Pre-Confederation Canadian History

Figure 10.4 Water-powered grist mills like this one near Waterloo, Ontario, were common features in the countryside.

Life on the land in the 19th century was not insulated entirely from changes occurring elsewhere. In fact, the countryside was often where change originated. It was also where intensely conservative impulses could be found.

In a study of seigneury communities near Trois-Rivières, historian Colin Coates reveals the connections between landscape, community, social relations, and economic transformation. At Batiscan attempts were made at the beginning of the century to establish an ironworks, something which would have provided seasonal, part-time, and full-time/year-round work for locals. This was an attractive proposition in part because the habitants’ farmlands had been so severely divided across generations that their productivity was quickly diminishing. These conditions were a product of rising human fertility and family size in the Lower Canadian countryside; in a Malthusian sense the growth that food production had made possible could not now keep pace with the population it produced.

Young men found it more and more difficult to establish the kind of economic security that would allow them to marry, which forced some to leave the land for opportunities in the woods or in the towns, ideally to find land grants elsewhere, perhaps nearby, but these options were increasingly unlikely. Some of the seigneuries thus became densely packed rural enclaves in which community members were heavily dependent on one another while also quite competitive. The Batiscan ironworks held out the hope of wealth from something other than the finite resource represented by land. The failure of the ironworks project wasn’t a disaster, but it set back the hopes of the seigneury for a while.

All this happened in less than a single generation, and the result was country life returning to its agricultural focus.The countryside continued to generate food but it was increasingly focused on subsistence. In a sense, it became even more intensively agricultural than it had been during the days of the fur trade. An outsider visiting for the first time in the 1830s might mistake it for a very traditional agrarian landscape. In truth, the “tradition” only went a generation or so deep. In 1790 there were fewer than a thousand people in Saint-Anne and 1,281 in Batiscan; in 1825 the numbers were 2,175 and 2,454 respectively. The two communities were doubling in size at a roughly Malthusian rate. They were, as well, shedding large numbers: nearly 500 people left Batiscan between 1790 and 1825 — a fifth of the total population in 1825. What is more, household sizes were rising. At Batiscan in 1784 the average family size was about five; in 1825 it was around six.

Coates identifies one of the consequences of these changes: “As households grew larger and young men and women remained dependent on their parents for longer periods, hierarchical relations within the family were strengthened.”[footnote]Colin M. Coates, The Metamorphosis of Landscape and Community in Early Quebec (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 58-60.[/footnote] This hints at the changes in the status of elders and the roles of mothers and fathers. Rather than being viewed as a place in a state of stasis, these seigneuries (and they are probably exemplary of many more) were undergoing profound changes.

Class in the Countryside

Class relations were also under pressure. As Cole Harris observes, land shortages played into the hands of seigneurs. Too many people and too little land meant that labour costs fell, making it more feasible for seigneurs to hire workers to improve their own lands. Between 1791 and the 1830s, seigneurs were more likely to insist on payments of debts, which they lacked the leverage to do in previous decades. They even increased the cens et rentes, something they were unable to do under the ancien régime’s regulating hand. One effect was the rise of a seigneurial class that was more aristocratic (at least in its wealth and its manorial lifestyle) in the 19th century than it had been in the days of New France.

Harris notes that Lower Canada was, perhaps perversely, becoming more rural than urban in the 19th century. At the end of the French regime, one-fifth to one-quarter of the population of the St. Lawrence Valley lived in the towns, a figure that dropped to one-twentieth “of the French-Canadians” by 1815. This change took place in an era where the population as a whole jumped from 70,000 to more than 300,000. The main cities were becoming more English and less welcoming to francophones, but that doesn’t mean that the Canadien population retreated into the countryside. In order for those numbers to work, they only had to stay put on the land, have more babies, and stay out of the cities, which is exactly what happened. Small wonder that Canadiens saw the institutions of the countryside (the parish church and the parish priest, the seigneur and the manor house, the Coutume de Paris with its focus on family rather than individual) as fundamental to their way of life, even if each of those was at one time or another exploitative of their rural existence.[footnote]Cole Harris, “Of Poverty and Helplessness in Petite-Nation,” Canadian Historical Review 52, issue 1 (March 1971): 23-50.[/footnote]

The situation in the English-speaking world was quite different. While the economic model of the family farm was found throughout all of British North America, it meant something different in the patrilineal nuclear family households of the anglophones. The availability of land in the western stretches of Upper Canada ensured that competition for inheritances would not produce painfully small subdivisions of farms. Communities stood in for families when it came time to depend on group labour for harvests, threshing, road building, and barn raising. The same was not always true in the Atlantic colonies, where poorer soil conditions and limited availability of arable land created pressures on locals to find other sources of income. In Prince Edward Island farming was an easier proposition, but often Maritime farming families looked to sawmills and mines to provide part-time and seasonal work. The family farm and the small market towns persisted, but they were rapidly becoming less typical of Maritime social organization.

Some of the changes occurring at the urban level diffused to rural areas, so much so that the clear cultural boundaries between town and country began to blur. Large edifices appeared, many of them made of brick and stone, to house new industries and institutions. In the early 19th century industry went to where there was water power: hydraulics were key to driving early factories. Once again, the river courses — especially the most difficult portage sites because that’s where the water power was to be found — were determining the shape of Canadian life.

Attributions

Figure 10.4
Erb’s Grist Mill at Sunset by Russ Gordon is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.

Figure 10.5 This grand structure embodies the neo-classical institution of the era. In this case, it is the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto, opened in 1850.

At the start of the post-Napoleonic era cities in British North America were mostly large towns. They were small in population and area, they served very local markets, and their people consisted mainly of merchants, artisans, physicians and lawyers, government and military officials, clergy, and not much more. Until the 1840s, Halifax, for example, was essentially a city built of wood; in the generation that followed, its centre would be largely rebuilt in stone and brick. By the 1860s, the most dynamic cities had grown significantly and were much more complex places.

The Modern City

Civic buildings became common and were a source of pride for the citizens. There was confidence and ambition in a young city that invested in stone buildings; the resident merchants and professionals located their mansions near the centre of town where they could be pointed to as evidence of community wealth; infrastructure like waterworks, board sidewalks, and a firehall were indicators of a commitment to the future and an enterprising attitude. The optimism of the age — the belief that a community’s citizens were building a glorious society with a long life expectancy — was embodied in the move to neoclassical design in these new public and civic spaces that suggested (not very modestly) a common and timeless connection with ancient Greece and Rome.

Few of these small cities had rows of shops just yet — they typically had public markets where grocers, butchers, fishmongers, and bakers hawked their wares. There was space as well for farmers from the nearby countryside to sell cash crops to the growing town population.

Michael Katz studied the people and patterns of life in mid-century Hamilton and he closely observed the transition that was underway there (and in many other cities):

[B]y 1861 some men could see that the future lay not only in trade but even more in manufacturing. By that time advocates of industry had begun a campaign to persuade the entrepreneurs of the city that the future lay in the factory as much, or more than, in the countinghouse. At first their successes remained modest. In 1861 the Wanzers moved their sewing-machine factory to Hamilton from Buffalo; someone partially manufactured shoes which were finished by hand; there were a prosperous factory that made pianos, one that manufactured hats, and, of course, the yards of the Great Western Railway and the construction of locomotives. Overall, in 1861 Hamilton remained a commercial city, though the future already was clear to anyone who read the signs. The ambitious little city would become the Birmingham [England] of Canada.[footnote]Michael B. Katz, The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 4-6.[/footnote]

By mid-century some cities were ready to leave behind Katz’s “commercial city.” For less than a century they had developed as nodes of commerce and local trade, sometimes tentatively reaching out into a larger global economy but (with the exception of Montreal and perhaps Quebec and Saint John), as commercial towns they had reached their upward limits: Toronto held about 40,000 and Hamilton a little more than 10,000; Halifax was creeping up above 20,000 and Charlottetown 7,000. Montreal was the giant with a population around 90,000 and was thus an example of where the future might lie.

