohibitionism exemplified both the best and the worst features of reform. It had little Catholic or urban working-class support. Moreover, it tended to clothe its single-minded arguments with intense moral fervour, often of the social purity variety.

Humanitarian reform, usually of urban abuses, often focused on the human victims of disastrous indus- trial social conditions. One of the main spearheads of such reform was the social gospel. Beginning in the Methodist Church and expanding to all Protestant denominations in Canada, the social gospel saw Christ as a social reformer and the institution of the Kingdom of God on earth as its (and his) mission. The growth of city missions and church settlement houses led to the establishment of the Social Services Council of Canada in 1912. The most prominent social gospeller was J.S. Woodsworth (1874–1942). Another branch of humani- tarian reform involved various professionals who became concerned with social problems through their professional practices. Thus doctors, for example, were active in promoting a public health system and in recom- mending ways of improving public health care. Among the medical profession’s public health recommendations was compulsory medical inspection of schoolchildren.

Schools and members of the teaching profession were also in the front lines of humanitarian reform. In this period educators pushed not only for improved schooling but for the schools to assume much of the burden of social services for the young by acting in loco parentis for the children of slum and ghetto dwell- ers. The pressure for compulsory school attendance legislation, extended on a province-by-province basis across the nation by 1914, was partly reformist in nature. Regular school attendance would provide a more suitable environment for children than roaming the streets or working in factories. The children might learn skills that would lift them out of their poverty and (in

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3117 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

The Americanization of Canada

Document

In 1850, 147,711 persons of Canadian birth were living south of the border—about one-sixteenth of the num- ber of people living in the British possessions at the same time. In 1860 the Canadian-born population of the United States had increased to 249,970, a gain of 76 per cent, while the general population of the Union was increasing at the rate of 35.6 per cent, and that of the British provinces at about 33.6. In 1870 there were 493,464 Canadians in the United States, an increase of 97.4 per cent for the decade against 22.6 per cent for that of the population of the Republic as a whole, and 16.2 per cent for that of the British colonies, now united in the Dominion of Canada. . . . While the population of the Republic was a little more than tripling in fifty years, and that of Canada was being multiplied by less than two and a half, the little Canada south of the boundary line saw the number of its inhabitants multiplied by eight. Of all the living persons of Canadian birth in 1900, more than one-fifth were settled in the United States. But if the statement stopped there it would be incomplete. In addition to the native Canadians in the United States in 1900, there were 527,301 persons of American birth but with both parents Canadian. There were also 425,617 with Canadian fathers and American mothers, and 344,470 with Canadian mothers and American fathers. Thus there were in all 2,480,613 persons in the United States of at least half Canadian blood, which is more than half the number of similar stock in Canada. . . .

In density of Canadian population, ignoring all other elements, Massachusetts stands first, exceeding any province of Canada, and Rhode Island second. The relative rank of the various Provinces and States previ- ously named on this basis is:

Canadian population per square mile 1 Massachusetts 64.2 2 Rhode Island 64.0 3 Prince Edward Island 45.36 4 Nova Scotia 20.6 5 New Brunswick 11.2 6 Connecticut 10.9 7 New Hampshire 10.8 8 Ontario 8.4 9 Michigan 7.1 10 Vermont 6.8 . . .

Classified in the same way, the principal Canadian cities in 1900–1 were:

1 Montreal 267,730 2 Toronto 208,040 3 Boston 84,336 4 Quebec 66,231 5 Chicago 64,615 6 Ottawa 49,718 7 Detroit 44,592 8 New York 40,400 . . .

In 1907 the American journalist Samuel E. Moffatt published a book entitled The Americanization of Canada, which extended Goldwin Smith’s earlier arguments about the extent of Canadian integration into the United States.

Source: Samuel Erasmus Moffatt, The Americanization of Canada (1907).

the case of immigrants) they would become assimilated to the values of Canadian society.

Educators clearly believed that using schools for reform purposes was in the best interests of Canadian

society. It was also in their best interest. Compulsory education opened more employment and introduced the educator as social expert, a professional who knew more about what was important for children than

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312 A History of the Canadian Peoples

parents, particularly the parents of the disadvantaged. Compulsory education, medical examinations, school nurses, and lunch programs all were part of a new form of social engineering that would only increase in emphasis over the century.

