History quiz

Becoming a Nation, 1840–18856

The construction of the Parliament buildings of a united Canada was one of the largest projects of its kind in 1860s Ontario. This photo, from 1862, shows the nearly finished buildings that would become the home of the new Canadian government in 1867. Samuel McLaughlin, LAC, C-018016

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1841 Union of Upper Canada and Lower Canada proclaimed.

1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty resolves the New Brunswick border. Great Britain experiments

with partially elected, partially appointed

legislature for Newfoundland.

1843 Fort Victoria established on Vancouver Island.

1846 Oregon Boundary Treaty settles western boundary. Corn Laws and Timber duties are

repealed by British Parliament. St John’s,

Newfoundland, is destroyed by fire.

1848 Nova Scotia gets responsible government. Lord Elgin concedes responsible government to

Canada. Newfoundland reverts to an elected

assembly.

1849 Vancouver Island is leased by the British to the Hudson’s Bay Company and becomes a Crown

colony. Rebellion Losses Bill is enacted, leading

to riots in Montreal. Annexation movement

flourishes.

1851 James Douglas becomes governor of Vancouver Island. Cable is laid from

New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island.

Prince Edward Island receives responsible

government. Colonial government takes over

post offices.

1852 Grand Trunk Railway is incorporated.

1854 Reciprocity Treaty with United States is signed, to last 10 years.

1855 Petroleum is discovered in southwestern Ontario. Newfoundland receives responsible

government.

1856 The first legislature meets on Vancouver Island.

1858 British Columbia becomes a colony.

1859 The first steamer is launched on the Red River. First newspaper is established in Red River.

1860 Cariboo Gold Rush begins in British Columbia. Prince Edward Island Land Commission

convenes. Royal Tour of Prince Albert suggests

that what would become Canada is already, in

some senses, a political entity.

1861 American Civil War begins. Montreal and Toronto introduce horse-drawn cars for public

transportation.

1862 Cariboo Road is begun in British Columbia.

1863 First non-Native salmon fishery on the Fraser River established.

1864 Reciprocity Treaty is terminated by a vote of the American Senate, to take effect in 1866.

Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences are

held to discuss union of British North America.

1866 Transatlantic cable laid from Newfoundland to Europe. Union of British Columbia and

Vancouver Island implemented, with Victoria as

capital.

1867 The British North America Act is passed by British Parliament to take effect 1 July 1867.

Emily Howard Stowe obtains a medical degree

in the United States, the first woman to do so.

British Columbia’s legislative council resolves to

request that the province be allowed eventual

admission into Canada, which officially comes

into existence on 1 July under an all-party

government headed by Sir John A. Macdonald.

Resolutions for territorial expansion are passed

by the Canadian Parliament in December. The

Americans purchase Alaska from Russia.

Timeline

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198 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Timeline 1857 British Parliament holds inquiry over the

future of the Northwest. Palliser and Canadian

Exploring Expeditions are sent West to

investigate the region. Gold is discovered on

the Thompson and Fraser rivers. Ottawa is

chosen by Queen Victoria as the site for the

capital of the Province of Canada. Canadian

legislature passes an Act for the Gradual

Civilization of the Indian Tribes in the Canadas.

1868 Canada First is founded in Ottawa. Five hundred and seven Zouaves are recruited in

Quebec for the papal army.

1869 Resistance to Canada, led by Louis Riel, begins in Red River. Newfoundland election produces

an anti-confederate assembly.

1870 Louis Riel allows execution of Thomas Scott. The Manitoba Act is passed by the Canadian

Parliament. The Wolseley Expedition is sent to

Red River. Negotiations are begun with British

Columbia for admission to Canada. Dominion

Notes Act of 1870 is passed.

1871 British Columbia enters Confederation on 20 July 1871. The Washington Treaty is signed

with the United States. The Bank Act of 1871 is

passed.

1872 In a federal election, Conservatives win 103 seats to 97 for the Liberals. Ontario Society of

Artists is formed.

1873 Prince Edward Island enters Confederation. The Macdonald government resigns over the Pacific

Scandal. Liberals under Alexander Mackenzie

take over federal government.

1874 Liberals win a clear majority in Parliament (133 to 73) over Conservatives. Woman’s Christian

Temperance Union is founded in December in

Picton, Ontario.

1876 Intercolonial Railway is completed, linking Saint John, Halifax, and Montreal. Alexander Graham

Bell invents a workable telephone. The first

wheat crop is exported from Manitoba.

1877 Saint John fire leaves 13,000 homeless.

1878 Sir John A. Macdonald returns to power as Conservatives elect 137 members to 69 for the

Liberals.

1880 Royal Academy of Arts is formed. Canadian government signs contract with the Canadian

Pacific Railway.

1881 CPR reaches Winnipeg. The boundaries of Manitoba are expanded. 15,000 Chinese

workers are allowed into Canada.

1882 Royal Society of Canada is formed. Conservatives are re-elected, winning 139 seats

to 71 for the Liberals, now led by Edward Blake.

Macdonald remains Prime Minister.

1883 CPR construction crews discover nickel near Sudbury, Ontario. Canadian Labour Congress is

founded.

1884 Louis Riel returns to Canada.

1885 The second resistance led by Louis Riel (the North West Rebellion) is crushed. Riel is

executed. The last spike is driven in the CPR.

A seamless web of political and economic expan-sion, beginning around 1840, brought Canadian Confederation. Between 1840 and 1874, British America became “British North America” and then the “Dominion of Canada,” changing from a collection of

loosely connected colonies in the northeastern sec- tor of the continent, heavily dependent on the mother country both economically and politically, to a trans- continental nation—at least on paper—with a rapidly diversifying internal economy in the early stages of

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industrialization. Because the Province of Canada took the lead in national unification, the beginning of the process can be identified as the Act of Union, which joined Upper and Lower Canada in July 1840.

British Americans had witnessed many changes over the centuries since first settlement. But in terms of technology, a settler of 1640 still would have been quite at home in the Canada of 1840. The era of political unifi- cation was the first period that experienced substantial technological advances, radically altering perceptions of distance and time in a vast domain separated from Europe by thousands of miles of ocean. With the rail- road, travel not only sped up substantially, it acquired a predictable timetable. The invention of telegraphy and the laying of a transatlantic cable from Newfoundland in 1866 affected the perception of time as well as of dis- tance. By 1870 the largest telegraph company in Canada had 20,000 miles (32,000 km) of wire extended across eastern Canada. Communication could take place in seconds instead of months. The ability to operate to a schedule and communicate instantly completely altered the world and the way people operated within it. These changes were not a necessary prerequisite for union, but they were clearly part of the facilitating background. In many respects, modern Canada began not in 1867 with political unification but in the 1840s, the first era of transforming technological change.

The Mobile Society Throughout the 1840s and 1850s British immigration to North America continued at high levels, although its makeup was now quite different. The proportion of new arrivals from southern Ireland, mainly Roman Catholic, increased and the number of those landing in British America without capital was much higher; the most impoverished were usually forced into the cities since they could not afford to obtain land. Driving immigra- tion were the potato famines in Ireland (and to a lesser extent in Scotland), which peaked in 1846. Between 1840 and 1860 well over 600,000 British immigrants arrived in British North America, many of them seeking land on which to build a new life. They were joined in the 1850s and 1860s by numbers of Germans and Poles

deliberately recruited by the Canadian government in the German states.

Combined with the natural population increase within the colonies, the arrival of this horde of new set- tlers put enormous pressure on available agricultural land, particularly land suitable for staple crop farming for the market. Second-generation farmers accepted less desirable land or moved to the United States, where a more rapid industrialization than in British America had created new employment and where the West was open to settlement. Thus, at the same time as thou- sands of land-hungry immigrants were moving in, thousands of disillusioned members of the younger generation within the colonies were moving out.

The first sign of serious out-migration came from the seigneurial districts of French Canada, the heart- land of French-Canadian culture, language, and reli- gion. Almost any opportunity was superior to a future on a farm of less than 100 acres (40 ha) of worn-out land. Over the course of the 1830s more than 40,000 left Lower Canada for the United States, and that figure jumped to 90,000 in the 1840s and to 190,000 in the 1850s. One clergyman called this population loss “the cem- etery of the race.” The visitor to New England can still see standing, usually empty and forlorn, the extensive brick buildings that housed the nineteenth-century fac- tories employing these migrants. Thousands of French Canadians also moved into the Eastern Townships of Canada East, originally intended as anglophone enclaves. In the Upper St Francis district of the Eastern Townships, for example, the francophone population grew from 9.7 per cent of the district in 1844 to 64.1 per cent by 1871. Others continued to fill unpopulated regions in the Laurentians and around Lac St-Jean. State and church both promoted colonization of these regions as an alternative to migration to the United States. As well as moving out of the country or into new districts, thousands of French Canadians moved into the cit- ies and expanding towns of the province where they often found employment as manufacturing workers. In Montreal, especially, many of the newcomers were female. Some found employment as domestic servants, but most worked in a few burgeoning industries, par- ticularly clothing manufacture, textile production, and the making of tobacco products.

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In Canada West, most of the movement into the United States before 1870 was into the rich agricul- tural districts of the American Midwest and beyond. A constant stream of Canadians crossed Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois onto the American prairies, contributing to the rapid settlement of Minnesota and the Dakotas. A key factor driving the migrants was the inability of the family farm to accommodate the needs of all family members. Successful farming required several children, but large families also created pressures for the expan- sion of landholdings and eventually led to the departure of some of the younger generation. In this male-dom- inated society, only males, as a rule, had expectations of inheritance; hence the tendency in all British North American rural society was to send disproportionate numbers of females (usually between the ages of 15 and 21) into the cities and non-agricultural employ-

ment. Some farms in some districts were more divis- ible than others, but the pressures were always strong on the younger members of the next generation to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Elder sons (and the women they married) could look forward to becoming pillars of and local leaders in their communities. For most of the children of most farmers, however, coming of age meant moving on. Some new land within Canada West was available to the north. Settlement after mid-century moved rapidly up to Georgian Bay and into the Muskoka country, heedless of the prominent rock outcroppings of the Canadian Shield. For most who chose to remain in Canada West, however, cities and towns were the obvious destinations.

The years before 1860 saw considerable internal expansion in the Atlantic region. Settlers moved on to less desirable and more remote lands, while others

“Roxburgh Place, Residence of A. Marshall, Esq.,” 1868. The unnamed artist who painted this farmstead—located in Oxford County, in southwestern Ontario—is thought to have been a local schoolteacher. The painting has probably idealized both the property and the animals in residence on it. On the other hand, the fences are quite accurately portrayed. Courtesy Michael S. Bird.

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moved into the major urban centres. Neither expansion nor seasonal migration could, in the end, accommodate the growing population. Many began to migrate, often to the United States. By the 1860s over one-third of the counties in the Maritime provinces were losing people, mostly to the United States, particularly to New England. The correlation between rural counties (with economies largely dependent on fishing and farming) and depopu- lation was very high. While out-migration was a general phenomenon, Scots and Irish were over-represented in the exodus and Acadians under-represented. Most of those departing were 15–25 years of age.

From Mercantilism to Free Trade By 1840 the mercantile economy of British North America had reached its apex, and it began to undergo considerable change. That alteration resulted from a number of factors. The most important was clearly the British government’s demolition of the imperial trad- ing system, which had prevailed since the seventeenth century. Instead of mercantilism, Britain moved to free trade. In the process, the mother country wiped out protectionist advantages for her colonies. As a result, instead of a transatlantic economy based on the sailing ship, some of British North America began to think in terms of a continental economy. Fortunately, the railway came along at exactly this time, providing possibilities for internal development and internal markets. Equally fortunately, Britain resolved long-standing differences with the Americans, making possible the negotiation of a trade treaty, providing some access for British North America to the lucrative American market. An import- ant factor in the reorganization of the commercial econ- omy was the rise of industrialization. Internal markets within the continent required not raw materials but finished goods. Colonial business sought to oblige.

By the 1840s, the British industrial economy could no longer afford the luxury of protectionism, which lim- ited its access to foreign raw materials and protected markets. The ministry, led by Sir Robert Peel, gritted its teeth and systematically removed protection for corn

and other raw materials, including timber. The British still sought to emphasize importing cheap raw materi- als and exporting finished goods overseas. Instead of trading with colonies, however, they sought to trade with the entire world. Most colonial merchants appre- ciated the nature of the revolution that was occurring in Britain. The Quebec Gazette summarized several generations of argument in 1842 when it wrote of the timber trade, “Our great ground of complaint is that British Acts of Parliament created the trade, caused capital to be invested in the trade, trusting to these acts, which by the uncertain character they now assume may ruin thousands. We never asked for protection; it was given on grounds of national policy” (quoted in Lower, 1973: 88). British free trade policies would have a tre- mendous psychological impact on colonial merchants.

In the short run, the British North American rush to export wheat and timber under the old system, before the repeal of the Corn Laws and Timber duties of 1846 took effect, resulted in a collapse of prices in 1847 that would last for the remainder of the decade. Further complicating matters for colonial governments was the arrival of thousands of impoverished Irish immigrants, refugees from the Great Famine of the 1840s. They brought sickness and expense to the colonies along with their anguish. The result of these blows was a conviction that the mother country had subverted the old empire. The crisis seemed much worse in the united Province of Canada because of its reliance on wheat exports. Canadian mercantile policy in the later 1840s was to attempt to come to terms with the Americans. The Canadians continued to improve their canal system. They argued for reciprocal free trade between British North America and the United States in the natural products of each.

Britain’s industrial needs also contributed to the need for international peace and bilateral understand- ings. One of these understandings came with the United States. Since 1815 Britain had sought entente with the Americans, a process that gained momentum during the period of free trade. By 1846 most of the outstanding boundary questions between the two nations had been resolved. In 1842 the Webster-Ashburton Treaty had sorted out the complex eastern boundary issues along the Maine–New Brunswick border. The boundary question

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202 A History of the Canadian Peoples

was even more complex west of the Rocky Mountains, where the two nations had agreed in 1818 to share occupation until there was a need for a decision. Many Americans had settled in the Oregon Territory south of the Columbia River, and presidential candidate James K. Polk in 1844 had rattled American sabres with his cam- paign slogan of “54–40 or Fight”; 54’ 40” is the latitude of what was the southernmost Russian boundary on the Pacific slope. Under the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846, the border across the West from Lake of the Woods con- tinued at the forty-ninth parallel to the Pacific (exclud- ing Vancouver Island). This “compromise” allowed the Americans to possess the state of Washington, in which they had virtually no nationals and which had been occu- pied chiefly by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The forty- ninth parallel artificially bisected the Pacific slope, where mountain ranges and river valleys ran north and south rather than east and west. While the geographical inter- ests of British North America may have been sacrificed by the Oregon settlement, entente was good for business.

Along the way to reciprocity, for a short time some Canadians were seduced by the idea of annexation to the United States. Annexationism gained support after an intense political debate over compensation for Lower Canadians who had not rebelled but had lost property in 1837. It was a far less important movement than that of reciprocity. Both flourished in the economic and pol- itical uncertainties of the late 1840s. Many British North Americans saw annexation as the inevitable result of the failure to achieve reciprocity rather than as a desir- able end in itself.

Canadians, especially those dependent on the wheat economy, viewed internal markets—which to them meant the United States—as the only alternative to those lost in Britain. The eastern provinces also saw advantages to gaining access to the American market. The Americans displayed no interest until 1852 when the British government decided to toughen its fishery policy. The resultant Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 was hardly a very broad free trade agreement. It removed tar- iff and other barriers on a variety of enumerated goods, chiefly raw materials common to both countries. It did not remove barriers on finished goods, although the Americans hoped that a more prosperous British North America would buy more American manufactures. The

treaty was potentially much more beneficial to British North America than to the United States. This helps explain why the Americans were so eager to end it at the expiration of its initial 10-year term. It does not appear to have greatly increased trade in either direction while it was in effect. The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, never- theless, was of enormous psychological value to British North America.

The Rise of Industrialism The Reciprocity Treaty encouraged merchants, entrepre- neurs, and politicians (mainly in the Province of Canada) to continue reconceptualizing their economic orienta- tion. They moved from an imperial context, in which the British market was critical, to a continental context, in which internal markets were dominant. Supplying the American market in preference to the British one was quite advantageous to the Canadas, especially Upper Canada/Canada West, since these provinces had little open access to the Atlantic Ocean. Once turned from its traditional transatlantic economy to a continental one, Canada began to industrialize. Indeed, one of the prin- cipal reasons why American trade in dutiable items did not expand during the 10 years of the reciprocity agree- ment was that the manufacturing capacity of British North America—again, particularly in the Province of Canada—grew substantially in this period. The internal market permitted agriculture in Canada West to shift partially out of grain cultivation into mixed farming. The concern for modernization led to the elimination of the seigneurial system in the St Lawrence Valley by legislative fiat. A bill replaced traditional seigneurial obligations with a “quit rent,” which gave tenants the opportunity to purchase their lands.

The process of economic reorientation was not a uniform one. Canada and the Atlantic region moved in somewhat different directions. While the Canadians became immersed in internal development—even ter- ritorial expansion into the prairie West—the Atlantic provinces continued to find the older transatlantic economy quite comfortable. They based their prosperity

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on a shipping industry committed to the wooden sail- ing ship, which the region was still successfully produ- cing. The period from 1840 to the early 1870s was the “Golden Age of Sail” in the Atlantic region. With hind- sight, it is possible to recognize the long-term techno- logical weaknesses of the wooden sailing ship. So long as vessels that cost less than half as much to produce as iron steamers were more than half as profitable, however, they would flourish. The carrying trade pro- vided employment for thousands. It also produced an outward-looking international orientation rather than one that focused on internal continental development. The Atlantic provinces sought to expand transportation links with Canada (mainly railways) in terms of trans- atlantic linkages.

The Province of Canada saw railways as a means to continental destinations rather than as transatlantic linkages. Canadian railway expansion would not occur in earnest until after 1850, after the complete demolition of the old imperial trade system. By 1850 only 60 miles (97 km) of track were in use in Canada. The obstacles were not technological; the technology had been avail- able since the 1820s. Finance and psychology were the barriers. Railways were expensive capital investments, few routes in British North America promised to be immediately profitable, and investors shied away until the railway boom of the 1850s. In that decade a mania for internal development totally captured the imagin- ations of Canadian politicians and investors, encour- aged by exaggerated promises of profits resulting from railway expansion. Canadian railway tracks had to be built well on deep beds because of the climate varian- ces that caused heaving. American railroads were less expensive to construct. By 1867 the total cost to Canada of 2,188.25 miles (3,520 km) of track was $145,794,853, or roughly $66,000 per mile. In order to pay for this con- struction, the railways borrowed on the British exchan- ges. Governments had to guarantee the loans and make contributions. The Canadian government, by 1867, had incurred a provincial debt on railway construction of over $33 million, and its municipalities added con- siderably more. The result, however, was the economic linking of cities and towns in a new way.

Vast expenditures brought out the worst in busi- nessmen and politicians, who commonly served together

on interlocking directorates and engaged in the various aspects of railway construction. Allan MacNab (1798– 1862), who was seven times chairman of the Canadian assembly’s railway committee between 1848 and 1857 and served the province as co-premier in 1854–6, was at various times president of three railway companies, chairman of another, and director of two more. Small wonder he once commented, “All my politics are rail- roads.” Bribes to politicians were common. Construction overruns were a way of life. Corruption ran rampant. The most serious problem, however, was that too much construction occurred in advance of a settled population that could sustain a profitable level of traffic. Perhaps the greatest disaster was the Bytown and Prescott Railway, financed by Boston interests in 1852 to carry timber from the Ottawa Valley into the United States but unable to find much other trade. This would always be the Canadian dilemma: trading off development against sustainability.

All railway promoters insisted that their lines would promote manufacturing by reducing transpor- tation costs. Railways not only closed the distance between markets, they also served as a major market for industrial goods, often becoming industrial manufac- turers themselves. The Grand Trunk Railway, incorpor- ated in 1852 to build a railway from Toronto to Montreal, began by building its own rolling stock. By 1857 it had decided to produce its own rails as well, constructing an iron foundry and rolling mill in Hamilton. This was the heavy-industry section of the economy. Most railroads relied heavily on carrying Canadian timber, ultimately into the American market. By 1853, no fewer than 51 ports in the Province of Canada were export- ing at least a million feet of planks and boards into the United States. As manufacturing grew and required increasing amounts of capital investment, most of the large firms were relatively recent creations. Some of the old entrepreneurs successfully made the shift from the commercial economy. Many others did not. Canadian cities certainly changed in the process.

The growth of industrialization—the introduction of manufacturing and related commerce on a large scale—inevitably made labour relations an increas- ingly important issue in British North America. The resource economy had employed large numbers of

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204 A History of the Canadian Peoples

men on a seasonal basis, offering little opportunity for organization. Industrialization rationalized and stabilized the labour market. Manufacturing tended to be more continuous, and much of it was conducted indoors. Overhead costs encouraged employers to seek a stable and experienced labour force. The rise of a cap- italistic labour market stabilized and settled the work- ers but did little for their bargaining position. Those with highly developed skills were in the strongest pos- ition, and labour organization first developed in indus- tries employing skilled workers, such as printing. Early trade unions emerged in certain skilled industries in various cities. Such unions almost never had any con- tact with one another. They could achieve only immedi- ate and localized gains.

Like union organization, labour militancy was local and extremely limited. Most industrial action con- sisted of unsystematic rioting. Employers responded to industrial action of any kind by calling in the police or the military. Before the 1850s there was a tendency for unions to identify with their particular trades rather

than with fellow workers in other trades in other places. The development of industry and the rise of factories employing mechanization brought considerable change to the incipient labour movement. A handful of inter- national unions appeared, either British or American in origin. Unions with several local chapters also organ- ized. Although mechanization encouraged unioniza- tion, the impersonality of the factory system created problems for labour, particularly when juveniles and women were drawn into the labour market. These work- ers were hard to organize.

Westward By mid-century there were signs that the vast territory west of the Lakehead would not forever remain the mon- opoly of the fur trade. There were also signs of Canadian interest in the West, beginning with editorials in the Toronto Globe in 1850. One key development in western settlement was the establishment in 1848 of Vancouver

Lake Huron

Georgian Bay

Lake Ontario

Lake Erie

Ottawa River

St Lawrence River 21 24

25

5

GTR

2322

4 9C&P

O&P GTR

B&O

PHL&B 2019

3

2

18

12

13 7

17

616 1

15

1110

14 GWR

GWR

GWR

8 GWR

Northern

E&O

B&LH

B&LH

L&PS

GTR

GTR

Welland

2,500 to 4,999 10. Windsor

11. Chatham

12. Goderich

13. Stratford

14. St Mary’s

15. Ingersoll

16. Woodstock

17. Galt

18. Dundas

19. Whitby

20. Bowmanville

21. Peterborough

22. Port Hope

23. Cobourg

24. Brockville

25. Prescott

5,000 to 9,999 6. Brantford

7. Guelph

8. St Catharines

9. Belleville

2,500 to 4,999

1,000 to 2,499

10,000 & over

5,000 to 9,999

10,000 & over 1. London

2. Hamilton

3. Toronto

4. Kingston

5. Ottawa

N

S

EW

Canada West, railways and urban centres, 1861. Source: Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

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Island as a British colony. Until then, Britain had been content to allow the Hudson’s Bay Company to act as custodian of all British interests in the West. Earlier, the HBC had sent James Douglas (1803–77) from Fort Vancouver (now in the state of Washington) to establish Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island. This was a fallback position if the Oregon Territory were to be lost, as it was in 1846. In 1849 Vancouver Island was leased to the Company for an annual payment of seven shillings. The HBC would organize the colony there. James Douglas

returned to Fort Victoria as chief factor of the Company, subsequently becoming its governor in 1851. Settlement on the west coast was slow. Most newcomers came from the British Isles. They sought to reproduce on the Pacific slope the life of the British gentry. This was not easy. The Colonial Office insisted on encumbering Vancouver Island with unworkable land policies. Land must be high-priced (a pound per acre) and settlement must be led by those who could afford to bring out labourers as settlers to work the lands.

A movement to supply adult educational oppor-

tunity for the working classes, who were virtually

ignored in the school and university systems, began

in Scotland at the end of the eighteenth century and

spread to London, where George Birkbeck founded

the London Mechanics Institute in 1823. The growth

of the movement in Great Britain—over 100 local

Institutes by 1826—was facilitated mainly by wealthy

businessmen and industrialists, who sought to pro-

vide self-improving facilities for working men, thus

enabling them to move up the social and economic

ladder. The Mechanics Institutes movement was

transferred to British America at the end of the 1820s,

with the establishment of a Montreal Institute in 1828,

one at Toronto in 1830, and one in Halifax in 1831. The

movement spread across the colonies in the 1840s,

with almost every prominent town and city estab-

lishing an Institute and constructing or taking over a

building to house the activities of the organization.

Most of the Institutes served three functions:

first, they housed libraries and reading rooms pub-

licly accessible to the working classes, who were

encouraged to borrow books; many of these facili-

ties eventually provided the basis for public librar-

ies in their respective cities. Second, they provided

classroom and lecture space for adult education in

the local community; and third, they provided space

for local organizations and groups to meet informally.

The Institutes offered venues for visiting lecturers

and others to speak on important issues and move-

ments of the day, and in the 1840s and 1850s much

of public awareness of science in British America was

spread by the Mechanics Institutes. Lectures featur-

ing practical exhibitions of scientific principles were

common activities at most Mechanics Institutes, and

were very well attended. Few Mechanics Institutes

remained solvent on the contributions of members

of the working classes, relying instead increasingly

on government grants and largesse from wealthy

benefactors who saw the value of these institutions

of adult education.

The Mechanics Institutes seldom served as active

sponsors of workingmen’s associations or unions, and

were more likely to be involved in temperance activity

than in labour agitation. Nevertheless, the Mechanics

Institutes movement remained a powerful one in

Canada throughout the nineteenth century, with

more than 300 local Institutes established in Ontario

alone before 1900, but the heyday of the Mechanics

Institute was between 1840 and Confederation.

BACkGROUNDER Mechanics Institutes

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206 A History of the Canadian Peoples

A dour Scot, Kenneth McKenzie (1811–74), was put in charge of farming operations, and he found him- self constantly struggling with the social pretensions of the bailiffs. “Balls & parties every now & then for farmers in a new country will not do,” he admonished one of his underlings, telling another, “It is profits we want at as little outlay as possible” (Ormsby, 1958: 102–3). The HBC was astounded to discover that one of these bailiffs spent eight times his annual salary in 1854 on various expenses and purchases, including 1,606 pounds of sugar and 70 gallons of brandy, rum, whisky, and wine.

In 1838 the British government had extended the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly over the West for 21 years. A major parliamentary inquiry took place in 1857 before the government decided its ongoing policy in regard to the Company. The HBC officials had attempted to argue that the West was inhabitable only in river valleys limited in extent; most of the region was a vast desert too cold and too arid to be settled. The inquiry’s report was not very favourable to the

HBC. It acknowledged “the desire of our Canadian fellow-subjects that the means of extension and regu- lar settlement should be afforded to them over a por- tion of this territory” (quoted in Bumsted, 1969: 220). It recommended that the HBC cease to control Vancouver Island. It also encouraged the annexation to Canada of the districts on the Red River and the Saskatchewan River. At the same time, the report maintained that for much of the West the continuation of the trading monopoly of the Company was desirable and appro- priate. While the British Parliament was considering the future of the West, two scientific expeditions (one British and one Canadian) set out in 1857 to inves- tigate the region first-hand. The leader of the British expedition was an Irishman, Captain John Palliser (1817–87). The Canadian Exploring Expedition was under the titular command of George Gladman (1800– 63), assisted by Simon James Dawson (1820–1902) and Henry Youle Hind (1823–1908). The findings of these expeditions helped to end the public perception of this vast region as utterly unfit for human habitation.

The Great Western Railway station, Hamilton, c. 1850–60. The Great Western Railway initially connected Toronto and Hamilton, but eventually would connect much of the Niagara Peninsula to the rest of Canada. Stations like the one pictured above bound these communities together to help create larger regional and national identities. LAC, C-019415.

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To Mrs. Dugald MacTavish, York Factory, September 1840

The usual dinner for our mess meaning the 3 ladies

& me was—a roast of venison at the top 3 geese at the

foot, 4 ducks on one side 6 plovers on the other, a large

Red river ham (whole leg) & potatoes & mashed turnips

or boiled lettuce. For something green when they have

broth they put lettuce [in] & the bitterness is surpriz-

ing—They have radish & lettuce after dinner. I am get-

ting a superfine blue cloth gown but I do not see how I

am to wear it as I cant bear a cap on my head, the room

is so close & the fire quite small. There are 3 windows in

it. We have 2 sitting rooms but the kitchen in our house

is not used except in Winter. . . . Our house is a good

size, 1 bedroom off each sitting room & men servants

rooms off the kitchen a very large closet off the dining.

. . . I had nearly forgot my piano. It is a very fine one &

the handsomest I ever saw. The wood is beautiful & Mr

Finlay[son] is croaking for one the same. Mrs. F does

not play except to accompany herself. I was astonished

at its appearance as I did not expect the case to be any

great thing. The hinge of the lid, & the lock have cre-

ated a sensation among the geniuses here from the

uncommon elegance of their contrivance & mechan-

ism. There was not a scratch upon it nor a note out of

tune. The form of the pedal is magnificent & the wood

beautifully marked. Mr. Gladman has a barrel organ in

wch are a drum & some other instruments. It is never

silent, the family imagine themselves so fond of music.

To Mary MacTavish, York Factory, 1st Sep’r 1840

There are 3 windows in each room & 2 in our bed-

room so that the sun cant fail to look in when it pleases

as they are in all the airts & there is no way of putting on

shutters as there is no jut in the windows from the walls

being so thin. The stoves are frightful. Mrs Finlayson

could not keep the temperature of her rooms lower

than 90. . . . I am quite baked with the stove. There are

3 windows open but Gibout [her servant] has made

such a fire that the thermometer is 72 & feels like a very

warm green house & my eyes are smarting & inflamed.

. . . By last years journal the snow began on the 19th of

this month but only in showers. There is a small plot

of pease in full flourish but they never pod to any size.

Indeed the blossoms look more luxuriant than at home

but not above half a dozen have formed & they are as

flat as a piece of paper. I take them for flowers as there

is a great scarcity of such.

Letitia MacTavish Hargrave Born in Edinburgh, Letitia MacTavish Hargrave (1813–54) married fur trader James Hargrave in 1840. The couple spent most of their married life, from 1840 to 1851, living at York Factory, the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post on Hudson Bay. Her letters to her family give a vivid account of life at the post.

Source: Margaret Arnett MacLeod, ed., The Letters of Letitia Hargrave (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1947), 61–3, 72, 74.

Contemporary Views

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208 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Both expeditions produced reports acknowledging the great agricultural potential of the West, once opened by a railway.

Meanwhile on the west coast, sheer serendipity brought the region to the attention of the world. In 1857 the discovery of gold on the mainland, along the Thompson and Fraser rivers, attracted fortune hunters from around the world. The amount of gold easily avail- able was quite small by earlier California standards. The ensuing rush was a pale imitation of the American one. Nevertheless, hundreds of miners, mainly from California, made their way to the Fraser River in the interior of British Columbia in the spring of 1858. The quiet village of Victoria was transformed overnight

into a major port. South of the forty-ninth parallel, talk of American annexation spread rapidly. The British government rushed through legislation putting New Caledonia under the direct jurisdiction of the Crown. The mainland colony of British Columbia came into formal existence on 2 August 1858, with James Douglas as Governor. The two colonies were at first administra- tively separate. The miners, however rough in appear- ance, were not really badly behaved and accepted British authority readily enough.

The extraction of most of the gold required proper machinery and capital expenditure. Many of the gold-seekers found employment in other ways, taking advantage of the developmental spinoff from the rush.

The Aurora gold mine, Williams Creek, BC, 15 August 1867, by Frederick Dally. Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, T14321. Note the ramshackle condition of the buildings, typical of the sense of impermanence in mining country.

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The discovery of gold irreversibly altered life for the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific slope. Even remote regions could contain great mineral wealth. The set- tlers and the government ignored the land claims of Indigenous peoples in the rush to exploit the land itself.

Few settlers disagreed with the view that the “indolent, contented savage, must give place to the busteling [sic] sons of civilization & Toil” (quoted in Fisher, 1977: 105). For the Aboriginal peoples the result was a very serious

Gold Mining in British Columbia

Document

The metallic sand in which gold is found is primar- ily sought, and the peculiar quality of earth that contains the amalgam is technically called the “colour.” While engaged in the pursuit of this indication of the presence of gold, the miner is “prospecting.” The requisites for this task are a “pan” and some quicksilver. When the miner comes to a spot on the bank of the river which he sup- poses to be auriferous, he proceeds to test the value of the “dirt” in the following manner. Having filled the pan with earth, he gently dips it in the stream, and by the assist- ance of a rotatory motion which he gives to the contents, loosened by the introduction of water, the black sand with pebbles is precipitated to the bottom. The lighter earth is allowed to pass over the edge of the pan or basin. After all has been removed except the sand and any specks of gold that may be in combination with it, the pan is placed by a fire or in the sun to dry. The lighter par- ticles of sand are blown away, and if the gold be very fine it is amalgamated with quicksilver. By thus ascertaining the value of the remaining particles of gold dust, skilful “prospectors” conclude whether the ground would pay to work. In this rough method of searching for gold the superior specific gravity of that metal over every other, except platinum, is the basis of operations—auriferous particles, on this principle, settling at the bottom.

The readiest and most primitive contrivance for washing gold is the “rocker”, which is still used by

Chinamen and a few white men, on the banks of the Fraser. The rocker is constructed like a child’s cradle, with rockers underneath. The box is 3 12 to 4 feet long, about 2 feet wide and 1 12 feet deep. The upper part and one end are open, and the sides gradually slope toward the bot- tom. At the head is a section closely jointed with a sheet- iron bottom, perforated so as to admit of small stones passing through. Along the bottom of the rocker riffles [these are strips of wood or metal arranged after the man- ner of a Venetian blind] or cleets are arranged to arrest the gold. This apparatus placed on the margin of the river, the upper iron box is fed by one miner with earth, and by another is rocked and supplied with water. The gold and pebbles passing down to the bottom, the water carries away the latter, and the riffles detain the former. In case the gold is very fine, part of a blanket is often laid along the under box, covered with quicksilver to attract the gold dust. By this simple agency from 1 pound sterling to 10 pounds sterling per day and upwards to the hand has been realised. In an ordinary sluice 40 or 50 lbs. of quick- silver is employed daily, and in a rocker from 8 to 10 lbs. But after the gold has been retorted from it, the same quicksilver may be applied several times over.

The next method to be described, and the one most prevailing on the Pacific, is Sluicing. This is a process of mining that can be conducted on any scale and in connection with the labour of an indefinite number of

Continued...

The following account of the pre-industrial techniques of gold mining is taken from Matthew Macfie’s Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Macfie had journeyed from Britain to British Columbia in 1859.

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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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2116 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

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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2136 | Becoming a Nation, 1840–1885

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

United States of America

GreenlandAlaska (USA)

Ontario

Manitoba 1870

British Columbia

1871

District of

Franklin

N o r t h - W e s t T e r r i t o r i e s N ew

foundland

Nova Scotia

PEI 1873New

Brunswick

Montreal

Ottawa Toronto

Victoria

Quebec

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

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kilometres

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Provinces of the Dominion of Canada

Territories Controlled by the Federal Government

British Territory

Disputed Area

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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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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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

Nahani

Slave

Chipewyan Chipewyan

Beaver

Cree

Cree

Cree

Cree

Assiniboine

Cree

Cree

OjibwaOjibwa Ojibwa

Sekani

Sarcee Blackfoot

Blood Stoney Piegan

11 1921

1 1871

2 1871

3 1873

4 1874

5a 1875

5b 1908

6a 1876

6b 1876

8 1899

9 1905

10 1906

7 1877

N

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0 500

kilometres

1,000

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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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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901491_06_Ch06.indd 256 12/18/15 3:54 PM

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.

901491_06_Ch06.indd 263 12/18/15 3:57 PM

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.

901491_06_Ch06.indd 264 12/18/15 3:57 PM

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

901491_06_Ch06.indd 265 12/18/15 3:58 PM

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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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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274 A History of the Canadian Peoples

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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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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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

E W

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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3037 | Becoming Modern, 1885–1915

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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304 A History of the Canadian Peoples

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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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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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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314 A History of the Canadian Peoples

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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320 A History of the Canadian Peoples

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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During World War II, thousands of women worked in Canadian industrial plants manufacturing war materials. Taken in December of 1943, this picture shows Cecilia Butler working in a munitions plant in Toronto, Ontario. Obviously staged, the photograph presents war-time Canada as a racially tolerant, multi-ethnic society. National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque, LAC, e000761869.

Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–19458

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1914 Canada and Newfoundland enter the Great War.

1925 United Church of Canada is formed. Pacific Coast Hockey League folds.

1915 Canadian Expeditionary Force fights in the first Battle of Ypres. Ontario introduces

Regulation 17.

1926 Governor General Byng refuses Prime Minister King a dissolution for a new election; a

constitutional crisis ensues.

1916 Canada introduces a business profits tax. The Newfoundland Regiment is decimated at

Beaumont Hamel.

1929 Stock market collapses. Aird Commission report on public broadcasting favours nationalization

of radio.