Industrialization in these days, however, meant consolidation of some producers, heavy secondary manufacturing like an iron foundry, and other similar operations that might hire a few dozen employees at best. Full-on industrialization would come later in the century and, with it, massive growth in city size and a complete overhaul in what it meant in practical terms to be a citizen.

It is worth noting, however, that from 1851 to 1861 about 13% of British North Americans lived in cities of 20,000 or more, which put the emergent confederacy above the world average of 5%. The proportions in New Brunswick and the Province of Canada were highest, at around 14% living in cities in 1851, with Canada West accelerating to 18.5%  in 1861. These numbers show that more British North Americans were moving to a handful of large centres and, simultaneously, more centres were passing the 20,000 threshold to qualify as cities. Some people, in other words, “urbanized” by sitting still. [footnote]Leroy O. Stone, “Urban Development in Canada,” in Perspectives on Canada’s Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, eds. Frank Trovato and Carl F. Grindstaff (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1994), 372.[/footnote]

Figure 10.6 A photograph of Toronto, 1856. Government House looms in the upper left while artisanal factories take up the foreground. Pianos were a mark of sophistication and in high demand in middle-class households. Note, too, the board sidewalks.

Sin City

The emergence and growth of cities brought to light many social problems — crime, poverty, and alcoholism being the most obvious. There were, as well, so-called moral issues like unwed motherhood, gambling, and prostitution (the last of these was not always regarded as a criminal activity in the 19th century). The response was the creation of institutions such as prisons, insane asylums, orphanages, and shelters for the poor. The protection of property (manifest in police stations, courts, and jails) and care for the weakest members of society (in asylums and hospitals) was part of a continuum of middle-class values that patrolled deviance and enforced the emerging standards. The wide support for these values was evident by the sometimes-competitive frenzy of funding and building the institutions that would mark a city as a “go-ahead” place. In the 1850s alone Halifax added to its list of government buildings the Lunatic Asylum, the City Hospital, Rockhead Prison, the Halifax Court House, and the County Jail.[footnote]Susan Buggey, “Building Halifax, 1841-1871,” Acadiensis X, no. 1 (Autumn 1980): 90.[/footnote]

Figure 10.7 The Toronto Jail in 1835 was one of many solid-looking urban institutions that spring up around British North America.

The mid-19th century witnessed the emergence of philanthropy  as a social phenomenon in British North America. To be wealthy was one thing; to be a philanthropist was something else altogether. Philanthropy had deeper roots in England where money had accumulated in the cities a century or two earlier. It was informed by Protestant values that placed a premium on doing good deeds as a means of achieving personal spiritual growth. And where one or two philanthropists could not make a project come together, an organization might. The Ladies Benevolent Society and the Hamilton Orphan Society, for example, addressed a constellation of concerns and were backed by middle-class Protestant women in Hamilton, Canada West. Their projects included a home for elderly women and an orphanage as well as a social work visitors initiative.[footnote]Carmen J. Nielson, Private Women and the Public Good: Charity and State Formation in Hamilton, Ontario, 1846-93 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).[/footnote]

In Montreal and Quebec, most of these institutions were  Catholic, but there were Protestant operations as well. As Montreal grew, so did the Catholic institutional presence; the Protestants had to play catch-up. Civic leaders faced issues like poverty with mixed feelings: charity and care were needed but leading Protestants were fearful that their efforts would lead to more poverty and less individual effort on the part of vulnerable populations. But also, “the Montreal Protestant community was torn between the need to create its own relief network to alleviate destitution, in order to avoid forcing Protestants to compromise their souls by using the Roman Catholic system, and the prevalent ideology against making relief too easily available or too abundant.”[footnote]Janice Harvey, “Dealing with ‘the destitute and the wretched’: The Protestant House of Industry and Refuge in Nineteenth-Century Montréal,” Journal of the CHA 2001 Revue de la SHC,12 (2001): 74-5.[/footnote] The result was a House of Industry in the 1860s that distinguished between the “deserving poor” (such as the elderly) and the able-bodied poor who could work for their keep. The division in Canada East between Catholic social work institutions and privately funded Protestant institutions kept the state out of the system for the most part (unlike in Canada West and the rest of English-speaking British North America), a fact that would come to have some bearing on the shape of Canadian federalism in the years to come.

Attributions

Figure 10.5
Provincial Asylum Toronto  by Skeezix1000 is in the public domain.

Figure 10.6
Toronto from the top of the Rossin House Hotel by Skeezix1000  is in the public domain.

Figure 10.7
North side of King Street East, from Toronto to Church Streets by Skeezix1000 is in the public domain.

Figure 11.13 Micmac camp near Sydney, Nova Scotia, 1857. Photo by Paul-Émile Miot.

Important changes in the relationship between Aboriginal and colonial peoples began in the 1830s. As early as the mid-18th century there was an appetite in Britain and in some of the North American colonies for the abolition of slavery, but not much came of it. We have seen how Governor John Graves Simcoe made some modest moves in this direction in the 1790s. In 1807 Parliament in London passed the Slave Trade Act, which put an end to the legal trafficking in slaves across the empire. In 1833 Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act.

Improvement

The rise in support for abolitionism in the 1830s pertains to Aboriginal people because it was a landmark in a movement that came to be known as humanitarianism. Generally, British opinion shapers and political leaders were in the process of developing a more egalitarian perspective generally.[footnote]Peter Stamatov, The Origins of Global Humanitarianism: Religion, Empires, and Advocacy (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 137.[/footnote] In part this sprang from the acceptance of individualism as an ideal. The link between individualism and humanitarianism may seem like a contradiction, but the connection was simple: Enlightenment-era individualism stressed the autonomy and value of the individual. If everyone had an equal moral significance then, regardless of race or culture, colour or religion, they were entitled to equivalent treatment or at least respect. This principle played out in many different ways when it came to Aboriginal people globally, but in British North America it mostly took on the flavour of “improvement” and “civilization” of Native societies, one individual at a time.

After the War of 1812 and the end of Aboriginal power around the Great Lakes, there appeared growing enthusiasm on the part of Euro-Canadians to “improve” Aboriginal peoples by settling them in colonial-style villages, modifying their housing styles, teaching them farming and animal husbandry, setting up European-style schools, and enforcing Euro-Canadian-style gender relations. Missionary activity in British North America had been largely neglected since the Conquest, Protestants being evidently less interested in the task than were the Catholics. But from the 1820s on Protestant missionary activity accelerated in Upper Canada and the Maritimes, as it did throughout the rest of the British Empire. By the 1840s the missionary movement had made it all the way to the West Coast.

Set in that context of humanitarian thinking and expanding missionary interest in Aboriginal societies, the timing of Britain’s mid-decade Select Committee on Aborigines is important. The Select Committee conducted a study of the treatment and condition of Aboriginal peoples around the empire. What it found, of course, was that settler societies everywhere dispossessed Aboriginal peoples of their lands and their means of making a living. Where Aboriginal lands were at the disposal of indigenous individuals or the community as a whole, there were also sales and further alienation of lands being made.