In the course of time, many of the private agen- cies of reform became conscripted as quasi-public ones under provincial legislation. They served as arms of the state in the intermediate period before the estab- lishment of permanent government bureaucracies. Thus private child welfare programs became officially responsible for abandoned, abused, and delinquent children. Despite this trend towards a public approach, the framework remained that of individual morality. The humanitarian reformers commonly linked vice, crime, and poverty. Even those who focused on poverty tended to attribute it to almost every other cause than the failure of the economic system to distribute wealth equitably. The concept of a basic minimum standard of living as the right of all members of society was slow to develop in Canada. Attacks on poverty in this period retained a certain class overtone, with a “superior” class helping an “inferior” one.

Another whole category of reformers sought structural alteration within the Canadian system.

Their model was often sound business practice, for the leaders of this movement were usually successful businessmen. They sought the elimination of wasteful graft and corruption through political reform, the cre- ation of publicly operated (and profitable) utilities to reduce unnecessary taxation, and the introduction of public planning. They tended to focus on the big city, although they spilled over in various directions. These reforms, which in the United States were associated with the Progressive movement, all found allies within associated middle-class and professional groups. The City Beautiful Movement, for example, received much of its support from an expanding community of profes- sional architects, who combined an urge to plan the city as a whole with aesthetic considerations of coherence, visual variety, and civic grandeur. Like Americans, many Canadians saw cities as the culmination of civil- ization, and many grand plans made their appearance on paper. Cities settled for a few monumental new buildings, such as the imposing legislative structures completed in many provinces before the war. Political reform of municipal government concentrated on “throwing the rascals out,” combined with structural changes to reduce the damage they could do when they were in. The changes often included the replacement of

Sample Questions for Junior Grade Examinations, May 1911

Document

1. If there are before you two tumblers of colorless liquid and you are told one contains water and the other alcohol, by what four tests can you determine which contains alcohol?

2. Explain how the juices of raspberries, cherries and currants are turned into wine. Why is the use of such home-made wines objectionable?

3. Explain the real cause of the so-called “stimulating” effect of alcohol on the heart.

4. Explain why employers do not wish to employ per- sons who use alcoholic liquors, tobacco or narcotics.

5. Why is alcohol which quickens action, hurtful, while exercise, which does the same thing, useful?

6. What is sleep? Show the necessity for it, and the evil effects of narcotics upon it.

Source: Canadian White Ribbon Tidings, May 1911, as quoted in Sharon Anne Cook, “Through Sunshine and Shadow”: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 121.

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3137 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

The pioneering woman in the Canadian legal profes- sion was Clara Brett Martin (1874–1923), who graduated with high honours in mathematics from Trinity College, Toronto, in 1890. In 1891 she petitioned the Law Society of Upper Canada to be registered as a student. The pe- tition was denied, and she was advised to “remove to

the United States,” where more than 20 states admitted women to the bar. Instead of leaving the country, Martin found an Ontario legislator willing to introduce a bill into the provincial legislature that would explicitly define the word “person” in the Law Society’s statutes as including females. This initiative was supported by Dr Emily Stowe, leader of the Dominion Woman’s Enfranchisement Association, who gained the approval of Premier Oliver Mowat for the new legislation. By the time it was passed in 1892, the legislation was emasculated so that women could only become solicitors (not barristers), and then only at the discretion of the Law Society.

The Law Society subsequently again refused admis- sion to Martin, and Oliver Mowat himself attended the next Law Society Convocation to move her admission. The Law Society agreed by the narrowest of margins, and Clara Martin became a student-at-law, accepted as an articling student by one of the most prestigious law firms in Toronto. Martin met much disapproval from within her law firm and was forced to change firms in 1893. She was also harassed in the lecture halls of Osgoode Hall and missed as many lectures as she possibly could. She eventually completed her degree and easily passed the bar examinations. Martin also pressed for revision of the legislation that allowed women to act only as solici- tors, not barristers. She won this battle, too, and then had to face the Law Society again. A final controversy came over the dress code for female barristers, when women were required to wear their gowns over a black dress. Martin was finally admitted as a barrister and solicitor on 2 February 1897, the first woman in the British Empire entered into the legal profession. She practised for most of her legal career in her own firm in Toronto.

Clara Brett Martin, first female lawyer in the British Empire. Law Society of Upper Canada Archives, Archives Department collection, “Photograph of Clara Brett Martin,” P291.