1917 Canadian Expeditionary Force suffers heavy losses at Vimy in April. Canada introduces an

income tax. Conscription crisis emerges over

introduction of Military Service Act. Much of

Halifax is destroyed in an explosion.

1930 Great Depression begins. R.B. Bennett’s Conservatives are elected to power in Ottawa.

1918 The Great War ends. Spanish influenza epidemic begins.

1931 Canadian government arrests and imprisons eight leaders of the Communist Party.

1919 “Red Scare” begins. Government suppresses Winnipeg General Strike. First Congress of the

League of Indians meets in Sault Ste Marie.

Canadian Bookman is founded.

1932 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation is founded in Calgary. Bennett government forms

the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission.

1933 Depression sees huge unemployment rolls. Regina Manifesto is adopted by the CCF.

Maurice Duplessis becomes leader of the

Conservative Party of Quebec. T. Dufferin

Pattullo wins election in British Columbia.

1920 Progressive Party is formed. First issues of Canadian Forum, Canadian Historical Review,

and The Dalhousie Review appear. The Group

of Seven holds its first exhibition of paintings.

1921 In a federal election, the Progressive Party wins 64 seats. William Lyon Mackenzie King’s

Liberals form the government. The Maritime

Rights Movement is organized.

1935 R.B. Bennett announces a “New Deal” for Canada, but is defeated by W.L.M. King in the

election. Social Credit under William Aberhart

sweeps to power in Alberta. Duplessis forms

the Union Nationale. The On-to-Ottawa Trek is

suppressed at Regina.

1923 Famous Players’ Canadian Corporation takes over Allen Theatres.

1936 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is formed. 1924 William Aberhart begins the Prophetic Bible

Institute broadcasts over Calgary’s CFCN.

1937 General Motors strike in Oshawa. Royal Commission on Dominion–Provincial Relations

is appointed. Lord Tweedsmuir creates the

Governor General’s awards.

1939 Canada declares war on Germany. British Commonwealth Air Training Plan is founded.

1942 Dieppe raid sees 2,700 Canadians killed or captured. National plebiscite held to release

government from non-conscription pledge.

1940 Royal Commission on Dominion–Provincial Relations recommends restructuring of public

finances.

1943 Marsh report on social security is tabled in the House of Commons.

1941 Emily Carr wins Governor General’s award for Klee Wyck. Hong Kong surrenders to Japan.

Pearl Harbor attacked.

1944 Family Allowances Act and National Housing Act are passed.

Timeline

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324 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The entrance of Canada into World War I marked a triumph of sorts for Canadian imperialism, as one journal emphasized in 1915:

Your Birthright There is one race that is fast dominating the

world—the Anglo-Saxon race, represented by Great Britain and the USA, born rulers, exceed- ing all others in the capacity for governing. The only Empire of the present day which answers to this is the British Empire, a Christian Empire, which includes strong young nations that are federating into a company—which car- ries the gospel to all lands, in all languages— and which is growing and growing—and bids to fill the earth. Do you belong to the British Empire? Then you belong to the blessed race, the blessed Empire—God’s chosen rulers of the world. (Canada’s White Ribbon Bulletin, August 1915, in Cook, 1995: 107)

Canada did not make its own declaration of war, but simply joined the British war effort. Before it ended, the war would inflict extremely heavy Canadian cas- ualties: 60,661 killed in action and 172,000 wounded out of some 620,000 Canadians in uniform drawn from a population of only 8 million. The war gradually isolated French Canada and made possible sweeping national reforms on several fronts. Reform had always implied an interventionist state, and wartime condi- tions encouraged the Canadian government’s intrusion into many new areas of life and work. The government’s expenditures were enormous, but it managed to find the money to keep going, mainly through extensive borrow- ing. One of the new developments was a business profits tax, retroactive to the beginning of the war, introduced in 1916. Another was an income tax, first levied in 1917. Yet another was the nationalization of the railways. The war also accelerated and distorted virtually every eco- nomic development that Canada had experienced dur- ing the previous 40 years.

Canadians entered the war with no idea of its ultimate length, intensity, or futile savagery. The initial enthusiasm of English-speaking Canadians assumed a swift defeat of Germany and its allies. By 1917 support

for the war effort emphasized the extent of the sacrifi- ces already made. Families of the dead soldiers could emotionally rationalize their losses only by calling for more effort towards a final victory. Canada’s military contribution was substantial. Nevertheless, Canadians who fought in Europe were almost exclusively volun- teers. Serving as the shock troops of the British Empire, Canadians achieved an enviable reputation for bravery and fierceness. Their commanders continually placed them in the most difficult situations, and they per- formed well. The list of battles at which they fought heroically (and at heavy cost) was a long one, beginning at Ypres in 1915 and continuing through to the Belgian town of Mons, where fighting ended for the Canadians at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918.

Life in the trenches—which was the main battle experience of most Canadian soldiers in World War I— was a nightmare, so hard to describe that most returning veterans did not really try. Loved ones at home seldom heard accounts of the trench experience, either in let- ters from the front or after the war. The social world of the trenches was a bizarre, surrealistic experience like no other to be found anywhere in the world. It is true that troops were rotated in and out of the front lines, but almost all experienced the danger and discomfort of life in the trenches at some point. Artillery shelling was con- stant, and reserves in the secondary and tertiary lines of fortifications were if anything shelled more heavily by large guns than those in the front lines; artillery crews always fired at longer-range targets for fear of hitting their own men. Periods of rotation were not standard- ized, and during times of crisis the stay in the front line could seem a lifetime. Actual attacks and offen- sives were relatively rare, but life in the trenches was extremely wearing; men faced not only the shelling and continual risk of sniper fire but difficulties in sleeping, bad food, and the ubiquitous mud, in which many men drowned. The worst thing about the mud was having to move through it. Most Canadian soldiers carried more than 60 pounds (27 kg) of equipment, and a mud-soaked greatcoat could weigh another 50 pounds (23 kg).

While in the front trenches, soldiers had to be con- stantly on the alert. They were regularly employed on “fatigues,” moving rations, stores, and wounded men, and repairing the trenches. Sleep deprivation was common.

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Soldiers suffered from the heat in summer and the cold in winter, and from rain virtually year-round. Corpses lay everywhere in the trenches and outside them, attracting rats and lice in great numbers. One Canadian remem- bered, “Huge rats. So big they would eat a wounded man if he couldn’t defend himself ” (quoted in Ellis, 1975: 54). The trenches also stank of chloride of lime (a dis- infectant), creosol (for the flies), human excrement and human sweat, and the putrefaction of decomposing bod- ies. Most soldiers were conscious not only of the stench but of the noise, especially the sounds of various sorts of artillery fire that were part of the continual bombard- ment in the trenches, particularly during offensives. Some could distinguish the various weapons by the noises they made. Dr Andrew Macphail, who served at the front with the 7th Canadian Field Ambulance, com- mented in his diary:

I amuse myself finding words to describe the sounds made by the various classes of guns. The 18 pounders thud, thud. The 4.7s bark like an infinite dachshund. The howitzers smash. The machine-guns rat-tat like the wood-pecker or the knocker of a door. A single rifle snaps like a dry twig when it is broken. Rapid rifle fire has a desolating sound; it is as if a load of small stones was being dumped from a Scotch cart. A large shell sounds exactly like a railway train; and shrapnel bursts as if boiler-plate were being torn into fragments, or as if the sky were made of sheet-iron, and had been riven by a thunderbolt. The whistle of the passing rifle bullet is unmistakable. (Macphail, 1915)

Many thought the worst things about the guns were the vibrations and the “solid ceiling of sound.” By 1918 soldiers were also exposed to aerial attacks and bom- bardments. The Great War produced a new form of nerv- ous illness, which came to be called “shell shock,” but which was really a combination of various assaults on the human nervous system.

Given the conditions under which the men oper- ated, it becomes easier to understand how they could, from time to time, be led “over the top” in open mass assaults or in raids in small parties—either way to risk

death. Sleep-deprived and in a constant state of shock, most troops who actually engaged in battle were numb to virtually everything going on around them. They fought in a zombie-like state, and those who managed to return were totally exhausted. High command never really understood what the war was like in the trenches. The generals never appreciated that defensive firepower from a dug-in enemy meant that most attacks were noth- ing but human carnage. Field officers believed in the mystical value of intestinal fortitude. In April 1915, a Canadian regiment at Ypres withstood one of the first poison gas attacks, using for protection nothing but handkerchiefs soaked in urine. After beating back the enemy at great human cost and with other units retreat- ing all around them, the regiment’s colonel, supported by those remaining of his junior officers, volunteered to hold the line. He telephoned divisional headquarters and reported modestly, “The 90th Rifles can hold their bit.” And they did. The casualties in this one unit in this one battle ran at 20 officers and 550 men killed, wounded, missing, or gassed—out of a total complement of 900.

While dispatches spoke reassuringly of the value of the assaults and the heroism, the soldiers knew per- fectly well that their sacrifices were achieving very little. Canadian casualties, like those of other settlement col- onies, tended to run considerably higher than those of the armies of the European allies. Whether the coloni- als had less experience as soldiers, or were placed in the most dangerous places, or simply fought more sav- agely, is not entirely clear. On one horrible day in 1916 at Beaumont-Hamel, 780 Newfoundlanders were trapped by barbed wire and mowed down by German machine guns; 310 died. While it was possible to be invalided back to Britain (“Blight”) or even Canada with a ser- ious enough wound (often called “a blighty”), most of the Canadian soldiers sent to Europe either died on the battlefield or remained on the lines until the Armistice.

Despite these sacrifices, the Canadian government had to fight hard for a voice in imperial war policy. It also worked hard to maintain separate Canadian unit and command structures. The arguments for autonomy—and the manpower necessary to sustain them—dragged the government ever deeper into the quagmire. By the time of Vimy in April 1917, Canada could no longer recruit new volunteers to replace the mounting casualties.

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326 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The government saw conscription as the only solution. Conscription was a policy intensely opposed by many French Canadians. From the standpoint of Anglo-Canadians, French Canada had not borne its fair share of the burden of war. English Canada argued that less than 5 per cent of the Canadian volunteers had

come from French Canada. On the other hand, French Canadians came to feel increasingly under attack by English Canada. As a symbol of their position they focused on the plight of francophones in Ontario, where in 1915 Regulation 17 had seemingly imposed unilin- gualism on the elementary school system. Virtually all

Monday, Dec. 7, 1914

Leaskdale, Ont. A Globe headline today was “The Germans

Capture Lodz.”

This war is at least extending my knowledge of

geography. Six months ago I did not know there was

such a place in the world as Lodz. Had I heard it men-

tioned I would have known nothing about it and cared

as little. To-day, the news that the Germans have

captured it in their second drive for Warsaw made my

heart sink into my boots. I know all about it now—its

size, its standing, its military significance. And so of

scores of other places whose names have been let-

tered on my memory in blood since that fateful 4th

of August—Mlawa, Bzura, Jarolwav, Tomaskoff, Yser,

Lys, Aisne, Marne, Prysmysl. At the last mentioned

the newspaper wits have been poking fun since the

siege of it began. Nobody seems to know how it is

pronounced. I daresay the Austrians would think that

Saskatchewan and Musquodoboit were about as bad.

The Manse, Leaskdale, Ont. Thursday, Dec. 10, 1914

To-day at noon Ewan [her husband] came in

jubilantly. “Good news!” he said. I snatched the paper

and read that a German squadron had been totally

destroyed by a British one off the Falkland Isles.

Coming after the long strain of the recent series of

Russian reverses I rather went off my head. I waved

the paper wildly in air as I danced around the dining

room table and hurrahed. Yet hundreds of men were

killed in the fight and hundreds of women’s hearts will

break because of it. Is that a cause for dancing and

hurrahing? Oh, war makes us all very crude and self-

ish and primitive!

Saturday, Dec. 12, 1914

To-day’s war news was better than it has been for

some time—the second German invasion of Poland

seems to have been definitely checked. Ever since it

began—a fortnight or so ago—I have been wracked

with dread. If Germany should smash Russia and then

her victorious army back against the French and British

lines! That thought was the Dweller on my Threshold.

All through the forenoons I could manage to work and

hold my dread at bay. But when at twelve I saw Ewan

going out for the mail my nerve invariably collapsed. I

could not do anything—it was of no use to try. I could

not even read. I could only pace the floor like a caged

tiger, nerving myself to meet the worst. Then when he

came back I would snatch the Globe and desperately

tear over the headlines. It has been agonizing.

Lucy Maud Montgomery and the War The following are excerpts from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journal for late 1914.

Source: Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, eds, The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, vol. 2, 1910–1921 (Toronto:

Oxford University Press, 1987), 157–8. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Contemporary Views

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In the Trenches Document

The sergeant comes into the bay again and whispers to me: “Keep your eyes open now—they might come over on a raid now that it’s dark. The wire’s cut over there—” He points a little to my right.

I stand staring into the darkness. Everything moves rapidly again as I stare. I look away for a moment and the illusion ceases.

Something leaps towards my face. I jerk back, afraid. Instinctively I feel for my rifle in the corner of

the bay. It is a rat. It is as large as a tom-cat. It is three feet away from

my face and it looks steadily at me with its two staring, beady eyes. It is fat. Its long tapering tail curves away from its padded hindquarters. There is still a little light from the stars and this light shines faintly on its sleek

skin. With a darting movement it disappears. I remember with a cold feeling that it was fat, and why . . .

The sergeant rushes into the bay of the trench, breathless. “Minnies,” he shouts, and dashes on.

In that instant there is a terrible roar directly behind us. The night whistles and flashes red. The trench rocks and sways. Mud and earth leap into the air, come down upon

us in heaps. We throw ourselves upon our faces, clawing our

nails into the soft earth on the bottom of the trench. Another! . . . Still they come. I am terrified. I hug the earth, digging my fingers

into every crevice, every hole. A blinding flash and an exploding howl a few feet

in front of the trench. My bowels liquefy.

Charles Yale Harrison (1898–1954) was a Canadian writer who served with the Royal Montreal Regiment and was wounded at the Battle of Amiens in 1918. He wrote a powerful novel about his experiences in the war.

Source: Charles Yale Harrison, Generals Die in Bed (Waterdown, Ont.: Potlatch Publications, 1995), 22–4.

French-Canadian members of Parliament opposed the Military Service Act, which became law in August 1917. In its wake, and with a federal election coming, a Union government was formed out of the Conservatives and those English-speaking members of the Liberal Party who had broken with Laurier over his opposition to conscription.

French Canada was not alone in becoming isolated by the war. Members of Canada’s other ethnic minor- ities, many of them originating in parts of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, found themselves under attack. The government became increasingly repressive as the war continued. It interned “aliens” by Order-in- Council and suppressed much of the foreign-language press. The Wartime Elections Act of September 1917

ruthlessly disenfranchised Canadians of enemy origin. Organized labour found itself shackled. The govern- ment introduced compulsory arbitration into all war industries in 1916. In the crisis year of 1917, the govern- ment announced its intention to outlaw all strikes and lockouts. The Union government was simultaneously bipartisan and sectional. It was able to implement sev- eral national reforms favoured by its Anglo-Canadian supporters. Many provinces had allowed women the vote earlier in the war. The Wartime Elections Act in 1917 granted the federal electoral franchise to women with close relatives in the war. In 1918 all women got the vote federally. Prohibition also triumphed nation- ally in 1918, not only to keep the soldiers pure and to ensure that the country to which they returned would

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328 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The Sopwith Camel was a single-seat biplane air-

plane in service between June 1917 and 1920.

Although tricky to fly, it was extremely manoeuvrable

in the hands of a skilled pilot, and was responsible

for nearly 1,300 “kills” (enemy planes destroyed),

more than any other Allied aircraft. The Camel

weighed 420 kilograms empty and was powered by a

nine-cylinder rotary engine rated at 130 horsepower

(by comparison, the World War II Spitfire weighed

almost 2,300 kilograms empty and had a 1470 horse-

power engine). The light weight was achieved by a

flimsy construction, with plywood panels around

the cockpit, and with fuselage, wings, and tail cov-

ered with fabric. Obviously there was no protection

for the pilot, and the contemporary joke was that it

offered “a wooden cross, a Red Cross, or a Victoria

Cross.” The plane had two .303 Vickers machine guns

mounted for synchronized fire in front of the cockpit.

Nearly 5,500 Camels were built. Many were diverted

to home defence against German bombers, and the

Camel proved capable of flying at night when the

enemy shifted to night bombing. Towards the end

of the war the Camel was limited by slow speed and

poor performance at high altitudes, but was used as a

ground attack weapon, destroying many enemy air-

craft by strafing runs at low altitude. It was the favour-

ite aircraft of Major William Barker, one of the most

decorated Canadian pilots during the war.

The Great War was not a very romantic one, with

most destruction involving large numbers of casual-

ties inflicted by anonymous weapons. The war in the

air was one of the few places featuring one-on-one

combat opportunities and duels between skilled fly-

ers, and a number of fighter pilots, such as Barker

and Billy Bishop, developed substantial popular

reputations. Canadian pilots flew for the Royal Air

Force for most of the war, since a separate Canadian

unit (the Royal Canadian Air Force) was not created

until September 1918. Nevertheless, Canadians

were highly successful in the air, with over 80 “aces”

credited with 10 “kills” or more. The Sopwith Camel,

itself an adaptation of previous technology to a

more war-like purpose, was in fact a conglomer-

ate of early twentieth-century material culture.

The biplane, the internal combustion engine, and

the machine guns were all recent innovations. War

obviously leads to many of these advances, and the

material culture of conflict is one that continues to

garner interest.

A number of Camels were given to Canada as part

of an imperial gift following the war. Primarily used

for training and maintaining the skills of new and vet-

eran pilots, all of the Camels were decommissioned

by the mid-1920s. While they rather quickly became

obsolete for their original purpose, the romanticism

of early aerial combat led to these weapons having a

more lasting impact on society, and their legacy, both

for the skill of Canadian pilots and the nature of this

new form of warfare, remained.

Material Culture

Sopwith Camel. © Chronicle/Alamy.

The Sopwith Camel

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3298 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

be a better place to live but also to prevent waste and inefficiency. Daylight savings added an hour of light to the workday. Previous arguments about infringing per- sonal liberty lost their cogency during wartime.

Canadian industry—at least in central Canada and industrial Nova Scotia—benefited directly from the war. By March 1915 over 200 firms had converted to muni- tions manufacture. Later in 1915 the government set up the Imperial Munitions Board, chaired by business- man Joseph Flavelle (1858–1939). Canadian munitions production increased dramatically, raising the export of iron and steel products from $68.5 million in 1915 to $441.1 million only two years later. The Canadian muni- tions industry employed 200,000 workers in 673 factor- ies. By 1917 the Imperial Munitions Board alone had an annual budget three times that of the federal govern- ment in 1914. In the latter years of the war nearly 40 per cent of Canadian manufacturing products found export markets. The high point came in 1918 when Canadian manufacturing exports reached $636 million and total exports peaked at $1.54 billion.

As for Canadian agriculture, it could not produce enough in the short run. From 1914 to 1919 in Canada as a whole, agricultural acreage under cultivation doubled. Wheat prices trebled, and western farmers expanded the size and number of their farms. The federal government created a national Wheat Board in 1917 to facilitate mar- keting. The number of prairie farms actually increased by 28 per cent between 1911 and 1921. Although the sons of Canadian farmers could gain exemption from conscription, by the time the draft was introduced in 1917 there were few young men left on the farms. Rural Canada, especially in the West, had outdone the remain- der of the country in volunteer enlistment. The result was an increase in labour costs, which forced farmers to buy more agricultural equipment. Increased produc- tion also pushed up the price of land. Farmers therefore increased production by borrowing money at high rates of interest. Farm debt increased substantially. High prices also encouraged farmers to move cultivation onto marginal land while abandoning most of the tested techniques of soil and moisture conservation hitherto practised. The result of all this expansion would be an inevitable disaster when the price of grain and other crops ultimately fell on the international market.

One of many casualties of the war was civil liberty in Canada. The War Measures Act, passed at war’s begin- ning, was a blank cheque allowing the government to censor writing and speech, as well as to arrest, detain, and even deport those regarded as obstructing the war effort. As a nation of immigrants, Canada inevitably contained citizens and residents whose homelands were part of the enemy, the so-called “enemy aliens.” Although the bulk of such people were German, most of those persecuted and interned were citizens of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, chiefly people of Ukrainian origin. After 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution, the activities of radical ethnic organizations came under heavy scru- tiny, and the Dominion government was easily per- suaded that the Ukrainian community was the centre of Bolshevism in Canada. Thus, on the eve of the Armistice, two Orders-in-Council suppressed the foreign-language press and most socialist/anarchist organizations.

The Great War had a profound impact on Canada in almost all aspects of life. Its rhetorical side was one of

A recruitment poster. Archives of Ontario, MU 2052, #40, F 895 (1915). Recruiting Circulars. What does this poster tell us about public attitudes in Canada towards the war in 1915?

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330 A History of the Canadian Peoples

present sacrifice for future benefits. This “war to end all wars” would make the world safe for democracy. An era of full social justice would follow the great victory. That the Canadian government had ignored democratic civil liberties in fighting the war was an irony escaping most contemporaries.

The war’s conclusion amounted to a triumph for Protestant Anglo-Canada, with little thought given to the tomorrows that would follow the coming of peace. A nation that had drawn heavily on its resources was really not ready to deal with the negative legacies of its efforts.

Only days after the Armistice was declared in November 1918, Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden went to Europe to head the Canadian delegation at the Peace Conference. Canada’s participation at Paris beginning in January 1919 was less concerned with the disposition of European and international problems than it was with its own status in dealing with that disposition. This was a policy agreed upon in advance by the Union cabinet in Ottawa, although many Canadians would have pre- ferred that their government stay away from Versailles entirely. Canada and the other dominions banded together to insist on being treated as independent

The Newfoundland Regiment, D Company, near St John’s, 1915. On 1 July 1916 the Newfoundlanders would see their first action in France. Of the 780 men of the Newfoundland Regiment who entered the fray that day at Beaumont-Hamel, in the first engagement of the Battle of the Somme, more than 700 were killed, wounded, or reported missing. Since 1917, the first of July is observed in Newfoundland as Memorial Day, in remembrance generally of Newfoundland’s war dead and specifically of those who were slaughtered at Beaumont-Hamel. The Rooms, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, E 22-45.

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3318 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

nations at the Peace Conference rather than as part of the British imperial delegation. The principal opponent to this change of policy was not the British government, but the United States, backed by other participants, who insisted that autonomous dominions would enhance the British voice in the deliberations, which did not answer the dominions’ claim that their commitment of manpower (and casualties) during the war entitled them to a separate say in the outcome.

Sir Robert Borden proved to have an influence on the conference greater than Canada’s actual power in world affairs. The first breakthrough came in early January 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson con- ceded a representative from each dominion at the peace table. Sir Robert Borden responded by calling a meeting

of the dominions, refusing to accept one representative, and demanding two. Wilson agreed to two representa- tives from Canada, Australia, South Africa, and India, and one for New Zealand. Newfoundland would have to sit as part of the British delegation. The dominions sub- sequently got the right to separate membership on new international organizations coming out of the treaty, including the League of Nations, and a separate signa- ture on the treaty and conventions. Membership in the League, of course, implied liability for any commitments undertaken by that organization. Canada had achieved a new status in world affairs. Whether that status justified the numbers of dead and wounded was another matter.

Once the Great War had ended, most Canadians did their best to put the conflict behind them. Many

A Canadian battalion going “over the top,” October 1916. W.I. Castle, Canada. Dept. of National Defence, LAC, PA-000648

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332 A History of the Canadian Peoples

hoped for the emergence of a more just society. Stephen Leacock well expressed the ambivalence of the post- war period in The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1919). Recognizing that industrial society did not nor- mally employ its full potential, Leacock could only hope that the destructive energy of war could be har- nessed for peacetime reform. The unsolved riddle was simply stated: “With all our wealth, we are still poor.” Every child, Leacock insisted, should have “adequate food, clothing, education and an opportunity in life.” Unemployment should become a “social crime” (Bowker, 1973: 74–80). Leacock did not offer specific solutions. Such a collective transformation would not be easy to accomplish. There were too many unresolved economic, constitutional, and social problems. The development of Canada over the next quarter-century demonstrated

that at least in peacetime, Canadians still had great trouble coming to terms with the paradox Leacock had identified in 1919. During the Great Depression espe- cially, the state seemed impotent to improve conditions. The politicians blamed the Constitution. Beginning in 1939, however, Canada would again demonstrate its capacity for waging total war within the constraints of the British North America Act.

Returning to “Normalcy” During demobilization Canada experienced one of the most devastating epidemics of modern times, the

During World War I, Ukrainians were one of several nationalities dubbed “enemy aliens.” Many of these people were imprisoned in Canadian internment camps, such as the camp and internees shown here, at Castle Mountain, Alberta. Glenbow Archives, NA-1870-6.

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3338 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

Sir Robert Borden on Canadian Representation at Versailles

Document

The subject [of representation] was first debated in- formally at conferences between the British and Dominion Ministers, and afterwards in the formal meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet. It was assumed that only five places could be secured for the British Empire at the Peace Conference. The panel system, under which the representation of the British Empire at the sessions of the Peace Conference would be selected from day to day, as the nature of the subject demanded, was not regarded as satisfactory in itself.

Finally, I proposed that in the general representation of the British Dominions, the panel system might be util- ized when necessary or appropriate but that there should be distinctive representation for each Dominion on the same basis as was to be accorded to the smaller nations of the Allied Powers. This proposal was eventually accepted at the preliminary conference in London between repre- sentatives of the British Empire, France, and Italy.

But all the difficulties had by no means been over- come. When the question of procedure, including that of representation, came before the Peace Conference on January 12, 1919, the proposal for distinctive rep- resentation for the British Dominions aroused strong opposition. The subject was further discussed in the British Empire Delegation, which was really the Imperial War Cabinet under another name; and the Dominions, standing firmly upon the principle recog- nized in London, declined to accept an inferior status. In the result, there insistence prevailed; and through a combination of the panel system together with their own distinctive representation, the Dominions secured a peculiarly effective position.

Elsewhere I have said, and here I emphatically repeat, that Canada and the other Dominions would

have regarded the situation as intolerable if they, who numbered their dead by the hundred thousands in the fiercest struggle the world had ever known, should stand outside the council chamber of the Conference, while nations that had taken no direct or active part in the struggle stood within and determined the condi- tions of Peace. . . .

We were lodged at the Hotel Majestic where I had a very commodious bedroom and sitting-room. The British had brought over an entire staff for the hotel as they were afraid to utilize a French staff, lest important information leak out. As a result, we had typical English meals, altogether too heavy for per- sons habitually deprived of normal opportunities for exercise. I used to escape the dinners two or three times a week and content myself with an apple, a glass of water, and a long walk. This regimen enabled me to survive. On one occasion I avoided dinner for ten con- secutive evenings.

[Feb. 4 1919] That evening, Foster [Sir George Foster] and I went with the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland to dine with Lord Brooke at the Café Escargot, where we had an excellent meal to which we did ample justice except the snails included in the menu. After dinner we attended the Theatre St. Martin to see Cyrano de Bergerac, beautifully acted but sad in its ending. We were invited to supper by the leading lady of the piece, “Roxanne,” and at her apartment we met Percival Langdon of the Morning Post. We had an excellent supper and a most enjoyable time. This was one of the friskiest evenings of Foster’s life, as we kept him up until 1:15. I told him I never would have embarked on such an adventure without his presence as chaperon.

In his Memoirs, originally published in 1938 and based on his diaries kept at the time, Sir Robert Borden wrote the following.

Source: Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs, vol. 2, 1916–1920 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1938), 908.

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334 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Spanish flu outbreak of 1918–19. The situation was so desperate in November 1918 that the government actually attempted, without success, to postpone pub- lic celebration of the Armistice for fear of spreading infection. Canadian deaths from the flu ultimately ran to 50,000—only some 10,000 thousand fewer than the number of Canadians who had died in battle. Fatalities had shifted from the trenches to the home front.

Yet another form of infectious epidemic made its appearance in 1919 with the great “Red Scare.” The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917–18 in Russia provided the Canadian government and businessmen with an example of what might happen if popular unrest got out of hand. Political paranoia was as catching as the flu. Both the government and the business community became almost hysterical over the possibility that the revolution was nigh. The immediate focus of their con- cern was the Winnipeg General Strike of June 1919, but it had been preceded by the organization of the One Big Union, formed in Calgary in February amid consider- able anti-capitalistic rhetoric. As usual, the Canadian government responded to anything smacking of popu- lar uprising with repression.

Most of the conditions and issues that initially pro- duced labour unrest in Winnipeg in the spring of 1919 were traditional ones exacerbated by the war: workers sought recognition of union rights to organize, higher wages, and better working conditions. A walkout by workers in the city’s metal trades and building indus- tries was quickly joined by others (as many as 50,000) in a general sympathy strike. On 15 May the strikers voted to close down the city’s services. Much of the rhetoric of the strike sounded extremely radical. Some labour lead- ers hoped to use the general strike as a weapon to bring capitalism to its knees. Many, but not all, demobilized servicemen supported the strikers. Worried business- men saw the general strike as a breakdown of public authority. Workers in other cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, responded with declarations of support and threats of their own strikes. The Canadian government, represented locally by acting Minister of Justice Arthur Meighen (1874–1960), responded decisively. He supple- mented the army with local militia, the Royal North West Mounted Police, and 1,800 special constables.

The Canadian Naturalization Act was hastily amended in early June 1919 to allow for the instant deportation of any foreign-born radicals who advocated revolution or who belonged to “any organization entertaining or teaching disbelief in or opposition to organized govern- ment” (quoted in Avery, 1986: 222). Most strikers were British or Canadian-born, but the general public was easily persuaded that what was needed was to “clean the aliens out of this community and ship them back to their happy homes in Europe which vomited them forth a decade ago” (quoted in Bumsted, 1994: 66).

Arthur Meighen effectively broke the strike on 17 June when he authorized the arrest of 10 strike leaders on charges of sedition. On the 21st—“Bloody Saturday”—a public demonstration of strikers and returned soldiers, marching towards the Winnipeg city hall, was met by a charge of Mounties on horseback. The result was a vio- lent melee that injured many, killed two strikers, and led to the arrest of a number of “foreign rioters.” This degree of violence, precipitated by the authorities, was unusual during the strike, perhaps because provincial prohibition in 1916 had closed bars and beverage rooms, making it difficult to get drunk and disorderly in public. Bloody Saturday happened despite the best efforts of the strike leaders to prevent the demonstration from going forward. The Strike Committee subsequently agreed to call off the strike if a Royal Commission investigated it and its underlying causes. The Royal Commission, called by the province of Manitoba, found that much of the labour unrest in Winnipeg was justified and that the strike’s principal goal was to effect the introduction of collective bargaining.

On the other hand, the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench convicted most of the arrested leaders (who were either British- or Canadian-born) on char- ges of sedition. The Department of Immigration held deportation hearings for the “foreigners” in camera. The use of the civil arm to suppress radicalism, long a part of the Canadian tradition, was given a new meaning in post-war Winnipeg. Perhaps most signif i- cantly, the strike and its handling by the government demonstrated the fragility of the post-war readjust- ment. The next decade would further emphasize the problems.

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3358 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

Regional Protest in the 1920s The decade of the 1920s is usually associated with pros- perity, but in truth the period faced great economic dif- ficulties. The boom did not begin until 1924 and it was quite limited in its influence. The depression of 1920–3 had seen world prices for resource products fall abruptly, while costs fell much more gradually. Prosperity finally came from substantial growth in new housing con- struction and a great wave of consumer spending, both understandable after the war and subsequent depres- sion. There was a major expansion of consumer credit facilities to finance the new spending. An advertising

industry quickly developed to promote consumerism. Speculative activities—in real estate, in the stock mar- ket, and in commodity futures—all flourished. So did gambling, both in the stock market and in games of chance; Canadians bet on almost anything. However, much of the boom was at best internal, at worst artifi- cial. International markets, except in the United States, were very soft. The traditional resource sectors of the economy had suffered most from the worldwide fall in prices, although they recovered somewhat in the lat- ter years of the decade. Only Ontario’s economy really prospered, chiefly on the strength of the manufacture of the motor car both for domestic consumption and for export into a British Empire protecting itself against the Americans. The economy of the Maritime provinces

Despite efforts to protect themselves from the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918–19, approximately 50,000 people died in Canada from the disease. CP PHOTO/National Archives of Canada.

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336 A History of the Canadian Peoples

James Shaver Woodsworth (1874–1942) was born in Etobicoke near Toronto. His father, a Methodist min- ister, moved the family to Brandon, Manitoba, in 1882, and James became a Methodist minister himself in 1896, subsequently studying at Victoria College and then at Oxford University. In 1902 he moved to Winnipeg and began questioning Methodist teachings. In 1907 he resigned from the ministry, but was instead given the superintendency of All People’s Mission in Winnipeg’s North End, spending six years working with immigrants and the poor. Two books—Strangers within Our Gates (1909) and My Neighbour (1911)—resulted from his work at All People’s Mission and established his reputation as a social reformer. Beginning in 1913

he spent some years travelling in western Canada, becoming a socialist in 1914 and espousing pacifism during World War I. In 1919 he returned to Winnipeg to become editor of the Western Labour News when its editor was arrested for seditious libel. He, too, was briefly arrested but was never charged. The publicity made his reputation as a labour radical and in 1921 he was elected as an Independent Labour Party MP for Winnipeg North. In 1925 Woodsworth used his vote in a deadlocked House of Commons to force the Liberals to promise to create a plan for old-age pen- sions, later introduced in 1927. In 1932 he helped found a new political party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, based largely on British Fabian socialist principles, although he insisted the party’s socialism would be distinctly Canadian. He was easily chosen as first leader of the CCF, and spent the remainder of the Depression attempting unsuccessfully to challenge the two established parties and supplant the Liberals as the major party of the left. When World War II broke out, Woodsworth refused to support it and was repudiated by the majority of his party as a result. He was re-elect- ed to Parliament in 1940, but was old and sick, dying in early 1942. Although Woodsworth advocated many of the major social policies of the modern welfare state, he was largely unsuccessful in implementing any of them, and both his socialism and his pacifism were aban- doned by his party and its successors. Nevertheless he is generally venerated as one of the early leaders of the Canadian left.

James Shaver Woodsworth. National Archives of Canada, C-057365.

James Shaver Woodsworth

Biography

continued to decline precipitously, since both the power revolution and the new industrialization bypassed them while foreign markets (especially for fish) con- tinued to decline.

Despite the government’s brutal suppression of the Winnipeg General Strike, industrial unrest remained high through 1925. The One Big Union, a radical and

militant industrial union, flourished briefly in western Canada. In 1921 labour representatives sat in seven of nine provincial legislatures. In the federal election of that year, more than 30 labour candidates ran for office, although only four were actually elected. Labour unrest after Winnipeg was most prevalent in the geographical extremes of the country. There were a number of notable

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3378 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

I had a little bird

And its name was Enza.

I opened the window

And in-flew-Enza.

(children’s skipping song of 1918)

The wild card in Canada’s post-war experience

in late 1918 and early 1919 was the pandemic always

known as the Spanish flu. There are no real questions

about the incidence, the extent of sickness, or even

the number of deaths caused by the disease, which

ran rampant across Canada between September 1918

and March 1919. The problem is that it is impossible

to document any real correlation between the flu and

anything else going on in Canada at the time. Disease

has always seemed to exist separately and independ-

ently from other historical factors. Contemporaries

talked openly about the connection between the high

cost of living and popular discontent, for example,

but advanced few arguments about any relationship

between fatal illness and the socio-political dissatis-

faction of 1919.

Few historians dealing with the unsettled condi-

tions in North America in 1919 mention the flu and

popular attitudes in the same breath. The flu’s almost

unthinkable extent and impact across Canada at the

end of the war seems to have eluded historical atten-

tion, perhaps partly because it was obviously not of

human agency and was seldom seen by those who

lived through it as anything other than a disease

that struck at individuals and families. It was seen by

its victims as a danger to their bodies but not as a

social problem menacing the body politic. Even the

rediscovery of the virulence of the pandemic by his-

torians beginning in the 1980s—resulting in a major

increase in information about it—has not produced

many attempts to connect influenza in a careful way

to other events occurring at the same time or only a

few months later.

The likelihood is that more than one virus was

responsible for the epidemic’s course worldwide.

The likelihood also is that the several viruses either

mutated, or became much more virulent, during their

travels around the world, or that other strains suc-

ceeded in jumping from animals to humans by either

adaptation or hybridization. Early evidence of the

beginnings of the flu in its milder forms can be seen

in various parts of the world. One outbreak occurred

in San Sebastién on the northern coast of Spain in

February of 1918. The Spanish experience gave the

disease its name, unfairly since there was no real evi-

dence that its actual origins were Spanish. In its early

incarnations, this “three-day fever”—as the American

Expeditionary Force called it—was not terribly

menac ing. The symptoms were typically flu-like in a

way familiar to all of us. The victim suddenly became

ill, running a high fever. The face became red, every

bone in the body ached, the body perspired consider-

ably, and there was usually an accompanying head-

ache. The period of feeling really sick usually lasted

only 72 to 96 hours, during which time the victim was

practically comatose, although after rising from his or

her bed the victim remained weak for a further seven

to 10 days. The disease was highly contagious.