This created a potential contradiction. On the one hand Euro-Canadian reformers and Tories alike favoured private ownership of land and implicitly the ability of a landowner to sell whenever they got a good price; on the other hand, the loss of tribal lands in this manner stood to undermine the economic self-sufficiency of Aboriginal communities and so should be stopped.

The urge to protect Aboriginal peoples from what (imperialist authorities took to be) their own irresponsibility won out. The Crown Lands Protection Act (1839) was thus an important step along the road to converting Aboriginal peoples from neighbours and sovereign peoples into disempowered subjects whose affairs were held in trust by the state as a guardian. This marked the arrival of a new kind of paternalism, one in which Aboriginal peoples had much the same rights as children and usually fewer than Euro-Canadian women.

The Act prevented Aboriginal landowners from selling off property to newcomers by effectively stripping Aboriginal communities of their title. And people without land in this era were people without citizenship. The colonial authorities had decided to act in what they thought were the best interests of Aboriginal people, who would be guided into citizenship via assimilation. But colonial officials were never certain in these years as to whether and how they could act.

Administrative Opacity

Until 1860, responsibility for Aboriginal affairs resided with the British government assisted by personnel on the ground in the colonies to advise and administer matters directly. In other words, the responsibility was in Britain but practical authority was in the field. Funding lines were, moreover, confused and complicated. Aboriginal influence, too, was at a low ebb. Key decisions were being made far away, in London, while day-to-day decisions were being made locally in the colonies for which the imperial regime might not take ownership. Under these circumstances it is easy to see how Aboriginal issues became disregarded or poorly addressed by British North America’s mid-century generation of politicians: it was neither their responsibility nor was it made pressing.

Olive Dickason, a historian of the First Nations in Canada, made these observations about the situation across the colonies and in London:

Herman Merivale, permanent undersecretary of the Colonial Office in London, 1847-60, developed the concept of regional approaches rather than an overarching policy applying to all. This meant almost as many policies as there were colonies: in the Maritimes, it was one of ‘insulation’ of the Amerindians; in the Canadas, ‘amalgamation’; in Rupert’s Land and on the Northwest Coast, support of HBC administration, which in the latter case was tempered by [Governor James] Douglas’ concern for Amerindian rights. In other words, in spite of good intentions, centralized imperial administration was not coping very well with the myriad local problems of colonial government. Neither did goals always synchronize: where the Colonial Office was concerned with rationalizing imperial administration in economic terms, in the colonies it was all too evident that Indians no longer fitted into imperial plans and that programs to ameliorate their situations would be costly. Attempts at enforced change were not getting very far, and the voices of the Natives themselves either were not being heard or were being ignored.[footnote]Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times, 3rd edition (Don Mills: OUP, 2002), 227.[/footnote]

These conditions were well understood in British North America. The Bagot Commission of 1842-44 looked at the situation through a humanitarian lens and called for a unified Indian policy, reminded government of its obligations under the Proclamation Act of 1763 regarding the integrity of Aboriginal land title, identified the need for more thorough and proper land surveys, and advocated for a program of economic cultural change that would see Aboriginal peoples become successful ranchers and farmers. There was more, as well, but little of it got funded so the point soon became moot.

There were two forces at work within newcomer society that pulled in opposite directions. First, there was an administrative and fiduciary obligation to Aboriginal communities and individuals to protect their interests, and also a vested interest in reducing Aboriginal dependence on government resources. Chronic poverty would be a burden on both Aboriginal and newcomer communities. Second, however, was the mindset of a developing colonial frontier, the belief that land and resources were there to be developed and that development and settlement of newcomer families produced revenues and wealth for all. There was, too, a bias in the marketplace: competition was good, but not competition between Aboriginal peoples and newcomers, not competition that the Aboriginal participants might win.[footnote]Arthur Ray, I Have Lived Here Since the World Began: An Illustrated History of Canada’s Native People (Toronto: Key Porter, 1996), 159.[/footnote]

The outcome was poor for Aboriginal peoples. Increasingly their numbers were too small to set a limit on Euro-Canadian expansion. They were pushed to the side or sent elsewhere. The Mi’kmaq fell on particularly hard times as traditional resources were either depleted, negatively impacted by the timber industry frenzy, or no longer accessible because of newcomer intrusion. On Prince Edward Island, the 1767 lottery of lands had neglected to include any provision for Aboriginal residence. In a blink, all indigenous peoples on the island were rendered landless. The patchy and inefficient efforts to settle Prince Edward Island bought the Mi’kmaq some time, but it wasn’t until 1859 that anything like a reserve was established.

Generally, the response of the Maritime colonies to Aboriginal hardship was to treat the Mi’kmaq much as they would paupers, with handouts. Nova Scotian and New Brunswick lands that were notionally allocated to the Mi’kmaq were not properly surveyed and, therefore, never registered; squatters moved in time and again. Efforts to take up farming were a failure; moreover, newcomer efforts to force the Mi’kmaq to become farmers were culturally insensitive, unrealistic given the land situation, and oblivious to the costs entailed in starting a community agricultural enterprise (as opposed to a family farm). In the 1840s the Mi’kmaq chief and elder Paussamigh Pemmeenauweet (1755-1843) made a direct approach by correspondence to a young Queen Victoria. Joseph Howe played a leading role in producing the Nova Scotia Indian Act of 1842 thereafter, the thrust of which was guardianship of a “helpless race.”[footnote]Ibid., 147.[/footnote] At this time there were thought to be fewer than 1,500 Mi’kmaq and Howe was predicting their extinction within two generations. Successive administrations took the view that to invest in schools or economic salvation of the Mi’kmaq was to throw good money after bad.

From the 1820s and accelerating in the 1830s, similar processes were underway in the Canadas. Mohawk claims to the whole Ottawa Valley were brushed aside as incompatible with the goal of building a thriving farming colony. Setting aside lands for hunting grounds — as opposed to ploughing them up for wheat — was antithetical to the dominant colonialist views of the day. Although governors and colonial administrations made an effort to observe the principles of the Proclamation Act of 1763, they did so without enthusiasm. Extinguishing Aboriginal title was often a matter of imposing the outcome on the Native communities effected, not negotiating a sale or rent.

Lands set aside for Aboriginal communities – known as “reserves” — begin to show up at this time. The immigrant and fertility explosions among the colonial peoples in the Canadas finally caught up to more remote arable lands. Resistance by Aboriginal peoples was difficult because of continuing population declines among Natives, successive loss of land title (which left Natives with little in the way of bargaining chips), and the elimination of historic allies in the face of American westward expansion. That’s not to say resistance did not occur. The Mica Bay War on Lake Superior in 1848 stands out as an example. The territory in question was entirely owned by the Ojibwe and none of it had been surrendered. Heedless of this fact, the government issued mining licences to non-Aboriginals. The Ojibwe responded by burning down a mining operation.

Aboriginal leaders argued for annuities and royalties on resources tapped in their territories; the Province of Canada was only prepared to pay for land cession. The outcome was the Robinson Treaties of 1850 — one on Lake Huron and the other on Lake Superior — which included a purchase payment plus annuities in exchange for the entire foreshore of Lakes Superior and Huron. Aboriginal people would enjoy unfettered Aboriginal access to hunting and fishing in the region, which was thought to be reasonable given the limited agricultural potential at the edge of the Canadian Shield. Manitoulin Island emerged as settlement hub for native peoples as a result. It is important to add that Métis peoples who made claims at this time (and whose claims were supported by the Ojibwe leadership) were disregarded by the Canadians. It is also worth noting that Aboriginal interest in farming was regarded as marginal, regardless of what plans and ambitions Native peoples themselves might have.