Clara Brett Martin

Biography

elective councils with more professional government by commission. Businessmen reformers also fought fierce battles over the question of the ownership of utilities. While the utilities barons complained of the

attack on private enterprise, the corporate reformers countered by arguing that utilities were intrinsic mon- opolies that should be operated in the public interest. Much of the impulse behind reform of all sorts came

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from fear of class warfare and moral degeneration. The reformers did for the poor rather than with the poor. The results were a vast increase in the public concerns of the state and the beginning of the growth of a public bureaucracy to deal with social matters.

Racism: The Darker Side of Canada’s Growth

Racialist thinking was at its height during this period. Part of the “race question” in Canada was not about “race” at all, of course, but about the conflict between French and English Canada. While there was no racial barrier between French and English, contemporaries accepted race-based arguments and analyses as “scien- tific.” Many imperialists regarded the historical prog- ress of the United States, Great Britain, and Canada as evidence of the special genius of the “Anglo-Saxon race.” The French were acceptable partners because they, too, were a northern people. Out of the scientific theories of Charles Darwin came the conviction that inheritance was the key to evolution. Races were formed by natural selection, exhibiting quite unequal characteristics. In almost everyone’s hierarchy, the dominant Canadian population was at the progressive top of the racial scale. Newcomers who could not or would not assimilate would inevitably lower the Canadian “standard of civil- ization.” Sexual morality was an important component of the racism of the time.

Canadians saw the new immigration after 1896 as particularly troubling. Even that secular saint J.S. Woodsworth, the Methodist minister and social worker in Winnipeg who would become a leftist federal par- liamentarian and the first leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), associated crimin- ality with the newcomers. Many feared the potential degeneracy of the “great northern race” through com- mingling with lesser stocks. Others concentrated on the campaigns for social purity, mixing restrictions on the consumption of alcoholic beverages with hostility to prostitution, venereal disease, and sexual exploita- tion. The first serious efforts at large-scale immigration restriction, designed mainly to keep out the “degener- ates,” began in the early years of the century. Campaigns for social purity, immigration restriction, and exclusion

of Asians all came out of the same stock of assumptions about heredity and environment that informed many other reform movements of the period. The reformers often emphasized social and moral aspects, directing their efforts chiefly against newcomers.

Immigration restrictions came in three senses. One was an insistence on the good health, good character, and resources of the individual immigrant. A second was an equally strong insistence on preventing group immigration by certain peoples deemed unassimil- able, headed by Asians but also including American- born blacks. Efforts at a broader exclusionary practice involved bilateral negotiations with foreign nations to restrict the departure of their nationals, such as an exclusionary agreement with Japan in 1907 that fol- lowed anti-Asian riots in Vancouver. The third involved provincial legislation, mainly in British Columbia, to limit the rights of the unwanted. By 1907, the British Columbia legislature had disenfranchised nationals of China, Japan, and imperial India. Federal immigration policy was expressed mostly in informal ways before 1906, but thereafter, immigration authorities became much more concerned with formal regulation of the flow of newcomers, emulating the Americans in this regard.

In 1906 a new Immigration Act consolidated many earlier laws, barring large categories of people, including prostitutes and pimps, the insane, the mentally retarded, epileptics, and the “deaf and dumb.” An expanded immi- gration service in 1908 for the first time began to monitor the border with the United States at 38 border crossings across the continent—before this time the border had been wide open with little checking of those crossing it in either direction—and was allowed to deport individuals who belonged to prohibited categories or become public charges. In 1908, another amendment to the Immigration Act provided that all immigration to Canada had to come via a continuous journey on a through ticket from the country of origin. This “continuous journey” proviso was intended to make it more difficult for immigrants to Canada to evade immigration restrictions placed by the governments of their homelands, often established at Canadian insistence, and it effectively cut off immi- gration from India. Another restrictive Immigration Act in 1910 gave the cabinet the power to regulate immigra- tion according to race and to keep out “prohibited and

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undesirable classes.” Any group deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada could be deported on grounds of political or moral undesirability. Political grounds for rejection included the advocacy by a person not a Canadian citizen of the overthrow by force or vio- lence of the government of Great Britain or Canada. The Act also introduced a head tax on all immigrants except the Japanese, who had been paying $500 since 1903 (9–10 Edward VII Chap 27, An Act respecting Immigration).