At some point over the summer of 1918, this rela-

tively mild influenza (with low mortality rates), which

had affected Europe and the United States up to

this point, mutated or morphed into a more virulent

disease. The new variety (or varieties) was far more

deadly. Some victims became extremely ill almost

instantly with symptoms of extreme pneumonia,

exhibiting high fevers and lungs full of fluid. Others

gradually developed pneumonia after a few days of

what appeared to be the ordinary flu. Associated with

BACKGROUNDER The Spanish Flu Pandemic

Continued...

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338 A History of the Canadian Peoples

strikes in Cape Breton, Alberta, and British Columbia. In the coalfields, 22,000 miners were on strike in August 1922. Several unions were broken in some of the bitterest labour violence that Canada had ever seen. Tactics in the mining communities made Winnipeg seem like a Sunday school picnic. A number of movements, mainly regionally based, sprang up to protest inequalities in the national system. Their collective inability to effect much change—though they tried a variety of approaches— was, and is, instructive. One of the principal problems was the very difficulty of working together despite com- mon complaints.

Certainly nobody felt harder done by after the Great War than the farmer. The movement of farm pro- test reached its height in the 1921 election, before the final wheat market collapse and the spread of drought conditions. Farmers in Anglo-Canada disliked infla- tion and had two specific economic grievances beyond the wheat price collapse of 1920. First, the wartime wheat marketing system had been abandoned by the government in 1919. Second, the government had failed to introduce serious tariff reform to lower the costs of farming. Behind these complaints was a long-stand- ing farmer conviction that the political system oper-

ated to the advantage of profiteering central Canadian capitalists. Farmer discontent was national in scope, although western farmers were the most alienated. The new Progressive Party, formed in 1920, won 64 seats in the 1921 federal election in six provinces: 37 on the prairies, 24 in Ontario, one in New Brunswick, and two in British Columbia. Joining 50 Conservatives and 117 Liberals, the Progressives broke the established two- party tradition. But despite occasional farmer–labour alliances, the two major groups of malcontents were unable to unite politically for change

Though they were entitled to become the official opposition, the Progressives were badly divided. Former Liberals wanted free trade, while the farm protest- ors sought more radical reform. The farm wing, led by Alberta’s Henry Wise Wood (1860–1941), wanted to scrap the existing party system. It sought instead to focus on farmer grievances. The only actions the two wings could agree upon were negative. The Progressives would not become the official opposition, and they would not join in coalition with the Liberals, now led by William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874–1950). As a result, the inexperi- enced farmer MPs were unable to accomplish anything substantial in Ottawa when economic conditions in

the new influenza was a cyanosis that discoloured

the face and the feet with a dark bluish, almost black,

cast and a cough bringing up blood-stained sputum

and mucus. Unlike the earlier outbreaks, these new

ones were highly fatal. There were reports at hospi-

tals of corpses stacked up like cordwood.

Canadian troops returning home in the late spring

and early summer brought the flu back to Canada

from Europe. How many of the troops were carry-

ing the earlier strains of the virus and how many the

newly mutated ones will never be known, although

clearly the virulent form was being introduced into

the nation from somewhere. Troop ships, military

camps, and soldier movement via the railroads were

probably the major means of spreading the flu across

Canada. The flu apparently did not usually hit on the

whole very hard at the very old and the very young,

who were the typical victims of most epidemic dis-

eases. It hit hardest at young adults, who were in

most epidemics the most immune.

The flu devastated most large cities in Canada. In

the rural districts, where houses were often far apart

and isolated but relatively safe from infection unless

it was introduced from outside, farm people often did

exactly the wrong thing, fleeing to towns and villages

to find companionship and medical assistance and

thus increasing the likelihood of the spread of infec-

tion. Certainly the pandemic hit with especial fury

against the First Nations. The death rate from influ-

enza among Canadian Native peoples in these years

overall was 37.7 per thousand, while the flu death rate

per thousand was 14.3 in Toronto, 16.7 in Winnipeg,

and 23.3 in Vancouver. Before it was over in the spring

of 1919, approximately 50,000 Canadians had died.

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3398 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

western Canada worsened. The King government pro- vided token programs to gain the support of moderate Progressives. Meanwhile, drought and the worldwide collapse of wheat prices beginning in 1921 produced a widespread inability to meet mortgage payments. Much of the land in the dry-belt region reverted to the state for unpaid taxes. Its inhabitants went either to the cities or, in many cases, back to the United States. Surviving farmers became too disheartened to support a party that had accomplished little in Ottawa, and the Progressives quickly disappeared.

A similar fate befell the major eastern expres- sion of protest, the Maritime Rights Movement. Maritimers had difficulty joining western farmers in a common cause. The easterners sought not free trade but increased protectionism, as well as lower rail- way freight rates. The region was acutely conscious of its increasing impotency in Confederation, as its population base continued to decline proportionally to central Canada and the West. By the end of 1921, regional discontent found expression in the Maritime Rights Movement, which combined an insistence on

The Winnipeg General Strike, 21 June 1919. This photograph shows the crowd gathered in downtown Winnipeg on Bloody Saturday, before the Mounties charged the crowd to break it up. Does this well-dressed crowd appear to be looking for trouble? Provincial Archives of Manitoba, N2771, Foote Collection 1705.

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340 A History of the Canadian Peoples

equitable freight rates with a series of particular prov- incial demands. The result was a widespread, if brief, public agitation. Eschewing the third-party route of the Progressives, the Maritime Rights leaders decided in 1923 to appeal to the remainder of the country over the head of Ottawa. Although a major national advertising and public relations campaign on behalf of Maritime concerns had some success, it was not enough. When Maritimers started voting Conservative

in 1923 by-elections, this merely annoyed the King government. After a Royal Commission investigated Maritime grievances, the Liberals bought off the region with concessions on freight rates, subsidies, and port development. None of these concessions touched fun- damental economic problems. In the end, working through the two-party system achieved no more than the creation of a third party. The inability of regional protest in the Maritimes and the West to find common

In 1916, feminist activist and author Emily Murphy

(1868–1933), who wrote under the name “Janey

Canuck,”was appointed a police magistrate in Alberta,

thus becoming the first female judge in the British

Empire. Her appointment was challenged on the

grounds that only males were persons as stated in

the British North America Act of 1867. A year later

the Alberta Supreme Court found that women were

persons in a ruling that applied only within the prov-

ince. Murphy was subsequently ruled ineligible by

Prime Minister Robert Borden to be appointed to the

Canadian Senate, and in 1927 she gathered a consor-

tium of four other Alberta women to sign a petition

to the Supreme Court of Canada, which asked the

question: “Does the word ‘persons’ in section 24 of the

British North America Act, 1867, include female per-

sons?” Murphy’s four collaborators were: Irene Parlby

(1868–1965), a former president of the United Farm

Women of Alberta and an Alberta cabinet minister

in 1921; Nellie McClung (1873–1951), author, female

suffrage advocate, and Alberta MLA (1921); Louise

McKinney (1868–1931), the first woman elected to a

legislature in the British Empire in 1917 and a temper-

ance supporter; and Henrietta Edwards (1849–1931), a

founding member of the Victorian Order of Nurses and

a leading member of the National Council of Women.

The Supreme Court brought down its decision

on 24 April 1928. The Court’s answer to the ques-

tion was that women were not persons, because

at the time of the drafting of the BNA Act, women

could not vote or hold political office. Moreover, it

pointed out, the Act used male pronouns through-

out. The five women appealed this decision to the

Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England,

which declared on 18 October 1929 that women

were indeed persons eligible to become Canadian

senators. The Privy Council argued that “the exclu-

sion of women from all public offices is a relic of days

more barbarous than ours,” adding: “to those who

would ask why the word ‘persons’ should include

females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”

This decision was not only important for women’s

rights, but also because it enunciated the princi-

ple that the BNA Act was “a living tree capable of

growth and expansion within its natural limits.” The

Constitution thus required progressive interpretation

that was different from that applied to ordinary stat-

utes. This principle remains an important compon-

ent of modern Canadian constitutional law. Prime

Minister Mackenzie King responded to the decision

a few months later by appointing Cairine Wilson

(1885–1962) to the Senate.

BACKGROUNDER The Famous Five and the “Persons” Case

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3418 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

Mother had filled another lunch can. At five-thirty in the

morning I slung it over my shoulder and tramped with

a few others over the familiar path along the washer

drain, past the old wash plant, through the woods to

Morrison Lake, and along the lake to No. 22 Colliery. In

the wash house Newfoundlanders, Frenchmen, Poles,

Hungarians, MacDonalds, MacRaes, and Smiths, bleary-

eyed and sleepy, flailed a writhing mass of limbs in

all directions as they wrestled on their pit clothes.

Bearlike torsos, dirty backs (many miners washed

only their faces), clear backs, bristly backs incred-

ibly muscular, small retracted penises, huge flopping

penises—obscene, good natured kidding in a dozen

dialects—these were the men who worked in the coal

mine, and I was to become one of them. . . .

When a week or so had passed, it no longer

seemed strange to walk down out of the brilliant

sunlight, out of the fresh air, into total darkness that

took five or ten minutes before one’s eyes adjusted to

the reduced light of one’s headlamp and one’s nose

accepted the fetid, mouldy air of decay common to a

mine. Air from a huge compressor on the surface was

driven down a carefully constructed air course, circu-

lated slowly through all the work areas, and returned

up the main haulage way, ensuring that no significant

accumulation of deadly gasses could occur. Yet in

most places you were unaware of any body change.

When you were working, sweat streamed from your

body, but when you sat down for five minutes, you

were shivering. Add to this the fact that you could

seldom stand up without stooping except where the

“roof” had been “brushed”; the coal seam was five feet

thick, but in the air course, the chief haulage areas, an

extra foot of shale was taken down chiefly to ensure

that it would not fall down and block traffic or slow

air circulation. This left a roof of solid stone gener-

ally considered safe. As coal seams went, the Gowrie

seam was of generous thickness; the harbour seam

on which Glace Bay collieries nos. 11 and 24 oper-

ated was only three and a half feet thick and required

a good deal more stooping. . . .

At No. 22 Colliery the coal seam emerged to the

surface, and . . . the main slope had been driven down

the seam. At one-thousand-foot intervals, landings or

levels were broken off east and west from the slope; the

term “level” is a relative one, for convenient operation

preferred a slight slope in the level. At similar intervals

along the level, “headways” were driven up and “deeps”

driven down the slope of the seam, each conforming

to the twenty degree angle. This might be more easily

visualized by picturing a level as a road built horizon-

tally across the mid-slope of a mountain; roads going

up the mountain from it are headways, those leading

down from it are deeps. At one-hundred-foot intervals

up the headways and down the deeps, “rooms” were

broken off, assigned numbers, and turned over to a

pair of miners known at that time as “butties”; these did

the actual mining. The average headway or deep could

employ thirty pairs of miners paid by the ton for the

coal they mined. A miner at the “face” could earn fif-

teen to twenty-five dollars per day, which in 1926 was

a lot of money, considerably more than the mine man-

ager earned. Within their room a pair of miners were

the lords of creation, and God help anyone or anything

that prevented them from “getting their coal out.” This

was free enterprise, indeed.

Coal Mining in Cape Breton In 1990 Earle Peach wrote a memoir of what he called his “childhood,” which included an account of his first days at Number 22 Colliery, Birch Grove. He began working in the mines at the age of 17.

Source: Earle Peach, Memoirs of a Cape Breton Childhood (Halifax: Nimbus, 1990), 112–13. Reprinted with permission.

Contemporary Views

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342 A History of the Canadian Peoples

ground was palpable—and significant. Neither side could see beyond its regional interests. Clever federal politicians, like Mackenzie King, could play the game of divide and rule with impunity.

While the West and the Maritimes produced their ineffectual protests, Quebec turned increasingly inward. It pursued a nationalism that was at least partly a reaction against its increasing sense of isolation from the remainder of Canada. The chief outlet for this nationalism was the journal L’Action Française, founded on the eve of the Conscription Crisis by the Ligue des droits de français. This movement began with a crusade to save the French language, but gradually shifted into broader issues. Inspiration for both movement and

journal came from Abbé Lionel Groulx (1878–1967). Groulx worried about the survival of the traditional religion and culture in the face of an ever more mater- ialistic environment. From the French-Canadian per- spective, that environment was increasingly “in the middle of an immense Anglo-Saxon ocean” ( quoted in Cook, 1969b: 193). In the 1920s Groulx denied that he was a separatist, although his arguments pointed in that direction. He called for a commitment to build the Quebec economy, preparing for a future in which Confederation would come to an end. By the late 1920s, Groulx had proved more successful at refashioning the history of French Canada than at gaining widespread public support.

The “dust bowl”: the prairies in the 1930s. Images of these lands were not only stark in comparison to what they had been only years before, but also in comparison to Canada’s image of what the prairies were. How do they compare to what you think they are today? Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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3438 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

The Depression and Responses to It The stock market failed in October 1929, with Wall Street leading the way in a record collapse of stock prices every- where in North America. Contrary to popular opinion,

this disaster was fairly independent of the Depression that followed it. That Depression was really the cumula- tive result of the worldwide fall in prices, which had never readjusted from the inflation of wartime and the deflation of the post-war period. An international inability to buy left Canada and other resource producers, such as Argentina and Australia, with decreased orders for their products.

Ernest Lapointe (1876–1941) was born in St-Eloi, Quebec. He attended Rimouski College and then Laval University, being called to the bar in 1898. Six years later he became Kamouraska’s Liberal MP. He was a

staunch supporter of Wilfrid Laurier, but remained on the back benches for many years, although in Laurier’s last days he was becoming more prominent, leading the Liberals in the debate over the Ontario Schools Question. In 1919 he was elected to Laurier’s old riding in Quebec East. He came into his own under Mackenzie King, who appreciated his loyalty to the party and to the administration. King placed him in two patronage portfolios—Marine and Fisheries, 1921–4, and Justice, 1924–30 and 1935–41—and treated Lapointe as his lieu- tenant in Quebec. As Fisheries Minister, he signed the Halibut Treaty with the United States in 1923, the first treaty signed by Canada itself rather than Britain.

Lapointe went with King to the Imperial Confer- ences of 1926 and 1931, supporting Canadian auton- omy in international matters all the way. Domestically, Lapointe was in favour of tariff reduction and provincial rights, although he was the Minister of Justice who dis- allowed Social Credit’s reformist legislation in Alberta because it infringed on federal rights. He was very cau- tious about federal interference in Quebec. But he also used federal patronage to great effect in the province, leading many to call Quebec a Liberal fiefdom. At the beginning of World War II, Lapointe promised Quebec there would be no conscription, and thus brought the vot- ers of the province on side for the Liberals and the war. His death in 1941 left Mackenzie King without a French- Canadian lieutenant of stature during most of the war.

Ernest Lapointe. J. Russell & Sons, LAC, C-019104.

Ernest Lapointe

Biography

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344 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Trade deficits quickly mounted. Nations that owed Canada money were unable to pay. The dollar fell, and in 1931 so did a number of major Canadian financial institutions,

brokerage agencies, and insurance companies. The country would not recover until after the eruption of another war in 1939. For most Canadians, the Depression of the 1930s

While living at the BLOCK, I heard my first radio broad-

cast. It occurred in the living room of our apartment.

There were other adults present besides Mom and

Dad. I can recall Bart and Marg Collins and the Bastable

family from the second floor being there. It seems as

if it was a special occasion. At any rate, all were sitting

around the dining room table. There was a device on

it with a pair of earphones attached. Dad did some tin-

kering with the device and eventually we all took turns

listening to the earphones. We could hear music and

talking! To overcome the limitations of two earphones

being passed from person to person Dad placed the

earphones on a metal pie plate and by being very quiet

we could all hear simultaneously. It was magic! The

magic of this lay in the fact that there was no wire con-

nection. The sound was being plucked from the air by

means of this little device called a crystal set. It was the

beginning of radio as home entertainment. The group

wanted to know where this sound was coming from.

Dad explained, as best he could, about electric waves

coming through the air. They originated from two tall

transmitting towers set up on the City Hall grounds at

8th St. and Princess Avenue. There was a small, stuc-

co-covered building beside the towers. This housed

all the devices needed to work the magic. It was called

a radio station and it identified itself as CKX [on air, 1

December 1928]. It had just begun operations. Music

came, without wires, more than three blocks to our

apartment! We were impressed.

Listening to Early Radio The radio was one of the few sources of inexpensive entertainment in Canada during the Depression. It was usually the last personal item families retained as they slid into poverty.

Although this photo was staged, it conveys the avid interest that radio aroused uring the Depression. A receiver like this walnut- veneered Canadian General Electric model was a luxury that not many Depression-era Canadians could afford. National Film Board of Canada, Photothèque, LAC, C-080917.

Source: Raymond R. Bailey, Tadpole to Little Frog (in a big pond): The Memoir of a Young Man Growing Up in Manitoba

during the Depression and War Years (Winnipeg, 2005), 111.

Contemporary Views

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was always the Great Depression. Canadians lived in its shadow for decades to come. Those generations who had experienced its effects were always sympathetic to calls for social justice.

What the Depression meant, first and foremost, was unemployment. Official statistics are totally meaning- less as a measure of the extent of joblessness, much less its significance. According to the publication Historical Statistics in Canada (1983), reflecting contemporary government data, unemployment in Canada rose from 116,000 in 1929 to 741,000 in 1932 to 826,000 in 1933, ultimately declining to 411,000 in 1937 and increasing to 529,000 in 1939. These figures, while substantial enough in a nation of only 10 million, hardly reflected the real- ity. No farmers or fishers, or their families, counted among the ranks of the unemployed at this time. The government regarded them as self-employed business- men. Women out of work did not count either. Thus unemployment in the depths of the Depression, around 1933, ran to more than 27 per cent in the non-agricul- tural sector, but probably more than 50 per cent overall. At the same time, a farmer whose expenses exceeded his income was probably better off than a jobless city dweller whose expenses similarly exceeded his income. Farmers at least had some land on which food could be grown. Moreover, provincial governments tended to respond to the plight of the farmers, who made up a substantial proportion of the electorate in many prov- inces. The rural population actually grew in this decade as members of farm families returned from the city to the family farm.

The fall in prices meant that times were good for those with jobs, although almost everyone held their breath each time payday rolled around. As for Canadian business corporations, outside the financial sector there was little permanent damage. Most large corporations ruthlessly retrenched and waited for better times. Canadian business corporations actually suffered losses only in 1932 because they had been too slow to limit operations. In 1933, the lowest point on the eco- nomic curve, they ended collectively in the black.

The real victims of the Depression were the urban unemployed, who found that their relief became the great political football of the period. Traditionally,

Canadian municipalities and private charities had cared for the poor and jobless. The challenge in the 1930s was more than any city could handle, at least without the full co-operation and assistance of senior levels of government. R.B. Bennett (1870–1947), Prime Minister from 1930 to 1935, personally assisted from his own pocket many people who wrote him begging letters while he was in office, but Bennett had long opposed the dole system and insisted that the provinces were responsible for social welfare. The provinces, in turn, maintained that they lacked the appropriate taxing power. They passed the problem to the municipalities, which had to support the unemployed on declining rev- enue from property taxes that provided about 80 per cent of municipal revenue. Municipal assistance was grudging, almost always taking the form of credit vouchers to be redeemed at local stores rather than cash, which might be spent on “frivolities” or worse. The relief lines were not called “the dole” for nothing. Cities often advised single unemployed men to go elsewhere and even paid their rail tickets out of town. The consti- tutional wrangling between the provinces and the fed- eral government seemed quite irrelevant to Canadians looking for help.

Only in 1935, on the eve of a federal election, did R.B. Bennett become a convert to interventionist strat- egies. He announced his new policy, a “New Deal” for Canada, in a live radio address to the nation early in January 1935, saying, “I am for reform. I nail the flag of progress to the mast. I summon the power of the state to its support.” Bennett spoke of legislation regulating working condi- tions, insuring against unemployment, and extending credit to the farmer. Unfortunately for Bennett, his radio proclamations ran well ahead of the practical legislative program he and his cabinet had ready for Parliament. The Canadian electorate, moreover, was understandably suspicious of last-minute conversions. Instead, the voters brought back Mackenzie King’s Liberals, who offered few promises but had the solid backing of Quebec.

R.B. Bennett’s “conversion” to New Dealism (after the New Deal of public works and welfare state pro- grams introduced beginning in 1933 by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) involved more than a des- perate wish to return to office. It also represented a

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346 A History of the Canadian Peoples

growing realization by large parts of the Canadian business and professional communities that stabilizing the nation’s economy was necessary to prevent a more serious upheaval. Many leading businessmen and finan- ciers were in favour of state intervention, not so much because they believed in social justice as because they wanted economic stability for capitalism. The prevail- ing political and economic system of Canada was under attack from many directions in the 1930s. Canadian politicians and businessmen did not need to look to Germany or Italy to find examples of radical responses to economic problems. What European experience did point out, however, was that radicalism was not neces- sarily confined to the traditional left, to be associated with organized labour, socialism, or communism. The great fear was that a demagogue of any political persua-

sion would emerge, offering simple but final solutions to a frustrated electorate. Canada had its share of pro- spective demagogues. Most of their success came on the provincial rather than on the federal level, however. All were advocates of provincial rights. This blunted their national effectiveness. Agreeing to bash Ottawa together was never a very creative strategy unless agree- ment could be reached on what to do next. About all these leaders had in common were their own curious mixtures of radical rhetoric and fundamentally con- servative attitudes.

Perhaps the most successful radical response came in Alberta, where the Social Credit Party mobilized a population that had suffered heavily from drought and depression. The leader of Social Credit in Alberta was a Calgary radio preacher, William Aberhart

By 1933, unemployment in Canada had risen to 50 per cent overall, forcing people to line up for jobs, food, and social assistance. Toronto Star Syndicate 2003. All Rights Reserved.

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3478 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

(1878–1943), who since 1924 had used his Sunday broadcasts for the Prophetic Bible Institute over CFCN (Canada’s most powerful radio station at the time) to build up a substantial personal following attracted to Protestant fundamentalism. In 1932 Aberhart added a secular dimension to his broadcasts, following his personal conversion to the economic ideas of a Scottish engineer named C.H. Douglas. An unconventional monetary theorist, Douglas claimed that capitalism’s failure lay in its inability to translate its production into purchasing power for the mass of people. Douglas advocated distributing money—“social credit”—to bridge the gap between production and consumption. Neither Aberhart nor his Alberta audience ever truly understood Douglas’s monetary theories, but both understood that the state would issue a social divi- dend, eventually set by Aberhart at $25 per month, to all citizens as part of their cultural heritage. With the assistance of Ernest Manning (1908–96), Aberhart organized the Social Credit Party early in 1935. The

new party swept to success at the polls, taking 56 of 63 seats and winning 54 per cent of the popular vote in the 1935 provincial election. The federal government (and courts) opposed much of its original legislative pro- gram, particularly mortgage, debt, and banking legis- lation, eventually disallowing 13 Alberta Acts. Social Credit moved to more traditional fiscal practices, blam- ing Ottawa and eastern big business for its inability to enact its program. (Under Aberhart and, following his death in 1943, under Manning, Social Credit won nine successive elections in Alberta and governed the prov- ince until 1971.)

The emergent popular leader in Quebec was Maurice Duplessis (1890–1959). Duplessis came from a family of Conservatives. In 1933 he became leader of the highly fragmented Conservative Party of Quebec. He found allies in two burgeoning Quebec move- ments of the early 1930s: the Catholic social action of the École social populaire, and the Liberal radicalism of the Action libérale nationale (ALN). From Catholic

In this Depression-era photo, four men share a bed and three others sit on the floor. How would you interpret this obviously staged image? CBC, LAC, C-013236.

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348 A History of the Canadian Peoples

social action Duplessis took a program of government intervention to redistribute wealth, protect farm- ers and workers, and regulate large corporations, all within the context of the Christian law of justice and charity. From the ALN he took an emphasis upon eco- nomic nationalism that called for liberation from col- onial oppression through agrarian reform, new labour legislation, the promotion of small industry and com- merce, and the destruction of the great financial estab- lishments of the province. Duplessis negotiated the merger of the ALN with the Conservatives in 1935 to form the Union Nationale. The new party campaigned on the ALN’s reform platform, winning an easy victory in the 1936 provincial election with 76 out of 90 seats and 58 per cent of the popular vote. Now “prime minis-

ter” of Quebec, Duplessis quickly abandoned the reform program that had brought him to power. Instead, he concentrated power in his own hands. His considerable success in office relied on a nationalistic concern for provincial autonomy in federal–provincial relations, anti-communism, and calculated paternalistic grants and patronage for the disadvantaged. He carefully culti- vated the Catholic hierarchy in the province. The Union Nationale’s economic program consisted chiefly in giv- ing American entrepreneurs a free hand to develop the province’s resources.

Other provinces besides Quebec and Alberta also produced populist political leaders, although within the context of traditional party labels. In British Columbia, T. Dufferin (Duff ) Pattullo (1873–1956) had led his

Among the buggies and wagons, there stood always

a few examples of that symbol of the Depression, the

Bennett buggy. The Bennett buggy was named, much

to his chagrin, after R.B. Bennett, who had the mis-

fortune to be Conservative Prime Minister of Canada

from 1930 to 1935, during the worst years of the

Depression.  . . . There probably couldn’t be a more

fitting symbol of the Depression than the Bennett

buggy. Originally it had been an automobile, most

often a Model T Ford, and it is difficult to say whether

the buggy evolved or the car devolved. At first it was

nothing more than the automobile fitted with a tongue

and whiffletrees so that a team of horses could be

hitched to it for economical motive power. As time

went on and it began to seem that the Depression

would never end, various segments and parts were

removed and those remaining re-arranged until little

was left but the chassis with its rubber-tired wheels.

With engine, transmission and radiator removed, the

front seat might migrate forward until it was between

the strong wheels, or the cowling, windshield and

front seat might move forward as a unit. Some form of

box was built on the chassis to make a general utility

vehicle. Whatever form each might take, all were called

Bennett buggies. From the standpoint of the horses,

their greatest advantage was that they pulled much

more easily than wagons with steel-rimmed wheels—

that is, until the tires wore out. Nor were the left-over

parts all discarded. Automobile seats became  sofas

or seats on farm wagons. Generators became wind

electrics, propeller-driven to generate power for

primitive six-vo[lt] farm lighting systems. Worn out

tires were sliced in two longitudinally to make circular

watering troughs for poultry. Engine blocks and other

steel parts that hadn’t rusted away disappeared in the

scrap drives of the Second World War.

The Bennett Buggy In his autobiographical account O Little Town: Remembering Life in a Prairie Village, Harlo L. Jones recalls the “Bennett buggy.”

Source: Harlo L. Jones, O Little Town: Remembering Life in a Prairie Village (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1995), 170.

Contemporary Views

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Liberal Party to power in 1933 without sounding very radical. In office, however, Pattullo gradually became a convert to state activism of the New Deal variety. His government was arguably the most interventionist in Canada, held back only by the province’s shortage of revenue. In Ontario, Mitchell Hepburn (1896–1953) led a Liberal government with a series of flamboyant pol- itical gestures designed chiefly as self-advertisement. He achieved national prominence in April 1937, in the midst of a strike at the General Motors plant in Oshawa. More than 4,000 workers struck for an eight-hour day, better wages and working conditions, and recognition of the new union of United Automobile Workers. This union was an affiliate of the recently formed Congress

of Industrial Organizations, which was organizing throughout the United States. Hepburn sided with General Motors and clashed publicly with the Prime Minister over Mackenzie King’s refusal to send RCMP reinforcements for the local police. The Premier organ- ized a volunteer force called Hepburn’s Hussars. Both Pattullo and Hepburn got great political mileage out of their well-publicized clashes with Ottawa.

None of the prominent provincial political lead- ers of the 1930s had any serious socialist leanings. The most important alternative political response of the Depression years based in the socialist tradition came from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). A convention in Calgary in 1932 founded the

Premier William Aberhart (front row, third from left) and cabinet, Edmonton, Alberta, 1935. “Bible Bill,” as he was sometimes referred to, took advantage of the radio to increase his profile, and his prospects. Glenbow Archives, ND-3-7103a.

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350 A History of the Canadian Peoples

CCF as a coalition of farmers’ organizations, labour unions, and labour-socialist parties in the four west- ern provinces. The League for Social Reconstruction (LSR) served as the CCF’s midwife. The LSR, organized in 1931 by a number of prominent Canadian academics, believed in Fabian socialism. Like the Fabians, it was proudly non-Marxist and non-revolutionary, although vehemently committed to a welfare state and the state’s takeover of key industries. At its first annual convention at Regina in 1933, the newly founded CCF adopted a pol- itical manifesto that promised a heady brew of political

reform. The Regina Manifesto called for the nationaliz- ation (with compensation for the owners) of all indus- try “essential to social planning.” It advocated a series of universal welfare measures for Canada—hospitaliz- ation, health care, unemployment insurance, and pen- sions—after amendments to the British North America Act to remove these areas from provincial jurisdiction.

The new party was an uneasy alliance of academ- ics and public activists. It chose as leader the former Methodist minister James Shaver Woodsworth. Pacifist, idealist, and moralist, Woodsworth had since 1921 led

Thomas Dufferin Pattullo (1873–1956), usually known as “Duff,” was born in Woodstock, Ontario. He worked for Ontario newspapers before moving to Yukon in 1897 as secretary to the commissioner of the territory. He sub- sequently became acting assistant gold commissioner before leaving Dawson City in 1908 to open a brokerage firm. In Prince Rupert, he became a municipal political leader and then a member of the BC assembly (1916) and cabinet minister. He became provincial Liberal leader in 1928 and set about re-energizing the party and turning it from its previous conservative position to one of progres- sive liberalism far to the left of the federal Liberal Party. In 1933 Pattullo’s Liberals won a large majority in an election fought chiefly against the newly founded CCF. The issue was socialism versus capitalism, and many vot- ers failed to realize on how many points the Liberals and CCF were in agreement, with the CCF offering “Humanity First” and the Liberals a “New Deal” under the slogan “Work and Wages.” Pattullo was something of a swash- buckler, and his insistence that the people were entitled to a decent standard of living guaranteed by government owed more to Franklin D. Roosevelt than to William Lyon Mackenzie King, the federal Liberal leader.

But the social reconstruction of British Columbia depended to a large extent on a new constitutional arrangement with the federal government, and Pattullo

ended up fighting bitterly with Ottawa. He was unable to implement most of his ad hoc Keynesian views about pump-priming. In his early years in office, Pattullo was easily able to pass reform legislation that did not cost very much, but it was harder to find the money for social programs providing a decent standard of liv- ing. Pattullo settled for a program of public works. The defeat of the federal Tories in 1935 led Pattullo to hope for more assistance from Ottawa. Instead, Pattullo and King became involved in an unseemly struggle over provincial debts to Ottawa. British Columbia could not afford to implement Pattullo’s cherished compre- hensive health insurance scheme in 1937, the year the Liberals again faced the electorate. Although Pattullo’s party was returned to office, he became more cautious and increasingly more hostile to the federal govern- ment. Standing foursquare for provincial rights, he was one of the chief critics of the Rowell-Sirois Commission when it recommended a transfer of functions to the federal government and a shift in taxation powers. Pattullo continued to advocate an enhanced role for government in the economy and in society, but by “government” he meant government at the provincial level, not the federal level. The only exception was the responsibility for unemployment, which he always saw as a national and federal matter.

Thomas Dufferin Pattullo

Biography

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a small cadre of labour-supported MPs in Ottawa. The new party attracted over 300,000 votes in the 1933 British Columbia provincial elections, more than 30 per cent of the popular vote. In the 1935 federal election it obtained 8.9 per cent of the popular vote, which trans- lated into seven CCF seats. During the 1930s the party would flourish only in BC and Saskatchewan, however. It did not attract broad-based popular support, particu- larly east of Ontario.

The nation’s politicians and businessmen grimly viewed the CCF as a threat from the radical left, failing to appreciate that the new party provided a far more restrained left-wing approach than the Communist Party of Canada (CP). At the outset of the Great Depression, only the CP had sought to organize popular discontent, especially among the unemployed. The Communists operated under several disadvantages, however. One was the charge that they were members of an international conspiracy. The other was the Canadian government’s willingness to repress the party in any way possible. Ottawa used section 98 of the Criminal Code, introduced in 1919 at the time of the first “Red Scare,” to outlaw the advocacy of revolution. It arrested eight Communist leaders in August of 1931. The courts quickly convicted and sentenced them, although the government gradually released them from prison after continual public dem- onstrations on their behalf. Nevertheless, the repression checked the momentum of the party. After 1933 the CCF took away some CP support. By mid-decade the CP found itself caught up in rapidly changing orders from the USSR and by events in Europe. In 1937 many Canadian Communists entered the European struggle by joining the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

The CP took the credit for organizing, through the Workers’ Unity League, a mass march on Ottawa in 1935 known as the On-to-Ottawa Trek. The march- ers came out of the unemployment relief camps in BC, where unemployed young men found their only refuge. Conditions in the camps were degrading. Not even the Communists claimed that the discontent was any- thing but spontaneous. The trek began in Vancouver and moved eastward as the men clambered aboard freight trains. It ended in Regina. The RCMP allowed a delegation of eight “marchers” to take their grievances

to Ottawa. The talks broke down and the delegation returned to Regina. At that point the Mounties moved in with baseball bat batons. The ensuing riot reduced downtown Regina to shambles and put 120 protestors in jail. Most of the remaining trekkers accepted offers of transportation back home. While the 1930s were punctuated from time to time by outbreaks of public discontent that turned to violence, as in Regina, two points must be emphasized about these incidents. The first is that with most of the spontaneous popular dem- onstrations, most of the harm to persons and damage to property resulted from the authorities’ efforts to break up what they regarded as ugly crowds. The second point is that much of the violence of the period resulted from confrontations between organized labour and the authorities. Clashes between police and strikers were common, as they always had been.

Canadian Society between the Wars For more than half a century before 1919, Canada had been making a gradual transition from frontier nation to modern industrial state. This process basically con- tinued unabated between the wars. Most of the emer- ging social patterns were not very different from those that affected all heavily industrialized countries. Urbanization advanced while rural (and especially agricultural) society declined in importance. The trad- itional family unit seemed under attack. Technology rapidly altered communication and transportation. It also profoundly affected the ways in which Canadians entertained themselves.

Immigration

Although the period 1914–45, which included two dis- ruptive world wars and a major depression, is often viewed in Canada as the lull between two rounds of mas- sive immigration, these years saw the admission of more than 1,700,000 newcomers, with more than 1,166,000 arriving between 1921 and 1931. The numbers were smaller during the Depression and World War II—140,000

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352 A History of the Canadian Peoples

from 1931 to 1941 and 50,000 from 1942 to 1945—but the most important feature of the period was the mounting negative attitude on the part of the Canadian author- ities and citizens alike towards extensive immigration, with racism expressed against many ethnic groups. Exclusionary policies seemed increasingly in vogue. The main task of the Immigration Department, especially after 1930, seemed to be to figure out ways to keep immi- grants out of the country, rather than of developing ways of allowing them to enter.

The Anglo-Canadian tradition had always been to reward soldiers with free land, and the Great War

provided no exception. Providing returned veterans with land would support an agricultural community experiencing difficulties after the war, and soldier settlement began even before the war was over. In May 1919 soldier settlement was revamped to expand the amount of land available and to provide for a more generous supply of credit. Land in the West was taken from Indian reserves, and much of this land proved to be only marginally viable. By 1923 the failure rate among soldier-settlers ran at 21.5 per cent. An even lar- ger problem was that soldier settlement absorbed a dis- proportionate amount of the money spent on veterans’

Strikers from the BC relief camps heading east as part of the On-to-Ottawa Trek; Kamloops, June 1935. LAC, C-029399.

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3538 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

benefits by the federal government. About 4 per cent of the total number of able-bodied Canadian veterans got about 14 per cent of the money allocated for ex-soldiers. In a related vein was Empire Settlement, by which large numbers of Britons were recruited to come to Canada. The Canadian government was never very keen about Empire Settlement (which was an imperial scheme), persuaded as it was that most of those recruited were “defectives” being dumped by the United Kingdom. Despite the arrival of more than 100,000 British immi- grants to Canada between 1922 and 1935—especially female domestics (20,000), intending farmers (10,000), and British farm families (3,500 families)—Empire Settlement did not work well, chiefly because the host country did not fully support it. British immigration became somewhat more popular after 1924, when the American government instituted a permanent quota system and exempted Canada from its provisions: between 1925 and 1932 nearly half a million Canadians would move to the United States.

The exodus of Canadians to the United States and boom conditions in Canada led in 1925 to the Canadian government signing an agreement with Canada’s two major railroads. The Dominion now agreed that the railroads could recruit genuine European agricultural- ists until 1928 from previously “non-preferred” parts of Europe. Over the next half-decade, nearly 200,000 immi- grants from Central and Eastern Europe were admitted to Canada, normally by co-operative arrangements among the railroads, their colonization companies, and various ethnic and religious organizations in Canada.

But exclusionary policies and practices were more common between the wars. One example of Canadian laggardness towards new immigrants can be found in the Canadian response to the persecution of the Armenian people by the Turkish government near the end of the Great War. Canadians responded to this geno- cide by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist the refugee survivors. But the Canadian immigration authorities managed to combine two different standards for exclusion—refugee status and racial classification— to keep the number of Armenians allowed into Canada to a mere 1,200, during a period when 23,000 were admit- ted to the United States and 80,000 allowed into France. Most Armenians lacked proper passports, and Canada

resolutely refused to recognize special identity certifi- cates in lieu of passports. The Canadian Immigration Service also insisted on treating the Armenians as Asians, bringing into play all of the regulations designed to exclude people from Asia. They were required to have $250 in cash, to come to Canada via a continuous jour- ney, and to meet Canada’s occupational requirements as farmers experienced with North American condi- tions. The 1920s saw a further tightening of Dominion immigration policy directed at Asians, including a new agreement with the Japanese government to restrict the number of their nationals going to Canada to 150 per year and to put a stop to the so-called “picture brides” (Japanese women coming to Canada to marry Canadian Japanese men whom they had never met).