Aboriginal people in the Maritimes and the Canadas complained that they were being characterized as “lazy” and dependent but that they couldn’t cut a tree on their lands without the permission of a bureaucrat. Worse, no one seemed interested in stopping colonists from taking timber from native lands. Half-hearted attempts were made to address this question. Legislation in the 1850s tried, with mixed results, to protect timber stands on Aboriginal reserves from the incursion of logging camps. The logging industry, however, was something of a wild free-for-all and this initiative was badly policed. The laws lacked teeth.

Another act that aimed to further protect the property of Aboriginal peoples in Canada East in 1851 would come to have very important long-term ramifications. The legislation attempted to define who could be regarded as an “Indian.” Initially very broad and inclusive, it was revised soon after to include categories like status and non-status, and to limit the extent to which Aboriginal communities could identify who qualified for membership. The patrilineal traditions common in European societies were impressed on Aboriginal identity so that the offspring of a registered Indian father inherited status while the children of a non-Aboriginal male married to an Aboriginal woman were, simply put, not Indians. Humanitarianism had become much more paternalistic, protective, and assimilationist, a trend that is most clear in the Province of Canada’s An Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes of the Canadas (1857). The goal was to enfranchise adult Native males one at a time, thereby removing their Indian status; monitor their moral character (as part of a Christianization initiative); and turn them into independent landowners (at the expense of reserve land). In the 20 years that followed only one Aboriginal person in the united colony took up this offer.

At the heart of this there were different goals. Aboriginal peoples generally wanted to adapt to new circumstances. In some quarters — among the Mississauga, for example — there was real interest in farming and a willingness to indulge the newcomers’ enthusiasm for “model villages” made of European-style houses on reserves. Other Aboriginal groups like the Lenape (Delaware) had an ancient agricultural tradition of their own; they didn’t need to become farmers, they needed land. This was not, however, about assimilation into newcomer norms; this was about adapting as Aboriginal people to changing circumstances. But Euro-Canadians and Nova Scotians wanted Aboriginal peoples to assimilate. Schooling and farm education were never, thus, about equipping Aboriginal peoples with the tools they wanted. These initiatives were meant to stop them from being Aboriginals.

Unable to gain much ground in either political or cultural inclusion, the state began a long campaign of legislating against behaviours. The fact that this coincided with the rise of racist thinking in the Western world is probably not a coincidence. Restrictions on the sale of liquor to Aboriginal peoples, for example, revealed a belief in Aboriginal susceptibility and then rooted that in “Indian-ness” rather than proximate causes like tragedy, trauma, economic dislocation, etc. (This law remained in effect until 1951.)[footnote]Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 212-13, 229-30.[/footnote]

The 1860s would witness further changes in the relationship between British North America and the Aboriginal peoples of the northern half of the continent, most of which could be characterized as intensified neglect. The humanitarian moment had passed; belief in the impending disappearance of “the Indian” was becoming more general.

Attributions

Figure 11.13 
Micmac camp by Achim Raschka is in the public domain.

By the 1840s industrial capitalists in Britain and the United States were a force with which to be reckoned. Along with their merchant and investment allies, they demanded a liberation of trade, an elimination of tariffs, and an opening of new markets, whether the markets and suppliers in question wanted it or not. For British North America, this meant an end to automatic support from Britain, a reduction in imperial governmental investment, loss of protected markets, and an opportunity to pursue new challenges.

Across Canada and the Maritimes the economic response was both entrepreneurial and innovative, and also sluggish and conventional. The establishment of financial institutions and embryonic industries helped transition the economy into a new capitalist stage of production. At the same time, staple industries remained at the core of the economy for years to come.

Suggested Readings

1. Coates, Colin M. “An Industrial Landscape.” In Metamorphoses of Landscape and CommChaptery in Early Quebec, 125-143. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000.
2. Lewis, Frank D. and M. C. Urquhart. “Growth and the Standard of Living in a Pioneer Economy: Upper Canada, 1826 to 1851.” The William and Mary Quarterly 56, no.1 (January 1999): 151-181.
3. Morton, Desmond. “The Divisive Dream: Reciprocity in 1854.” Beaver 82, no.6 (December 2002/January 2003): 16-28.
4. Samson, Daniel. “Industrial Colonization: The Colonial Context of the General Mining Association, Nova Scotia, 1825-1842.” Acadiensis XXIX, no.1 (Autumn 1999): 3-28.
5. Schrauwers, Albert. “The Gentlemanly Order & the Politics of Production in the Transition to Capitalism in the Home District, Upper Canada.” Labour/Le Travail 65 (Spring 2010): 9-45.

By the middle of the 19th century Britain was well established as the leading industrial economy on Earth. An alignment of domestic resources (especially iron and coal), innovations in harnessing new energy sources (from hydraulics through to steam), developments in the mechanization of looms, access to raw materials from colonies and non-colonial suppliers, an abundance of local free labour, and the extent to which British merchants as well as naval fleets ruled the waves produced and perpetuated a high-speed transformation of the economy of the British Isles. Western Europe as a whole played catch-up (some countries better than others) while the United States exploited its own natural advantages and ploughed ahead at a dramatic pace. The days of rough equality with France were well within living memory for many British leaders and capitalists; they could recall a time when mercantilism made sense. By the 1840s they and their younger counterparts were wondering whether it should continue. After all, British goods were in demand everywhere, and Britain had the economic and military muscle to impose commercial arrangements where needed. Increasingly influenced, as well, by free market economic theories that held to the view that one should always buy in the lowest market and sell in the highest, capitalists in particular thought that preferential tariffs interfered with the natural workings of the marketplace. What became known as laissez-faire capitalism was coming into fashion.

This was, of course, terrible news for a British North American economy that had been finely crafted to work within the comfort zone of protectionism. Under mercantilism (French and English alike) there were direct and indirect disincentives to diversification: some kinds of production were simply not allowed or not worth attempting. A thriving market in Britain for unprocessed products from the sea or the forests gave settlement and society its shape; the smart money went after those opportunities and little investment was sunk into manufacturing.

The staple theory describes how the pursuit of natural resources both expands and restricts an economy, both spatially and structurally. Whether they were chasing beaver pelts or trees, British North Americans followed rivers deeper into the interior rather than building up market towns with a healthy surplus of labour that could be used in small, artisanal factories of five to 20 people, the sort of operation that might expand to 50 or 100 employees one day. Staples, moreover, tend to favour what are called backward linkages: harbours, warehouses, some shipping capacity. These are things that are useful in any economy but they don’t propel it forward. A dock is a dock; it cannot be redeployed into the production of new kinds of goods. Forward linkages are more likely to arise from basic manufacturing: iron production begets iron tools, tools lead to machinery, machinery leads to manufacturing of shoes or clothing. In each of those steps value is added to the product as is the potential for movement into entirely different economic activities (e.g., the iron foundry becomes the parent of the cotton textiles industry). By mid-century, the colonies of British North America were breaking out of the staple economy, but only tentatively. The end of British protectionism would necessitate accelerated change.

Sudden Adjustments

The end came quickly. In 1842 the tariff on squared timber was amended and exports fell by 25% the very next year.[footnote]Kenneth Norrie and Douglas Owram, A History of the Canadian Economy (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 208.[/footnote] In 1846 Britain abolished the Corn Laws; now grain and flour produced in the United States competed toe-to-toe with the British North American (more specifically, Upper Canadian) wheat economy. Fears grew across the colonies that farmers, shipping interests, dockworkers, freight handlers, and millworkers would all suffer.