Perhaps the most extreme example of Canadian exclusionism occurred in May of 1914, when the Japanese vessel Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver harbour with 376 passengers aboard. Of these, 165 had boarded at Hong Kong, 111 at Shanghai, 86 at Maji, and 14 at Yokohama. Of the passengers, 340 were Sikhs, a people who had been arriving in British Columbia for more than a decade. Most had been males from the Jat Sikh community in rural Punjab who came to Canada as sojourners, intending to return to their homes; accord- ing to official Canadian statistics, the number of East Indian adult females who entered Canada over the years 1904–7 was 14, and the number of children was 22. The East Indian community soon began to become organized and articulate. The Khalsa Diwan Society, a fraternal organization with nationalist overtones, was organized in Vancouver in 1907. East Indian revolu- tionary agitators began their work in North America, including Canada. Separating the activities of Indian nationalists into those directed at abuses at home and in host countries is not easy. Much of our knowledge about the nationalists comes from information collected by police undercover agents, and must be understood in this context. The agents were convinced that the leading nationalists were advocates of violence and terrorism.

The Komagata Maru’s organizer expected that the Canadians would overlook the continuous voyage requirement when the ship docked in Vancouver and that the local community would raise the money for the head tax. He was right on the second count but wrong on the first. The Canadian government—backed by Vancouver municipal authorities and the British Columbia govern- ment, both of which became quite hysterical—refused to allow the passengers to land. Conditions on board ship deteriorated rapidly, and the incident quickly became an international one. Canadian immigration authorities

attempted to storm the vessel by force but were driven off. Eventually the ship sailed out of Vancouver harbour under naval escort and headed back to India, a powerful symbol of Canada’s exclusionism.

Canada’s Entrance into the Great War The sudden arrival of the Great War in September of 1914 would subsume events such as those in British Columbia, as it would virtually everything in Canadian life. Canada officially went to war at 20:45 hours (Ottawa time) on 4 August 1914, as an automatic consequence of the British declaration of war on Germany. If Canada had no voice in the decision to go to war, it did have some control over the extent of its involvement, and it chose to plunge into the maelstrom quickly and completely. The Canadian Minister of Militia was Colonel Sam Hughes, who had long expected that Canadians would eventu- ally meet Germans on the battlefield. On 10 August, an Order-in-Council permitted him to call 25,000 men to the colours. By this time, some militia units had already begun appealing for recruits. In Winnipeg, for example, Lieutenant-Colonel J.W. de C. O’Grady had mustered his unit, the 90th Winnipeg Rifles, in their drill hall and announced that he had promised that the regiment would turn out “not only [in] full strength but one thou- sand strong. Who goes?” (Tascona and Wells, 1983: 63). The response was overwhelming, and on 9 August— the day before the Order-in-Council—the Rifles held a recruiting parade on the streets of Winnipeg. When formal sign-ups began after 10 August, one of the rules was that married men had to have the permission of their wives, many of whom dragged their spouses out of the ranks while brandishing their marriage certificates. These early volunteers had virtually no uniforms or equipment, and were sent for first training aboard trams.

By the time the Canadian Parliament met on 18 August the die was cast. Canadian volunteers would participate in the war on a massive scale. On 22 August Parliament passed “An Act to confer certain powers upon the Governor in Council in the event of War, Invasion, or Insurrection”—the famous War Measures Act—enabling the government to act in the defence of the realm with- out consulting Parliament. Before August was over,

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Sam Hughes had created a vast training camp north- west of Quebec City at Valcartier—a tent city capable of housing 32,000 men. Before the end of September the first contingents of soldiers from Valcartier were board- ing the passenger liners that would take them to Britain. The fleet sailed on 3 October and arrived at Plymouth 11 days later. “Canada’s Answer,” as the British called the new arrivals, numbered 31,200. Sent to bivouac on Salisbury Plain, they were finally reviewed by King George V on 4 February 1915, and before the end of the month they were suffering their first casualties on the front lines in France. One of the advantages of the breathtaking speed with which Hughes had moved to create Canadian regiments was that Canadian troops

were kept together as units rather than being broken up and integrated into the British forces.