Demographic Trends

Like all industrial countries, Canada experienced pro- found demographic changes. Some of these had been somewhat disguised by the federal government’s fail- ure, until 1921, to keep accurate national statistics beyond the census. Enormous infusions of new immi- grants before 1914 also helped prevent the new demo- graphic trends from becoming easily apparent, but they existed. By the 1941 census more Canadians lived in urban rather than rural places, a result of a substantial increase in urban residents, especially during the 1920s. Moreover, the 1941 census would be the last in which rural numbers and farm dwellers grew absolutely in number. Even before 1941, the impact of urbanization and industrialization was apparent.

First, mortality rates declined. In the critical area of infant mortality, the death rate had been steadily declin- ing since the nineteenth century. Infant mortality took another major drop in the 1930s, while the overall death rate drifted perceptibly downward. By 1946 the median age at death was 63.1 for males and 65.3 for females. For the first time, Canadian society had begun to produce substantial numbers of people who would live beyond the age of productive labour; a rise in agitation for old-age pensions in this period was hardly accidental. The main exception to the national trend was in the Aboriginal population. Their death rates ran to four times the national average; infant mortality was at least twice that

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354 A History of the Canadian Peoples

of Canadian society as a whole. Large numbers of Native mothers died in childbirth. Moreover, Aboriginal people suffered up to three times more accidental deaths than Canada’s population overall. They had a high suicide rate. Before 1940 most Aboriginal people died of com- municable rather than chronic disease, with tuberculosis as the big killer. The decreasing death rate for Canadians in general resulted from an improved standard of liv- ing, including especially improvements in nutrition and hygiene as well as better medical treatment. In the years 1921–6, 270 out of every 1,000 Canadian deaths came from pulmonary and communicable disease. By 1946 such fatalities dropped to just over 60 out of every 1,000 Canadian deaths. Cardiovascular problems, renal disease, and cancer—all afflictions of an aging popula- tion—became more important killers.

Then fertility rates declined. The extent to which the fall in the birth rate resulted from conscious deci- sions on the part of women is not entirely clear, but the two were plainly related. Increased urbanization made large families less desirable. As industrialization took more women out of the home and into the workforce, child care became a serious problem. More women, especially those over 30 years old, began to limit the number of children they bore, practising some form of contraception. Birth rates had begun to fall in Canada before 1919 and continued to fall in the 1920s and 1930s. They recovered from an extremely low point in the mid- dle of the Depression after 1941, increasing sharply after 1945. There were some significant internal differentials. One was between Quebec and the remainder of Canada. The birth rate in French Canada remained substan- tially higher than in the rest of the country, although it shared in the general decline. There was also a dif- ference between urban and rural areas, with substan- tially higher birth rates in the latter. A third differential occurred between Catholics and Protestants, although certain Protestant subgroups, such as Mennonites and Mormons, had higher rates than the overall Catholic one. Finally, Aboriginal birth rates were at least twice the national average.

Another important new factor was divorce. The year 1918 saw 114 divorces in all of Canada, a rate of 1.4 per 100,000 people. By 1929 the divorce rate had reached 8.2 per 100,000, rising to 18.4 per 100,000

in 1939 and to 65.3 per 100,000 by 1947. Higher rates occurred partly because more Canadians gained access to divorce courts; Ontario courts obtained divorce juris- diction in 1930. The increase also reflected changing attitudes, particularly among women, who instituted most divorce actions. Divorce statistics did not begin to measure the extent of marital dissolutions, however. Most dissolutions never reached a court. Especially during the Depression, husbands simply deserted their wives. Many contemporaries saw the increase in divorce as evidence of the disintegration of the Canadian family.

Technological Change

Despite the nation’s uneven economic record between 1919 and 1945, Canadians in these years experienced an increase in the rate and nature of technological change. The new technologies had enormous impact on all aspects of Canadian life. On one level they forced gov- ernments to adopt a myriad of new policies. On another level they had tremendous psychological impact, par- ticularly by militating against communalism in favour of the individual, family, or household.

One evident area of change was in the mass accept- ance of the internal combustion engine in the form of the automobile and the tractor. Before 1920 automobile ownership had been almost entirely an urban phenom- enon, but by 1920 it had become more general. In 1904 there were fewer than 5,000 motor vehicles in Canada. By 1920 there were 251,000, most of them built during the war. From 1918 to 1923 Canadian manufacturers, allied to US companies, were the second-largest car producers in the world. Canada was a major exporter, especially to the British Empire. By 1930 only the United States had more automobiles per capita than did Canada. In that year Canada had 1,061,000 automobiles registered. Also significant was the increase in the num- ber of tractors employed on the nation’s farms after 1918.

The automobile was individually owned and oper- ated as an extension of a household. It represented pri- vate rather than public transportation. No other single product operated so insidiously against communalism as the automobile. It also had tremendous spinoff con- sequences. Automobiles required roads, which were a provincial and municipal responsibility. More than

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From Adolf Hitler’s assumption of office as German

chancellor, it was clear that the Jews would be a tar-

get for persecution. Those Jews who could escape

Germany did so, although they were unable to flee

swiftly enough to escape the German annexations

of the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Most

countries sheltering refugees made clear that they

were providing only temporary shelter, and Canada

felt it could not open its doors to a flood of people

from Europe. Canadian policy was put in the hands

of Frederick Charles Blair, a lifetime bureaucrat and

well-known anti-Semite, who saw Jewish people as

unassimilable. Blair kept the Jews out with the full

approval of the Canadian cabinet. In 1938 he decided

that the few Jews admitted to Canada as farmers were

not really agriculturalists. That same year Canada

reluctantly attended a conference at Evian, France,

sponsored partly by the United States, to discuss the

refugee problems of Europe. Canada was a nation

with large amounts of vacant land, and many of its

politicians and population feared—quite accurately—

that the world community would be quite satisfied

to resolve its problems with displaced persons by

sending them to Canada. From Canada’s perspec-

tive, there was no reason to become involved in a

European mess not of its own making. Unfortunately,

isolationism did not suit the times.

A handful of Jewish members of Parliament

(there were only three after 1935), with the support of

J.S. Woodsworth of the Co-operative Commonwealth

Federation, proposed to the Canadian cabinet that

Canada offer at this conference to admit 5,000

Jewish refugees over four years, with all costs to

be assumed by the Jewish community in Canada,

including guarantees that the newcomers would not

become charity cases. The cabinet rejected this offer,

chiefly on the grounds that such action could serve

as the thin edge of the wedge. By 1938, of course,

there were at least a million refugees to be dealt with.

Canadian Undersecretary of State for External Affairs

O.D. Skelton told the Americans that “governments

with unwanted minorities must . . . not be encour-

aged to think that harsh treatment at home is the

key that will open the doors to immigration abroad”

(quoted in Abella and Troper, 1991: 27). The Evian

conference accomplished nothing except to dem-

onstrate to the  Nazis the lack of international sup-

port available to the Jews, thereby probably spurring

further persecution, including the “Kristallnacht”

pogrom of late November 1938. On 23 November

1938 a delegation of Jews met with Prime Minister

William Lyon Mackenzie King and T.A. Crerar, the

Minister of Immigration, to plead for the admission

of 10,000 refugees totally financed by the Jewish

community. They were rebuffed, and the cabinet on

13 December 1938 agreed to maintain existing immi-

gration regulations, which admitted only farmers with

capital. Highly skilled professionals and intellectuals

(including doctors, scientists, and musicians) were

thus rejected as “inadmissible.”

In May of 1939, nearly 1,000 German Jews left

Hamburg on a luxury liner, the St Louis, some with

entrance visas for Cuba. The Cubans rejected most

of the passengers, and while Canada sat on the side-

lines, the ship was forced to return to Europe. The

most that could be said for the Canadian exclusion

of Jews was that it was consistent with past national

policy, which had never been strongly influenced by

humanitarian considerations. But for a nation as lim-

ited in world-renowned scientific, intellectual, and

cultural talent as Canada, the result was a cruel—if

totally deserved—shortfall. Even in the crassest of

practical terms, Canadian policy was a disaster. But it

was also inexcusable, in a moral sense, on the part of

a nation that constantly lectured the rest of the world

about its shortcomings.

BACKGROUNDER Canada and the Refugees from Nazi Germany, 1933–1939

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356 A History of the Canadian Peoples

one-quarter of the $650 million increase in provincial and municipal debt between 1913 and 1921 resulted from capital expenditures on highways, streets, and bridges. Road mileage in Canada expanded from 385,000 miles (619,580 km) in 1922 to 565,000 miles (909,254 km) in 1942. Motorists wanted not only roads but properly paved ones. Although in 1945 nearly two- thirds of Canadian roads were still of earth construc- tion, the other third had been paved or gravelled at considerable expense. Automobiles ran on petroleum products. Not only did they encourage petroleum pro- duction, chiefly in Alberta, but they also created the gasoline station, the repair garage, the roadside restau-

rant, and the motel—new service industries to provide for a newly mobile population. Door-to-door rather than station-to-station mobility was one of the principal effects of the automobile revolution. Both the automobile and the truck competed with the railways, which began their decline in the 1920s. Although the automobile pro- vided an important source of tax revenue for both fed- eral and provincial governments, neither Ottawa nor the provinces made any serious effort to control the use or construction of motor vehicles, aside from some fairly minimal rules of the road and the issuance of drivers’ licences to almost all comers. Despite its importance, the automobile and its 20,000 parts were produced entirely

After being denied entry into Cuba, the SS St Louis was then sent away from the United States and Canada before returning to Europe, where many of its Jewish passengers were killed in the concentration camps. AP Photo, CP Images.

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according to manufacturers’ standards and consumers’ desires, without government regulation. The car quickly became the symbol of North American independence and individuality. It also served as a combined status and sex symbol, and according to some critics, as a “port- able den of iniquity.”

Unlike the automobile, radio was treated by the federal government as a public matter deserving of regulation. The programs broadcast, rather than the radio receiver itself, became the target of government control. The transmission and reception of sound via radio waves had initially been developed before the Great War as an aid to ships at sea. The 1920s saw the mass marketing of the radio receiver in North America. In order to sell radios, it was necessary to provide something to listen to. By 1929, 85 broadcast- ing stations were operating in Canada under various ownerships. Private radio broadcasting in Canada was not all bad, but it was uneven. A Royal Commission

on Broadcasting—the Aird Commission, appointed in 1928 and reporting in 1929—recommended the nation- alization of radio. Its advice was not immediately taken. The Bennett government eventually introduced the Broadcasting Act of 1932, however, which led to the formation of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission to establish a national network and to supervise private stations. In 1936 this Commission became the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with extensive English and French networks, and oper- ated with federal financial support as an independent agency. No other Canadian cultural institution of its day was so closely associated with Canadian national- ism and Canadian culture than was the CBC. The CBC was not only pre-eminent but frequently unique in fos- tering Canadian culture. Often the battle seemed to be uphill, since Canadians usually preferred listening to the slick entertainment programming produced in the United States.

A Toronto traffic jam, 1924: motorists out for a Sunday drive on the newly built Lakeshore Boulevard. City of Toronto Archives, James Collection, Fonds 1244, 2530.

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358 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Prohibition and Church Union The impetus for social reform died after 1918. To some extent, the movement was a victim of its own successes. For many Canadians, the achievement of prohibition and women’s suffrage—the two principal reform goals of the pre-war period—meant that the struggle had been won. To some extent, reform was a victim of the Great War. Reformers had exhausted themselves in a war effort that had produced devastation but no final victory. The war had been a disillusioning experience for many.

The failure of the prohibition experiment sym- bolized the decline of reform. Despite considerable evidence that the elimination of alcoholic beverages had made a social difference—the jails were emp- tied in most places, since they were usually filled with prisoners who had committed alcohol-related offences—the supporters of prohibition were unable to stem the tide. The Ontario Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Trade claimed in 1922 that the number of convictions for offences associated with drink had declined from 17,143 in 1914 to 5,413 in 1921, and drunkenness cases decreased in the prov- ince’s major cities from 16,590 in 1915 to 6,766 in 1921.

Nevertheless, various provinces went “wet” between 1920 and 1924, and the Liquor Control Act replaced the Ontario Temperance Act in 1927. Opposition to prohibition after the war found a new argument to add to the old one that private conduct was being publicly regulated: attempts to enforce prohibition encouraged people to flout the law and even created organized crime and vice. Too many people were pre- pared to ignore the law, said prohibition’s opponents, who found more acceptable slogans of their own in “Moderation” and “Government Regulation.” In many provinces, the possibility of obtaining provincial rev- enue for tax-starved coffers led to the introduction of government control over the sale of alcohol. Taxing bad habits rather than forbidding them became part of the Canadian tradition.

While prohibition was dying, in 1925 the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches (the first two were among Canada’s largest denomina- tions) merged as the United Church of Canada. As three of the most “liberal” denominations in Canada, home of much of the social gospel commitment to Christian reform of secular society, they hoped to rejuvenate reform fervour through unification. Not all members of the three denominations were equally enthusiastic. Opposition to union was particularly strong among the

Household Equipment Ownership in Montreal, 1941

Document

Heating By stove 51.5% Wood and coal 92.3

Cooking Fuel Wood and coal 17.7 Gas & electric 80.6

Refrigeration Mechanical 25.1

Icebox 65.0 None 5.1

Radio 85.5 Bathtub 83.9 Telephone 44.9 Vacuum cleaner 28.2 Automobile 15.7

Source: Denyse Baillargeon, Making Do: Women, Family, and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000), 187. Reprinted with permission.

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3598 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

Presbyterians. In the end, congregations could vote to stay out of the union. Thus 784 Presbyterian and eight Congregational congregations so declared, while 4,797 Methodist, 3,728 Presbyterian, and 166 Congregational congregations joined in the United Church of Canada. The new denomination became the most substantial Protestant communion of Canada, generally commit- ted to liberal thinking and reform.

Racism

Canadian society between the wars continued to be pro- foundly racist. That point was demonstrable in a variety of ways, although it must be emphasized that very few Canadians saw their exclusionary attitudes as either socially undesirable or dysfunctional.

Imported from the United States, the Ku Klux Klan flourished in Canada during the 1920s. In the United States the revived Klan spread anti-black and anti-Catholic hate propaganda under the guise of a fra- ternal organization. In its secret rituals, fundamentalist Protestantism, and social operations, the Klan appeared to some Canadians to be little different from a host of other secret societies. The Klan assumed a Canadian face, posing as the defender of Britishness against the alien hordes and calling itself the “Ku Klux Klan of the British Empire.” Although the Klan had some suc- cess everywhere in Canada, it made particular head- way in the late 1920s in Saskatchewan, where by 1929 there were over 125 chapters. In that province it found support from a number of Protestant ministers, who objected to the increasingly liberal leanings of the main- line Protestant churches. It also gained acceptance as a way of opposing the patronage-style politics of the prov- incial Liberal government. Few of its members associ- ated it with American-style cross burning or midnight lynch mobs.

Canada’s treatment of its Aboriginal population continued to reflect both belief in the superiority of non-Native culture and antagonism towards the Native peoples. The Department of Indian Affairs assumed that assimilation was the only possible policy. Deputy Minister Duncan Campbell Scott stated in 1920 that “Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the

body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department.” Indian Affairs employed a variety of policies. It forced Aboriginal children into schools, usually residential ones far removed from their fam- ilies. It forbade and actively suppressed the practice of traditional Native rituals like the potlatch. It carried out the Canadian government’s legislative provisions to enfranchise the Aboriginal people, thus in theory mak- ing them full citizens and no longer wards of the state. Most of the resistance to these measures was passive, although there was the beginning of organization. The first congress of the League of Indians convened at Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, in September 1919. The League’s objectives were “to claim and protect the rights of all Indians in Canada by legitimate and just means” and to assert “absolute control in retaining possession or dis- position of our lands” (quoted in Cuthand, 1978: 31–2). The League and its successors met regularly thereafter.

In British Columbia, an anti-Oriental movement flourished during the interwar years. Much of the criti- cism of the “menace” from Asia came from economic fears, although there was also a general concern for the racial integrity of the province as a white society. The general argument was that the newcomers would not assimilate, although there was considerable evidence that the Japanese, at least, were acculturating rapidly. Moving onto small holdings in the Fraser Valley and into salmon fishing along the coasts, the Japanese appeared to pose a potential military threat should their home- land—which was militarily aggressive in the Pacific from the beginning of the century—attempt to expand into Canada. If people from Asia were highly visible in some areas and in some industries, that fact was partly explained by their exclusion—in law and in practice— from so much of the life of the province.

Women

Canadian women emerged from the Great War with the vote in hand. A few feminist critics had argued that the vote was no panacea for women’s second-class position in Canadian society. It did not even assure a high level of political involvement. Between the wars women did not very often run for public office or constitute a recogniz- able voting bloc. The flapper, with her bobbed hair, short

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360 A History of the Canadian Peoples

skirts, and spirit of independence, was the symbolic “new woman” of the 1920s, but she was hardly typical. Most Canadian women did not smoke or sip cocktails or dance the “black bottom.” About all they had in common with the flapper was that, like her, they worked outside the home. Quebec women began moving into the workforce after 1918. More women worked in Canada in 1931 than in 1921, mostly in dead-end jobs. The Depression was particularly difficult for women. Public opinion turned against married women holding jobs that could be done by men. Most relief programs were geared to men, partly because it was not thought that women would threaten the social order by rioting and demonstrating.

In the gradual elaboration of unemployment insur- ance, many radicals opposed gender discrimination but at the same time accepted the principle that mar- ried women should be supported by their husbands. Women’s access to benefits was often limited without mention of gender. For example, traditionally female areas of employment—school teaching, nursing, domes- tic service performed in private homes—were excluded from UI coverage. Many husbands deserted their wives during the Depression, and even where the family remained together the wife did most of the work to keep it functioning. In the House of Commons in 1935, J.S. Woodsworth cited the case of a child murder and suicide in Winnipeg. The husband was unemployed and came home to find his children and wife dead. His wife had left a suicide note that read, “I owe the drug store 44 cents farewell” (quoted in Pierson, 1990).

Canadian Culture between the Wars A resurgence of Canadian nationalism characterized the 1920s. The larger stories of the interwar period, how- ever, were the blossoming of Canada’s love affair with American popular culture and the simultaneous emer- gence of a number of significant homegrown writers and artists. By the 1930s Canadians no longer had to be apologetic about their cultural achievements, although the number of individuals who could actually make a living from their creative work remained fairly small.

The Great War may have been fought for the British Empire, but both its course and its outcome made Canadians more conscious of their nation’s distinctive- ness. In the 1920s Canadian nationalism wore a dual face. On the one hand, it had to reflect Canada’s new international status. On the other, it felt it had to protect the country from being overwhelmed by foreign culture. The painter Arthur Lismer (1885–1969) wrote, “After 1919, most creative people, whether in painting, writing or music, began to have a guilty feeling that Canada was as yet unwritten, unpainted, unsung. . . . In 1920 there was a job to be done” (quoted in Thompson and Seager, 1985: 158). That job was not simply to write books, paint pictures, and compose music that captured the true Canadian spirit. The task was also to organize national cultural organizations and institutions that would mobilize a new sense of national consciousness. A number of Canadian magazines and journals emerged to serve as vehicles for Canadian ideas. The Canadian Bookman appeared in 1919, and Canadian Forum, Canadian Historical Review, and Dalhousie Review in 1920. The Canadian Authors’ Association, founded in 1921, backed campaigns promot- ing Canadian writers. In 1937 it succeeded in persuading the Governor General—the famous Scottish novelist John Buchan (1875–1940), Lord Tweedsmuir—to establish the prestigious Governor General’s awards. In art, the Group of Seven consciously sought to create a Canadian mythol- ogy. According to their first exhibition catalogue, in 1920, their vision was simple: “An Art must grow and flower in the land before the country will be a real home for its people” (quoted in Thompson and Seager, 1985: 162).

Between 1920 and 1940 over 750 Canadian novels were published. While most of these works were escap- ist fiction, a number of Canadian novelists achieved national and even modest international reputations for their skill at their craft. Perhaps even more import- ant, a small number of strong, confident, realistic novels appeared that formed the foundation of modern Canadian fiction. Not only was the move towards real- ism in line with international trends, but it responded to the nationalist demand for distinctively Canadian content. As for the visual arts, particularly during the Depression when most artists had to live at sub- sistence level, much work we now value highly was produced. Few visual artists in Canada could make a

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3618 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

living from their work alone, but art schools were now sufficiently common in the larger Canadian cities to provide employment for painters and sculptors. British Columbia’s Emily Carr (1871–1945) united art and lit- erature in a highly original way. Combining French Post-Impressionism with Aboriginal form and colour, Carr gradually created a powerful and distinctive vis- ual landscape. She also won a Governor General’s award for Klee Wyck (1941), a collection of stories based on her visits to Native villages. By the time of her death, Carr’s paintings were probably the visual icons the average Canadian could most easily associate with an individual artist. She had triumphed not only over the

disadvantages of Canadian geography but over the lim- itations faced by any woman who aspired to more than a genteel “dabbling” in art.

During the interwar period, radio, motion pictures, and the great expansion of professional sports all repre- sented major American influences on the Canadian consciousness. In popular culture Canada made little effort at national distinctiveness. The loudest critics of insidious Americanization usually had no alternatives to offer other than a somewhat outworn Britishness. At the same time, Canada and Canadians were hardly innocent victims of American cultural imperialism. As a nation Canada had choices it failed or refused to

Biography

Charlotte Whitton (1896–1975) was born in Renfrew, Ontario, and was educated at Queen’s University, where she had a spectacular academic record. In 1918 she was ap- pointed assistant secretary to the Social Services Council of Canada. She was soon actively involved in social work and social work reform, and became the first director of the Canadian Council on Child Welfare, which would become the Canadian Welfare Council, serving from 1926 to 1941. In this position she edited the journal Social Welfare and represented Canada on social issues at the League of Nations. She also campaigned courageously for improved standards in the care of children and juven- iles, and insisted on the need for a more professional ap- proach to social work. During her tenure as director of the Canadian Welfare Council she toured the nation, making frequent speeches and giving many lectures. Her major message during the 1930s was that while the Depression had made it impossible for private philanthropy to carry the social welfare load by itself, neither spending large sums of money on unemployment nor an active federal government was the answer to the problem. As an advis- er to the Bennett government on federal unemployment relief, she offered the same opinions.

After her departure from the Welfare Council in 1941, Whitton became a private consultant on welfare matters. In 1943, in response to an invitation from new Progressive Conservative leader John Bracken, she pub- lished The Dawn of an Ampler Life, obviously intended to serve as a background document for the new party’s social policy. (Bracken, a Progressive who had been Premier of Manitoba, had accepted the leadership of the Tories on the condition that “Progressive” would be added to the name of the Conservative Party.) The reader would be hard-pressed to decide exactly what Whitton was recommending, but it clearly was considerably less state interventionist than most of the competing visions of the time, and it had little impact on the welfare debate. Whitton subsequently became notorious for her oppos- ition to liberal divorce laws and to married women who held jobs. In 1950 she was elected controller of the city of Ottawa, succeeding to the mayor’s post on the death of the incumbent, thus becoming the first female mayor of a major Canadian city. She was re-elected in 1952 and 1954, then again in 1960 and 1962. When not mayor, Whitton served the city as an alderman. She was famous for her outspoken opinions and keen wit.

Charlotte Whitton

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362 A History of the Canadian Peoples

exercise. As a people Canadians were willing—indeed, active—collaborators in cultural production, both at home and in the United States itself. A closer examin- ation of motion pictures and hockey in this period is instructive.

In the world of film, Hollywood’s success was also Canada’s, since there was no shortage of Canadian talent involved in the formative years of Tinseltown. Mack Sennett, Sidney Olcott, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Walter Huston, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, and Marie Dressler—some of Hollywood’s biggest and most influential names at the time—were Canadian- born. Pickford, Warner, and Mayer founded three of the major Hollywood studios between 1919 and 1924. Canada itself had only the beginnings of a film indus- try, consisting mainly of the seven films produced by Ernest Shipman, of which Back to God’s Country (1919) is a Canadian silent film classic. Otherwise filmmaking in Canada was confined chiefly to newsreels and docu- mentaries, which were often appended to American features. By 1922 American studios were including Canadian receipts as part of domestic revenue, and in 1923 Famous Players’ Canadian Corporation, a subsidiary of Pickford’s studio, took over the leading Canadian cinema chain, Allen Theatres. At the height

of the silent film era, Hollywood succeeded in monop- olizing the distribution of film in Canada; Canadian exhibitors and cinema owners were not much con- cerned about where the product had originated so long as it was profitable.

Other nations around the world took some sort of defensive action against the Hollywood juggernaut, either placing quotas on imported films or providing tax incen- tives for local productions. Canada did neither, partly because a few of its citizens were so closely connected with the American film industry, partly because Canadians so clearly preferred Hollywood films to the alternatives. During the Great Depression, when the Dream Factory provided blessed release from the cares and woes of everyday life for millions of Canadians, that dream was plainly American. Canadians continued to love American movies despite the inaccuracy with which Hollywood persistently treated Canadian geography, society, and history. Symbolically, the successive and successful film portrayals of that quintessential American, Abraham Lincoln, by two Canadian actors, Walter Huston (1884– 1950) and Raymond Massey (1896–1983), only solidified the close identification of Canadians and Americans in the popular mind on both sides of the border.

The situation with professional hockey was equally interesting. The National Hockey Association (NHA) was organized in 1909 in eastern Canada. On the west coast, Frank and Lester Patrick, in 1911–12, formed the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), whose Vancouver Millionaires defeated the Ottawa Senators of the NHA for the Stanley Cup in 1915. The next year, the Montreal Canadiens of the NHA outlasted the PCHA’s Portland Rosebuds—the first US-based team in the Stanley Cup final. Then, in 1917, the National Hockey League (NHL) formed out of the NHA. The PCHA folded in 1924. That same year, the NHL granted a franchise lease to the Boston Bruins and became the top professional hockey league in North America. The New York Rangers and the Pittsburgh Pirates soon followed, and Chicago and Detroit received NHL franchises in 1927. Most of the American clubs were owned or managed by Canadians, and the players were almost entirely Canadian. Indeed, the Patrick brothers had brought players from their PCHA teams to the American-based NHL teams they acquired in the 1920s. The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired a physical

Charlotte Whitton, the mayor of Ottawa (second from left), at the unveiling of a commemorative bust of Agnes Macphail, the first woman elected to the House of Commons, outside the House, Ottawa, 1955. Also pictured (from left) are MP Margaret Aitken, Senator Cairine Wilson, and MP Ellen Fairclough. Duncan Cameron, LAC, PA-121765.

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As for Me and My House Document

Sunday Evening, April 30.

The wind keeps on. It’s less than a week since the snowstorm, and the land is already dry again. The dust goes reeling up the street in stinging little scuds. Over the fields this morning on our way to Partridge Hill there were dark, foreboding clouds of it.

Service was difficult this morning. They were lis- tening to the wind, not Philip, the whimpering and strumming through the eaves, and the dry hard crackle of sand against the windows. From the organ I could see their faces pinched and stiffened with anxiety. They sat in tense, bolt upright rows, most of the time their eyes on the ceiling, as if it were the sky and they were trying to read the weather. . . .

Philip and Paul and I stood on the school steps till the congregation were all gone. The horses pawed and stamped as if they, too, felt something ominous in the day. One after another the democrats and buggies rolled away with a whir of wheels like pebbly thunder. From the top of Partridge Hill where the schoolhouse stands we could see the prairie smoking with dust as if it had just been swept by fire. A frightening, wavering hum fled blind within the telephone wires. The wind struck in hard, clenched little blows; and even as we watched each other the dust formed in veins and wrinkles round our eyes. According to the signs, says Paul, it’s

going to be a dry and windy year all through. With the countryman’s instincts for such things he was strangely depressed this morning. . . .

I found it hard myself to believe in the town outside, houses, streets, and solid earth. Mile after mile the wind poured by, and we were immersed and lost in it. I sat breathing from my throat, my muscles tense. To relax, I felt, would be to let the walls round me crumple in. . . .

It’s the most nerve-wracking wind I’ve ever lis- tened to. Sometimes it sinks a little, as if spent and out of breath, then comes high, shrill and importunate again. Sometimes it’s blustering and rough, sometimes silent and sustained. Sometimes it’s wind, sometimes frightened hands that shake the doors and windows. Sometimes it makes the little room and its smug, fam- iliar furniture a dramatic inconsistency, sometimes a relief. I sit thinking about the dust, the farmers and the crops, wondering what another dried-out year will mean for us.

We’re pinched already. They gave us fifteen dollars this week, but ten had to go for a payment on the car. I’m running bills already at the butcher shop and Dawson’s store. Philip needs shoes and a hat. His Sunday suit is going at the cuffs again, and it’s shiny at the seat and knees. I sent for a new spring hat for myself the other day, but it was just a dollar forty-five, and won’t be much.

In 1941 (James) Sinclair Ross (1908–96) published a novel in New York entitled As for Me and My House. Set in Horizon, Saskatchewan, in the 1930s, the story is told from the vantage point of Mrs Bentley, the wife of a local clergyman.

Source: Sinclair Ross, As for Me and My House (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1970 [1941]), 37–9.

presence when Maple Leaf Gardens was built as their home. At the opening on 12 November 1931, Foster Hewitt (1902–85) broadcast his first Hockey Night in Canada, describing the game from a gondola overlooking

the rink. For three decades thereafter, his high-pitched voice—and his excited refrain, “He shoots! He scores!”— was hockey for most Canadians. Hockey Night in Canada was the one and only Canadian-produced radio program

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364 A History of the Canadian Peoples

on CBC that consistently outdrew American offerings with the Canadian listeners. Although the Depression benefited professional sports by creating a desperate need for escape, not all Canadians could afford to pay for admission. In Toronto, for example, ticket prices of 50¢ and $1.25 resulted in many empty seats. By 1939 the NHL had suffered the loss of all but two of its Canadian teams, the Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens. The cen- tre of professional hockey power shifted to the United States, although Canadians knew that virtually all the players still came from Canada, where hockey was a way of life on the frozen rivers and lakes of the nation in the winter months.

While Canada’s film and hockey successes were mainly in Hollywood and in American arenas, a vital grassroots theatrical movement existed at home between the wars, almost entirely on the amateur level. It consisted of Little Theatre groups in most major cit-

ies and towns, hundreds of high school drama groups, dozens of university drama groups, and innumerable other drama and musical drama organizations spon- sored by fraternal organizations, church groups, and labour unions. In most Canadian cities and towns, one group or another was rehearsing a play or a musical at any given time during the winter months. During the darkest days of the Depression, Canadian theatre blossomed, providing relief for many from the grim conditions of their lives. Protracted hard times, while discouraging some artists, also energized others, par- ticularly those who sought cultural directions that would encourage a new spirit of social involvement and commitment.

During the Depression, a theatre of the left emerged in the major cities of Canada, particularly Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Montreal, which spread to other places (like Timmins, Ontario) where “progressive” people were to be found. In all of these places, there was a twin emphasis: first, on supplying theatre that spoke directly to its audiences about what was going on in Canada and the world; and second, on exemplifying the ideals of collective experience in theatrical production. The theatre of the left tended to exalt amateur values and participation. It also had far more Canadian content in its plays. The first tour of the Workers’ Theatre, for example, included seven short plays, including Eviction (written by members of the Montreal Progressive Arts Club), Farmers’ Fight (also written by the Montreal PAC), Joe Derry (written by Dorothy Livesay), and War in the East (written by Stanley Ryerson). Interestingly, progressive theatre groups did not shun the establishment-oriented Dominion Drama Festival (DDF) but instead competed frequently, seek- ing thereby to test their theatrical quality, apart from the political value of their work. The DDF adjudicators, in their turn, were sympathetic to the productions but often unenthusiastic about the doom and gloom of their themes, preferring lighter fare. In 1937, a four-person play entitled Relief, written by Minnie Evans Bicknell of Marshall, Saskatchewan, and performed by the Marshall Dramatic Club, was one of the finalists at the DDF. The play was a domestic tragedy performed in a naturalistic style in which the performers dealt with matters that were all too familiar in their daily lives, as

Emily Carr in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, 1904.

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Radio Programming, 1939

Document

Network Highlights CBC

7:00 Songs of the World 7:30 Percy Faith’s Music 8:00 Sunset Symphony 8:30 Nature Talk 9:15 Sunset Symphony 10:00 Everyman Theatre

NBC—BLUE 7:30 Idea Mart 8:00 Kay Kyser’s Quiz 8:30 Fred Waring Orch. 10:30 Lights Out

CBS

9:00 Amos ’n’ Andy 9:30 Paul Whiteman orch.

Station Programs 5:00 The Lone Ranger, sketch—CKY 5:00 Dinner Concert—CBC-CJRC, CBK 5:00 Fred Waring Orch.—KFYR 5:30 Crackerjacks, songs—CBC-CJRC, CBK 5:30 Jimmy Allen, sketch—CKY 5:45 Howie Wing, sketch—CJRC 5:45 Waltz Time—CKY 5:45 Canadian Outdoor Days, Ozark Ripley—

CBC-CBK . . . 7:00 Songs of the World, mixed choir, Montreal—

CBC-CKY

7:00 Reports—CJRC

7:00 Horse and Buggy Days, songs of the 90s— KFYR

7:00 Percy Faith’s Music; George Murray, Dorothy Alt, soloists, Toronto—CBC-CKY, CBK

7:30 Modern Music Maestros—CJRC 7:30 Idea Mart—KFYR 8:00 Interview from London, from BBC—CBC-

CKY, CBK 8:00 Reports, Blaine Edwards, organ—CJRC 8:00 Kay Kyser’s College, musical quiz—NBC—

KFY until 9. 8:15 Teller of Curious Tales—CJRC 8:30 Dan McMurray’s Nature Talk, Bank CBC-

CKY, CBK 8:30 Five Esquires—CJRC 8:45 Lieder Recital—CBC-CKY, CBK 9:00 Canadian Press News—CBC-CKY, CBK 9:00 Reports; Piano Moods—CJRC 9:00 Amos ’n’ Andy, sketch—CBS-WJR, WCCO,

KMOx, KBL 9:00 Fred Waring Orch.—NBC-KFTR, WHO, WLW 9:15 Summer Symphony, G. Waddington con-

ducting from Walker Theatre, Winnipeg— CBC-CKY, CBK, CJRC, until 10.

9:30 Milt North Trio, WKNR 9:30 Tommy Dorsey Orch.—NBC-KOR 9:30 Horace Heidt Orch.—NBC-KFYR 9:30 Paul Whiteman Orch., guests—CBS-WCCO,

KMOx, KSL 9:45 Reports—CJRC

Wednesday 2 August

Source: Winnipeg Tribune, 2 August 1939, 2.

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366 A History of the Canadian Peoples

A Cabaret Song

Document

One of the major songwriters for the cabarets of the left-wing Theatre of Action was Frank Gregory. These cabarets began in 1939 and continued through the early 1940s. The songs were heavily influenced by Tin Pan Alley and Broadway.

the critics noted in their reviews. Toronto’s Theatre of Action was particularly active in seeking out Canadian themes and Canadian playwrights. The thematic con- tent of the drama preferred by the theatre of the left was undoubtedly one of the factors that limited its popular acceptance. Towards the end of the 1930s, however, influenced by the cabaret theatre of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht as developed by left-wing American the- atre groups, progressive theatre in Canada became more interested in musical theatre. Some of the cabaret pro- ductions actually featured songs that commented satir- ically on Canadian politics. This topical humour offered a lighter alternative to the fare presented by the more earnest theatre companies.

World War II Canada went back to war on 10 September 1939. This time the government waited a week after the British declaration of war against Germany to join the conflict, thus emphasizing Canada’s “independent” status. The nation’s entry into the war helped complete the process of economic recovery. Unprepared militarily, as in the Great War, Canada proved capable of mobilizing resour- ces remarkably swiftly when required. Canada quickly accepted the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as its major war commitment. The details of the scheme were agreed upon by Britain and Canada on 17 December 1939. Within months the program’s first

We never travel in Café society, And Winchell never gives us notoriety— I guess we must be Socially insignificant But we get along.

You’ll never find us at the El Morocco, We can’t afford the latest Broadway socko— It seems we are just Socially insignificant. But we get along.

Don’t think we’re satisfied To sit and bide Our time as we are: We’re not the patient kind. For in addition We’ve got ambition, But that can’t get us far, With money and security so hard to find.

So that is why you’ll never see our faces In photographs of all the swellest places: You’d think we were born Socially insignificant, But we get along.

Source: Quoted in Toby Gordon Ryan, Stage Left Canadian Theatre in the Thirties: A Memoir (Toronto: CTR Publications,

1981), 189. Courtesy CTR Publications.

We Get Along

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graduates emerged from Camp Borden, Ontario. It even- tually graduated 131,552 Commonwealth airmen from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand (Table 8.1), over half of whom were Canadian, at a cost of $1.6 billion. A nation of less than 12 million people would eventually put over 1 million of them into uni- form. Using the War Measures Act, Canada succeeded in mobilizing economic resources in a way that had seemed impossible during the Depression. Tax arrangements between the Dominion and the provinces were restruc- tured during the emergency, with the federal govern- ment collecting most of the revenue and making grants to the provinces to recover their operating expenses.