The difficulty at the time facing policymakers in British North America was twofold. First, they needed to decide how to respond to changes in tariffs when the legislative power to do so still resided mainly with the mother country. Second, they needed to determine with some certainty whether free trade was a bad thing or a good thing. British North America was a world leader in the production of squared timber: would it not benefit from a more open market? As well, it was easy to confuse the causes for economic troubles: did sales of staples fall because of free trade or because of falling demand? To what extent were those factors related? In the 1840s and 1850s, political and financial leaders in the colonies didn’t have the statistical information to guide them (or mislead them). What they did know was that tariffs were falling away and everything had to be considered in light of that fact.

Overall, despite a few setbacks, the British North American economies performed well after the shock of tariff removals. From the late 1840s through to the 1860s shipping production continued to grow in the Atlantic colonies (serving American demand for additional capacity) and wheat exports from Canada West increased. Demand for grain in famine-stricken Ireland helped matters after 1847, as did British military needs during the Crimean War of 1854-56 and American requirements during the Civil War in the early 1860s.

The First Free Trade Agreement

Although British North America was not an early adopter of industrial processes, the United States was, and demand for raw materials accelerated there by mid-century. The forests of New England were badly depleted, agricultural lands were no longer sufficient to supply the rapidly growing manufacturing towns and the major cities, and the British North American colonies could provide both timber and food. As well, the British North American ports were a good source of materials derived from British markets and other British colonies. This made the northern colonies very attractive partners to the Americans and it made the American marketplace more attractive to British North America’s leading capitalists. In return, the Americans could provide agricultural implements, textile products, and other goods that were less conveniently sourced from Britain. And often they could do so much more cheaply. The Reciprocity Treaty signed by Britain and the United States in 1854 thus opened up trade between the colonies and the Americans while constituting a further step in Britain’s efforts to create a world without trade barriers. This was, however, a short-lived experiment.

Protectionist interests in the United States, combined with anti-British feeling at the end of the Civil War, led to the treaty being terminated in 1866. For 12 years, however, Canadian products enjoyed unprecedented access to American markets.

Figure 9.14 British North American colonies used the Spanish dollar (pictured here) as the basis of their currency. Each dollar was worth eight shillings, hence “pieces of eight.” In 1861 Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick moved to the American dollar/decimal system. Newfoundland developed its own system.

It is worth underlining again that, whatever the inherent benefits of reciprocity, the context is critical. Had it not been for the additional and dramatic demand created by the Civil War south of the border, it is unlikely that British North America would have benefited as much as it did. After Confederation until the Great War (1914-1918) there would be nostalgia for reciprocity in some Canadian political circles but it would tend to ignore that important piece of the equation.

Attributions

Figure 9.14
Philip V Coin by Coinman62 is in the public domain.

Manufacturing — the process of adding value to raw materials by turning them into something else — was limited in British North America by continued mercantilist attitudes in Britain and by American restrictions. Nonetheless, there were examples of manufacturing to be found, such as rope making in Halifax, hat making in Quebec City, and shipbuilding in almost every port town. The canal excitement of the 1830s fed demand for locally produced tools like shovels and wheelbarrows, some of them made in workshops that would become agricultural implement factories.[footnote]Bryan D. Palmer, Working-Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991, 2nd edition (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992), 38-9.[/footnote]

But the markets were small in British North America so the growth of local manufacturing depended on access to external markets. Britain didn’t need much of what British North America had to offer apart from raw materials. And in 1828 the United States introduced a system of tariffs that was meant to protect embryonic industries in the northern states (New England was a particular beneficiary). Most of the industrial manufacturers that were targeted came from Britain; British North American exports suffered as well.

For the first 50 years or so of the 19th century, therefore, manufacturing growth took place principally in areas of production that served the British North American market itself. One example was the cotton mill established in Sherbrooke (the first joint-stock company to be incorporated in Canada) in 1845, but the biggest driver of economic change was railway development.[footnote]Jean-Pierre Kesteman, “GALT, Sir ALEXANDER TILLOCH,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12 (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003). Accessed December 2, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/galt_alexander_tilloch_12E.html .[/footnote]

Railways were to the mid-19th century what freeways and airports were to the 20th. That is, they were potentially very efficient means of moving goods and people, they were enormously expensive to construct and typically required government involvement (whether directly or indirectly through loans), and they were the mark of an up-to-date economy and country (or colony). As well, railways didn’t suffer from cold weather as waterways did — they offered the potential of year-round service and they could, theoretically, go wherever they were needed, unlike canal systems which depended on water routes.

The first railways in Canada were temporary structures, usually made of wooden rails and used to move quarried rock. One such railway was built at Louisbourg in the early 18th century and another — more like a steam-winch-powered cable car — was used to build the new Quebec Citadel in 1820. The first true railway, however, appeared in the 1830s, running about 36 kilometres from La Prairie (across the St. Lawrence from Montreal) to the head of Lake Champlain. From there water transportation took over as goods were transferred to boats and sailed downriver to New York. The second railway built in British North America was shorter still: a 9.5 kilometre line from Albion Mines to Pictou, Nova Scotia.

Much more significant was the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, which opened in 1853. It was important for three reasons: first, it was broad gauge (rather than standard) and thus set the standard for future railroads in Canada until the 1870s; second, it addressed the centuries-old irritant of Montreal merchants who longed for an ice-free port by joining the largest Canadian city with Portland, Maine; third, it was an international railroad, the first in the world.

The Great Western Railway (1855) subsequently linked Windsor and Detroit to Toronto, Hamilton, and the Niagara district, while the Toronto, Simcoe, and Lake Huron Railway (also 1855) further locked in Toronto as Canada West’s hub city. The largest and most ambitious of the pre-Confederation railroad projects, however, was the Grand Trunk Railway, which eventually connected Montreal and Toronto, in part by leasing or otherwise absorbing these smaller independent railways. Fortunes were invested in these projects and a whole generation of British North American capitalists and banks made even larger fortunes back. Land and material sales were key to profits, most of which appear to have been made before the first train chugged down the line.

Figure 9.12 The Victoria Bridge was part of the Grand Trunk Railway’s infrastructure and, at the time of its completion in 1857, the longest span on Earth.

The value of railways in Canadian economic history is often misunderstood. Railways in many respects duplicated what had already been accomplished by canals and added little to the economy that was truly new. Some of the earliest experiments were, in fact, referred to as “canal railways” because they paralleled existing water routes. This was certainly the case with the 12-kilometre Montreal and Lachine Railroad, built in 1847. In British North America, the first railways have been described as a duplication and extension of the Empire of the St. Lawrence, corridors of trade that echoed, rather unimaginatively, the trade routes first developed under New France (if not under the Wendat and Haudenosaunee). It was for this reason that railways were perilous investments: in British North America  they were necessarily very long, they competed with existing water transportation routes, and they offered little to emerging manufacturers.

Exercise: Documents

Canada South

It may be west of Montreal and Old Canada, but Canada West is very definitely farther south than much of the rest of the country, including all of what is now Western Canada. These two maps (Figures 9.E2 and 9.E3) show the same region in the 1850s.

Figure 9.E2 John Tallis’ ca. 1850 map of Canada West.

Figure 9.E3 John Hutchins Colton’s 1855 map version of Canada West.