World War I brought to fruition several major trends of the period between 1885 and 1914. It marked a triumph of sorts for Canadian imperialism, for example, as Canada subordinated its substantial military effort to the needs and direction of Great Britain. It also rejuvenated Canadian reform. The patriotic fervour of the war and the eventual political isolation of French Canada made possible a sweeping program of reform, much of which French Canada had opposed. Reform has always required an active state, and wartime conditions encouraged the Canadian government to intervene in almost all areas of life and work.

How History Has Changed: Aboriginal Peoples and Christian Missions

Susan Neylan, Wilfrid Laurier University

For a long time, histories of Christian missions to Aborig- inal peoples in Canada privileged the churches’ perspec- tives and valorized heroic missionaries. They highlighted conversion experiences and, for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emphasized what was termed the “civilizing” project. Historians told the story of how Aboriginal people encountered Christianity through the teachings of Euro-Canadian missionaries and cast aside former belief systems for the new religion and, often, its Western associations. Aboriginal spiritualities and Christianity were cast in opposition to one another.

Parallel to the rise of Native history as a distinct field of Canadian historical scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of mission historians arose who gave far more attention to the role of Aboriginal peoples. Scholars stressed either their agency or victimization by casting a critical eye on the churches and mission- aries. John Webster Grant’s Moon of Wintertime (1984)

argues that Aboriginal peoples accepted Christianity at a moment of severe cultural disruption; as missionaries arrived on the scene bent on transforming Aboriginal cultures, Native spiritual systems were thrown into crisis. First Nations were not helpless in this encounter, yet they had little input beyond the local context.

However, this generation of scholars also high- lighted the importance of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis in the narrative. Many actively resisted the encroach- ment of missions through rejection and opposition; others embraced elements of Christianity and assumed roles of leadership within the missions and churches. Such latter individuals were cast as cross-cultural medi- ators who enabled the transmission and the translation of religious ideas. Accordingly, biographies of Aboriginal men and women abound in the literature, ranging from those who enthusiastically spread the gospel as mission employees to others who walked in two worlds. Winona

Historiography

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Wheeler’s study (2003) of Askeenootow (Charles Pratt) demonstrates how adopting Christianity was never a clear-cut replacement of his Cree-Assiniboine identity with the Christian one.

The third scholarly generation was influenced by the so-called “cultural turn” of the 1990s that drew on theories from anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, and literary studies, notably post-colonial literature. It encouraged historians to look at the big picture, particu- larly when it came to culture, and the socially constructed nature of all human reality. Historians recognized the place of missions within older frameworks of Indigenous histories of change and continuity and broader patterns of systemic colonialism. Accordingly, the encounter bet- ween Aboriginal peoples and Christians came to be represented in far more nuanced terms than the mission hagiographies of the first generation or the agency/vic- timization or Aboriginal spirituality/Christianity mod- els of the second.

Scholars proceeded from the idea that Christianity can be translated and incorporated as an integral part of an authentic Indigenous identity without hav- ing to wholly replace what came before. Adopting a post-colonial interpretation, Aboriginal spiritual practi- ces were seen to have altered Christianity itself. Hence the Aboriginal–Christian encounter could be studied from points on meeting and similarities, instead of only underscoring distance and differences. Susan Neylan (2003) studies the role in mission work of the first gen- eration of Aboriginal Christian converts, highlighting their contributions to mission forms in ways that did not forsake older spiritual traditions, despite the negative effects of missions. Many turned to Christianity for more than its spiritual appeal and resonance. They were seeking citizenship in a wider Western framework that would allow them to survive as Indigenous people regardless of the political, economic, and cultural chan- ges instituted under colonialism.

Third-generation scholars demonstrate Aboriginal creativity and initiative alongside missionary coer- cion and dogma, and analyze the impact of the Indigenization (whereby Christianity is made cultur- ally relevant and naturalized as their own), syncretism (the creation of new beliefs and practices through the

compatibility of religious forms and traditions), and genuine conversion. However, there is no denying the part Christian churches played in the colonial pro- cess itself, which included the attempted destruction of Aboriginal cultures, identities, lands, and resour- ces. Aboriginal residential schools are probably the best-known tool of Christian colonialism. J.R. Miller’s Shingwauk’s Vision (1996), John Milloy’s A National Crime (1999), and studies authored by residential school survivors expose this dark, shameful aspect of Aboriginal–Christian relations.