The economy was totally managed and regulated, a process associated with Ottawa’s wartime economic czar, Clarence Decatur Howe (1886–1960). By 1943 unemploy- ment was well under 2 per cent, a figure regarded in most quarters as full employment. Federal spending rose from 3.4 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) in 1939 to 37.6 per cent of GNP by 1944, totalling a full $4.4 billion in the latter year. Industrial growth was bet- ter distributed across the regions than in 1914–18, infla- tion was controlled, and consumption was regulated by shortages and rationing. Canada’s total GNP rose from $5.6 billion in 1939 to $11.9 billion in 1945. The nation became one of the world’s industrial giants, producing 850,000 motorized vehicles and over 16,000 military air- craft during the war. The government borrowed heavily from its own citizens, partly in the form of war bonds. While the achievement was impressive, it suggested that Leacock’s “riddle of social justice” remained unsolved. Canada appeared far more capable of efficient use of its productive capacity to fight destructive wars abroad than to battle domestically with poverty and unemployment.

As in the Great War, Canadians fought well when- ever called upon. As in the previous conflict, they were often employed as shock troops. In the disastrous land- ing of the 2nd Canadian Division at Dieppe in August 1942, nearly 2,700 of the 5,000 Canadians who embarked were either killed or captured. Canadians landed on Juno Beach on D-Day, 6 June 1944, and took heavy casualties. The First Canadian Army, formed in 1942 under the command of General A.G.L. McNaughton (1887–1966), was composed of five divisions that were eventually split between Italy and Northwest Europe.

This army was independently commanded, although the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy were mainly integrated with their British counter- parts. Canadian flyers became noted for their work in bombers rather than in fighters, as in World War I. Many thousands of Canadians spent most or all of the war years in Britain, and a number brought their British wives back to Canada after the war.

The RCN grew to 365 ships, spending the war mainly protecting convoys on the North Atlantic route and achieving such expertise in this duty that in May 1943 a Canadian, Admiral L.W. Murray (1896–1971), was given command of the Canadian Northwest Atlantic theatre. Many other Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in the Canadian merchant marine, a thankless task that kept them out of the loop for veterans’ benefits for many years. Canada ultimately had the third lar- gest navy among the Allied powers, the fourth largest air force, and the fourth largest army. Such a contribu- tion ought to have made it something of a power in the world, although the major powers—Britain, the United States, and the USSR—routinely treated Canada as little different from Allied nations such as Chile and Brazil, which had only token forces in the war. The super- powers admitted France to their council tables almost as soon as the nation was liberated, while ignoring Canada completely.

Canada fought chiefly in the European and North Atlantic theatres. Canadian assistance to American and British efforts in the Pacific and Southeast Asia was fairly minimal. In December 1941, however, two Canadian battalions were involved in the surrender of Hong Kong. The 1,421 men who returned home after years in Japanese prison camps had to fight for 23 years to win proper veterans’ benefits from the Canadian gov- ernment. As in the Great War, casualties in this conflict were heavy, with 42,642 Canadians giving up their lives. On the other hand, this was not a war of stalemate in the trenches. Instead, the establishment of beachheads was followed by a constant advance that involved lib- erating places held by the enemy. One innovation in this war was the active military service of women. As in 1914–18 large numbers of women were employed in the war industry, but by 1945 over 43,000 women were actually in uniform. A Gallup poll taken in 1944

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368 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Table 8.1 Final Output of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan

Trade RCAF RAF RAAF RNZAF Total

Pilot 25,646 17,796 4,045 2,220 49,707

Navigator 7,280 6,922 944 724 15,870

Navigator (B2) 5,154 3,113 699 829 9,795

Navigator (W) 421 3,847 30   4,298

Air Bomber 6,659 7,581 799 634 15,673

Wireless Operator/Air

Gunner

12,744 755 2,975 2,122 18,596

Air Gunner 12,917 2,096 244 443 15,700 

Flight Engineers 1,913       1,913

Total 72,734 42,110 9,706 7,002 131,552

Source: http://www.canadianwings.com/BCATP.

Canadian soldiers, known for their bravery, were instrumental in liberating northwestern Europe from the Germans. Canadian Major David Currie (left, holding pistol) won the Victoria Cross for his role in helping to close the Falaise Gap in August 1944. CWM 20020045-2276, George Metcalf Archival Collection, Canadian War Museum.

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indicated, however, that most Canadians, including 68 per cent of the women polled, believed that men should be given preference for employment in the post-war reconstruction. As a result, the machinery for women’s participation in the workforce, including daycare cen- tres, was dismantled with unseemly haste at the war’s end.

Dissent was met with persecution, as had been the case during the Great War. The Canadian govern- ment proved almost totally insensitive to pacifists’ beliefs. It interned thousands of Canadians without trial, often for mere criticism of government policy. The most publicized abuse of the state’s power was the treatment of the Japanese Canadians. Although the King government did not for a minute believe that Japanese Canadians represented any real military dan- ger, it yielded to pressure from British Columbia and forcibly evacuated most Japanese Canadians from the west coast. Many were sent to internment camps in the

BC Interior, and others were scattered across the coun- try, their land seized and their property sold at auction. “National emergency” was also used to justify the dis- semination of propaganda, now called “management of information.” Citizens needed to be educated in order to maintain faith and hope and to eliminate “potential elements of disunity,” a euphemism for criticism of the government. One major institution of information management was the National Film Board of Canada, under Scottish-born John Grierson (1898–1972), who believed in the integration of “the loyalties and forces of the community in the name of positive and highly con- structive ideas.” Grierson saw “information services— propaganda if you like” as an inevitable consequence of the government’s involvement in the crisis (quoted in Young, 1978: 217–40).

Internally, wartime policies revolved around two major questions: conscription and post-war recon- struction. In a national plebiscite held on the question

Many gave their lives on D-Day. Sixty-three in The

Queen’s Own paid the price. In our section of ten

men, seven fell: David Boynton, Fred Eaman, Edward

Westerby, Albert Kennedy, John Kirkland, Douglas

Reed—all Riflemen—and Corporal John Gibson.

Three of our ten survived: Rifleman Robert Nicol,

Corporal Rolph Jackson, and myself.

Although I spent more than twelve hundred

days in active service only three were spent on the

beachhead. Less than three hours were spent on my

feet. The rest was on a stretcher. That first night was

in a small building on what is now called rue de la

Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada. The second night was

in the now very well-known orchard where we were

taken care of by those wonderful nuns. Then it was a

rocky and dangerous ride getting out to an American

LST [landing ship, tank] and back to England.

It was August 1944 before my wound healed and

I could get back to the invasion beach and take a look

at Bernières-sur-Mer. I found the temporary graves of

some of our fallen by the railroad tracks. One of the

cleanup pioneers told me bodies were still washing

ashore from time to time. I stood facing the beach,

heart heavy and mind racing.

A British sergeant began to explain things to me

describing what took place on D-Day. It was clearly

beyond his imagination. It hurt to listen.

“Were you there?” I asked him. “No.” “Well, if you

had been there you wouldn’t need to say a word. If you

weren’t, then it’s impossible for you to understand.

“You see that beach? My friends and I own a

piece of it. And I don’t want to hear another word.”

Owning a Piece of Juno

Source: Doug Hester (Toronto, Ontario, Queen’s Own Rifles, Canadian Third Division), “A War Memoir,” http://www.

warchronicle.com/canadian_third_div/soldierstories_wwii/hester.htm.

Contemporary Views

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370 A History of the Canadian Peoples

of conscription in the spring of 1942, the nation voted 2,945,514 to 1,643,006 to release the government from an earlier pledge not to conscript for overseas service. Quebec voted strongly in the negative. The conscrip- tion issue emerged again in 1944, when the military insisted (as in 1917) that it was necessary to ship conscripts overseas, although they had been drafted with the promise that they would not be required to serve abroad. In the end, while conscripts were sent to Europe, few served as combatants before the war ended in May 1945. For the King government, the increasing threat from the CCF became a problem as nagging as

that of Quebec. As early as 1941 many Canadians had apparently come to realize that the failure to make a concerted assault on social injustice had been a result mainly of governments’ refusal to act. Canada was now, in wartime, demonstrating how thoroughly the coun- try could be mobilized if the will to do so was present. Public opinion in Anglo-Canada began turning to the social promises of the CCF. Indeed, in the September 1943 federal election, the CCF received the support of 29 per cent of the electorate at the polls, and in 1944 the Saskatchewan CCF wiped out a long-standing Liberal government in an election fought over social services.

Ruby was a lonely English girl from London, England.

She was a widow with a three-year-old daughter.

Ruby didn’t make friends easily because she was hard

of hearing and tended to keep to herself. At the time,

she worked in a Legion waiting on tables and helping

with the cleaning for the more than 400 soldiers of

every nationality who called the Legion home. They

could not go to their real homes on leave, so most of

them stayed at the Legion.

Every New Year’s Eve, the soldiers donned kitch-

en aprons and waited on the help. Everyone made

jokes and enjoyed the antics and the soldier who

waited on them.

The Canadian soldier who waited on Ruby spoke

to her several times and even put a present on her

plate, but she didn’t answer him, she just tried to smile.

Not many people knew she was hard of hearing.

After all the tables were cleared, the band began

to play and couples started dancing. Ruby stood

alone, just watching.

Suddenly Ruby’s soldier approached her and gave

her a note to read: “I know you have trouble hearing.

Are you as lonely as you look: I feel the same way; I

miss my folks home in Canada. Would you keep me

company and dance with me?” She surprised her-

self and danced with him several times. He saw her

home, and after this he continued to see her at work

and on the occasional date.

After seeing him for a little over six months, she

took him home to meet her parents and her little girl.

When the little girl saw him she ran to him and said:

“Daddy, you came home!”

She had seen her dad in uniform in a photo on

her shelf, and seeing the soldier in uniform, she nat-

urally assumed it was her father.

After the young girl was put to bed and Ruby and

the soldier was [sic] alone, he asked, “Well, how about it?”

“How about what?” Ruby asked.

“Being her daddy,” he replied.

This was in 1944. We were married in 1945 and

came to Canada the next year. We have now been

married for 46 years and we have five children—and

are still as happy as the day we first met.

The Story of War Bride Ruby McCreight This narrative of a Canadian war bride begins in the third person but concludes in the first person.

Source: David Helwig, ed., Back Then: Voices of Memory 1915–1945 (n.p: Oberon Press, 1993), 102–3.

Contemporary Views

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King’s Liberals had long dragged their heels over serious social welfare reform. Federal unemployment insurance had been introduced in 1940, but other pro- gressive legislation remained on hold. Now, in 1944, King declared in the House of Commons “a wholly new conception of industry as being in the nature of social service for the benefit of all, not as something existing only for the benefit of a favoured few.” The introduction of social reform was necessary not only to deal with the threat from the CCF but also to prevent possible public disorder at the conclusion of the war and to assert the authority of the federal government over the provinces. Once the political decision was made to implement social reform, there were plenty of schemes available, including a package in the Report on Social Security for Canada tabled in the House of Commons Special

Committee on Social Security by economist Leonard Marsh (1906–82) in 1943. In the end, a full program of progressive legislation was never actually enacted before the end of the war. The Liberal government did introduce the Family Allowances Act of 1944, Canada’s first social insurance program with universal coverage. It provided benefits to mothers of children under age 16. In 1944 the Liberals also passed the National Housing Act, described as “An Act to Promote the Construction of New Houses, the Repair and Modernization of Existing Houses, the Improvement of Housing and Living Conditions and the Expansion of Employment in the Postwar Period.” The King government turned to the post-war period, how- ever, with intentions of attacking the problem of social justice and the constitutional limitations of the British North America Act simultaneously.

Japanese Canadians being relocated to camps in the Interior of British Columbia, 1942. LAC, C-046355.

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372 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Conclusion Despite war fatalities, injustices, and some depriva- tion, World War II was, on balance, a more unifying and positive experience for most Canadians than the Great War had been. Full employment helped a good deal. Rationing provided a better-balanced diet. Limited leisure time and the absence of big-ticket consumer items, such as automobiles and household

appliances, forced many Canadians to save, often by purchasing war bonds and savings stamps. By war’s end, a 15-year deferral of expectations had built up a powerful urge among Canadians to enjoy material comforts, free from concern over life’s vagaries and hazards. This population was fully conscious of the dangers of assuming that social protection could be left to the private individual. It was equally aware that the state could intervene in the process, if it so desired.

Evacuation from Woodfibre, British Columbia, 1942

Document

Pearl Harbor, the opening strike of the Japan–U.S. con- flict, shocked Woodfibre’s inhabitants. The quiet town was completely transformed as rumours propagated rumours, fed by often conflicting reports. The Japanese community especially was in an uproar.

We Japanese, largely working-class immigrants, were, generally speaking, not given to sophisticated pol- itical thinking. Rather we had in common a blind faith in Japan’s eventual victory. The extent of our reasoning, decidedly specious in retrospect, went something like this: The burst of energy at Pearl Harbor was exemplary. If the war were short, say of less than two years’ duration, Japan stood to win. If it were prolonged, Japan, weakened by over a decade of aggression in Manchuria and China, admittedly might lose. Meanwhile, we kept receiving reports of Japanese victories in the Far East. We there- fore resolved to bear the present uneasiness patiently.

In the weeks that followed, life in Woodfibre was indeed changed. I remember especially the compul- sory nightly blackout, meant to thwart the activity of Japanese bombers that might fly over British Columbia.

With Canadians thus anxious, some drastic move was inevitable. By mid-January of 1942, some of us faced the prospect of evacuation. At that time it was said that if the Issei [Japanese-born] men aged eighteen to forty- five went to the road camps, then the Issei men over forty-five, the Issei women and children, and all Nisei [Canadian-born of Japanese descent] would be allowed to remain where they were. We Issei men accordingly received an order to depart on March 16.

As the day of departure drew nearer, tension mounted in the Japanese community. The lot of us Issei men was held to be a sorry one indeed. The Rockies were terribly cold in March; some of us would likely freeze to death in the twenty-below temperature. Again, the steep moun- tains were subject to avalanches; road work in them would be very dangerous. And again, deep in the mountains, men could easily become isolated by the snow and starve when provisions failed to get through to them. With such conjectures, the families of Issei men spent anxious days and sleepless nights. But the order to depart was a govern- ment order. To accept it as fate was our sorry resolve. . . .

Takao Ujo Nakano published this account of his wartime experience in 1980.

Source: T.U. Nakano, “Evacuation from Woodfibre, British Columbia, 1942,” from T.U. Nakano, Within the Barbed Wire Fence: A Japanese Man’s Account of His Internment in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 8–10. © University of Toronto Press, 1980.

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Studying Canada’s Military Effort in World War I

Roger Sarty, Wilfrid Laurier University

Personal favourites, among many short, introductory accounts, are D.J. Goodspeed, The Road Past Vimy: The Canadian Corps 1914–1918 (Toronto, 1969) and Terry Copp, Matt Symes, and Nick Lachance, Canadian Battlefields 1915–1918 (Waterloo, Ont., 2011).

Books about Canada’s role began to appear dur- ing the conflict1 and continued to pour forth in the following decades. These included memoirs, popular works, and regimental histories. Many are still very useful. The regimental histories, for example, present detailed accounts of operations and sketches of person- alities available nowhere else.2 Among the most distin- guished memoirs are those of the wartime leader, Prime Minister Robert Borden, assembled by his nephew, who drew heavily on Borden’s papers.3

The project initiated by the Department of National Defence for an eight-volume official history, however, produced only the first volume and a supporting vol- ume of documents. These appeared in 1938 and cover the initial year of the war. Immensely detailed, they are still an essential resource.4 A full official account of Canadian participation in land warfare—nearly 500,000 Canadian troops served overseas—appeared in a single volume in 1962.5 Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson, a senior member of the professional Army Historical Section, and the noted academic C.P. Stacey led the team that was organized during and after World War II to work on this history. They drew on the vast archives organized by the original historical section and the book is still the best starting place.

Nicholson produced two other thoroughly refer- enced, foundational volumes. The Fighting Newfound- lander: A History of The Royal Newfoundland Regiment (St John’s: Government of Newfoundland, 1964) is the first comprehensive account of the extraordinary sac- rifice by this British Dominion, separate from Canada, that did not join Confederation until 1949. Nicholson’s

The Gunners of Canada: The History of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, vol.1, 1534–1919 (Toronto and Montreal, 1967) details the organization and oper- ations of the immensely powerful artillery arm of the Canadian Corps, which was a key element in its formid- able striking power.

Canada’s large contribution to the air war—the provision of some 20,000 personnel to the British fly- ing services—was the least well recorded part of the military effort. This was belatedly corrected when the Army Historical Section became the tri-service Directorate of History in 1965 and focused on aviation history. S.F. Wise, Canadian Airmen in the First World War, The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, vol. 1 ([Toronto], 1980)is still a foremost author- ity on not just the Canadian role, but on aviation more generally during World War I.

At the leading edge of scholarly work that started in the 1960s with the opening of government archives was Robert Craig Brown’s biography, Robert Laird Borden: A Biography, 2 vols (Toronto, 1975–80). Another bench- mark in superbly researched biography is Michael Bliss’s volume on Sir Joseph Flavelle,6 who headed munitions production in Canada from 1916 to 1918. This is the fullest published account of Canada’s indus- trial effort. Strong in its research on both the home front and the overseas effort is Ronald G. Haycock’s life of Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defence from 1911 until 1916, when Prime Minister Borden finally lost patience with Hughes’s erratic, scandal-prone administration.7 General Sir Arthur Currie, the militia officer who succeeded brilliantly on the battlefield and commanded the Canadian Corps in 1917–18, has had three major biographies written about him, all well worth consulting.8

Robert Craig Brown joined Ramsay Cook to pro- duce a survey of signal importance, Canada 1896–1921:

Historiography

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374 A History of the Canadian Peoples

A Nation Transformed (Toronto and Montreal, 1974). Its chapters on the war draw on the large number of gradu- ate theses recently completed or in progress prior to the book’s publication; the book really marks the beginning of sustained scholarship, particularly on the homefront. For further work in the following three decades, see the outstanding collection of papers in David Mackenzie, ed., Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown (Toronto, 2005), which captures sub- sequent work on combat and the home front by many of the now senior scholars whose early research informed the 1974 volume by Brown and Cook.

Publication of new scholarly work in the 1970s and 1980s included little on the navy. It raised a total of 9,600 personnel during the war, about 1,700 for service with the British fleet overseas and the rest for the protec- tion of shipping in Canadian waters. Gilbert N. Tucker’s detailed The Naval Service of Canada: Its Official History, vol. 1, Origins and Early Years (Ottawa, 1952) is still a valuable source on many subjects. The volume, however, is circumspect about personalities and silent on import- ant aspects of operations. Michael L. Hadley and Roger Sarty sought to fill these gaps in Tin-Pots and Pirate Ships: Canadian Naval Forces and German Sea Raiders 1880–1918 (Montreal and Kingston, 1991). The navy had long carried much blame for the Halifax Explosion, the devastation of the city by the explosion of a muni- tions ship in the Halifax harbour on 6 December 1917. John Armstrong’s The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy: Inquiry and Intrigue (Vancouver, 2002) explores the navy’s role, and challenges its responsibil- ity for the critical lapses with newly discovered archival sources. Mark Hunter’s To Employ and Uplift Them: The Newfoundland Naval Reserve, 1899-1926 (St John’s, 2009) covers the service Newfoundland’s experienced seamen gave to both the British and Canadian fleets during the war. These works helped lay the foundation for William Johnston, William G.P. Rawling, Richard H. Gimblett, and John MacFarlane, The Seabound Coast: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Navy, 1867–1939, vol. 1 (Toronto, 2010), which the Directorate of History (now

the Directorate of History and Heritage) undertook because of renewed interest in World War I.

The enormous achievements of the Canadian Corps that fought in France and Belgium, and the heavy losses it bore, have been the subject of the bulk of schol- arly research that started in the 1960s and 1970s, gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, and continues with the interest aroused by the centenary of the war. Still important are the well-researched books produced by Daniel G. Dancocks in the 1980s, including Spearhead to Victory: Canada and the Great War (Edmonton, 1987). One of the first and still leading academic authors is Desmond Morton. Among his numerous, wide-ranging studies, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto, 1993) perhaps best encapsulates his research on combat. It can profitably be read in conjunction with Bill Rawling’s Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914–1918 (Toronto, 1992). A comprehensive and insightful treat- ment of French Canada’s part in combat is Jean-Pierre Gagnon, Le 22e bataillon (canadien–français) 1914- 1919: Étude socio-militaire ([Quebec City], 1986), which was produced by the Directorate of History. The full- est treatment of the divisive conscription issue is still J.L. Granatstein and J.M. Hitsman, Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in Canada (Toronto, 1977). The journal Canadian Military History, published since 1992 by the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic, and Disarmament Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University has featured a great deal of the new work on World War I combat. Geoffrey Hayes, Andrew Iarocci, and Mike Bechthold’s Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment (Waterloo, Ont., 2007) comprises wide-ranging essays by many of the leading younger scholars on the Canadian Corps’ iconic battle. J.L. Granatstein drew on much of the more recent scholarship in The Greatest Victory: Canada’s One Hundred Days, 1918 (Toronto, 2014). One of the foremost younger authors is Tim Cook, who in two substantial volumes presents the whole combat history of the Canadian Corps with the rich personal accounts that have become available since the 1960s.9

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3758 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

Notes 1. Max Aitken, Canada in Flanders. The Official Story

of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, vol. 1 (London, 1916), for example, was a best-seller.

2. For a full listing, see O.A. Cooke, The Canadian Military Experience 1867–1995: A Bibliography, 3rd edn (Ottawa, 1997). See also Brian Douglas Tennyson, The Canadian Experience of the Great War: A Guide to Memoirs (Plymouth, UK, 2013).

3. Henry Borden, ed., Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs, 2 vols (Toronto, 1938).

4. Archer Fortescue Duguid, Official History of the Canadian Forces in the Great War, 1914–1919, vol. 1 (Ottawa, 1938).

5. G.W.L. Nicholson, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1919 (Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War) (Ottawa, 1962).

6. Michael Bliss, A Canadian Millionaire: The Life and Business Times of Sir Joseph Flavelle, Bart., 1858–1939 (Toronto, 1978).

7. Ronald G. Haycock, Sam Hughes: The Public Career of a Controversial Canadian, 1885–1916 (Waterloo, Ont., 1986).

8. H.M. Urquhart, Arthur Currie: The Biography of a Great Canadian (Toronto, 1950); A.M.J. Hyatt, General Sir Arthur Currie: A Military Biography (Toronto, 1982); D.G. Dancocks, Sir Arthur Currie: A Biography (Toronto, 1985).

9. Tim Cook, At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914–16, vol. 1 (Toronto, 2007) and Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918, vol. 2 (Toronto, 2008).

Short Bibliography

Abella, Ir ving, and Harold Troper. None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948. Toronto, 1982. The standard work on the subject, judicious, fair, and scathing in its critique of Canadian policy.

Baillargeon, Denyse. Making Do: Women, Family, and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression. Waterloo, Ont., 2000. An exploration of women’s role during the Depression.

Baum, Gregory. Catholics and Canadian Socialism: Political Thought in the Thirties and Forties. Toronto, 1980. A stimulating book emphasizing that not all Catholics were unsympathetic to social reform and socialism.

Berton, Pierre. Hollywood’s Canada: The Americanization of Our National Image. Toronto, 1975. Perhaps Berton’s best work, this explores the ways in which

Hollywood has dealt with Canada and Canadian subjects.

Bumsted, J.M. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: An Illustrated History. Winnipeg, 1994. Makes the hist- ory of the strike accessible to the general audience.

Fedorowich, Kent. Unfit for Heroes: Reconstitution and Soldier Settlement in the Empire between the Wars. Manchester, 1995. Examination of the failed attempts to relocate British ex-soldiers as immigrants to rural areas in Canada and other Anglo countries.

Finkel, Alvin. Business and Social Reform in the Thirties. Toronto, 1979. A useful analysis of the relation- ship between business and social reform in the Depression, emphasizing that many businessmen saw reform as the only alternative to the destruction of capitalism.

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376 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Forbes, Ernest R. The Maritime Rights Movement 1919– 1927: A Study in Canadian Regionalism. Montreal, 1979. A fascinating study of one movement of regional protest that failed.

Kaprelian-Churchill, Isabel. “Armenian Refugees and Their Entry into Canada, 1919–1930.” Canadian Historical Review 71, 1 (1990): 80–108.

Lévesque, Andrée. Making and Breaking the Rules: Women in Quebec, 1919–1939. Toronto, 1994. An important study of women in Quebec between the wars.

MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York, 2002. A Canadian- based historian’s massive narrative of the Paris Peace Conference, including Canada’s role put in context.

Morton, W.L. The Progressive Party of Canada.Toronto, 1950. The classic account, still generally valid.

Owram, Doug. The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State 1900–1945. Toronto, 1986. A synthesis of secondary literature on the subject to the mid-1980s.

Peers, Frank. The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting 1920–1951. Toronto, 1969. A first-hand history of the development of Canadian broadcasting before television.

Safarian, A.E. The Canadian Economy in the Great Depression. Toronto, 1959. The standard account of

the performance of the Canadian economy in the 1930s.

Stacey, C.P. Arms, Men and Governments: The War Policies of Canada 1939–1945. Ottawa, 1970. A useful survey of Canada’s military policy during World War II.

Strong-Boag, Veronica. The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada 1919–1939. Toronto, 1988. A survey of the changing (or unchanging) role of women in English Canada between the wars.

Sunahara, Ann. The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Toronto, 1981. A sober and unsentimental account that does not hesitate to call this part of Canadian war policy racist.

Thompson, John Herd, and Allan Seager. Canada 1922– 1939: Decades of Discord. Toronto, 1985. The best syn- thesis of the interwar years, rich in detail.

Tippett, Maria. Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massey Commission. Toronto, 1990. Perhaps the only over- view of the cultural infrastructure of any part of Canada before 1951.

Trofimenkoff, Susan Mann. Action Française: French- Canadian Nationalism in the Twenties. Toronto, 1975. An analysis of nationalism, mainly in Quebec, in the 1920s, focusing on Abbé Groulx and his circle.

Study Questions 1. What was Stephen Leacock’s “unsolved riddle of social justice”? How did Canadians address this riddle in the

interwar period?

2. Identify three causes of labour unrest in Canada after the Great War.

3. Explain why the Depression was a devastating experience for many Canadians.

4. What social and economic impacts did the automobile have on the Canadian public during this period?

5. Did gaining the vote substantially increase the political power of Canadian women? Explain.

6. In what ways could Canada’s exclusionist immigration policy be defended?

7. What does the document “Radio Programming, 1939” tell us about what Canadians listened to in 1939?

8. Why was the theatre of the left more active than the mainstream theatre in presenting Canadian themes

during the 1930s?

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3778 | Two Wars and a Depression, 1914–1945

9. For Canadians, in what ways was World War II a replay of World War I? In what ways was it different? Are the

similarities more important than the differences?

10. Are there incidents in this period about which the Canadian government needs to be ashamed? What are

they?

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

www.oupcanada.com/Bumsted5e

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Prospering Together, 1945–19609

Pipers march during the opening ceremonies of the Canso Causeway, 13 August 1955. The causeway, one of the major engineering achievements of the period, linked Cape Breton to the Canadian mainland. There were supposed to be 100 pipers, but some accounts claim that one man refused to play. While not clear from this photo, it does appear that there is a man missing from the second row of the third column (behind the Union Jack). Canada. Dept. of Manpower and Immigration, LAC.

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1945 Liberal government is re-elected. Dominion– Provincial Conference on Reconstruction is

convened. United Nations is founded in San

Francisco. Gouzenko Affair. Cold War begins.

1947 Imperial Oil brings in Leduc, Alberta, oil field. Prime Minister King acknowledges Canada’s

“moral obligation” to refugees and displaced

persons in Europe.

1948 Mackenzie King resigns and is replaced by Louis St Laurent. Newfoundland holds two plebiscites

on its future, choosing to join Canada. Canada

becomes part of the Marshall Plan.

1949 Asbestos strike in Quebec. Newfoundland joins Confederation. Royal Commission on National

Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences

(Massey Commission) is appointed. North

Atlantic Treaty Organization is formed.

1950 Canada joins Korean “police action.” Interprovincial oil pipeline is built from

Edmonton to Superior, Ontario.

1951 Old Age Security Act passed by Ottawa. Eaton’s department stores’ employees strike. Aluminum

Company of Canada begins the Kitimat project

in British Columbia.

1952 First CBC television stations are opened. 1953 Quebec’s Tremblay Commission on

Constitutional Problems makes its report.

Mackenzie Highway is completed to Northwest

Territories. Transmountain oil pipeline is built

from Edmonton to Vancouver.

1954 British Empire Games in Vancouver sees mile run for the first time in less than four minutes

by both Roger Bannister and John Landy.

St Lawrence Seaway opens. First iron ore

leaves Ungava, Quebec. Canada joins a joint

commission on Vietnam.

1955 Canso Causeway is opened in Nova Scotia, linking Cape Breton to the mainland.

1956 Canadian Labour Congress is formed from a merger of the Canadian Congress of Labour

and the Trades and Labor Congress of

Canada. The Unemployment Assistance Act is

passed by Parliament. Trans-Canada Pipeline

debate weakens the Liberal government. First

transatlantic telephone cable is completed

between Newfoundland and Scotland. Distant

Early Warning (DEW) Line is established.

1957 Liberal government passes the Hospital Insurance Diagnostic Services Act.

Diefenbaker’s Tories win a minority

government; St Laurent steps down. Lester B.

Pearson wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Canada

joins NORAD. The Canada Council is created.

1958 Inco strike. Lester B. Pearson is chosen Liberal leader. Diefenbaker Tories sweep the nation,

including Quebec. Great Slave Railway is

begun.

1959 Diefenbaker government decides to scrap the Avro Arrow. Maurice Duplessis dies.

1960 Royal Commission on Government Reorganization is appointed.

Timeline

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380 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The post–World War II era, particularly before 1960, was a period of unparalleled economic growth and prosperity for Canada. Production and consump- tion moved steadily upward. Employment rose almost continuously. Canada substantially increased its work- force. Inflation was steady but almost never excessive. Interest rates were relatively low. The nation was in the midst of an uncharacteristic natural increase in its population growth rate that would become known as the baby boom. At the same time as many Canadians took advantage of the good times by conceiving chil- dren and moving to new homes in the suburbs, both the federal and provincial governments became active in providing new programs of social protection for their citizens. That network was not created without controversy, particularly of the constitutional variety, although the debate was still relatively muted until the 1960s. By that time, however, Canadian governments at all levels had become interventionist in a variety of areas, including culture.

Affluence Economic prosperity and growth were at the root of all developments from 1946 to 1960 (and beyond). Almost all aspects of planning in both the public and private sectors were based on assumptions of constant growth, and such thinking seemed to work. Between 1946 and 1960, per capita income in Canada nearly doubled, thus increasing the Canadian standard of liv- ing. Canadians believed there were no limits to growth. Great Depressions were disasters of the past, and the standard of living could continue to rise. Politicians and their expert advisers argued that governments could now manage economies. They could correct for nega- tive movements soon after they began. The operative economic wisdom was Keynesianism, named after the English economist John Maynard Keynes, whose writ- ings provided much of the theoretical underpinning of the new affluence.

Quebec’s Tremblay Commission on Constitutional Problems well described the prevailing wisdom in 1953:

The objective envisaged was the maintenance of economic stability and full employment. . . .

Both expenditures and investments, by indi- viduals as well as by companies, should, there- fore, be encouraged. Moreover, the government should take a part in this, and co-operate in stabilizing the economy and in ensuring full employment by its own expenditures and investments. This would demand from it an appropriate fiscal and monetary policy, as well as a programme of carefully planned public works. . . . The new policy necessarily entailed a considerable number of social security meas- ures regarded as indispensable for the cor- rection of variations in the economic cycle. (Kwavnick, 1973: 183–4)

In truth, the overall pattern of affluence was nei- ther solely attributable to government management nor distinctive to Canada. It was general across the Western industrial world. It started, in part, with the rebuilding of the war-torn economies of Europe and Asia. It con- tinued with heavy expenditures on military defence during the Cold War. Filling consumer wants after a generation’s deferral of expectations helped. Then pros- perity continued under its own momentum for a time, aided by the baby boom.

Foreign trade was an important component of Canadian affluence. The volume of imports and exports increased substantially. Canada became integrated into the American trading market as Great Britain decreased in importance as a trading partner. The government set the value of the Canadian dollar in relation to the American dollar, and attempted to control Canadian foreign exchange and Canadian domestic banking through the Bank of Canada. After 1954, banks were allowed to extend consumer credit and mortgage loans, although before 1967 they were limited in the interest they could charge. Canada’s monetary policy was to increase the supply of money in circulation, producing inflation that eventually would run out of control.

The relative importance of various sectors of the domestic economy shifted in these years. Agriculture declined from 25 per cent of the total workforce in 1946 to 11 per cent in 1961. The real growth areas were in the public sector, particularly public administration and the services necessary to manage the new state. In 1946 just over 15 per cent of Canadians were employed in the

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3819 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

public sector, but by 1961 that figure had increased to just over 25 per cent. Many of the public service employ- ees were highly educated white-collar workers, and by 1960 over half of Canadians held white-collar jobs. Women in 1960 made up about 30 per cent of the work- force, with their pay about two-thirds that of males. Regional disparities in manufacturing continued and even grew. Central Canada, especially Ontario, experi- enced most of the gains in manufacturing. Ontario produced over 50 per cent of total manufacturing value added in the nation and dominated the manufacture of durable goods and big-ticket consumer items in many industries. In 1957, for example, Ontario turned out 98.8 per cent of Canada’s motor vehicles, 90.7 per cent of its

heavy industrial goods, 90 per cent of its agricultural implements, and 80.7 per cent of its major household appliances. Canadian manufacturing served two prin- cipal markets. One was the domestic consumer market, which exploded after 15 years of “doing without.” The other was a huge market for military hardware to equip Canada’s armed forces, which greatly increased in number after 1950. Canada was ambitious to produce homegrown equipment, but had to settle for subcon- tracting parts of Canadian orders through American branch plants. The Diefenbaker government’s decision to scrap the Avro Arrow in 1959 ended the last serious Canadian venture in the independent development of military hardware.

Much of the employment growth in Canada from 1946 to 1966 was in the public sector. The size of the public service, federally, provincially, and municipally, grew from 222,000 to 909,000 in these years, a more than fourfold increase. © McCord Museum.

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382 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The resource economy did reasonably well. Begin- ning in 1947, when Imperial Oil brought in the major oil field at Leduc, in southern Alberta, there was signifi- cant expansion in western Canadian oil and gas. Most of the risk was assumed by Americans, and the Alberta oil industry was quickly taken over by multinational firms. Oil and gas began to be transported by pipeline from the West into the major centres of population and industry. Potash provided a major new resource for Saskatchewan, and uranium was a short-lived bonanza for northern Ontario. The burning of fossil fuels and the development of nuclear power were the growth areas in the energy industry. Hydroelectric generation, which accounted for almost 95 per cent of Canada’s electrical capacity in 1946, had dropped to just over 75 per cent by 1960 and would be down to only half that by the 1970s, despite massive hydroelectric projects in many prov- inces, especially Quebec and British Columbia.

In this period of growth, nobody paid much atten- tion to environmental issues. “Affluence,” not “effluence,” was the watchword. Prior to 1960, Canadians were only dimly aware of the dangers of “pollution,” a word that had only just come into common use. Nuclear experts insisted that nuclear accidents were extremely unlikely and did not worry about the disposal of half-life radio- active nuclear wastes. Petrochemical plants dumped waste into surrounding waters and paper-processing plants dumped poisonous mercury and other efflu- ents into rivers and lakes. Solid industrial waste was usually buried, often used as landfill to create new housing estates near large urban centres, such as the Love Canal area in New York near Niagara Falls. Many inland rivers and lakes deteriorated into cesspools of industrial waste and human sewage. Acid rain spread, unrecognized as an international problem. Farmers dumped chemical fertilizers and weed killers into the soil, where they eventually ended up in underground aquifers. Economic growth and development were the measures of all things, and the few Canadians preach- ing caution were often regarded as a lunatic fringe of troublemakers.

The boom of the post-war years encouraged the growth of American direct investment in Canada and the rise of the multinational corporation, which usually had headquarters in the United States and a

branch-plant operation in Canada. By 1950 more than three-quarters of total foreign investment in the coun- try was American, chiefly in mining, manufacturing, and petroleum. In 1959 foreign-owned companies con- trolled nearly 60 per cent of assets in Canadian mining, over 60 per cent of the oil and gas industry, and over 50 per cent of Canadian manufacturing. The extent of foreign ownership of all major Canadian industries in 1959 was 34 per cent, of which 26 per cent was owned by United States residents. American ownership was espe- cially prevalent in the highly profitable consumer area, where production flourished on the backs of American technology and American promotion of goods and brand names. American advertising and cultural val- ues created consumer demand on a continental basis, and Canadian subsidiaries fulfilled this demand for the Canadian segment of their market. Not until 1957, however, did American investment and the growth of multinationals become important public issues. As late as 1956, one of the leading textbooks in Canadian eco- nomic history referred to foreign investment as “one of the mainsprings of progress” without mentioning its less desirable aspects (Easterbrook and Aitken, 1956: 402). The foreign investment issue was brought to the pub- lic’s attention by the Royal Commission on Canada’s Economic Prospects, chaired by Walter Gordon. The report of the Commission, released after the Liberal government that had appointed it was defeated in 1957, observed that “No other nation as highly indus- trialized as Canada has such a large proportion of industry controlled by non-resident concerns” (Royal Commission on Canada’s Economic Prospects, 1958: 384). The Commission’s concern was not immediately shared by the public, however.