They are, however, profoundly different representations of southern Ontario.

What changes can you see? What is being emphasized in the first that was not so important or interesting to the cartographer and artist who produced the second?

Beginning an Industrial Revolution

What railways did offer (and what is easy to overlook) is a stimulus to heavy industry, to say nothing of demand for squared timber for ties and trestles. Steel for rails, rolling stock, and engines represented a major new demand factor in the economy. Iron and steel foundries appeared and gradually diversified. The availability of surplus iron and steel stimulated growth in other kinds of manufacturing, principally associated with working implements. Shovels, axes, and pickaxes — the trademark tools of the farmer, the logger, and the miner — were beneficiaries of the railway industry. They were needed in such enormous quantities that investment in metal-bashing shops became very attractive and tools became more generally available.

Figure 9.13 The Toronto Rolling Mills produced iron rails from 1857 to 1873, when steel production took over.

The Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory provides a useful example of how industries complemented each other. Established in 1847 in Newcastle, Canada West, by Daniel Massey, this was the chrysalis from which Massey Manufacturing and then Massey-Harris and, in the 20th century, Massey-Ferguson would emerge. Massey began by pioneering the production of mechanical threshing machines, which was possible only because of the availability of all kinds of metal products, everything from iron ingots to nails. From Newcastle, Massey could ship up and down Lake Ontario, but there was limited roadway access to the interior of the colony. By the mid-1850s the company relocated to Toronto where it had improved access to raw materials, nearby foundries, and farmers to whom it could sell its products. This small industrial revolution, so intimately related to the agricultural well-being of the colony, had an almost immediately perceptible effect. One observer in 1860 commented that “an American machine is now as great a rarity as a Canadian one was a few years ago.”[footnote]Quoted in Richard Pomfret, “The Mechanization of Reaping in Nineteenth-Century Ontario: A Case Study of the Pace and Causes of the Diffusion of Embodied Technical Change,” in Perspectives on Canadian Economic History, ed. Douglas McCalla (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1987), 81.[/footnote]

This focus on, and success in, the manufacturing of agricultural implements followed on the continued Upper Canadian belief in an expanding farm frontier as an engine of growth and the wheat economy. Implement manufacturing, then, was something of an advance in terms of industrialization, but it ultimately preserved the staples orientation of the wheat economy and did not lead to agricultural diversification. That is to say, a threshing machine does nothing to push a farm economy from monoculture to robust self-sufficiency and, say, wool production.

Creating a Working Class

The rise of farm implement production had an unintended impact on the Canadian economy: it reduced the need for farm labour. In doing so it freed up younger members of farm families, specifically those who were not in line to inherit the farm. Some of these men and women looked west to new farming opportunities in Upper Canada while others moved to the towns and cities to pursue wage labour. Put less charitably, perhaps, farm machinery created circumstances in which the big farm family was not needed; some families had to shed a few members, sending them off to take their chances, perhaps working for Massey in Toronto. This change marked the emergence of a locally produced market of free labour: “free” in the sense of being removed from other obligations and free to move to wherever the jobs and opportunities arise.

Whatever factories came into existence in British North America  before Confederation were not, to be sure, very large. One study claims that “the average Upper Canadian manufactory employed less than five workers.”[footnote]Palmer, Working-Class Experience, 38.[/footnote] The railway companies were the largest employers — some of them marked by the vertical integration of foundries, equipment manufacturing, line construction and maintenance, connections with ports and shippers, and even the housing of their workers. By 1871, nearly 3,000 British North Americans worked for the principal railway firms.[footnote]Paul Craven and Tom Traves, “Canadian Railways as Manufacturers, 1850-1880,” in Perspectives on Canadian Economic History, ed. Douglas McCalla (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1987), 127-8.[/footnote]

Environmental Costs

These numbers hint at the scale and breadth of production necessary to keep these industries moving. As railways extended the reach of industry deeper into rural areas, new resources could be tapped. Logging for the manufacture of railway ties accelerated, and with it came soil erosion and stream damage. Fish spawning grounds were impacted as rivers silted up. Even the production of sawdust in industrial quantities affected water quality. As well, iron and steel production required a mining industry to supply the key ingredients: iron ore and coking coal. Iron mines opened around Lower Canada and coal mines in Cape Breton. By mid-century hundreds were employed as wage labourers underground and in iron forges.

The production of coke — coal from which impurities have been removed — began in earnest in Canada in these years and augmented the production of charcoal (coke is much better in the smelting process but the tar residue is much greater and much more toxic, as 20th century Nova Scotians would discover to their sorrow). Steam engines, whether on rails or on the water or in mills, increasingly required coal as well. The needs of the Royal Navy often determined the location and success (or failure) of coal mines, as was the case in Cape Breton and on Vancouver Island. Coal tips (piles of waste earth, stone, and unmarketable small pieces of coal), began to grow on the landscapes abutting Sydney, Nova Scotia, and Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. Dust from the tips and from the coal heaped on the docks was in the air where everyone — even those who never ventured underground — would breathe it in. Many from those communities were exposed to the toxins, and at risk for developing — and dying from — silicosis.

No one at the start of British North America’s industrial revolution could have imagined the millions of tons of material that would be won from under Earth’s surface in the decades ahead, nor could they know the full environmental consequences of their actions. By 1860, however, the purity of water and soil and cellular matter was already being severely compromised in areas of early industrialization.

Attributions

Figure 9.12
Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, Victoria Bridge, now constructing across the St. Lawrence River at Montreal by Skeezix1000 is in the public domain.

Figure 9.E2
West Canada by BotMultichill is in the public domain.

Figure 9.E3
Canada West or Upper Canada by BotMultichill is in the public domain.

Figure 9.13
Toronto Rolling Mills by Skeezix1000 is in the public domain.

Figure 9.10 Chateau Clique leader John Richardson opened the Bank of Montreal in 1817. Thirty-three years later, brewer and industrialist John Molson opened his own. The Molson Bank, ca. 1860.

Building the canals required two things of critical importance to the economic, social, and political history of Upper and Lower Canada: money and a workforce.

Banks and Locks

First, banks were required because all that debt had to reside somewhere. An agency was needed to both store the growing amounts of capital in the colonies and to act as a lender to entrepreneurs and governments. These early banks also coined the local currency. The Bank of Montreal appeared first, in 1817, followed by the Bank of Quebec and the Bank of Canada (also in Montreal), and then the Bank of Upper Canada. All were chartered in the years between 1819 and 1822, and other banks would be established — a flurry of them in the 1830s — though not all lasted more than a few years. The Bank of Upper Canada held a monopoly position in the colony for nearly a generation, and it was very much an instrument of the Family Compact: the Bank’s directorship was dominated by members of the colony’s executive council.[footnote]Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada 1784-1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 245–7.[/footnote]

The interests of the bank were thus indistinguishable from those of the political elite in the colony and the colonial elite was very interested in canals. The bank’s inaugural president, William Allan, was also an active investor in and a director of the Welland Canal Company. Allan was not alone in this regard. The interlocking directorships between the bank, the government’s executive council (which overlapped, too, into the legislative council), and the Church of England under the leadership of the Reverend John Strachan became the source of the Family Compact’s unquestionable authority in the colony and a target for critics in the 1830s.[footnote]Albert Schrauwers, “The Gentlemanly Order & the Politics of Production in the Transition to Capitalism in the Home District, Upper Canada,” Labour/Le Travail 65 (2010): 22-5.[/footnote] As a consequence of this effective strategy on the part of the Family Compact, the Bank of Upper Canada was instantly a force with which to reckon in colonial policy making.