Whether talking about first-generation scholars or those of the twenty-first century, the trajectory of this historical scholarship has also been heavily influ- enced by changes in methodologies. Initially, church records and missionary accounts comprised the bulk of the primary sources used as evidence. There were Aboriginal voices within this colonial archive, but usually very few, or the materials had to be read closely “against the grain” to find Aboriginal perspectives. This changed with the application of ethnohistorical meth- odologies. Ethnohistory is an approach to the study of the Aboriginal–non-Aboriginal encounter that consid- ers textual, oral, and material sources in its analysis. Scholars sought to evaluate Native responses to Christian missions in as much detail as they had invested in the examination of missionary goals and criteria.

More recently, ethnohistorians have turned from colonialism as the only way to assess the encounter between the colonizers and the colonized. Change, even when it first appears to be evidence of colonialist suc- cesses at work, can simultaneously exemplify cultural continuities. Canadian history can also be situated within Aboriginal history and chronologies. Research with rather than about Aboriginal peoples, employing Indigenous research methodologies, has served to accentuate Aboriginal voices, world views, and concep- tualizations of the past. Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las (2012) reconsiders one Christian Aboriginal woman’s life in the context of both Kwakwaka’wakw systems of prestige, knowledge, and status and colonial political histories. By prioritizing Indigenous insights and writ- ten as a collaboration, the study shifts from merely an analysis of Aboriginal–Settler interactions to one that

Continued...

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shows internal community dynamics and tension. After all, history is also negotiated in the present.

Bibliography Agnes, Jack, ed. Behind Closed Doors: Stories from

the Kamloops Indian Residential School, rev. edn. Penticton, BC, 2006.

Axtell, James. “Some Thoughts on the Ethnohistory of Missions.” Ethnohistory 29, 1 (1982): 35–41.

Bradford, Tolly. Prophetic Identities: Indigenous Missionaries and British Colonial Frontiers, 1850–75. Vancouver, 2012.

Carlson, Keith Thor. The Problem of Place, the Problem of Time: Aboriginal Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Cauldron of Colonialism. Toronto, 2010.

Furniss, Elizabeth. Victims of Benevolence: The Dark Legacy of William Lake Residential School, 2nd edn. Vancouver, 1995.

Grant, John Webster. The Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Canada in Encounter since 1534.Toronto, 1984.

Gray, Susan Elaine. “I Will Fear No Evil”: Ojibwa– Missionary Encounters along the Berens River, 1875– 1940. Calgary, 2006.

Haig-Brown, Celia. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver, 1988.

Johnston, Basil H. Indian School Days. Toronto, 1988. Lutz, John Sutton. Makúk: A New History of Aboriginal–

White Relations. Vancouver, 2009. Miller, J.R. Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native

Residential Schools. Toronto, 1996.

Milloy, John. A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879–1986. Winnipeg, 1999.

Neylan, Susan. The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth- Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity. Montreal and Kingston, 2003.

Regan, Paulette. Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada. Vancouver, 2010.

Robertson, Leslie A., with the Kwagu’ł Gixsam Clan. Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom. Vancouver, 2012.

Rutherdale, Myra. Women and the White Man’s God: Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field. Vancouver, 2002.

Sellars, Bev. They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School. Vancouver, 2012.

Smith, Donald. Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians, 2nd edn. Toronto, 2013 [1987].

———. Mississauga Portraits: Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century Canada. Toronto, 2013.

Wheeler, Winona. “The Journals and Voices of a Church of England Native Catechist: Askenootow (Charles Pratt), 1851–1884.” In Jennifer S.H. Brown and Elizabeth Vibert, eds, Reading Beyond the Words: Contexts for Native History, 2nd edn, 237–61. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2003 [1996].

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Avery, Donald. Reluctant Host: Canada’s Response to Immigrant Workers, 1896–1994. Toronto, 1995. The best synthesis of the topic.

Bacchi, Carole. Liberation Deferred? The Ideas of the English-Canadian Suffragists, 1877–1918. Toronto, 1983. An analysis of English-Canadian suffragism, emphasizing the distinction between maternal and radical feminism.

Berger, Carl. The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867–1914. Toronto, 1970. The pioneer study of these ideas in Canada, and still easily the best.

Bliss, J.M. A Living Profit: Studies in the Social History of Canadian Business, 1883–1911. Toronto, 1974. A col- lection of stimulating essays on Canadian business in a critical period.