Part of the critique of American multinationalism was related to Canada’s scientific research and develop- ment policy. Critics noted that Canada spent a far smaller proportion of its science dollar on the development side of research and development. They added that industry in Canada contributed a far smaller share of scientific activity than in any other highly industrialized nation. The reasons for these lags, many insisted, were to be found in Canada’s ability as a branch-plant economy to import technology developed elsewhere. In 1959, for example, industry was responsible for only 39 per cent

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3839 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

of scientific research in Canada, as opposed to 58 per cent in Britain and 78 per cent in the United States. By this time, the federal government’s outlays in scientific activity were in excess of $200 million per year, while in 1959 Canadian industry spent only $96.7 million on research and development at home. Research money for the Avro Arrow was supplied not by A.V. Roe, but by the Canadian federal government. Moreover, 95 per cent of all Canadian patents between 1957 and 1961 involved foreign applicants, nearly 70 per cent of them American. Clearly, Canada spent large sums of public money on scientific research, but the nation was not getting much industrial advantage from the expenditures. Canadian scientists had co-operated with American counterparts to produce the IBM 101 electronic statistical machine in time for it to analyze the 1951 Canadian census data. But before long, the new technology became American, and Canadians were never in the front lines of the micro- chip revolution of later years. In 1962, expenditure on research and development as a proportion of sales aver- aged 0.7 per cent by all Canadian manufacturers, as opposed to 2 per cent by American manufacturers and even larger proportions in Germany and Japan.

An increased role for organized labour accom- panied other economic trends of the affluent society. Union membership increased and unions were organ- ized in a number of new industries. World War II had marked a major turning point for Canadian labour, which had fought any number of bitter strikes during the Depression in search of an unfettered right to bar- gain collectively with employers. It received precious little support from government in this effort. The per- centage of union members in the total civilian labour force had actually declined slightly between 1929 and 1939. During the war, however, the federal government had decided to co-opt labour into the war effort. Both Ottawa and the provinces began the slow process of altering labour legislation to recognize and protect the rights to organization and collective bargaining. The key breakthrough came in 1944 when the federal government, by wartime Order-in-Council, introduced PCO 1003. This order introduced recently adopted American principles of compulsory recognition and col- lective bargaining, creating the machinery necessary to protect both management and labour in contested

cases. By 1946, 17.1 per cent of all workers and 27.9 per cent of non-agricultural workers belonged to unions.

With bargaining rights achieved, labour unions went on to hammer out working relationships with most of Canada’s traditional industries. Improved working conditions and higher wages were the result. The pro- cess of coming to terms with employers was hardly a painless one. Throughout the 1950s there were never fewer than 159 strikes per year across Canada, involv- ing between 49,000 and 112,000 workers annually. Important strikes that achieved national prominence included the Asbestos strike of 1949 in Quebec, the Eaton’s strike of 1951, and the Inco strike of 1958 in Sudbury. A major breakthrough for public-sector union- ism came at the very end of the 1950s when the postal employees organized and began demanding the right of collective bargaining. In 1956 the two largest Canadian umbrella organizations for labour—the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour—merged as one consolidated body called the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). This merger reduced jurisdictional disputes at the top of Canada’s table of labour organization, although it did not deal with the question of the domination of so-called “international” unions by their American members.

The Cold War By 1945, Canada was probably already too deeply en- meshed in its linkages with the United States ever to cast them aside. Great Britain, financially strapped, was not likely to provide much of a counterweight. Canadian involvement in the Cold War was almost inescapable. There were numerous signs in the last years of World War II that the Russians and the Americans were the emergent world superpowers, eager to carve up the world into respective spheres of influence. Countries like Canada were virtually excluded from the pro- cess of peacemaking with the defeated enemies, as well as from most of the significant diplomatic man- oeuvring of the post-war period. The nation found itself unable to translate its wartime manpower and resource commitments into any post-war place in the decision-making corridors of power that would remake

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384 A History of the Canadian Peoples

the world. Canada protested privately about being left out of the surrender agreement with Germany, being left out of the drafting of a unilateral statement ending the war, and being left out of the Italian surrender. The final straw may have been the Allied decision to admit France (a nation that had allowed itself to be occupied by the Nazis and had fought Germany with only an army in exile) to the ranks of the “Occupying Powers” of Berlin. As a result of the war, Canada did substantially increase its overseas diplomatic contacts, with 25 posts abroad in 1944 and 36 by 1947, but it hardly improved its international position. Towards the close of the war Canada tried to create some diplomatic distance from the Americans in their continual arm-wrestling with the Russians, but the notorious Gouzenko affair made it difficult for Ottawa to remain on sympathetic terms with the Russians.

Igor Gouzenko (1919–82) was an obscure cipher clerk in the Russian embassy in Ottawa. In September 1945 he brought material to the RCMP that demon- strated how the Russians had organized a spy ring in Canada during the war. Nowadays spying is taken for granted, but at the time Gouzenko’s information and the subsequent arrests of Canadian citizens (including one member of Parliament) were absolutely shocking. Canada did not exchange ambassadors again with the Russians until after 1953. In public opinion polls in 1946, Canadians proved far more willing than people in other nations to believe that Russia sought to domin- ate the world. The Gouzenko incident would also send shock waves across the Western world, for loose ends from the files made it apparent that the Russians had suborned not only Canadians but their allies. Moreover, it became evident that the tight security connected with research on atomic energy carried on in Montreal had been breached. The Russians had received secret infor- mation that may have aided them in developing their own atomic bomb in 1949. With the two superpowers both possessing nuclear capability, the standoff that characterized the Cold War began in earnest. Unlike the British and French, the Canadian government declared its refusal to use nuclear power for military purposes.

Economic considerations impelled Canada in an inevitable direction as the international situation unfolded and the nation became America’s docile jun-

ior partner. Prime Minister King was leery of a com- plete economic integration proposed by the Americans late in the war—and supported by many of his own civil servants—but Canada and the United States became closer trading partners than ever before. Moreover, when the American Congress approved the Marshall Plan early in 1948—by which the United States pro- posed to rebuild war-torn Europe with unrestricted gifts of money and goods—Canada was forced to do something. If European reconstruction was limited solely to American goods, Canadian trade would shrink to nothing. Canada needed market access into the American program, that is, permission for Europe to use American money to buy Canadian goods. The US readily agreed. King used North Atlantic security as a way out of continental free trade. A security treaty would not only deflect reciprocity but, as a multilat- eral arrangement, might provide a much-needed inter- national counterbalance against American military domination. The Americans were not enthusiastic about a multilateral arrangement for North Atlantic sec- urity, but the Canadians pressed hard. Some Canadian diplomats even wanted non-Atlantic Commonwealth countries admitted, and Escott Reid, the deputy under- secretary of state for external affairs, sought a treaty that encompassed social and economic issues as well. The Americans ultimately accepted the North Atlantic Treaty’s military and security provisions, particu- larly the centralization of command under what would inevitably be an American general. They quietly scut- tled other aspects of the alliance.

The Search for Middle-Power Status By the time NATO was established in 1949, the Cold War had extended beyond Europe into Asia, where a Communist government headed by Chou En-lai had taken over China. Communism made gains in other places like Indochina and Korea, which had been parti- tioned after the war. The United States always saw these Communist governments as mere extensions of inter- national Communism rather than as movements of legit- imate national liberation. In 1950 North Korea invaded American-supported South Korea. The Americans took

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3859 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

On 5 September 1945, a cipher clerk in the Russian

embassy in Ottawa named Igor Gouzenko returned

to his office and removed a collection of 109 docu-

ments that he had previously extracted from the

files. Arranging the documents around his body,

he managed to leave the embassy without detec-

tion. He took the documents to the night editor at

the Ottawa Journal, who suggested that he take

them to the RCMP. Gouzenko had great difficulty in

finding anyone to take him seriously. At one point

he was told, “Nobody wants to hear anything but

nice things about Stalin these days.” Eventually he

found an audience in the RCMP for his story that a

Soviet spy ring was operating inside Canada, and five

Canadians were named as Russian agents, although

none of them had access to highly sensitive material.

Gouzenko’s disclosures are often taken as the begin-

ning of the so-called “Cold War,” a period in which

a good many individuals were accused of serving as

Russian agents; some of them actually were. Part of

the problem was that during the Depression years,

Communism had been popular, especially with uni-

versity students, because it was virtually alone in

opposing fascism and in offering a concrete program

for dealing with the economic hard times. Then, after

the war began, Stalin’s Russia became an important

ally of the Western alliance. Assistance to Russia for

the duration of the war was a patriotic duty. After the

war, the Gouzenko affair and the disclosures of the

ex-Communist Elizabeth Bentley in the United States,

as well as the emergence of the Soviet Union as a

military threat and the later revelations that the British

intelligence services had been seriously comprom-

ised by internal Soviet agents, led to frantic efforts

to root out Communists at home. Most of those

exposed were so-called “fellow travellers” who were

attracted by the Communist ideology but were not

Russian agents. Nonetheless, sufficient evidence

existed of the passing to the Russians of military

secrets, especially involving nuclear weapons, to fuel

continual American paranoia.

BACKGROUNDER Canada and Cold War Espionage

Igor Gouzenko with a copy of his novel, The Fall of a Titan, about life in Stalinist Russia, 15 October 1954. Gouzenko’s novel won the Governor General’s Award in 1954. Canadian authorities gave Gouzenko a new identity, but the former spy wore a hood over his face whenever he made a public appearance. CP lASERPhOtO.

Continued...

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386 A History of the Canadian Peoples

advantage of a temporary Soviet boycott of the Security Council of the United Nations to invoke universal col- lective security in regard to the Korean situation. The Canadian government was in a quandary. It had no peacetime military of its own to send, nor was it enthusi- astic about participating in collective security under the American aegis.

The Korean War increased the pressure for a mil- itary buildup. By 1953 the defence budget stood at nearly $2 billion, up tenfold since 1947. Public opinion in the 1950s consistently supported rearmament. The policy-makers at the Department of External Affairs did their best to give Canada an autonomous inter- national presence, developing a Canadian reputation for sending small numbers of soldiers to trouble spots to supervise international agencies and monitor local conditions. Peacekeeping operations were carried out in Indochina and the Middle East, especially Cyprus. The nation’s standing reached its high point in 1957 when Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the 1956 hostilities in Suez. Pearson, with American support, found a way for Britain and France to back out of an impossible situation created by their ill-conceived invasion of Egypt to protect the Suez Canal. Canada had earned its place among the “middle powers,” a characterization that became popular with Canada’s international relations specialists at the same time as it flattered the nation’s pretensions. But the world changed rapidly after Suez, and middle-power status altered with events.

The Retreat from Internationalism

Part of the gradual change in Canada’s place in the world was a result of technology. When, in 1953, the USSR added a hydrogen bomb to its nuclear arsenal, Canadians became even more conscious that their nation sat uneasily between the two nuclear giants. Everyone’s attention turned to air defence. Canada expanded the RCAF and began development of the famed CF-105 (the Avro Arrow). The United States pushed for increased electronic sur- veillance in the Arctic. In 1955 Canada agreed to allow the Americans to construct at their own expense a series of northern radar posts called the Distant Early Warning (or DEW) Line. The Americans also pressed for an inte- grated bilateral air defence system, the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), which was agreed to by the Diefenbaker government soon after it took office in 1957. The Canadian government made a half-hearted attempt to educate its citizens on the dangers of nuclear war, but they were so horrible and unthinkable that most Canadians resolutely refused to pay much attention.

The Baby Boom and the Suburban Society Canadians emerged from World War II with 15 years of disruption behind them. Normal expectations for

One Canadian later caught up in the web of suspi-

cion was the diplomat E. Herbert Norman (1909–57).

Norman had grown up in Japan, the son of Methodist

missionaries, before joining the Canadian Foreign

Service in 1939. During his university years he had

flirted with Communism, and as a Canadian official

during the occupation of Japan he had shown some

sympathy for the Japanese Communist Party. He was

exonerated after an investigation in 1950. Although

Norman was a close friend of Lester Pearson, the

American government never trusted him, especially

after his name came up in testimony before the US

Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security in 1957.

Norman committed suicide in Cairo in April 1957

while serving as Canadian ambassador to Egypt.

Many contemporaries viewed Norman as a victim of

witch-hunting. Two books about his career published

in 1986 came to diametrically opposed conclusions

about his involvement with Communism. The last

gasp of Cold War spies came to Canada in 1965, when

a former East German prostitute/call girl and possible

Soviet agent named Gerda Munsinger was associated

by the media in a sex scandal involving several mem-

bers of the government of John Diefenbaker.

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3879 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

family life had been interrupted in various ways. During the Depression, marriage and birth rates had decreased and the average age at marriage had risen. Between 1939 and 1952 the marriage rate jumped substantially, especially among the young. More family units were formed each year, while the birth rate and the annual immigration intake rose. Birth rates climbed because women who had married early tended to begin bear- ing children early as well—and to continue expanding their families while remaining at home. The result was a substantial increase in the total numbers of children in Canada between 1941 and 1961—the baby boom—a demographic phenomenon that occurred in the United States during the same period. As these children arrived at each stage of life in waves, their sheer numbers put heavy pressure on the facilities that had to accommo- date them. The phenomenon hit primary education in the 1940s and then rolled progressively through the Canadian educational system and other aspects of soci- ety as the baby boomers got older. Secondary schools were affected in the 1950s, universities in the 1960s, employment in the later 1960s, and so on.

We do not entirely understand why this demo- graphic blip occurred. Pent-up deferral of expectations during the Depression before the early 1940s is part of the answer, as is the absence of so many young men during the war. The fulfillment of deferred expecta- tions, however, does not explain why an entire nation should suddenly decide to marry earlier and raise larger families. A better explanation is probably to be found in the fantasy package of a better life for Canadians, fuelled by post-war affluence. The urge affected Quebecers as well as anglophone Canadians. Pierre Vallières described his father’s post-war dream: “We’ll be at peace. The children will have all the room they need to play. We’ll be masters in our own house. There will be no more stairs to go up and down. . . . Pierre won’t hang around the alleys and sheds any more. . . . The owner was prepared to stretch the pay- ments out over many years. . . . Life would become eas- ier. . . . He would enlarge the house. A few years from now, Madeline and the ‘little ones’ would have peace and comfort” (Vallières, 1971: 98). In 1945 the Vallières family moved to Longueuil-Annexe, one of the “mush- room cities” that grew up around Montreal.

What Canadians thought they wanted—and what the media told them was desirable—was a detached bun- galow, preferably in a nice suburban neighbourhood, surrounded by green grass and inhabited by a trad- itional nuclear family. This fantasy included a wife who was a homemaker and a houseful of perfect children. “Suburbia” was always less a geographical reality than a mental and emotional space. It is a convenient term that can be used to describe the idealized social world of the post-war period. After the war, a popular domestication of values extended into the ranks of the lower-middle and traditional working classes. Post-war suburbia was not only highly traditional in its gender roles but tended to be retrogressive in its emphasis on the role of the female as child-bearer and nurturer. In its consumer orientation, as well as in its child-centredness, it was a powerful force.

Houses became homes, easily the most expensive physical object possessed by their owners. So much time and emotional energy could be devoted to the edifice that it often seemed to possess its owners. The house focused the life of the nuclear family, and at the same time permitted individual members to have their own private spaces. Ideally, each child had a bedroom, for example, and a large recreation room in the basement provided a place for the children to play and gather. The kitchen was often too small for gathering, and the living room, increasingly after 1950, was the home of the tele- vision set. Advertising and articles in the media exalted the roles of housewife and mother as the epicentre of this world. Radio, television, and the record player all made it possible for popular culture to be consumed without ever leaving the house.

Central to any post-war middle-class household were its children, around whose upbringing the parents’ lives increasingly revolved. The baby-boom generation grew up in a child-centred atmosphere in both home and school. Older standards of discipline and toughness in the parent–child relationship were replaced by permis- siveness. New child-rearing attitudes found their popu- lar expression in The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care by the American pediatrician Benjamin Spock, which outsold the Bible in Canada after the war. Spock replaced more austere Canadian manuals. The book was one of the earliest mass-market paperbacks, sold over the counter at drugstores and supermarkets for less than 50 cents.

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388 A History of the Canadian Peoples

the North Atlantic treaty, 1949

Document

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.

They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual lib- erty and the rule of law.

They work to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.

They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defense and for the preservation of peace and security.

They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty: ARTICLE 1. The Parties undertake, as set forth in

the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any inter- national disputes in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the pur- poses of the United Nations.

ARTICLE 2. The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly inter- national relations by strengthening their free institu- tions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international

economic policies and will encourage economic collab- oration between any or all of them.

ARTICLE 3. In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their indi- vidual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.

ARTICLE 4. The Parties will consult together when- ever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integ- rity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.

ARTICLE 5. The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forth- with, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed at Washington on 4 April 1949. The preamble and the first five articles are reprinted below.

Source: National Defence Headquarters, Department of National Defence, The North Atlantic treaty (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1995) [includes a facsimile of the original treaty signed at Washington]. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

In its pages the reader could find continual reassurance. Use your common sense, said Spock; almost anything reasonable is okay. “Trust Yourself ” was his first injunc-

tion. The good doctor came down hard against the use of coercion of any sort. In toilet training, for example, he insisted that “Practically all those children who regu-

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3899 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

Say “We Want Margarine”

Document

From coast to coast, in the cities and in the country four fifths of Canadian housewives say, “We want mar- garine.” The attitude of many was summed up by one woman who said, “We have a prairie family near us with six young children who never see butter because of its price. Everyone should be able to have it as a substitute, because of its nutritional value.”

A very high percentage of the rural women—more than three-fifths—many of them wives of dairy farm- ers selling cream in the dairy market were fair-minded enough to say that large families in moderate circum- stances could not afford butter at its present prices and should therefore have the opportunity of buying a cheaper substitute.

A few Councillors who were in favor of margarine “on principle” were not sure whether they would use it because they had never tasted it. One Councillor asked, “What is margarine—do you use it in your tea?”

Margarine went under a ban in Canada 25 years ago. It has been hushed so much that a whole genera- tion has grown up without ever having seen it. On the other hand, many housewives know that margarine is a good nourishing, cheap food and that Canada is the only country in the world in which it is banned. As for

price, margarine sells in the United States today as low as .39¢ a pound, compared to butter which has gone as high as $1 a pound.

The Canadian Medical Journal last August stated quite bluntly that “from economic and nutritional aspects, good margarine is superior to butter.”

Both margarine and butter contain 80% fat. Margarine is made from vegetable oils—cotton-seed, soybean, corn and peanut. These fats are usually churned with pure skim milk to give them the dairy taste. Units of vitamin A are added, bringing the prod- uct up to and frequently beyond, the vitamin standard for butter.

In its natural form, margarine has a yellowish color not unlike butter. Manufacturers in the United States, however, are compelled by law to remove this natural color by bleaching, so that it will not be mistaken for butter, and to enclose with each pound a small envel- ope of yellow coloring matter for the housewife to knead into the margarine. . . .

Last year a bill favoring the lifting of the ban on margarine was defeated in the Senate. Two more bills will be brought up during the present session, one in the Senate and one in the House of Commons.

The following article appeared in the April 1948 issue Chatelaine, the leading Canadian magazine for women at the time. Margarine was banned in Canada from 1886 to 1948, although from 1917 to 1923 the ban was lifted because of dairy shortages. During the ban margarine was smuggled to Canada from Newfoundland. After this prohibition was ended in 1948, the sale of coloured or uncoloured margarine remained an issue in many provinces for many years. The magazine had a Consumer Council that it polled on critical issues.

Source: Sylvia Fraser, ed., Chatelaine: A Woman’s Place: Seventy Years in the lives of Canadian Women (Toronto: KeyPorter Books, 1997) 121.

larly go on soiling after 2 are those whose mothers have made a big issue of it and those who have become fright- ened by painful movements.” Spock explained that chil- dren passed through stages. Once parents recognized

what stage of development their child had reached, they could understand otherwise incomprehensible behav- iour and recognize that seemingly exceptional problems were really quite common.

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390 A History of the Canadian Peoples

The baby boom combined with the attitudes of the permissively raised Spock generation and the new afflu- ence to produce a category of adolescence segmented from and sandwiched between childhood and adult society. More and more young people were encouraged to remain in school longer. Progressive-minded edu- cators treated them as a distinct social phenomenon. The authors of Crestwood heights (1956), a study of a wealthy Toronto suburb, found a central theme in the “difficulties experienced by the child in living up to the expectations of both parents and the school for ‘respons- ibility’ and ‘independence’.” They labelled the 16–19 age group as one of “Dependent Independence.” The loss of community through urbanization and suburbanization provided a real challenge for social control. Kept out of the workforce, teenagers did not become full adults. Law and custom combined to prevent them from enjoying full adult privileges. These kids had considerable spend- ing power. Encouraged to live at home, the youngsters were not often required to contribute their earnings (if any) to family maintenance. Instead, their parents gave them pocket money or allowances. Canadian teenagers rapidly became avid consumers, providing a market for fast food, clothing fads, acne medicine, cosmetics, and popular music. Melinda McCracken has explained that “to be a real teenager you had to drink Cokes, eat ham- burgers [known as nips in Winnipeg because the local Salisbury House chain sold them as such], French fries [known in Winnipeg as chips, in the English fashion], go to the Dairy Queen, listen to the Top Forty and neck” (McCracken, 1975: 72).

Between 1946 and 1960 Canadian education, res- ponding partly to the baby boom, partly to changing social expectations, transformed itself entirely. Canadians had long accepted the concept of universal education in the primary grades. In the 1940s and 1950s education for all was extended to secondary levels by raising the school-leaving age to 16. In 1945 there were 1,741,000 chil- dren in provincially controlled schools. By 1960–1 that figure had risen to 3,993,125. The expenditure per pupil in public schools nearly tripled between 1945 and 1958. Thousands of new schools had to be built to accommo- date the increased student population. Teachers, who before 1946 had needed only a year or two of training in teachers’ college, by the 1960s had to have a university

degree. In 1956 the authors of Crestwood heights observed that the flagship suburban community they had studied was, “literally, built around its schools.” In “Crestwood Heights” (Toronto’s Forest Hill), education was “aimed pri- marily at preparing pupils for a middle-class vocation in a highly-industrialized culture” (Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, 1972 [1956]: 224). Such was the goal of baby-boomer edu- cation all across Canada by the early 1960s.

Before the mid-1950s no one anticipated the arrival of a serious educational crisis, for in the decade after the war, classes in existing schools simply got larger while a few extra teachers were hired. But finally the problem of overcrowding became too obvious to ignore. Shortage of space was only partly a result of the baby boom. The new insistence on high school diplomas for everyone represented a profound social revolution and created a need for more room at the universities. Canadians saw more education as the key to dealing with mod- ern industrial conditions. Curiously, however, Canada lagged badly behind other countries in terms of voca- tional and practical education, preferring instead to

The baby-boom generation was child-centred, and Canadian youth rapidly became avid consumers. This photograph connects the new consumers with that Canadian passion, skating. The box holds what are probably a young man’s first skates. Are there further details to be derived from this photo? Chris lund/National Film Board of Canada. lAC, PA-111396.

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3919 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

force the vast majority of its students into traditional academic endeavours. Much of the thinking that justi- fied expanded education was imported from the United States, but these ideas increasingly were accepted by Canadian parents and taxpayers—particularly after 1957, when the Russians put Sputnik into orbit and inadvertently gave rise to a concerted campaign for edu- cational reform throughout North America.

Immigration Canada ended World War II with neither an immigra- tion nor a refugee policy sufficient for the situations in which it would soon find itself, particularly inter- nationally. The Canadian government and the Canadian people were, by and large, exclusionist, racist, and not very humane in their attitudes towards immigration. Over the next few years, this position would change, however. Circumstances, as well as slowly changing val- ues, would literally force Canada to accept millions of immigrants, including both displaced persons and refu- gees (the distinction between the two was never entirely clear in the eyes of the public). Whether the people came from now non-existent countries or had been uprooted or fled from states in which they no longer had homes, by 1962 the government would overhaul its immigra- tion procedures to bring at least a formal end to racist immigration policy.

All of Canada’s resources in late 1945 and early 1946 were devoted to transporting its troops home. Some of them had been in Britain since 1939. Partly as a result of the length of the stay abroad, almost 50,000 Canadian soldiers had found wives in Europe, mainly in the United Kingdom, although some soldiers had married women on the continent, especially in Holland. There were over 20,000 children from these marriages. Obviously these dependants would have to be allowed to accompany their soldier husbands and fathers back to Canada, and the Canadian Department of National Defence facilitated matters as expeditiously as possible, not only admitting these women and children with- out question, but also providing them with transport, documentation, and the transfer of money and posses- sions as well. The brides were informed there would be

only a single one-way journey provided at government expense. Being uprooted was not an easy experience for many of these women, but they were for the most part welcomed enthusiastically in their new homes.

By the end of 1945, perhaps two million refugees and other displaced persons remained in allied terri- tory, mostly in Germany but also in Austria and Italy. The majority had been housed in refugee camps. Few of these people had proper documentation, and more than a few had been Nazi soldiers and collaborators—even war criminals—who now posed as innocent victims. Establishing the legitimacy of each refugee was virtu- ally impossible; therefore, Canadian officials did not want to accept immigrants from these camps. An inves- tigation into immigration policy was conducted in May of 1946 by the Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on Immigration and Labour, which, to the surprise of immigration officials, supported such immigration. This report emphasized that “Canada, as a humane and Christian nation, should do her share toward the relief of refugees and displaced persons” (Standing Committee of the Canadian Senate on Immigration and Labour, 1946: 628). The Committee also criticized the government for its failure to produce a proper immigra- tion policy.

The same month as the Senate hearings, the Canadian cabinet amended PC 695—the 1931 Order- in-Council still in effect—with PC 2071, permitting the admission of refugees with close relations in Canada. This was not intended to open Canada to a flood of immigrants. All existing immigration regulations were to be observed, and the definition of a “first-degree” relative was narrowly limited. Canadian immigration officials used the absence of inspection facilities as a reason for not processing first-degree relatives more rapidly. A Gallup poll in April of 1946 had indicated that two-thirds of Canadians opposed immigration from Europe. A subsequent poll in October of that year asked: If there were to be immigration, what nationalities would the respondent most like to keep out of Canada? The Japanese ranked first, the Jews second. Meanwhile, international pressure was building on Canada to help out with the refugee situation, and External Affairs became concerned that the United Nations might impose an arbitrary quota on Canada.

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392 A History of the Canadian Peoples

After months of debate in the Canadian press and in the cabinet, Prime Minister Mackenzie King read a formal statement on immigration policy to the House of Commons on 1 May 1947. King insisted that Canada wanted to encourage immigration, but also that Canada’s “absorptive capacity” must be taken into account. He did not further define “absorptive capacity,” which many Canadians chose to see as an economic measure. Others thought it a coded term for racism, an interpretation that gained force from King’s spirited defence of the nation’s right to pursue a discriminatory immigration policy that would not appreciably alter the makeup of the Canadian population, which, of course, was essen- tially of European descent. King further declared that although Canada’s membership in international organ- izations did not oblige it to accept specific numbers of refugees and displaced persons (a barb directed towards External Affairs), “We have, nevertheless, a

moral obligation to assist in meeting the problem, and this obligation we are prepared to recognize” (quoted in Knowles, 1997: 132). In the wake of King’s statement, five teams of immigration officials visited camps in Austria and Germany in the summer of 1947 to select potential immigrants. A new system of screening was put into effect, and an expansion of the term “close relative” was introduced. Those selected were mainly under the labour selection category. They were granted visas and transported to a port of embarkation where they signed labour contracts. On arrival in Canada, each immigrant got money for railway tickets and meals. Most of the sec- urity concerns were over potential Communists rather than ex-Nazis.

Contributing to the new influx of displaced per- sons were fresh pressures on the Canadian government in 1947. First, the rampaging economic prosperity being supervised by C.D. Howe (Minister of Reconstruction

In the middle of the prairie outside Calgary, a billboard announces the new “engineered” suburb of Glendale Meadows in August 1958. What is noteworthy about this photograph is the location of the billboard in a huge vacant field that soon will be filled with the new development. Photo Rosetti’s Studio. Glenbow Archives, NA-5093-558.

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3939 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

and Supply) required more labour. “The speeding up of the immigration movement,” he insisted, had to be “treated as a matter of high priority” (quoted in Margolian, 2000: 77). Second, the nature of the refugee lobby changed substantially. Symptomatic of this shift was the establishment in June 1947 of the Canadian Christian Council for Resettlement of Refugees (CCCRR). This organization was composed of various German immigrant aid groups and concentrated on helping refugees from Germany and Austria, especially the Volksdeutsche, those Germans who had lived outside Germany’s borders. With the assistance of the CCCRR, more than 120,000 refugees ultimately were admitted to Canada, placing the nation behind only the United States, Australia, and Israel in the number of refugees it received in the post-war period.

The influx of displaced persons to Canada from 1948 to 1952 was distinguished by several contradictory features. One was the inability of the Canadian author- ities totally to prevent Jews from joining the flow, how- ever hard they tried. Canada put Jews low on the list of desired immigrants, partly for cultural reasons but also because of what the authorities thought prospective employers expected of new immigrants, chiefly robust health and considerable strength. Most post-war Jews, it was argued, could not have coped with a regimen of hard physical labour. What clearly was needed was an alter- nate program. Jewish activists insisted that war crim- inals like Martin Bormann (Hitler’s private secretary) could enter Canada more easily than Jews and, indeed, the immigrants of these years may well have included as many as 1,500 war criminals and Nazi collaborators. Another feature of these years was the arrival of the first “boat people,” as several thousand people from the Baltic area made their way independently to Canada aboard small and often unseaworthy vessels. They were usually greeted sympathetically and often allowed to remain by special Order-in-Council.

The hard-labour aspect of Canadian criteria for immigrants caused many problems for immigration officials. Early in 1948, for example, the Communists took over Czechoslovakia, forcing thousands to flee the country, including many of its civil servants. But such people were not eligible under existing immigration policy to enter Canada. One Canadian

immigration official commented of the Czech dip- lomats clamouring for admission to Canada, “As an ex-member of the profession, I may perhaps be for- given if I suggest that the average diplomat is not likely to be very much use at anything else—particu- larly at the kind of initial jobs that are commonly available for immigrants” (quoted in Avery, 1995: 159). Highly trained professionals generally proved a major problem for nations receiving immigrants after the war; Canada was not exceptional in this regard. Local professional organizations and licensing authorities insisted on protecting the public from the unqualified, while the sorts of credentials offered by a displaced person from a European nation usually made little sense or seemed incomplete. Most receiving nations, including Canada, insisted that the professionals, especially the doctors, either take jobs where the receiving country’s own nationals would not go—such as to the north, in Canada—or else requalify for their profession. Canada was not only unsympathetic to professionals but also to intellectuals and artists, such as those from Czechoslovakia.

By 1949 Canada was finally brought to the realiza- tion that its concentration on human brawn was biting off its nose to spite its face. A new sponsorship program allowed up to 500 highly trained displaced persons into Canada, although it emphasized that most admit- ted could not immediately practise their skills. On the other hand, some countries, particularly the United States, had always been quite willing to accept skilled enemy aliens—even those openly Nazi—if they were sci- entists working in such areas as weapons research. Few scientists, no more than 50, were admitted to Canada before 1950. In a well-received book published in 1951, economist Mabel Timlin actually studied the question of “absorptive capacity,” concluding that Canada was capable of accepting larger numbers of immigrants from an economic standpoint and that such acceptance, by increasing the population, “should mean a higher physical product per capita and hence higher real incomes for Canadian citizens” (Timlin, 1951: 122).

The displaced persons who came to Canada in the years immediately after the war shared much in com- mon with one another. Most had suffered years of emo- tional turmoil, both in Europe and then in Canada. The

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394 A History of the Canadian Peoples

sorts of jobs available to most immigrants, at the bot- tom of the occupational chain, tended to be in remote districts and subject to seasonal unemployment. The Canadian government provided little counselling or other assistance for the newcomers, leaving voluntary organizations to fill the gap as best they could. On the other hand, the post-war newcomers had the great psychological advantage of knowing that they could never return to a former life—thus providing a sense of finality and permanence to their new situation—and that almost any material conditions were better than those they had suffered in the refugee camps.

In June 1950, by Order-in-Council PC 2856, Canada expanded admissible categories of European immi- grants to include any healthy individual of good char- acter with needed skills and an ability to integrate. That same year saw the Department of Citizenship and

Immigration established to replace a previous admin- istrative structure in which immigration had been a branch of the Department of Mines and Resources. Canada now had an immigration policy of sorts, and a separate agency to administer it. In 1951 Canadian immigration policy reached out tentatively beyond Europe. The Canadian government agreed with the governments of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon to admit a few additional newcomers from each of these nations beyond the old quotas on Asians.

As many recognized by 1952, Canada desperately needed to overhaul and rethink its immigration policy. That goal was hardly achieved in the new Immigration Act of that year, produced after only four days of hearings by a House of Commons subcommittee that heard testimony mainly from the large transporta- tion companies. Most of the other players involved in

New arrivals are examined in Immigration Examination hall at Pier 21 in halifax, Nova Scotia. Judging by their dress, these immigrants are arriving from Europe. The papers on the officer’s desk suggest the amount of documentation required to enter Canada. By the expressions on their faces, these candidates are obviously anxious. Chris lund/National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque collection, lAC, PA-111579.

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3959 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

immigration, such as the trade unions and the ethnic organizations, were not heard at all. As a result the 1952 Act dealt mainly with administrative proced- ures rather than new initiatives. It expanded the dis- cretionary powers of the cabinet and the Immigration Department to select immigrants, even on a case-by- case basis, but did not much alter the criteria used in the selection. Many found the Act concerned mainly with keeping people out. These included peculiar customs, unsuitability for Canadian conditions, and probable inability to become readily assimilated into full Canadian citizenship. The noisiest complaints about the 1952 Act came from the ethnic commun- ities, who organized to lobby for their own particular agendas. The 1952 Act had little to say about refugees and nothing to say about the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951, which provided a legal definition of a refugee as someone:

owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, mem- bership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that coun- try; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual resi- dence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

Critics saw several reasons for the silence on refu- gees. One was the common belief that refugees were looking for temporary asylum rather than permanent resettlement. Another was the concern that not all refu- gees were necessarily responsible citizens driven out of their countries for the wrong reasons. Finally, there was the racial factor. Canada took some characteristic steps in 1956 when it decided as a humanitarian gesture to admit some of the 900,000 refugees living in camps in the Middle East. A Canadian immigration team visited camps in Jordan and Lebanon, selecting 98 potential citizens from the 575 candidates presented to them by international refugee organizations. Eventually, 39 heads of families, primarily of Palestinian origin, were admitted to Canada in 1956. The tokenism manifest here

is evident when the selection process is compared with that employed during and after the Hungarian uprising of November 1956.

Canadians had seen the events in Hungary unfold on their television screens, with young student “freedom fighters” armed with nothing but stones facing Soviet tanks in the streets. Occurring as it did in the midst of the Cold War, the plight of the more than 200,000 refu- gees who fled to Austria quickly gained public sympathy. Immigration Minister Jack Pickersgill moved quickly, and before the end of November he announced the gov- ernment’s plan to provide free passage to Canada for every refugee who met Canadian admissions standards. By the spring of 1957, Canada had brought nearly 20,000 Hungarians to North America on board more than 200 chartered airplane flights, and by the end of the year another 10,000 Hungarians had arrived in Canada. These refugees were mainly young male students with urban backgrounds; many were Jewish. The new arrivals were, of course, fervently anti-Communist, which simul- taneously made them popular with Cold Warriors—the House of Commons welcomed them enthusiastically almost to a person—and to some extent unpopular with some of the older generation of Hungarians in Canada, whose politics leaned further left. The enthusiasm of their welcome may have led some of the newcomers to assume that life in Canada would be easier than it turned out to be, particularly as many suffered from severe trauma because of their experiences.

Not all the immigrants who came to Canada in the years after World War II remained in the country. One student of that immigration calculated that about 23 per cent of all post-war immigrants had left the coun- try by 1961, and further estimated “that Canada suc- ceeded in retaining approximately 60 per cent of the immigrants who entered the country from the United States, about 70 per cent of those from Britain, and 80 per cent of those from other countries” (Richmond, 1967: 228). For most post-war European immigrants to Canada, their commitment to their new nation was fairly strong. In many cases, immigrants had few family members and sometimes no country to which to return. In other cases, a return to a much less prosperous life- style at home was possible but hardly desirable. For the British, the years immediately after the war were

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ones of deprivation, but economic conditions grad- ually returned to normal in the United Kingdom, and social conditions under the “welfare state” may even have improved, particularly for the working classes. In any case, upward of 100,000 British immigrants to Canada returned to their homeland during the 1950s. Most had been reasonably successful economically but had not substantially improved their social or occupa- tional standing. Those who had married (and/or had children) in Canada were far more likely to remain, and single people, especially females, were far more likely to return home. The presence of close relatives in Canada was also important in the decision to remain.