Second, the canal-building projects required a large workforce, more than could be mustered in the colonies. The arrival of several hundred Irish Catholic canal builders or navvies, some of them veterans of similar projects in the British Isles, changed the demographics of Montreal for generations. The 500 or so employees of the Lachine Canal Company were the largest non-military workforce ever assembled in Canada. The conditions under which they worked were appalling (see Chapter 10); they represented, however, a small army of wage earners whose survival depended on the emergence of a service economy in Montreal and Lachine.

Figure 9.11 The Bank of Upper Canada issued its own currency (minted in England) in the 1850s.

New immigrants are always a convenient target for blame when economic conditions tumble and competition for jobs intensifies. When the canal projects were completed by 1830 (setting aside various expansions and improvements in the years to come) hundreds of economically vulnerable Irish navvies found themselves out of work. This happened at a time when wheat prices in Britain were falling and sales of farmland in Upper Canada were in decline.

In the years between 1800 and the 1830s there had arisen, predictably, an array of businesses associated with the production of lumber for houses and fences, nail-makers, and importers of cotton textiles, rope, and furniture — all of whom serviced the growing farm population. Blacksmithing generally was of critical importance. When immigration slowed all of those secondary industries and services were affected. And, of course, farmers who had staked their property on the future of wheat were hardest hit.

The second wave of immigrants in the 1830s, which followed the navvies from Ireland, was doomed to travel in atrocious conditions aboard lumber boats (known at the time as coffin ships) and in the company of cholera. This proved to be the worst possible time for these immigrants to arrive, as the 1830s generally was a time of economic struggles in Lower and Upper Canada alike. By 1837 — a fateful year in the Canadas politically — Upper Canada’s debt was so great that the colony was nearly bankrupt.[footnote]Kenneth Norrie and Douglas Owram, A History of the Canadian Economy (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 194.[/footnote] (For more on the social and political impacts of this time, see Chapters 10 and 11.)

Britain’s response to this debt crisis (and to the political crisis of which it was a part) was to unite the two Canadas (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 11). Naturally, Lower Canadians, who inherited Upper Canada’s debt, were none too pleased. Britain also appointed as governor of the united colony Charles Poulet Thomson, the first governor with significant financial experience and an understanding of the emerging industrial world.[footnote]Ibid., 195.[/footnote]

Colonial Cities

Changes in the Corn Laws in the 1840s restored Canada’s superior position in relation to the United States, and as American cities began to grow, there were even markets south of the border for Canadian wheat. Overall the decade witnessed a dramatic recovery in exports and immigration: the population of Upper Canada (called Canada West after the joining of Upper and Lower Canada) nearly doubled and a significant presence at Toronto was inevitable.

Urbanization generally in British North America changed the rhythm of the economy. Generations of Canadiens had successfully mixed farming with the fur trade: ploughing and planting before heading off into the North and the West before late spring. This pattern of seasonal labour persisted well into the 19th century. Logging camps operated during the winter months even while the rivers — their supply line and highway — were frozen. Farmers often undertook construction work on roads or jobs in sawmills while they waited for their crops to mature; fishing was very seasonal and sometimes augmented with seal hunting (in Newfoundland); wherever there was logging there was squaring of timbers and the need to build ships in which to transport the lumber. Cities provided another market for surplus labour. As farming became more economically marginal in Lower Canada in particular, where growing families pressed against the limits of farm productivity, more and more young men and women moved into the towns and cities.

The social aspects of this urbanization are considered in Chapter 10. It is worth noting here, though, that Lower Canada’s cities appeared where the Anglo-Protestant community was most heavily concentrated and in such numbers and with such wealth as to represent a powerful economic, political, and social elite. Montreal caught up with and finally passed Quebec City in population size only in the 1820s. Government, the garrison, the lumber trade, and (relatedly) shipbuilding dominated the economy of Quebec City. Montreal, on the other hand, began to diversify with the completion of the Lachine Canal. And, of course, it had always been an important seat of commercial power for the interior of the continent (more lately for Upper Canada). As Upper Canada grew, so too did the role played by Montreal merchants in provisioning frontier settlers.

Attributions

Figure 9.10
Molson Bank Montreal – John Henry Walker by Jeangagnon  is in the public domain.

Figure 9.11
CANADA, BANK OF UPPER CANADA 1857 —ONE PENNY by Geo Swan is used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.

As was the case with the Canadas, the Maritimes and Newfoundland also enjoyed an economic boom during the war years. After the war, they staggered and struggled until eventually entering an unparalleled period of prosperity. Expanding Atlantic markets would, overall, usher in an age of wind, wood, and water for the four colonies, even as steam-driven shipping was chugging across the ocean.

Wood

Various imperial tariff policies favoured wood products from British North America, most of which came from New Brunswick. Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland profited as well in the short run, but New Brunswick enjoyed two key advantages over the other colonies in this regard. First, it had better and bigger forests; second, it was criss-crossed by rivers that allowed logging camps to move deep into the interior in search of more trees.

While all four Atlantic colonies engaged in the lumber trade, they did so in different ways. Prince Edward Islanders depleted their own forests and then shipped out to New Brunswick in large numbers to work as seasonal labourers in the mainland logging camps. As well, Prince Edward Island manufactured some of the largest and most diverse ships associated with the forest industry. Newfoundland, too, produced large numbers of ships from its own forest supplies, but these were overwhelmingly in service of the fisheries industry and not meant to serve other exports. Newfoundland’s forest industry would grow on the Avalon Peninsula in particular in the 19th century but, like Nova Scotia, it faced limitations based on access. With few rivers that reached deep into either colony’s interior, the forests along the foreshore were denuded and the industry’s advance slowed until new investment and technology made inland tree stands more accessible.

Figure 9.6 The Miramichi and Saint John River systems alone provided access to most of New Brunswick’s forests.

In New Brunswick logging and sawmilling became year-round activities, spawning smaller milltowns along the Saint John River in particular. Demand for New Brunswick lumber was so great that the port towns (St. Andrews and Saint John especially, but also the settlements at the mouth of the Miramichi) began to produce ships designed specifically to carry squared timber. On arrival in British ports, these boats were either sold as shipping capacity or for their timber. With the exception of some brief market downturns (including, in 1821, a fire that burned across the middle of the province from the Miramichi through Fredericton) and some uncertainty from time to time about tariffs, the forest sector as a whole grew until 1860.

Imperial tariffs and other protectionist measures ensured privileged access to West Indian markets for Maritimers. During these years the links between the Atlantic colonies and British (and  Spanish) Caribbean colonies strengthened. With New England frozen out of the British West Indies, the opportunity arose for Maritimers to stock them with fish, farm surpluses, and shipping capacity. Prince Edward Island benefited mainly from the market for farm products as none of the other three colonies had the same agricultural potential. Charlottetown in particular benefited from the need for more shipping capacity.

Wind and Water

Shipbuilding throughout the region was a leading sector, supported heavily, of course, by the timber industry. Saint John was home to the largest fleet and Charlottetown was second. Both ports built, registered, and chartered out their vessels. Some of these ships were bound for distant parts of the world such as the eastern Mediterranean and the west coast of South America. There, they would carry freight from one port to the next under the command of notoriously tough “bluenose” (Maritimer) skippers whose reputation for cutting costs was eclipsed only by that of their ship owners.