Bradbury, Bettina. Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal. Toronto, 1993. A valuable study on the effect of industrializa- tion on the family and its strategies.

Carbert, Louise. Agrarian Feminism: The Politics of Ontario Farm Women. Toronto, 1995. The first full-length analysis of what farm women were up to before 1914.

Christie, Nancy. Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada. Toronto, 2000. A controver- sial work that locates the origins of the Canadian welfare state in the quest for stability for the family.

Copp, Terry. The Anatomy of Poverty: The Condition of the Working Class in Montreal 1897–1929. Toronto, 1974. An early study of the urban working class in Montreal, probably still the best analysis available.

Courville, Serge, and Normand Séguin. Rural Life in Nineteenth-century Quebec.Ottawa, 1989. A synthe- sis of a good deal of secondary literature, which emphasizes how similar rural French Canada was to English Canada.

English, John. The Decline of Politics: The Conservatives and the Party System, 1901–20. Toronto, 1977. The best study of politics before the Great War.

Heron, Craig. Working in Steel: The Early Years in Canada, 1883–1935. Toronto, 1988. A brilliant account of the

origins of steelmaking in Canada, especially strong on labour issues.

Johnston, Hugh. The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada’s Colour Bar. Delhi, 1979. A dispassionate recounting of the story.

Linteau, Paul-André. The Promoters’City: Building the Industrial Town of Maisonneuve, 1883–1918. Toronto, 1985. A wonderful study of the creation of an indus- trial suburb in French Canada.

McCormack, A.R. Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian Radical Movement, 1899–1919. Toronto, 1977. A work that resurrects and brings to life a collection of radicals previously neglected in the traditional literature.

McDonald, R.J. Making Vancouver: Class, Status, and Social Boundaries, 1863–1913. Vancouver, 1996. Urban social history that takes advantage of all the latest conceptualizations.

Magocsi, Paul Robert. Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples. Toronto, 1999. A co-operative project by dozens of scholars providing a vast compendium of material on Canadian ethnicity.

Miller, Carman. Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War, 1899–1902. Montreal, 1993. The best study of Canada and the Boer War.

Parker, Roy. Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada, 1867–1917. Vancouver, 2008. A thorough scholarly synthesis of an emotive subject.

Petryshyn, Jaroslav. Peasants in the Promised Land: Canada and the Ukrainians, 1891–1914. Toronto, 1985. A careful study of the early Ukrainian migration.

Rollings-Magnusson, Sandra. Heavy Burdens on Small Shoulders: The Labour of Pioneer Children on the Canadian Prairies. Edmonton, 2009. A recent study that suggests how much the settlement of the West depended on the work of children.

Sager, Eric, with Gerald Panting. Maritime Capital: The Shipping Industry in Atlantic Canada, 1820–1914. Montreal, 1990. A study, based on quantitative data, of an important industry.

Short Bibliography

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Troper, Harold Martin. Only Farmers Need Apply: Official Canadian Government Encouragement of Immigration from the United States, 1896–1911. Toronto, 1972. The standard work on the topic.

Valverde, Mariana. The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925. Toronto, 1991. One of the few overall syntheses of the reform move- ment, focusing particularly on its moral dimensions.

Voisey, Paul. Vulcan: The Making of a Prairie Community. Toronto, 1988. Probably the best historical commun- ity study ever executed in Canada.

Walden, Keith. Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture. Toronto, 1997. A work in cultural studies that deconstructs the Toronto Industrial Exhibition.

Study Questions 1. What role did the patronage system play in Canadian political parties in the years before the Great War?

2. How did the industrialization of the period 1885–1914 differ from that of the 1850s and 1860s?

3. Compare the major problems of urban and rural life in Canada in the early years of the twentieth century.

4. Are the differences between child labour in factories and on farms significant?

5. What does the poem “Town Directory” tell us about Treherne, Manitoba, in 1895?

6. How was Canada selling the western region to newcomers in 1907?

7. Discuss the relationship between the small town and the development of Canadian fiction, 1890–1914.

8. What were the linkages among imperialism, reform, and racism before the Great War?

9. Was Canada a country truly open to immigrants in this period? What were the limitations?

Visit the companion website for A History of the Canadian Peoples, fifth edition for further resources.

www.oupcanada.com/Bumsted5e

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