In 1958 Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed a woman as Minister of Immigration. Ellen Fairclough (1905–2004) was a Hamilton businesswoman and was the first female appointed to a federal cabinet post. Immigration was not expected by Diefenbaker to be a heavy responsibility, and Fairclough was given Indian Affairs as well. But a number of general problems related

to immigration had surfaced by the later 1950s. Three were of critical importance. First and foremost were the ongoing difficulties with the sponsorship program, by which those already in the country could sponsor close relatives as immigrants. Second, there was the need for an expanded and liberalized selection policy, particu- larly in terms of attracting non-Europeans. Third, there was a need for administrative reform.

Fairclough first tackled the sponsorship program. With the virtual end of the European refugee influx in the early 1950s (except for the Hungarians), the basic way in which immigrants got to Canada was through being sponsored by close relatives already in the coun- try. The sponsorship system, begun in 1946, had some advantages, as it authorized chain migration (by which one immigrant sponsored another) and provided a means of integrating the newcomers quickly into the Canadian community, as well as of preventing them from becoming public charges. The national group that took greatest advantage of sponsorship was the Italians. More than 240,000 Italian immigrants arrived in Canada between 1946 and 1961, over 90 per cent of them sponsored by relatives, by far the heaviest pro- portion of sponsored arrivals among any immigrant group. Critics complained that many of these newcom- ers would not have qualified for admission had they not been sponsored.

Most family-sponsored Italians were either dep- endants (women, children, the elderly) not likely to enter the Canadian labour force, or unskilled males able to work only as labourers on heavy construction sites and thus likely to flood the unskilled job market. More than one-half (60 per cent) of these newcomers were from southern Italy, with the regions of Abruzzi, Molise, and Calabria providing the vast bulk of the immigrants. Most sponsors were male, and especially before 1956, males predominated in the immigration. But the chains gradually expanded, and by the later 1950s whole fam- ilies and entire villages were coming to Canada. By the end of the decade, Immigration Department stud- ies indicated that fewer than 10 per cent of these new arrivals would have been admitted to Canada under other circumstances. Because of the volume of Italian immigration, the Italian agents for immigrants to Canada committed fraudulent practices, chiefly the

In 1957, nearly 20,000 hungarian emigrants received free passage to Canada following the hungarian uprising in 1956. Photo by Keystone/Getty Images.

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misrepresentation of facts on immigration applica- tions. The Immigration Department began a deliberate bureaucratic slowdown of Italian immigration, as well as introducing an informal quota of 25,000 immigrants per year. The result was a huge backlog of cases, well in excess of 50,000.

Fairclough managed to get cabinet approval for an Order-in-Council in 1959 (PC 59/310) that limited the entry of non-dependant relatives into Canada. This limitation immediately affected the Italian flow but also the flow from other Mediterranean countries—such as Portugal and Greece—that featured large extended families and chain migration. The ethnic communities of these nations raised a wave of protest, claiming the new policy discriminated against them. “Fairclough tried to defend her policy by pointing out that the spon- sorship system was itself discriminatory since ‘well qualified Italians who wished to migrate to this coun- try had little or no chance of having their applications considered unless they were in the sponsored categor- ies’” (Avery, 1995: 176). She insisted that over the long

term the limitation on sponsorship would produce a more diversified immigration. But she was forced to back down, stating that she was asking the cabinet to withdraw the Order-in-Council in favour of new regula- tions to be introduced later. This initiative failed partly because the issues were not clearly understood and partly because the government had not taken sufficient account of the vociferousness of the ethnic community; when push came to shove, the government did not want to alienate ethnic voters.

Post-war immigration greatly changed the face of Canada, especially in Ontario. Most of the new immi- grants settled in the larger cities of the province, or in urban concentrations in other provinces. The Canadian city became honeycombed with ethnic neighbourhoods, featuring churches, markets, bakeries, restaurants, and clubs to cater to particular local tastes.

Aboriginal People As in earlier periods, one group that did not fully benefit from affluence and growth was the Aboriginal popula- tion. Improvements in First Nations medical care began in 1945 when responsibility for it was transferred from Indian Affairs to the Department of National Health and Welfare. This shift helped close gaps but did not elimin- ate them, chiefly because improved health care was not a panacea; it treated only the symptoms, not the causes of First Nations problems. At this time, infant mortal- ity rates among Native peoples were greatly reduced for the first 28 days of life, but these rates continued to run four to five times the national average for the remain- der of infants’ first year. A change in major causes of death from infectious to chronic diseases occurred, but overall Indian and Inuit mortality rates still ran at more than twice the national average, and the incidence of death from accidental causes and suicide increased. Accidental and violent death was third on the list of killers for all Canadians, but first for First Nations—and this although automobile accidents were not common in most Native communities.

Alcohol was probably the major health hazard, less from long-term effects than from accidents and vio- lence, neither of which could be dealt with effectively by

The honourable Ellen Fairclough. Photo by FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images.

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improvements in medical service. Native people drank for the same reasons that other socio-culturally dis- located and economically disadvantaged people around the world did: out of frustration and a desire to escape. The First Nations were slow to organize to improve their con- ditions. A number of Saskatchewan groups merged into the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians at the end of the 1950s, however, and in 1961 the National Indian Council was formed “to promote unity among Indian people, the betterment of people of Indian ancestry in Canada, and to create a better understanding of Indian and non-In- dian relationships” (quoted in Patterson, 1972: 177).

The Growth of the State Government at all levels—federal, provincial, and municipal—grew extremely rapidly after the war. For the Dominion government, the extension of its power and authority represented a continuation of wartime momentum. For provincial governments, extensions of power were necessary to counter federal incursions in areas traditionally reserved for the provinces. All levels of government found the Canadian public responsive

Doctors and nurses of Indian and Northern health Services check the health of Aboriginal people at a clinic at a hudson’s Bay Company post, 1945. Only at the close of the war did the Canadian government begin to show concern about the serious discrepancies between Aboriginal health and that of most Canadians. lAC, 1983-120 NPC.

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to the introduction of new social services, even if it was piecemeal. The emergence of a much more powerful and costly public sector was fuelled partly by increased social programs, partly by the growth of a Canadian public enterprise system after the war.

While the Canadian public enterprise system went back to the nineteenth century, the development of Crown corporations greatly accelerated during and especially after World War II. Both federal and prov- incial governments created Crown corporations, pub- licly owned and operated. They modelled management structures on private enterprise and usually admin- istered these corporations on a hands-off basis. Many Crown corporations came into existence to provide important services that could not be profitably offered by private enterprise. There was a tendency for public enterprise, almost by definition, to risk unprofitability. The CCF government of Saskatchewan created many Crown corporations from the time of its election in 1944. One of the largest public enterprises of the 1950s, the St Lawrence Seaway, was a Crown corporation. For many rural Canadians the extension of electricity into all but the most remote corners of the country was a great development of the post-war period. Many provinces consolidated electric utilities in Crown cor- porations after the war to extend services. The federal government had hoped to expand Canada’s social ser- vices after the war, at least partly to justify continuing control of the major tax fields it had acquired under wartime emergency conditions. At the Dominion– Provincial Conference on Reconstruction, which began on 6 August 1945 (the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan), Ottawa discovered that not all the provinces were willing to withdraw permanently from the fields of personal and corporate income tax. Quebec and Ontario, particularly, were equally unenthusiastic about surrendering their constitutional rights to social services. The provincial rebuff to Ottawa in 1945 did not mean that the Dominion gave up on social security measures. Both funding and constitutional haggling, however, would be continuing problems.

While we often talk about the Canadian wel- fare state, there is little evidence that many people in Canada, much less in the federal government, had any notion of a truly comprehensive and integrated national

social security system that would include full employ- ment, housing, and education as social rights of all Canadians. Social protection in Canada would instead grow a step at a time through the activities of all levels of government. Sometimes new programs responded to overt public demand, sometimes they met obvious public need. Frequently job creation was the immedi- ate rationale for a social program. Often a particular program of social protection was intended to provide a platform on which a government or political party could campaign. Political proponents of such programs hoped that the opposition would demur, thus providing a con- venient election issue. Oppositions frequently failed to take the bait, accepting the programs and avoiding electoral battles. A patchwork of social programs thus emerged in fits and starts.

Canada ended the war with a limited federal pen- sion program, a universal family allowance scheme, and housing legislation designed chiefly to provide employment. In 1945 Ottawa had also proposed to the provinces a national universal pension scheme for Canadians over 70 (with a means test provincially administered for those 65 to 69), a national public assistance scheme for the unemployed, and a health insurance scheme to be shared by the provinces and the federal government. The almost inevitable failure of the Dominion–Provincial Conference on Reconstruction to achieve these objectives meant that federal progress on social protection moved ahead extremely slowly. Apart from the creation of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation to assist in providing low-cost mortgage loans to Canadian families and a limited home-building program (10,000 houses per year), little happened on the housing front in the 15 years after 1945. On the health-care front, the government in 1948 established a fund for health research and hospital con- struction, but did little else on health until 1957 when it passed the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act. This legislation allowed the federal government to provide 50 per cent of the cost of provincial hospital insurance plans. A new Old Age Security Act of 1951 provided a $40-per-month pension to all Canadians over the age of 70, but still insisted on a means test for those between 65 and 69. In 1956 a limited federal Unemployment Assistance Act with a means test passed

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Parliament. Education remained almost entirely a prov- incial matter before 1960.

In 1945, the last year of the war, federal expendi- ture was just over $5 billion, with another $451 million spent by the provinces and $250 million by munici- palities. In 1960 the Dominion still spent $5 billion, although far less on the military, but provincial gov- ernments now spent $2.5 billion and municipalities another $1.7 billion. Much of the increase went to social services. The result was a vast expansion in the numbers of government employees. In 1945, the last year of the war, the Dominion had 30,240 permanent civil servants and 85,668 temporary ones. At the beginning of 1961, it employed 337,416 Canadians, most of them “perma- nent” and many of them female. Both provincial and municipal employment grew even faster. The provinces employed 50,000 in 1946 and 257,000 in 1966, while the municipalities increased from 56,000 in 1946 to 224,000 two decades later. By 1960 there was a sense (at least on the federal level) that matters could get out of hand. The Diefenbaker government in that year created the Royal Commission on Government Organization to improve efficiency and economy. It was chaired by J. Grant Glassco (1905–68).

The Shape of Politics At the federal level there were two major parties, the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. In this per- iod there were other federal parties as well, chiefly the CCF and Social Credit. The nature of the Canadian electoral system—particularly the “first past the post” method of determining victorious candidates in single-member con- stituencies—combined with the continued presence of a multiplicity of parties to reduce to inconsequence the relationship between the popular vote and the number of seats in the House of Commons. True political man- dates were difficult to find in such electoral results. The Liberals never won more than 50 per cent of the popu- lar vote in any election in the period 1945–60, although they came close in 1949 and 1954. Only the Diefenbaker government of 1958 was elected by more than half of actual votes cast. The correlation between popular vote and number of seats could be quite low for both major

and minor parties. The system tended to translate any edge in the popular vote for a major party into consider- ably larger numbers of seats and to dissipate votes for other parties. Third parties were much better off if their support was concentrated in a few ridings (as was true for Social Credit) and not spread widely across the coun- try (as was the case for the CCF). In 1953, for example, the Liberals had 48.8 per cent of the popular vote to 31 per cent for the PCs, 11.3 per cent for the CCF, and 5.4 per cent for the Social Credit Party. These percentages translated into 171 Liberal seats, 51 PC, 23 CCF, and 15 Social Credit.

The Liberals had a number of advantages in the pursuit of continued federal power, of which two were absolutely critical. Above all they had the ongoing support of Quebec, which elected one of the largest blocks of seats in the House of Commons. Support from francophone Quebec had come to the Liberals in the 1890s following the ascension of Laurier to the Liberal leadership and the recent memory of the execution of Louis Riel, was solidified during the Conscription Crisis of the Great War, and was further confirmed by Mackenzie King’s management of that same issue dur- ing World War II. The Liberals did not lose a federal election in Quebec between 1896 and 1958, usually win- ning more than three-quarters of the available seats. To triumph nationally without Quebec’s support, an oppos- ition party needed to win the vast majority of seats in the remainder of the country, including Ontario (in which the two major parties were always fairly evenly matched). The Tories did win anglophone Canada in 1957. Such a victory could produce only a minority gov- ernment, however. The Diefenbaker sweep of 1958 was the exception that proved the rule. In other elections the Liberals were able to persuade Quebec’s francophone voters that the competing parties were unsympathetic to French Canada.

The apparent Liberal stranglehold on Quebec had its impact on the other parties, particularly in terms of choice of leaders and electoral strategies. During this period, neither the Progressive Conservatives nor the CCF ever seriously considered selecting a leader from Quebec—not even a unilingual English-speaker, let alone a French Canadian. Nor did the other par- ties make much of an effort to campaign in French

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4019 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

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402 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Biography

Son of a Methodist clergyman, Lester Pearson (1897– 1972) served as a stretcher bearer with the Canadian Army Medical Corps during World War I before trans- ferring to the Royal Flying Corps. His military career ended when he was hit by a London bus. Following com- pletion of a BA in history at the University of Toronto in 1919, he won a fellowship at the University of Oxford, playing hockey for Britain in the 1920 Winter Olympics. He remained a keen sports fan throughout his life. After some years teaching history at the University of Toronto, he became the most important of O.D. Skelton’s “young men of talent” at External Affairs. This group was once described by Skelton as individuals of “all-round ability, capable of performing in widely different assignments at short notice.” From 1935 to 1940 he was first secretary in the Canadian High Commission in London, and fol- lowed this appointment in 1942 with a similar posting at the Canadian Legation in Washington before becom- ing Canadian Ambassador to the United States in 1945. He was part of the Canadian delegation to the con- ference that founded the United Nations, and in 1946

became deputy minister at External Affairs, where he worked tirelessly to fit Canada into the post-war world.

Pearson continued this work after entering pol- itics in 1949 and becoming Minister of External Affairs. Disliked by the Americans for being soft on Communism and not a very ardent Cold Warrior, his proposal for a United Nations peacekeeping force in Suez in 1956 won him a Nobel Peace Prize, setting Canada on its way as a peacekeeper. In January 1958 Pearson became leader of a Liberal Party out of office for the first time in over 20 years. He rebuilt the party and became Prime Minister of a minority government in April 1963. One of his first actions was to agree to arm American missiles based on Canadian soil with nuclear warheads, thus ending a controversy that had bedevilled the Diefenbaker government for years. In office, Pearson was not outstandingly successful. His government had many problems, and the lack of a majority in Parliament made virtually every day an adventure. Pearson himself was not good at the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate, especially when com-

Lester Bowles (Mike) Pearson

Canada, except in 1958. The Liberal Party, therefore, continued its historic collaboration with francophone Quebec. It alternated its leaders between anglo- phones and francophones, following Mackenzie King (1919–48) with Louis St Laurent (1948–57) and Lester B. Pearson (1958–68). This association tended to polar- ize Canadian federal politics. The Liberals also did well with other francophone voters, particularly the Acadians of New Brunswick.

But the Liberal political advantage was not con- fined to support from francophones. While national pol- itical parties needed to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters across the nation in order to gain power, only the Liberals consistently succeeded in this appeal, chiefly

by staking out their political ground outside French Canada slightly to the left of centre. Mackenzie King had specialized in adopting the most popular goals of the welfare state, often lifting them shamelessly from the platform of the CCF, a practice his successors continued. The Liberals preferred to find urbane, well-educated leaders from the professional middle classes, oriented to federal service and politics. Each man had his own expertise. Mackenzie King was a professional labour consultant and negotiator who had studied economics at Chicago and Harvard and had written a well-known book entitled Industry and humanity (1918). St Laurent was a former law professor at Laval, who became a highly successful corporation lawyer and president of

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4039 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

pared to the oratorical flourishes of Diefenbaker, his Conservative counterpart. Both at home and abroad times were changing. The world was no longer particu- larly sympathetic to Canada’s self-proclaimed role as a middle power, and Canadians were very much of two minds about both the military and the nation’s foreign obligations. The integration of Canada’s armed forces, a major policy initiative of Pearson’s government, was a tough sell. Moreover, the emergence of a new attitude of independence on the part of Quebec led to various efforts, often stumbling, to conciliate Quebec. Despite the problems, Pearson’s governments had some tri- umphs, including the introduction of an enhanced pen- sion plan, the start of a universal medicare system, and a largely triumphal Centennial Year (marred mainly by French President Charles de Gaulle’s notorious “Vive le Québec” speech in Montreal in the summer of 1967). Pearson retired from office in 1968 and was replaced by Pierre Trudeau.

lester B. Pearson. Duncan Cameron, lAC, e007150488.

the Canadian Bar Association. Pearson had begun as a history professor at the University of Toronto before joining the Department of External Affairs as a manda- rin and professional diplomat. None of these men had earned a doctorate, but all held civilian appointments that in our own time would probably require one.

The Progressive Conservative Party also had three leaders in this period: John Bracken (1942–8), George Drew (1948–56), and John Diefenbaker (1956–67). Bracken and Drew had been successful provincial premiers with little federal experience, while Diefenbaker had been an opposition spokesman in the House of Commons from 1940. Bracken had been a university professor (of field husbandry) and administrator before entering politics.

The other two had been small-town lawyers. All three were regarded as being to the left of their parties, and the PC party platforms of these years looked decidedly progressive. Diefenbaker was sui generis, a brilliant if old-fashioned public orator and genuine western popu- list. All the PC leaders had strong sympathies for the ordinary underprivileged Canadian, although only Diefenbaker managed to convince the public of his con- cerns. None of these men spoke French comfortably, and they left what campaigning was done in Quebec to others.

The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation had emerged from the war with high hopes, gaining 15.6 per cent of the popular vote and 28 members of Parliament in the 1945 federal election. Its popularity decreased

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404 A History of the Canadian Peoples

regularly thereafter, however. By 1958 it was reduced to eight MPs and 9.5 per cent of the popular vote. This erosion of support came about partly because the CCF was mistakenly thought by some to be associated with international Communism, and partly because much of the Canadian electorate regarded it as both too radical and too doctrinaire. The CCF showed no strength east of Ontario and was not a credible national alternative to the two major parties. After its 1958 defeat, the CCF remobilized through an alliance with organized labour (the Canadian Labour Congress), which in 1961 would produce the New Democratic Party under the leader- ship of former Saskatchewan Premier T.C. (Tommy) Douglas. The Social Credit Party won some scattered seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan after the war, but would achieve prominence only after Robert Thompson (b. 1914) became president of the Social Credit Association of Canada in 1960 and party leader in 1961.

Liberal dominance before 1957 was moderated less by the opposition parties than by other factors. One was the increased size and scope of the apparatus of bureau- cracy, including a “mandarinate” at the top of the civil service. Powerful senior civil servants stayed in their posts despite changes of minister or government. They provided most of the policy initiatives for the govern- ment. Another important limitation was the force of public opinion, which often restrained policy initiatives and provided a public sense of fair play. The Liberals under St Laurent lost the 1957 election for many rea- sons, but one of the most critical was a public sense that they had become too arrogant. Government closure of debate over the Trans-Canada Pipeline in 1956 served as a symbol for Liberal contempt of the democratic pro- cess. As the new leader in 1958, Lester Pearson blun- dered in, challenging the minority government of John Diefenbaker to resign in his favour without offering any compelling reasons for so doing.

At the provincial level, few provinces enjoyed genu- ine two-party politics. Long-governing parties with near monopolies were common, and even in Atlantic Canada, where there was a long tradition of trying to keep prov- incial and federal governments of the same party, the party in power was not necessarily Liberal. The Tories,

under Robert Stanfield, took over Nova Scotia in 1956; Tories ran New Brunswick from 1951 to 1961. Quebec was controlled by Maurice Duplessis’s Union Nationale. The Tory “Big Blue Machine” ran Ontario, while Alberta (1935–72) and British Columbia (beginning in 1952) were governed by Social Credit. In British Columbia, W.A.C. Bennett (1900–79) took advantage of an electoral change (the preferential ballot), designed by a warring coalition to keep the socialists out of power, to win enough seats to form a minority government in 1952. Continuing to exploit brilliantly the social polarities of a province div- ided into free enterprisers and socialists, Bennett never looked back. The CCF governed Saskatchewan. There was no provincial Liberal government west of Quebec between 1945 and 1960, although the coalition govern- ment of Manitoba was usually headed by a Liberal.

Liberal success in Newfoundland was a product chiefl y of unusual local circumstances. Joseph R. Small- wood parlayed strong Liberal support for Confederation with Canada into an unbroken tenure as the province’s first Premier from 1949 until early 1972. After a some- what complicated journey, Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949. Effectively bankrupt, the province had surren- dered its elective government to Great Britain in 1933. It was governed until 1949 by an appointed commission, which balanced the budget but was not very popular. After 1945 the British government sought to get rid of its colonial obligations and ordered a National Convention elected in 1946 to decide Newfoundland’s future. In a preliminary referendum in 1948, 69,400 voters (44.5 per cent) voted for a return to the pre-1933 situation, 64,066 (41.1 per cent) voted for Confederation with Canada, and 22,311 (14.3 per cent) voted for the continuation of the Commission of Government. Seven weeks later, on 22 July 1948, a second referendum brought an 84.9 per cent turnout: 78,323 Newfoundlanders (52.3 per cent) voted for Canada and 71,344 (47.7 per cent) for the resumption of Crown colony status. Confederation did best outside the Avalon Peninsula and St John’s. The Canadian cab- inet accepted the decision on 27 July 1948, allowing Smallwood, now leader of the Liberal Party, to head an interim government that easily won the province’s first election in many years.

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4059 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

Born near Gambo, Newfoundland, the son of a boot- maker, “Joey” Smallwood (1900–91) became a journal- ist and spent some years in New York City as a “pro- gressive” reporter. He returned to Newfoundland to become involved in politics, but became better known as an amateur historian and radio broadcaster; his radio program, The Barrelman, was extremely popular during the late 1930s. During World War II he operat- ed a pig farm near the American air base at Gander, feeding the animals with garbage from the base. When Britain decided in 1945 that Newfoundland would be given a chance through referendum to de- cide on the form of government that might replace the appointed Commission of Government installed by Britain in 1933, Smallwood resumed his political

activity. A supporter of Confederation with Canada, Smallwood was elected to the Newfoundland National Convention established in 1946 to determine the col- ony’s constitutional future, and then was chosen to advise on the options to be placed on the referendum ballot. At the National Convention, he spoke often and effectively against a return to independent government and spent the next two years campaigning for Canada, much assisted by the promise of family allowances for every Newfoundland family. He led the pro-Canada forces to a narrow victory in the second of two referen- dums in 1948, and helped convince the Canadian gov- ernment to agree to Confederation despite the relatively small margin of the referendum vote in favour of joining Canada. As a reward, he was appointed by Canada as the new province’s first premier, and he rode this advan- tage to a Liberal Party electoral victory in May 1949. He would remain in office until 1972.

In power, Smallwood’s government began by attempting a variety of modernizations, including the establishment of industrial plants, educational reform (especially the replacement of denominational schools with a public system and the establishment of Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1949), and efforts to move the inhabitants of remote outports into larger “resettle- ment centres.” Most of the reforms were controversial and heavily criticized, and Premier Smallwood in later years became increasingly involved with corporate million- aires (who got concessions of raw resources) while fend- ing off in the legislature attacks on his family’s behaviour as a St John’s landlord. Smallwood ran the Newfoundland government as a personal fiefdom, remaining in power largely because of the introduction of new spending by Ottawa. His party was finally beaten in the 1971 election, and he resigned from office in early 1972. He made sev- eral comeback efforts before finally leaving public life in 1977. In retirement he edited a four-volume Encyclopedia of Newfoundland, which may well prove to be his most lasting contribution to his province.

Joseph Roberts Smallwood. Alamy Image ID: B65N9A, copyright © Bert hoferichter/Alamy.

Joseph Roberts (Joey) Smallwood

Biography

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406 A History of the Canadian Peoples

French Canada after World War II The scope of social and economic change in French Canada, especially after 1939, went largely unheralded in the remainder of the nation until the 1960s. Pierre Elliott Trudeau began his editorial introduction to his book on the Asbestos strike of 1949—entitled “The Province of Quebec at the Time of the Strike”—with the words, “I surely do not have to belabour the point that in the half century preceding the asbestos strike, the material basis of Canadian society in general, and of Quebec society in particular, was radically altered” (Trudeau, 1974: 1). But in English Canada before 1960, the popular press was fascinated by Maurice Duplessis and his conservative Union Nationale; by ignoring the changes that were actually occurring, journalists pre- sented a distorted picture of Quebec society. Duplessis mixed heavy-handed attacks on civil liberties and trade unions with traditional nationalism and laissez- faire economic policy, while ignoring the underlying social changes and debates within Quebec. For many English-speaking Canadians, Quebec remained stereo- typed as a priest-ridden rural society inhabited by a simple people. Because Quebec had been lagging in the socio-economic aspects of modern industrialism, its rapid catch-up became more internally unsettling and externally bewildering. As Trudeau pointed out, by the 1950s Quebec was no longer behind the remainder of Canada in most social and economic indicators. Many Canadian commentators outside Quebec who were aware of the province’s transformation assumed that the continued electoral success of Duplessis and the Union Nationale represented confusion on the part of many French Canadians. Since social and economic modern- ization, in the long run, should lead to French-Canadian assimilation into the majority society of North America, said external observers, in the short run it must be caus- ing internal chaos.

The standard post-war assumptions about Quebec’s modernization—that it meant short-term confusion and long-term loss of distinctiveness—were not par- ticularly valid. The socio-economic transformation was accompanied by a series of profound ideological

shifts within Quebec society that shook its very foun- dations. The patterns of that development ought to have been comprehensible to anyone familiar with what was happening elsewhere in developing societies. The power and authority of defenders of traditional Quebec nationalism, including the Roman Catholic Church, were being swept away by a new secular nationalism that had become fully articulated under Duplessis. The main opposition to the new nationalism came less from the old nationalism than from a renewed current of nineteenth-century liberalism adapted to twentieth- century Quebec conditions. In the 1960s these two com- peting ideologies would find popular labels as “separa- tism” and “federalism.”

The new nationalism was profoundly different from the old in its intellectual assumptions, however similar the two versions could sound in rhetorical manifestos. In the first place, while often espousing Catholic val- ues, the new nationalism was profoundly anticlerical. It opposed the entrenched role of the Church in Quebec

Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis giving a speech, 1950. Duplessis (1890–1959) dominated Quebec politics as Premier from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 until his death in 1959. Le Soleil/The Canadian Press.

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4079 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

society. In the second place, the new nationalism had no desire to return to a golden age of agricultural ruralism, but instead celebrated the new industrial and urban realities of modern Quebec. It insisted that Quebec nationalism had to be based on the aspirations of the newly emerging French-Canadian working class, which meant that nationalists had to lead in the battle for socio-economic change. While scorning international socialism because it would not pay sufficient atten- tion to the particular cultural dimensions of French Canada, the new nationalists pre-empted much of the vocabulary and economic analysis of Marxism, includ- ing the essential concept of proletarian class solidarity. In their insistence on nationalism, they were hardly traditional Marxists. The post-war world, however, saw many examples of similar movements that combined Marxist analysis with national aspirations. The new nationalists—particularly the younger, more militant ones—were able to find intellectual allies and models everywhere. The external neo-Marxism most commonly cited came from the French ex-colonial world or from Latin America. The new nationalists had long insisted that the key to their program was an active and mod- ern state. The homogeneous secular state represented the highest articulation of the nation and was the best means of liberating humanity. Traditionalist forces in Quebec had historically collaborated with forces in Canada to keep French Canadians in their place. The active state envisioned by the nationalists was Quebec, not Canada.

Opposition to the new nationalism came from a tiny but influential group of small-l liberal intellectuals centred on the journal Cité libre. This publication was founded by Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919–2000) and Gérard Pelletier (1919–1997), among others, at the height of the Duplessis regime, to which it was a reaction. These liberals were as revisionist in spirit as the new nation- alists, but they were simultaneously suspicious of what they regarded as simplistic doctrinaire thinking. They were committed to the new rationalism of the new social sciences. As Trudeau wrote in an oft-quoted manifesto:

We must systematically question all political categories bequeathed to us by the intervening generation. . . . The time has arrived for us to

borrow from architecture the discipline called “functional,” to cast aside the thousands of past prejudices which encumber the present, and to build for the new man. Overthrow all totems, transgress all taboos. Better still, consider them as dead ends. Without passion, let us be intelligent. (Quoted in Behiels, 1985: 69)

Trudeau’s small group was even more fiercely anti- clerical than the new nationalists, perhaps because its members still believed in the need for a revitalized Catholic humanism and criticized the Church from within. It was equally critical of traditional French- Canadian nationalism, which it regarded as outdated, inadequate, and oppressive. Cité libre preferred to locate French Canada within an open multicultural and multinational state and society. Not only trad- itional nationalism but all nationalism was unprogres- sive and undemocratic.

At the end of the 1950s most Quebec intellectuals had arrived at some similar conclusions, however differ- ent the routes. The traditional nationalism in Quebec— of Catholicism, of the Union Nationale—led nowhere. The dead hand of the Church had to be removed. A mod- ern state, secular and interventionist, was needed to complete Quebec’s modernization.

There was some disagreement over the nature of this modern state. The new nationalists were inclined to see it as a liberating embodiment of French-Canadian collectivities, while the Cité libre people saw it more as a regulating mechanism. It only remained to persuade the general populace of the province of the need for change.

Signs of the profound changes that had occurred and were still occurring in Quebec could be seen in the province’s intellectual and artistic communities. In 1948 Paul-Émile Borduas released his famous mani- festo, written originally in 1947. Refus global was a rambling series of passionate, almost poetic utter- ances attacking virtually everything in Quebec soci- ety at the time. Some young painters were not satisfied with the combination of spontaneity and traditional spatial perspectives advocated by Borduas. Led by Fernand Leduc, they produced a manifesto in 1955— signed “Les Plasticiens”—that was less inflammatory than Refus global, but that also insisted on artistic

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408 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Refus Global

Document

The magical harvest magically reaped from the field of the Unknown lies ready for use. All the true poets have worked at gathering it in. Its powers of transform- ation are as great as the violent reactions it originally provoked, and as remarkable as its later unavailability (after more than two centuries, there is not a single copy of Sade to be found in our bookshops; Isidore Ducasse, dead for over a century, a century of revolution and slaughter, is still, despite our having become inured to filth and corruption, too powerful for the queasy con- temporary conscience).

All the elements of this treasure as yet remain inaccessible to our present-day society. Every precious part of it will be preserved intact for future use. It was built up with spontaneous enthusiasm, in spite of, and outside, the framework of civilization. And its social effects will only be felt once society’s present needs are recognized.

Meanwhile our duty is plain. The ways of society must be abandoned once and

for all; we must free ourselves from its utilitarian spirit. We must not tolerate our mental or physical faculties’ being wittingly left undeveloped. We must refuse to close our eyes to vice, to deceit perpetuated under the cloak of imparted knowledge, of services rendered, of payment due. We must refuse to be trapped within the

walls of the common mould—a strong citadel, but easy enough to escape. We must avoid silence (do with us what you will, but hear us you must), avoid fame, avoid privileges (except that of being heeded)—avoid them all as the stigma of evil, indifference, servility. We must refuse to serve, or to be used for, such despicable ends. We must avoid deliberate design as the harmful weapon of reason. Down with them both! Back they go!

MAKE WAY FOR MAGIC! MAKE WAY FOR OBJECTIVE

MYSTERY!

MAKE WAY FOR LOVE!

MAKE WAY FOR WHAT IS NEEDED!

We accept full responsibility for the consequences of our refusal.

Self-interested plans are nothing but the stillborn product of their author.

While passionate action is animated with a life of its own.

We shall gladly take full responsibility for the future. Deliberate, rational effect can only fashion the present from the ashes of the past.

Our passions must necessarily, spontaneously, unpredictably forge the future. . . .

We need not worry about the future until we come to it.

In 1948, in Montreal, the painter Paul-Émile Borduas (1905–60) released a manifesto signed by himself and a number of other Quebec artists and intellectuals. An excerpt follows.

Source: Ramsay Cook, ed., French-Canadian Nationalism: An Anthology (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1969), 280–1. Reprinted with permission of the author.

freedom. It said that its subscribers were drawn to “plastic qualities: tone, texture, forms, lines, and the final unity between elements” (quoted in Davis, 1979: 18). Abstractionism quickly ceased to be regarded as particularly avant-garde in Quebec. In the theatre, some attempt was made to break out of the constraints imposed by realism. One particularly striking example

was le Marcheur (The Walker) by Yves Thériault, which was presented in 1950. It featured a dominant father (never seen on stage), who controlled the lives of every- one around him at the same time that he united them in their hatred for him. The father could be seen as the traditional French-Canadian paternal tyrant, or Premier Duplessis, or the Church.

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4099 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

Federal–Provincial Relations The 1945–6 Dominion–Provincial Conference on Recon- struction had served as the arena for the renewal after the war of constitutional conflict between the Dominion and its provinces. In August 1945 the federal govern- ment tabled a comprehensive program for an extended welfare state based on the tax collection and economic policy of a strong central government. It sought the co-operation of the provinces to implement its plans. Ottawa wanted agreement that it could keep the emer- gency powers it had acquired to fight the war, especially the power to collect all major taxes. The Conference adjourned for study, finally meeting again in April 1946. At this point Quebec and Ontario in tandem simultan- eously denounced centralization while insisting on a return to provincial autonomy. Ontario had some social programs of its own in the planning stages. Quebec, led by Duplessis, wanted to keep control of social powers in order not to have them implemented. In the wake of this meeting, the federal government offered a “tax rental” scheme to the provinces, whereby it would collect cer- tain taxes (on incomes, corporations, and inheritances) and distribute payment to the provinces. Ontario and Quebec went their own ways, but the remaining prov- inces (and Newfoundland after 1949) accepted tax rental, which (along with suitable constitutional amend- ment) had been recommended by the Rowell-Sirois Commission in 1940.

Constitutional revision was no easy matter to con- template. As we have seen, conflict had been literally built into Confederation by the British North America Act. The Dominion of Canada was a federal state, with a central government in Ottawa and local governments in the provinces. While the intention of the Fathers of Confederation had been to produce a strong central gov- ernment, they had been forced by the provinces (espe- cially what would become Quebec) to guarantee them separate identities. These identities were protected through an explicit division of powers between federal and provincial governments in sections 91 and 92 of the British North America Act of 1867. The division thus cre- ated reflected the state of political thinking in the 1860s.

It gave the federal arm the authority to create a viable national economy. It gave the provinces the power to protect what at the time were regarded as local and cul- tural matters. Some of the provincial powers, such as those over education, were acquired because the prov- inces demanded them. Others, such as the powers over the health and welfare of provincial inhabitants, were not regarded by the Fathers as critical for a national government. Lighthouses and post offices were more important than public medical care in the 1860s.

Over time the division of powers gave the prov- inces the responsibility, in whole or in part, for many of the expensive aspects of government, including health, education, and welfare. Provincial ability to raise the revenue needed to meet these obligations was limited, however. Many important aspects of welfare came to be shared among governments. The BNA Act’s division of powers was clearly dated, ambiguous, and contentious. Despite the miracle of Canada’s survival, the Constitution was constantly strained. Then, as now, critics of the existing system stressed its tensions, while its defenders lauded its capacity for survival.

One of the key problems was the settling of disputes over interpretation of the BNA Act itself. The Act provided for a judicature modelled on British arrangements, with a Supreme Court at the top. This Court, established in 1875, was not always the court of final recourse on con- stitutional matters. Until 1949 constitutional questions could be finally appealed to a British imperial court, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. In the years after Confederation, the JCPC had interpreted the Constitution in ways highly favourable to the provinces. Even with the successful elimination, after the war, of this example of continued colonialism, amendment of the Constitution was extremely difficult. Amending procedures were not spelled out in the Act itself. The convention had grown up that amendment required the consent of all provinces, which was not easy to obtain. Moreover, such amendment could ultimately be achieved only by an Act of the British Parliament.

By the mid-twentieth century, Canadian political leaders had worked out a variety of informal means for dealing with matters of constitutional disagreement. One of the most important was the federal–provincial confer- ence, which was employed regularly after 1945 to deal with

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410 A History of the Canadian Peoples

financial business and gradually came to address consti- tutional matters as well. So long as the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis represented Quebec at these gatherings, Quebec stood by a traditional view of the 1867 arrangement. The province protected its existing powers fiercely, but did not particularly seek to expand them. Another dimension was added to the post-war con- stitutional situation through John Diefenbaker’s insistence on the introduction of a Canadian Bill of Rights, however.

The Americans had produced their Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to their 1787 Constitution) as part of the process of ratifying the Constitution. In Canada, the British constitutional tradition insisted that Parliament was supreme, while the courts automatically protected against the abuse of power. The BNA Act had protected some minority rights, but had displayed little interest in the rights of the individual, which were cru- cial to the American approach. This notion of spelling out rights—for individuals or collective groups—was a pot- entially profound change in the Canadian Constitution. Diefenbaker’s Bill for the Recognition and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, fulfilling campaign promises of 1957 and 1958, passed the fed- eral Parliament in 1960. As it was limited to the federal level, and the rights it protected could be overridden by national emergencies, it had little immediate impact. A full 10 years would go by before the Canadian Supreme Court would hear a case based on the Bill of Rights, but its implications for constitutional reform—particularly when combined with the growth of new and politically conscious minorities in the 1960s—were substantial.