Wealth accumulated in Yarmouth, Halifax, Charlottetown, and Saint John, especially in the pockets of shipbuilders and owners. Their view of the world was not narrow and parochial: they were shipping in very distant waters and trafficking in exotic goods. More than that, their ships were themselves products for market. At mid-century ship built in Charlottetown was being sold to buyers in Britain and the West Indies; more often than not island shipbuilders sold their output to Canadians and Newfoundlanders.[footnote]Eric W. Sager, “Atlantic Canada and the Age of Sail Revisited,” in Perspectives on Canadian Economic History, ed. Douglas McCalla (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1987), 99-100.[/footnote]

Newfoundland began to tap more into the fisheries and seal colonies of Labrador as well and  provided most of the fish that was traded abroad. Markets in Britain continued to be strong, although French competition returned to the Grand Banks from their base on St. Pierre and Miquelon. Tariff changes badly undermined Newfoundland cod exports to Spain (formerly its major marketplace) and forced a reorientation toward Portugal and the Italian states. Even Brazil, a Portuguese colony with Portuguese tastes, emerged in the early 19th century as a viable market for Newfoundland salt cod.

The internal workings of this industry changed in the first quarter of the century when the truck system arose. St. John’s merchants provided fishermen with credit to purchase nets and other essentials of the codfishing trade in exchange for their catch. The merchants bore the bulk of risk if the market failed, but the fishermen faced comparable risks if they borrowed too much and/or the catch was not big enough to settle accounts. On the face of it, this may seem to be a symbiotic relationship, one in which the success of one side depends ultimately on the success of the other. In practice, merchants and codfish buyers, or cullers, often took advantage of their knowledge of the marketplace to fix a lower price for the catch so that they could maximize profit. Fishermen were thus faced with two threats: the size of the catch might fall short and, even in good years, it might fetch a lower price than usual. Indebtedness and merchant financial worries became ongoing themes in the St. John’s and Newfoundland economies.[footnote]Sean T. Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 87-116.[/footnote]

Figure 9.7 By mid-century all of the colonies had their own postal systems. An 1851 Nova Scotia one shilling stamp.

Overall, the Atlantic colonies experienced the first half of the 19th century as years of growth and relative prosperity. Merchants in the main towns took on many of the aspects of the old Bristol merchants of early mercantilist days. They wanted to work in protected markets, they saw themselves benefiting from their colonial/imperial connection with the Crown, and they engaged in a kind of triangular trade involving the Caribbean plantation colonies. They also had a growing influence over colonial and imperial policy and came to form a powerful political force. These connections enabled the establishment, too, of financial institutions in the Maritimes, including the Bank of New Brunswick (founded in 1820 as the first chartered bank in British North America), the Bank of Nova Scotia (1832), and the Newfoundland Savings Bank (1834). These institutions facilitated the accumulation of colonial capital and its reinvestment in public and private enterprises.

Exercise: Documents

France in America, 1852

Victor Levasseur was part of a generation of cartographers whose work was meant to stimulate the mind in several ways. On the map in Figure 9.E1 he shows what little is left of the French presence in the Americas, including St. Pierre and Miquelon, the little island chain south of Newfoundland that enables France to remain a presence in the Grand Banks and the Gulf of St. Lawrence to this day. Apart from the rather abashed looking tiger (embarrassed, perhaps, because he’s meant to be on a different map), what does Levasseur want you to take away from his document?

Figure 9.E1

Attributions

Figure 9.6
New Brunswick map general by Qyd is used under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.

Figure 9.7
Nova Scotia stamp by File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) is in the public domain.

Figure 9.E1
Colonies françaises (en Amérique) by AncelyBot is in the public domain.

The first Canadian canal was built at Lachine, toward the western end of the island of Montreal. It opened in 1825, bypassing the Lachine rapids, long a barrier to navigation and the site of a now-ancient portage. The Lachine Canal had an important impact on the economy of Montreal: it changed the city from being the westernmost head of navigation in Lower Canada to being the port of exit for goods coming out of Upper Canada, a way station at the mid-point between southern Upper Canada and the Atlantic. Because the canal joined the higher levels above Lachine to the lower levels to the east of Montreal, the water flow was fast enough to generate power through water wheels. Industries relocated from the old town centre of Montreal and even Quebec to take advantage of the power supply that could be used to run sawmills and flour mills.

Figure 9.8 The Canada Marine Works at Lachine, ca. 1875, by Peter Winkworth.

The Lachine Canal served the towns and ports of Lake Ontario. The expanding frontier of farms along Lake Erie, however, had to deal with the Niagara River and the famous cataract there. American investors first found a way to evade Niagara Falls by building the Erie Canal, completed in 1825 — the same year as the Lachine Canal. They followed up with the Oswego Canal four years later, and the American system then connected Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to the ice-free port of New York.

Meanwhile, Canadian investors did not stand still. The Welland Canal opened in 1829, linking Lakes Erie and Ontario, although it was plagued by problems with both route and financing. But as the 1830s opened the Canadians could claim to have kept pace with the Americans during what might be called the “canal race.”

The more defence-oriented Rideau Canal, completed in 1826, was built by the British government as a public venture and was an early indicator of the close link between infrastructure and public funding in British North America. Other Canadian canals soon shifted from private hands to government control.[footnote]Gerald Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years 1784-1841 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963), 153–60.[/footnote]

Figure 9.9 The first Welland Canal (in blue) was criticized as being slow and inefficient and more likely to benefit American farmers on Lake Erie than Upper Canadian farmers. The current canal route is marked in grey.

The canals were technological and engineering marvels in their time but they had real limitations. Although shipping bulk goods by water was much cheaper and faster than by road, that was only true when the water was not frozen. Only so much grain could be moved at the end of one autumn harvest before the ice set in; after that, this harvest had to wait until the following spring before making it to market. Consequently, storage and credit became increasingly important considerations.[footnote]James T. Angus, A Respectable Ditch: A History of the Trent-Severn Waterway 1833-1920 (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 3-71.[/footnote] As well, the three Canadian canals were built by different companies and, not surprisingly, their specifics varied greatly. The Rideau Canal, for example was only half as deep as the Welland, which limited the ships that could use it and their ability to survive commercially — or even just to stay afloat in Lake Ontario. Canal-related debt was considerable and, given the involvement of the colonial administration, it left the government of Upper Canada unable to fund ancillary projects like road construction. Pro-canal merchants proposed more taxes on property to address the situation; anti-canal farmers responded that these big projects benefited merchants principally, so trade should be taxed instead to cover the debt.

However much debt the Canadian canals might have acquired, none was as disastrous as Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Canal. Construction began in 1826 and ceased abruptly in 1831 when the Shubenacadie Canal Company collapsed in bankruptcy. Twenty-three years passed before the project could be renewed, and it took seven more years to complete the route between Halifax and the Bay of Fundy. The canal was used for a decade and then shut for good in 1871. By then, railways and even roadways had overtaken canals as the most viable infrastructure in eastern and central British North America.

As a final note on the golden age of canal-building, it is no surprise that they had unintended environmental consequences. The four western Great Lakes flow into one another but they are blocked from Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence, and the sea by Niagara Falls. The opening of the Welland Canal joined the two ecosystems and the Lachine Canal similarly circumvented the rapids at Lachine. This allowed different species of fish and parasites to mingle for the first time. Developments in shipping — especially in bilge systems — and the rise of industrial pollution would worsen this situation in the 20th century, but the process began in the early 19th century.

Attributions

Figure 9.8
Canada Marine Works by Soul scanner is in the public domain.

Figure 9.9
Welland Canal – First Canal Stage One by Qviri is in the public domain.