At the end of the 1950s the Canadian Constitution stood on the cusp of great change. Canadians ought to have recognized that neither constitutional nor federal– provincial problems were solely the product of the pres- ence of Quebec in Confederation. Nevertheless, the issue of Quebec became inextricably bound up with increas- ing federal–provincial tensions. Constitutional reform would become the panacea for the nation’s divisions.

The Rise of Canadian Culture Culture in Canada and Canadian Culture (the two were never quite synonymous) after World War II emerged

as major public issues. This was a major development of the post-war period. Culture had not been entirely ignored before 1945, but it had always taken a back seat to political and economic matters. Canada’s cultural performance (or lack of it) was explained chiefly in terms of priorities. Culture was a luxury that would come only with political and economic maturity. Such maturity was now at hand. A number of parallel developments affecting culture occurred after 1945. One of the most obvious saw both federal and provincial governments attempt to articulate and implement public cultural policy. The policy initiatives were driven chiefly by concerns to protect homegrown culture from being overwhelmed by external influen- ces. They helped create a variety of new cultural insti- tutions in the post-war period. On the creative level, many contemporary artists began deliberately culti- vating a naive or native style, with considerable public success, thus helping to breach the older boundaries of art and culture. Other artists enthusiastically joined international movements.

Canada was hardly alone in discovering that cul- ture in its various forms was an important matter in the post-war world. Few nations, however, had a greater need for conscious cultural policy than Canada. It was a nation without a single unifying language and with at least two of what many after 1945 began to call “found- ing cultures.” At the same time, francophones and anglo- phones often meant something quite different when they talked about culture. While nobody doubted that French Canada’s culture was distinctive, defining the culture of the rest of the nation was more problematic. More than most nations, Canada was exposed to external cultural influences, particularly from its behemoth neighbour to the south, the United States. The Americans purveyed to Canada and then to the world a profoundly American cultural style, anchored in popular culture.

In 1945 (or at any point earlier), Canada had consider- ably more cultural activity than most Canadians would have recognized at the time. One of the problems was that cultural commentators relied on highly restrictive critical canons and categories. Much of Canada’s cultural life went on outside the boundaries of what critics and experts usually regarded as Culture with a capital C. Canadians became involved in culture on a non-professional basis for their own pleasure. The resultant culture came from

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4119 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

From the beginning of World War II on, Canadian

control of the Arctic faced a serious challenge from

the United States, and especially from American mil-

itary scientists, who sought a key role for the region in

security arrangements and were able to take advan-

tage of the Russian threat during the Cold War to

achieve it. Canada, of course, was situated between

the two superpowers and directly in the path of the

probable line of air attack across the Arctic. Although

in early 1945 a Canadian working committee had rec-

ommended joint co-operation with the Americans,

provided that all military installations in Canada and

Newfoundland remained under Canadian control,

that principle quickly became difficult to maintain.

The Americans began in 1946 by proposing a line

of weather stations across the North, assuming that

since Canada had limited financial resources, the

Canadians would be pleased to allow Uncle Sam to

build and run them. In early 1947 the Canadian cab-

inet approved the Joint Arctic Weather Station pro-

gram. In 1950 three new radar lines were proposed,

and the Pinetree Line, running across the fiftieth

parallel, was begun in 1951 with the Americans pro-

viding two-thirds of the necessary men and money.

This line was too close to population centres—and

too far south—to be useful, and it was soon followed

by the Mid-Canada Line—90 unmanned stations and

eight large control stations along the fifty-fifth par-

allel employing Doppler radar—built and manned

by Canada between 1954 and 1957. In November

1954 the US and Canada agreed to a third radar line

along the Arctic coast from Alaska to Baffin Island

at the sixty-ninth parallel. This DEW Line of 22 sta-

tions was funded by the Americans using Canadian

construction firms and some Aboriginal labour. The

early warning systems would be useless without

interceptor aircraft at the ready, and the result was

NORAD, another joint command system dominated

by the Americans. At the same time, the Avro Arrow,

a Canadian aircraft designed as an interceptor, had

to be scrapped. The introduction of intercontinental

ballistic missiles (ICBMs) soon rendered the radar lines

militarily useless, and they were shut down in the

1960s. What the various manoeuvrings over the DEW

Line clearly demonstrated was that Canada could

not afford to defend its vast territories from Soviet

attack, and would have to sacrifice some sovereignty

(officially described as joint co-operation with the

Americans) in order to survive.

BACKGROUNDER Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line

The Dew line and Mid-Canada line. From Shelagh Grant, Polar Imperative: A History of Arctic Sovereignty in North America (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010), 325. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Artic Ocean

Ellesmere Island

Beaufort Sea

Joint Arctic Weather Station

Major military airfield

Barrow

Mould Bay Isachsen

Fort Wainwright

USA (Alaska)

Resolute Bay

Eureka

Alert

Camp Fistclench

GREENLAND

Ontario

QUEBEC

Hopedale

Frobisher Bay

DEW Line Dye sites

BMEWS Flyingdales

Mid-Canada Line

BMEWS Thule

RUSSIA

Chak chi

Sea

Manitoba

Alberta

Yukon

Dawson Creeks

New Foundland

0

0

500 miles

500 kilometer

ICELAND

UNITED KINGDOM

Camp Century

Camp Tuto

Baffin Island

A RT

IC C

IR C

LE

70 º N

80 º N

60 º N

60º W

90º W

50 º N

North Atlants Ocean

British Columbia

Northwest Territories

U S A

Saskachewan

C A N A D A

Hudson Bay

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412 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Vincent Massey (left), chairman of the Royal Commission of Arts, letters, and Sciences, presents Prime Minister louis St laurent with a copy of the Commission’s official report. Chris lund/National Film Board of Canada. lAC, PA-116801.

folk traditions more than from high art. Moreover, it was not necessarily distinctly Canadian. By 1945, Canadian government—particularly at the federal level with the Public Archives, the National Gallery, the National Film Board, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation— already had a substantial if largely unrecognized role in culture. Prime Minister St Laurent was told during the 1949 elections that the Liberals might lose votes to the CCF from “those Canadians who have a distinct national con- sciousness and feel that more should be done to encour- age national culture and strengthen national feeling.” As a result, St Laurent appointed the Royal Commission on

National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, usually known as the Massey Commission after its chair- man, Vincent Massey.

The Massey Commission existed because its time had come. It did not invent a cultural policy but merely pub- licized one. While its recommendations were crucial in increasing government involvement in the arts, they were precisely the ones envisioned in the Commission’s terms of reference, which were in turn a product of considerable lobbying by well-established arts groups. The Commission held extensive public meetings, receiving 462 briefs and listening to 1,200 witnesses. The witnesses, reported its

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4139 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

The strike against the owners of asbestos mines around

Sherbrooke, Quebec, that broke out  in  February

1949 was arguably the most important and influen-

tial labour dispute in the province during the years

of Maurice Duplessis from 1935 to 1959. The strike

polarized the province and closed most of the asbes-

tos mines for four months. It marked the beginning

of the end for Duplessis’s Union Nationale, which had

supported the anglophone owners (both Americans

and Canadians) in their refusal to grant a first contract

to the unions of the Confédération des Travailleurs

Catholiques du Canada (CTCC), which had organized

the industry under secretary-general Jean Marchand

(1918–88). Union demands included the removal of

the dangerous dust from the mill, an automatic check-

off of union dues (the so-called Rand Formula), and a

series of wage increases.

A number of key points characterized this strike.

The first was that working conditions in the mines—

particularly the constant exposure to asbestos dust

and its danger to health—were truly appalling and

caught the attention of the public in and outside

BACKGROUNDER Asbestos Strike of 1949

The 1949 Asbestos strike in Quebec. Metropolitan toronto Reference library.

Continued...

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414 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Quebec. At the time asbestos was a major material

in the construction industry, used inside buildings for

insulation and outside them as an inexpensive siding.

The second point was that the union involved was

a Catholic one, which had previously not been very

militant but had the support not only of the traditional

left in Quebec but also of Catholic clergy, profes-

sionals, and intellectuals in the province. The ardent

support of the strikers by the archbishop of Montreal,

Monseigneur Joseph Charbonneau (1892–1959)—

who announced that “when the working class is the

victim of a conspiracy, it is the duty of the Church

to intervene”—ultimately led to his mysterious retire-

ment from office and his retreat to British Columbia.

Although the CTCC lost the strike, it continued to

grow under Marchand’s leadership through the dec-

ade. The final point is that support for the strike at the

time and for years afterwards helped make the careers

of several young Quebecers, including Marchand,

Gérard Pelletier (editor of the weekly Le Travail), and

Pierre Elliott Trudeau (editor of the review Cité libre

and editor of a major book on the strike, published in

French in 1956). In the book, Trudeau saw the strike as

a symbol of the disconnects in Quebec between its

ideologies and its industrial realities, a diagnosis with

which many historians have agreed.

Danville

St. Georges

to Sherbrooke

Wotton

St. Remi Tingwick

Warwick

Victoriaville

Plessisville

to Québec

E. Broughton

Robertson

Thetford Mines

Black Lake

Coleraine

Québec

U.S.A

Montreal

to Montreal

Asbestos

Pt Nicolet

Map of the Asbestos area east of Montreal. The map appears opposite the title page in the English translation of trudeau’s The Asbestos Strike (toronto: James lorimer, 1974.)

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4159 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

chairperson, represented “13 Federal Government insti- tutions, 7 Provincial Governments, 87 national organiz- ations, 262 local bodies and 35 private commercial radio stations” (Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, letters and Sciences, 1951: 8). In most respects the Massey Commission looked backward

instead of forward. It attempted to promote a Victorian vision of culture. It may have established most of the agenda of federal cultural policy for at least a generation to follow, but that agenda was narrowly conceived.

Despite its mandate to articulate a national cultural policy, especially in radio and television broadcasting,

While the United States refused to recognize as legit-

imate any of the post-war governments in Asia that

were simultaneously Communist and nationalistically

anti-colonial, Canada was on the verge of some form

of recognition of the People’s Republic of  China—

helped by visions of a vast potential new market—

when North Korea invaded American-controlled

South Korea in June 1950.

The resulting Korean conflict—it did not reach

the status of a “war”—provided a severe challenge

to Canada’s international aspirations. The Americans

took advantage of a Soviet boycott of the Security

Council of the United Nations—the boycott’s very

existence denied the myth that Communism was

monolithic—to invoke universal collective security.

The Council recommended that its member nations

assist the Republic of Korea militarily, thus supporting

the unilateral American action already taken by order

of President Harry Truman. The Americans expected

Canadian support for the resultant UN forces, and

Canadian public opinion concurred. The Canadian

government offered three destroyers, calling such

aid “no mere token.” One American official allegedly

commented, “Okay, let’s call it three tokens.” Canada

continued to drag its heels while it desperately sought

volunteers for a “Canadian Army Special Force” com-

prised of over 10,000 men, more than 3,000 from

Quebec. Eventually 26,000 Canadians served in

Korea, with 1,557 casualties and 516 fatalities, 312 in

combat. Canada ultimately supplied eight destroyers

and aircraft that flew supply missions. Korean service

became one of the many aspects of military history

that Canadians have preferred to forget.

While Canada recruited and trained its troops,

events in Korea took a series of startling turns. The

allied army—mainly Americans and South Koreans,

assisted by a single British brigade and some Turkish

and Filipino troops (Canadians were not yet on the

ground in any numbers)—commanded by General

Douglas MacArthur broke out of a defensive position

and steamrolled north across the thirty-eighth par-

allel to the Yalu River. Here they unexpectedly met

Chinese “volunteers,” who pushed the allies south-

ward. MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons,

but President Truman vetoed the idea and ordered

the general home instead. The contending forces

surged back and forth across the thirty-eighth paral-

lel for months, with substantial numbers of Canadian

troops finally entering the fray in early February

1951. Canada constantly worked behind the scenes

towards an armistice, badly straining relations with

the United States in the process. The key show of

strength, however, came over an American UN reso-

lution condemning the Chinese aggression, and

in the end—despite statements of reservations—

Canada voted for it. Canada continued private dis-

agreements with the Americans despite the eventual

peace settlement, but it agreed to leave troops in

Korea as observers, and always publicly supported

the United States.

BACKGROUNDER Canada and the Korean Conflict

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416 A History of the Canadian Peoples

the Crestwood house in Crestwood heights

Document

The Crestwood house seemed often oddly reminiscent of a series of department store windows, charmingly arranged, harmoniously matched in color, but rather cold and empty of life. On more than one occasion an inter- viewer had the experience of waiting while his hostess whisked the plastic covering off the furniture. In such a home one did not find chil- dren’s toys on the living-room rug, or a piece of sewing dropped on the chesterfield or table, with the needle sticking in it and thread or thimble nearby. There was no homely litter to proclaim that family activity went on amidst the inanimate objects, chosen with such care. In some houses one was almost driven to ask, “But where do they live?” In others, the piled magazines and the evidences of hard use indi- cated that a room, though tidy at the moment, was indubitably a “living room.” In still other rooms, it was found that the so-called living room, like the rural parlor, was spared daily wear—this is possible in a large house—while a small den or breakfast nook served the pur- pose. For the outsider, the stage must always be set and ready. Intimates can be brought into a

disordered house with the simple explanation: “This place is a shambles”; the wider circle of acquaintances cannot be received so casually. Certain articles are reserved for the most for- mal display only. In one house, a handsome silver tea service on an ornate Sheffield tray was enveloped in plastic, and the covering would not be removed for an outsider dining informally with the family. The furnishing of this elaborate stage is an arduous undertaking. The people of Crestwood Heights appear to occupy a middle position, not only in the class structure, but also in the hierarchy of taste. The majority of them are not in a position to acquire the prestige-giving objects commonly found in upper-class homes. They lack the excess wealth, the judgment, the contacts, and often, the desire, to secure them; yet they are compelled to collect material possessions from which they can derive pleasure and status. . . . But these purchases pose nagging questions. Is the object still in style? Is it passé? Or is it already “coming back?” Crestwooders are not in a position to confer respectability upon an item simply because they have given it their

Crestwood Heights (actually Forest Hill Village, in the 1950s a suburb north of downtown Toronto) was the site of one of the best-known sociological and ethnographic studies of a community done in North America in the 1950s. The study was originally undertaken as a project of the National Committee for Mental Health (Canada) to seek ways of improving the mental health of Canadians. To that end, it focused on home and school in a wealthy suburb close to a big city with an independent school system and a high degree of literacy. The community was perhaps not typical in its high proportion (almost 40 per cent) of Jewish residents. The study unapologetically viewed Canada as part of a North American culture rather than as distinctive from the United States. The following is an excerpt from the resultant book entitled Crestwood Heights.

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Source: John R. Seeley, R. Alexander Sim, Elizabeth W. Loosley, Crestwood Heights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

1956), 51–2.

Inside cover of John R. Seeley, R. Alexander Sim, and Elizabeth W. loosley, Crestwood Heights (toronto: University of toronto Press, 1956). Reprinted with permission of the publisher. What about the Crestwood heights community is conveyed by this artist’s rendering?

patronage, since they themselves still hope to derive status from their purchase. This is a changing, unstable society; there is, for those

who are its most mobile members, a continu- ing need to revalidate the material objects with which the house has been “dressed.”

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418 A History of the Canadian Peoples

the Commission was chiefly interested in elite culture and elitist ways of dealing with it. What needed to be preserved was a culture of excellence that was “reso- lutely Canadian.” In 1951 it recommended the creation of a national television service as quickly as possible. It also wanted both radio and television broadcasting to be “vested in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.” This monopoly would help “to avoid excessive commer- cialism and to encourage Canadian content and the use of Canadian talent” (Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, letters and Sciences, 1951: 305). It supported the expansion of the National Film Board, the National Gallery, the National Museum, the Public Archives, the Library of Parliament, and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of the National Parks Service. It also recommended the extension of

the concept of the National Research Council (for scien- tific research) into the humanities and social sciences through the creation of a Council for the Arts, Letters, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Much of its agenda would be implemented in piecemeal fashion by federal governments over the next decade. The Canada Council, for example, was established in 1957.

Not long after the Massey Commission had reported, the Royal Commission on Broadcasting was formed in 1955, chaired by Robert Fowler (1901–80) of Montreal. It made its final report in 1957. The Fowler Commission had to deal with the shift from radio to television and the prevalence of American-produced records, movies, and shows in both media. It insisted that the century-old Canadian answer to Americanization was for the gov- ernment to provide “conscious stimulation” through

Family watching television, 1950s. This photograph showing a family gathered around the television set in the living room presents a quite accurate picture of what was becoming an increasingly significant part of daily life in this era. Photo: Petrified Collection/ Getty Images.

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The technical name for this machine is the negative

pressure ventilator. It enables a person to breathe

when muscle control is lost, often to poliomyletis, a

highly infectious viral disease. The iron lung became

the symbol for the polio outbreaks in Canada in the

late 1940s and early 1950s. Next to death, it repre-

sented to parents the most feared aspect of the dis-

ease. Polio struck hardest at young children, although

it affected many adults as well. The disease caused

inflammation of motor neurons of the spinal cord

and brainstem, leading to paralysis and difficulty in

breathing. Most polio victims experienced mild flu-

like symptoms and no lasting effects, but others were

seriously affected. In Canada, the most severe out-

break of polio occurred in the years 1949–54, when

11,000 nationally were paralyzed by the disease. It

peaked in 1953 with 9,000 victims and 500 deaths.

Manitoba was the province hardest hit, with over 2,000

cases and the highest incidence of iron lung usage

anywhere in the country. Among notable Canadians

who contracted the disease in their earlier years were

the actor Donald Sutherland and popular music icons

Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. United States President

Franklin D. Roosevelt was significantly paralyzed by

polio from the early 1920s until his death in 1945, and

as a political leader was instrumental in founding the

March of Dimes to fund research on the disease. Not

surprisingly, the epidemic of the early 1950s consider-

ably speeded up emergency research seeking some

kind of preventative solution in the form of a vaccine.

Iron lungs worked by creating a vacuum around

the patient from the neck down. A bellows at the

patient’s feet could be manipulated either manually

or by an electric motor. The bellows caused a change

in pressure within the tube that allowed the patient to

breathe in, and out, sometimes for as long as a week

at a time. The first modern negative pressure venti-

lator was invented by medical researchers at Harvard

University in the late 1920s, and in Canada the device

was first introduced at the Hospital for Sick Children

in Toronto. After the various outbreaks of polio these

machines became increasingly common nationwide.

The original iron lungs were brutal-looking objects,

stark metal tubes from which only the head of the

patient emerged. Their association with polio also did

them no favours, as the fear of the disease gave the

iron lung a perception of fear as well. While certainly a

life-saving or life-extending tool, the iron lung was an

example of modern medicine that—until the testing

and approval in 1955 of the polio vaccine developed

by American virologist and researcher Jonas Salk—

produced a sense of helplessness in Canadian parents.

Material Culture

Iron lung. From the Museum of health Care at Kingston. Used with permission.

Iron Lung

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420 A History of the Canadian Peoples

financial assistance, an approach it clearly favoured. In addition to subsidies and protective measures, the Fowler Commission recommended another cultural strategy: regulated competition with a “mixed system of public and private ownership.” The Diefenbaker government trans- lated Fowler’s recommendations into its Broadcasting Act of 1958, creating the Board of Broadcast Governors to monitor broadcasting to ensure that the service would be “basically Canadian in content and character” (Report of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting, 1957: 8–11).

In September 1952, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation opened the nation’s first two television stations in Toronto and Montreal, and over the next two years it extended its television coverage to seven other metropolitan areas. At the time, only 146,000 Canadians owned television receivers (or “sets” as they were usually called).

They tuned their sets to American border stations and used increasingly elaborate antenna systems to draw in distant signals. Most Canadians thus missed entirely the first generation of American television program- ming, broadcast live from the studio, and tuned in only as US television moved from live to filmed programs and from New York to Hollywood. By 1952, I love lucy had been running in the States for over a year. But if Canada’s love affair with the tube was slightly belated, the coun- try rapidly caught up. By December 1954 there were nine stations and 1.2 million sets; by June 1955 there were 26 stations and 1.4 million sets, and by December 1957 there were 44 stations and nearly 3 million sets.

Television’s popularity has been an international phenomenon transcending national circumstances and socio-economic conditions. Nevertheless, for Canadian society in the post-war years, television was the ideal technology. It fitted perfectly into the overall social and cultural dynamics of the time. Perhaps even more than the automobile or the detached bungalow on its carefully manicured plot of green grass, television symbolized the aspirations and emergent lifestyles of the new suburban generation of Canadians. Unlike other leisure-time activ- ities that required “going out,” television was a completely domesticated entertainment package that drew Canadian families into their homes. Until the late 1960s, most fam- ilies owned only one television set, located in the living room. Particularly on weekend evenings during the long

Canadian winter, the only sign of life on entire blocks of residential neighbourhoods—or on rural roads with their scattered farmhouses—was the flickering glow of black-and-white television sets coming from otherwise darkened houses. The family could entertain friends who enjoyed the same popular programs, and everyone could enjoy snacks served on small metal “TV tables” or even a meal taken from the freezer and heated in the oven (the “TV dinner”). Some of what people watched was Canadian- produced, but most prime-time shows came from the Hollywood dream factory. Despite the popularity of Saturday evening’s hockey Night in Canada, first telecast in 1954, television served to draw Canadians ever deeper into the seductive world of American popular culture.

The post-war years were critical ones for popular culture in Canada. While governments wrestled with aspects of a cultural policy intended to protect Canadian culture and the Canadian identity from “foreign” (read American) influence, their focus before 1960 was almost entirely on high culture. Few Canadians appreciated that the Americans were undergoing a cosmic shift of their own in cultural terms, particularly in the way they mar- shalled the media and their entire entertainment industry as delivery systems of American culture. One American scholar has described what happened as the shift from popular to mass culture. The secret of American success was an extraordinarily prosperous home economy, based partly on the extension of technological innovation into nearly every household. The result was a domestication of entertainment, moving it from the public arena to inside the home. Many of the new consumer goods, such as television sets and high-fidelity equipment, required the development of related cultural products—programs, recordings—to make the new gadgets essential to every family. The American entertainment industry was clearly up to the challenge. All aspects of American cul- ture, including sports, were systematically brought into the web of the new entertainment industry. This would have a profound effect on Canadians.

After the war a handful of Canadian intellectuals became fascinated by the media’s role in modern soci- ety. Given Canada’s long history of wrestling with communications, this was perhaps not surprising. The Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan (1911–80), follow- ing the lead of economic historian and communications

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4219 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

the Impact of Science on Cultural Development

Document

The impact of science on cultural development has been evident in its contribution to technological advance, notably in communication and in the dissemination of knowledge. In turn it has been evident in the types of knowledge disseminated; that is to say, science lives its own life not only in the mechanism which is pro- vided to distribute knowledge but also in the sort of knowledge which will be distributed. As information has been disseminated the demand for the miraculous, which has been one of the great contributions of science, has increased. To supply this demand for the miracu- lous has been a highly remunerative task, as evidenced by the publications of firms concerned with scientific works. Bury described the rapidly growing demand in England for books and lectures, making the results of science accessible and interesting to the lay public, as a remarkable feature of the second half of the nineteenth century. Popular literature explained the wonders of the physical world and at the same time flushed the imaginations of men with the consciousness that they were living in the era “which, in itself vastly superior to any age of the past, need be burdened by no fear of decline or catastrophe but, trusting in the boundless resources of science, might surely defy fate.” “Progress itself suggests that its value as a doctrine is only relative, corresponding to a certain not very advanced stage of civilization, just as Providence in its day was an idea of relative value, corresponding to a stage somewhat less

advanced.” The average reader has been impressed by the miraculous, and the high priests of science, or per- haps it would be fair to say the pseudo-priests of science, have been extremely effective in developing all sorts of fantastic things, with great emphasis, of course, on the atomic bomb. I hoped to get through this paper without mentioning the atomic bomb, but found it impossible. . . .

The effects of obsession with science have become serious for the position of science itself. It has been held that the scientific mind can adapt itself more easily to tyranny than the literary mind, since “art is individual- ism and science seeks the subjection of the individual to absolute laws,” but Casaubon was probably right in saying that “the encouragement of science and letters is almost always a personal influence.” The concept of the state in the Anglo-Saxon world has been favourable to the suppression or distortion of culture, particularly through its influence on science. Under the influence of the state, communication among themselves has become more difficult for scientists with the same pol- itical background and practically impossible for those with a different political background, because of the importance attached to war. Mathematics and music have been regarded as universal languages, particu- larly with the decline of Latin, but even mathematics is a tool and has become ineffective for purposes of com- munication in a highly technical civilization concerned with war.

In 1948 the Canadian social scientist and economic historian Harold Innis delivered a paper to the Conference of Commonwealth Universities in Oxford. A part of that paper follows.

Source: Harold Innis, “A Critical Review,” in Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951), 192–3.

theoretician Harold Adams Innis (1894–1952), would become the chief international guru of media culture, one of the first thinkers to arrive at and communicate some idea of the effect that electronic media were having

on culture at every level. His first book, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951), examined comic strips, advertisements, and other promotional imagery of the American press to convey insights into “that very

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422 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Printmaking began among the people of Kingait

(Cape Dorset) in the early winter of 1957. This is how

it began.

Osuitok sat near me one evening casually study-

ing the sailor head trademark on two identical pack-

ages of cigarettes. He noted carefully every subtle

detail of color and form, then stated that it must have

been very tiresome for some artist to sit painting

every one of the little heads on the packages with the

exact sameness.

I tried to explain in Inuktitut, as best I could,

about “civilized” man’s technical progress in the field

of printing little packages, which involved the entire

offset color printing process. My explanation was far

from successful, partly because of my inability to find

the right words to describe terms such as “intaglio”

and “color register,” and partly because I was start-

ing to wonder whether this could have any practical

application in Inuit terms.

Looking around to find some way to demonstrate

printing, I saw an ivory walrus tusk that Osuitok had

recently engraved. The curved tusk was about fifteen

inches long. Osuitok had carefully smoothed and pol-

ished it and had incised bold engravings on both sides.

Into the lines of these engravings he had rubbed black

soot gathered from his family’s seal-oil lamp.

James A. Houston and the Introduction of Inuit Printmaking James A. Houston was an artist, filmmaker, and author who lived for many years in the Arctic. He was among the first to recognize the aesthetic and commercial value of Inuit art. In the following excerpt from his autobiography, he describes how he introduced printmaking to the Inuit. His companion was Osuitok Ipeelee (1922–2005), one of the most distinguished sculptors and printmakers among the Inuit.

common condition of industrial man in which he lives amid a great flowering of technical and mechanical imagery of whose rich human symbolism he is mainly unconscious” (McLuhan, 1951: 4). Like his mentor, Innis, McLuhan took the media seriously. Unlike Innis, however, McLuhan was not prepared to condemn the mechanization process and its introduction of a “mass” dimension.

Categorizing culture has never been simple. One of the principal artistic developments of the post-war period—the commercialization of Inuit art—well dem- onstrates the problems. The Inuit of the Arctic had for centuries carved a complex image world in ivory and other materials, mainly for their own pleasure. In the late 1940s several Canadian artists working in the North, led by James Archibald Houston (1921–2005), encouraged the Inuit to offer their carvings for sale

in the south through co-operative marketing. Later in the 1950s Houston would teach the Inuit how to translate their striking images into prints. The federal government encouraged commercialization, with the assistance of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild and the Hudson’s Bay Company. Inuit artists quickly produced some of Canada’s most distinctive images, known around the world. Their combination of tradition and deliberate commercialization, while not unique in this or any other period, resists facile generalizations.

Conclusion Against a backdrop of economic prosperity and sub- stantial population growth, Canada after the war finally appeared to be fulfilling its promise. Substantial strides

Contemporary Views

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4239 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

were made on fronts as different as social welfare and cultural policy. “Progress” was everywhere. Quebec’s place within the Constitution had not yet emerged as

a serious problem for the federal government, which by 1959 appeared to have established itself as a typical twentieth-century centralized state.

Prospering Together?

Christopher Dummit, Trent University

For many who lived through the mean and turbulent years of the Great Depression and World War II, there

could only be one assessment of the post-war decades: these were the golden years.

Continued...

Taking an old tin of writing ink that had frozen

and thawed many times, with my finger I dipped

up the black residue and smoothed it over the tusk.

Then taking a thin piece of toilet tissue, I laid it on the

inked surface and rubbed the top lightly, then quickly

stripped the paper from the tusk. I saw by mere good

fortune, I had pulled a fairly good negative image of

Osuitok’s incised design.

“We could do that,” he said, with the instant deci-

sion of a hunter. And so we did.

Source: James Houston, Confessions of an Igloo Dweller (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995), 263.

“Weasel.” 1958. Woodcut by Osuitok Ipeelee. Canadian Museum of history. © Dorset Fine Arts.

Historiography

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424 A History of the Canadian Peoples

For more than two decades after the end of the war, the Canadian economy grew year after year with only minor interruption. Most Canadians could find jobs. Where unemployment had been well into the double digits in the 1930s, in the post-war decades it tumbled to between 3 and 5 per cent. Moreover, governments made it their goal to keep unemployment low. When these trends are combined with improved housing, a boom- ing consumer culture that brought Canadians every- thing from refrigerators and electric stoves to washing machines and televisions, the spread of wonder drugs like antibiotics, and improved government services, it is easy see why the 1950s and 1960s initially came to be seen as a period of unprecedented prosperity.

Early historical debates about post-war affluence probed the national unease created by the fact that so much of the investment that financed the economic boom came from the United States. This reliance on American investment was emphasized in the 1958 Final Report of the Royal Commission on Canada’s Economic Prospects, led by Walter Gordon. The Commission pointed out, among other things, how the prevalence of American-controlled companies in Canada stifled cer- tain kinds of economic activity, especially the research and development that was so central to innovation. These kinds of concerns gained more of a constituency in the 1960s and 1970s, including when Gordon became Finance Minister in the government of Lester Pearson in 1963 and attempted to institute a series of economic- ally nationalist reforms. For several years, the extent of American control of the Canadian economy became a pressing and divisive national concern.

Historians in the 1980s and 1990s turned to a dif- ferent critique of post-war prosperity. Some came to question just who was marginalized. These historians pointed to a variety of groups, including new immi- grants, Aboriginal peoples, and welfare recipients, whose experience did not fit the glowing account of prosperity. These critiques were best summarized and articulated in historian Alvin Finkel’s text of the post- war years, Our lives: Canada after 1945 (1997), which in many ways can be read as a counter-narrative to an ear- lier textbook that had provided the standard account, Canada since 1945 (1981) by Robert Bothwell, John

English, and Ian Drummond. The main differences in these accounts centred on the extent of post-war pros- perity and the inequalities it did or did not contain.

At the same time, other historians were picking apart the social and cultural complexities of these affluent decades. Women’s and gender historians from the 1970s and afterwards looked back to the post-war decades and asked to what extent the era’s glorification of family life and domesticity constrained women’s choices. They debated whether the 1950s represented a step back from the seemingly revolutionary steps for- ward for women who worked for wages during World War II, and teased apart the complex and often con- tradictory cultural messages about gender attitudes in these decades.

Labour historians pointed out the way in which the seeming successes of the labour movement in the 1940s brought with them unexpected troubles. For example, the Rand Formula that emerged from the strike of Ford employees in Windsor, Ontario, in 1945 made employ- ers automatically deduct union dues from paycheques in organized workplaces. This gave unions a secure financial footing, yet labour historians noted the way it also led to increased bureaucracy and a more distant, elitist labour leadership.

More recently, the rise of environmental history has drawn our attention to how the industrial capital- ism that made Canada so prosperous in these years was built upon a certain way of seeing—or not seeing—the environmental consequences of progress.

There has been and still is no single view of post- war prosperity. Although historians’ views of the era have become more complex, it is clear that the initial assessment of the era is still compelling. For example, in the midst of recent debates about growing social inequality, many now look back to the post-war years as representing a particularly unique era when social inequality lessened. In his book Capital in the twenty- First Century (2014), French economist Thomas Picketty shows how the post-war decades really did stand out as affluent in a more socially equal way. It just might make Canadian historians reconsider the recent, more critical interpretation of the era. But that would be fine. History is, after all, a conversation and not a destination.

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4259 | Prospering Together, 1945–1960

Short Bibliography Abella, Irving. Nationalism, Communism, and Canadian

labour. Toronto, 1973. A well-balanced analysis of the conceptual and practical problems besetting Canadian labour.

Bashevkin, Sylvia. true Patriot love: The Politics of Canadian Nationalism. Toronto, 1991. A thought- ful study of the ways politicians and the state have attempted to harness Canadian nationalism to their own purposes.

Behiels, Michael. Prelude to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution: liberalism versus Neo-Nationalism 1945–1960. Montreal and Kingston, 1985. A fascinating treat- ment of the intellectual battle in Quebec in the years before the Quiet Revolution.

Bothwell, Robert, Ian Drummond, and John English. Canada since 1945: Power, Politics, and Provincialism, 2nd edn. Toronto, 1989. The best general account of the post-1945 period, though somewhat dated, fer- vently pro-federalist, and very Ontario-oriented.

Bryden, Kenneth. Old Age Pensions and Policy-Making in Canada. Montreal and London, 1984. A judicious study of a critical component of the welfare state.

Burtch, Andrew. Give Me Shelter: The Failure of Canada’s Cold War Civil Defence. Vancouver, 2012. As the title suggests, a critical account of government response to Cold War fears.

Clark, S.D. The Suburban Society. Toronto, 1964. A study of the suburban phenomenon by the leading histor- ical sociologist of his generation.

Doern, G. Bruce. Science and Politics in Canada. Montreal and London, 1972. A trenchant account of the hist- ory of Canadian science policy.

Guindon, Herbert. Quebec Society: tradition, Modernity, Nationhood. Toronto, 1988. A useful overview of the recent history of Quebec.

Harris, Richard. Creeping Conformity: how Canada Became Suburban, 1900–1960. Toronto, 2004. A first- rate recent survey of the suburbanization process.

Korenik, Valerie. Roughing It in the Suburbs: Reading Chatelaine Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties. Toronto, 2000. A fascinating account of the relation- ship between suburbanization and popular culture in Canada’s leading women’s magazine.

Kwavnick, David, ed. The tremblay Report.Toronto, 1972. An edited translation of the report of the vital Quebec Commission on Constitutional Problems of the early 1950s.

Litt, Paul. The Muses, the Masseys and the Massey Commission. Toronto, 1992. A revisionist study of the Massey Commission, which argues it was elitist and ineffective.

Owram, Doug. Born at the Right time: A history of the Baby Boom Generation. Toronto, 1996. A scholarly attempt to understand the baby boomers.

Porter, John. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada. Toronto, 1965. The clas- sic study that argued that a social hierarchy existed among Canadians based on ethnic origins.

Rea, K.J. The Prosperous Years: The Economic history of Ontario, 1939–1975. Toronto, 1985. A useful analysis of the period of affluence in Canada’s largest prov- ince and of the centre of its industrial growth.

Richmond, Anthony. Post-War Immigrants in Canada. Toronto, 1967. A careful analysis of Canada’s immedi- ate post-war immigration policy and its outcomes.

Rutherford, Paul. When television Was Young: Primetime Canada 1952–1967. Toronto, 1990. A scholarly treat- ment of the early history of the medium.

Safarian, A.E. Foreign Ownership of Canadian Industry. Toronto, 1966. A calm and dispassionate analysis of the hotly debated economic topic of the 1960s.

Seeley, John R., et al. Crestwood heights: A North American Suburb. Toronto, 1956. A richly nuanced contempor- ary study of the Canadian suburban phenomenon, focusing on what was perhaps not a typical suburb.

Simeon, Richard, and Ian Robertson. State, Society and the Development of Canadian Federalism. Toronto, 1990. A useful overview of the recent historical development of federalism in Canada.

Stewart, Craig. Arrow through the heart: The life and times of Crawford Gordon & the Avro Arrow. Toronto, 1998. Perhaps the best of the Arrow books, this one focuses on the man in charge of the project.

Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, ed. The Asbestos Strike. 1956, trans. Toronto, 1974. A fascinating study of one of the key events in Quebec in the early post-war years.

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426 A History of the Canadian Peoples

Study Questions 1. After World War I, a three-year economic depression struck Canada. World War II was followed by a pro-

longed economic boom. Identify and explain three changed conditions that might account for Canadian

prosperity after World War II.

2. What was the main factor that made it possible for Canada to spend less than other developed nations on

research and development while still benefiting from the latest technological advances?

3. What effects did the baby boom have on public education in Canada?

4. To what extent was suburbia an imagined world? How did this imagined world affect consumer spending

patterns?

5. Give two reasons to account for rapid growth in the public sector of the economy between 1945 and 1960.

6. What were the chief factors that accounted for the Liberal Party’s predominance at the federal level during

this period?

7. How did immigration alter the face of Canada between 1945 and 1960?

8. Describe the main tenets of the “new nationalism” that developed in Quebec after 1939.

9. What was the most important reason anglophone Canadians had so much trouble understanding the dis-

tinctiveness of their culture?

10. Who was Igor Gouzenko? What role did he play in the development of the Cold War between the West and the

Soviet Union?

11. Would you describe the 1950s in Canada as an “era of tranquility”?

12. Why was the iron lung so intimidating?

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

www.oupcanada.com/Bumsted5e

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