Canadian City: Essays in Urban and Social History 9780773584853

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The Canadian City: Essays in Urban and Social History

Edited by Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F. J. Artibise

Revised and Enlarged

CARLETON UNIVERSITY PRESS OTTAWA —CANADA 1991

THE CARLETON LIBRARY SERIES A series of original works, new collections and reprints of source material relating to Canada, issued under the supervision of the Editorial Board, Carleton Library Series, Carleton University Press Inc., Ottawa, Canada. GENERAL EDITOR Michael Gnarowski EDITORIAL BOARD Valda Blundell (Anthropology) Irwin Gillespie (Economics) Naomi Griffiths (History) Robert J. Jackson (Political Science) David B. Knight (Geography) Michael MacNeil (Law) Stephen Richer (Sociology) © Carleton University Press Inc., 1984 Reprinted 1991 ISBN 0-88629-018-X (paperback) Printed and bound in Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication data Main entry under title: The Canadian City (The Carleton library; no. 132) Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-88629-018-X I. Cities and towns—Canada—History—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Stelter, Gilbert A., 1933II. Artibise, Alan F.J., 1946- III. Series. HT127.C33

1984

307.7'6'0971

C84-090212-3

Distributed by: Oxford University Press Canada 70 Wynford Drive DON MILLS, Ontario, CANADA, M3C 1J9 (416)441-2941 ACKNOWLEDGMENT Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. Cover photo: St. George's Square, Guelph, Ontario, 1908. Courtesy: Guelph Civic Museum

CONTENTS

I. II.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 CITIES IN THE NEW WORLD: CANADIAN URBAN HISTORY BEFORE 1850 Introduction 5 1. Gilbert A. Stelter, "The Political Economy of Early Canadian Urban Development" 8 2. Paul-Andre Linteau and Jean-Claude Robert, "Land Ownership and Society in Montreal: An Hypothesis'* 39 3. Frederick H. Armstrong, "Metropolitan!sin and Toronto Reexamined, 1825-1850" 57 III. METROPOLITAN GROWTH AND THE SPREAD OF THE URBAN NETWORK Introduction 71 4. Peter G. Goheen, "Currents of Change in Toronto, 18501900" 74 5. T. W. Acheson, "The National Policy and the Industrialization of the Mahtimes, 1880-1910" 109 6. Alan F. J. Artibise, "The Urban West: The Evolution of Prairie Towns and Cities to 1930" 138 IV. THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT Introduction 165 7. Walter Van Nus, "The Fate of City Beautiful Thought in Canada, 1893-1930" 167 8. Deryck Holdsworth, "House and Home in Vancouver: Images of West Coast Urbanism, 1886-1929" 187 9. Alan Gowans, "The Evolution of Architectural Styles in Toronto" 210

V.

URBAN SOCIETY Introduction 221 10. Michael Katz, "The People of a Canadian City, 18511852" 224 11. Sheva Medjuck, "Family and Household Composition in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Moncton, New Brunswick, 1851-1871" 249 12. Chad Gaffield, "Social Structure and the Urbanization Process: Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Research" 262 13. Robert Harney, "Boarding and Belonging: Thoughts on Sojourner Institutions" 282 14. D. Suzanne Cross, "The Neglected Majority: The Changing Role of Women in Nineteenth Century Montreal" 304 15. Murray Nicolson, "The Other Toronto: Irish Catholics in a Victorian City 1850-1900" 328 16. Alan F. J. Artibise, '*Divided City: The Immigrant in Winnipeg Society, 1874-1921" 360 17. Carl Betke, "The Original City of Edmonton: A Derivative Prairie Urban Community" 392 VI. Urban Reform and Government Introduction 431 18. Paul Rutherford, "Tomorrow's Metropolis: The Urban Reform Movement in Canada, 1880-1920" 435 19. John C. Weaver, " ' Tomorrow's Metropolis'\ Revisited: A Critical Assessment of Urban Reform in Canada, 18901920" 456 20. John H. Taylor, "Urban Autonomy in Canada: It's Evolution and Decline" 478

Preface to the Second Edition

This volume represents a shift in emphasis from the first edition published in 1977, for we have added a number of new articles that deal with the question of urban society. Thus there is a new emphasis on subjects such as family, social structure, immigration and religion. Other sections of the volume have been revised as well, with new articles in several areas. The editors have provided new introductions to each section with indications of recent literature available. This volume, with its concentration on urban society, is a companion to two other Carleton Library books — The Usable Urban Past: Planning and Politics in the Modern Canadian City (No. 119, 1979) which emphasizes the nature of urban government and the evolution of modern planning, and Shaping the Urban Landscape: Aspects of the Canadian City-Building Process (No. 125, 1982), which stresses the formation of the urban environment, with articles on factors in urban growth, land speculation and development, the subdivision process, building and architecture, and internal transportation. This edition is dedicated to the members of the Urban History Group of the Canadian Historical Assocation. Since 1971 this committee of historians, geographers, planners and archivists has met regularly at the annual Learned Societies meetings in June and in the fall in a succession of cities to promote the study of urban history. Through conference planning and organization and through the sponsorship of the Urban History Review, this group has been a vital force in the development of the historical dimension of urban studies in Canada. Gilbert Stelter, Guelph Alan Artibise, Winnipeg.

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I.

General Introduction: What is Urban History?

"Urban history," according to H.J. Dyos, one of the pioneers of the field in Britain, "is the most newly discovered continent and into the scramble for it goes every kind of explorer."1 In Canada, the rush was relatively late compared to that in the United States and Great Britain, but the activity has been intense since the early 1970s. For example, a major bibliography published in 1981, Canada's Urban Past, contains more than 7,000 entries for books, articles and theses, most of them the product of the past decade, indicating the wealth of material now available to the researcher and student.2 As well, there are a number of articles which serve as guides to the general concepts of urban history or to specific themes such as urban growth, land development, architecture and building, and urban society.3 For up-to-date information on what is going on in the field in Canada, readers should regularly consult the Urban History Review, a periodical which is now published by the Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg. In spite of all of this activity, defining urban history in a precise way remains a difficult task, partly because the subject matter is so complex. To most of those who consider themselves urban historians, urban history is not a single discipline or subdiscipline in any exclusive sense; rather, it is a field of knowledge in which many disciplines converge.4 Thus geographers, planners, architects, political scientiests and a good many others as well as historians can be said to "do" urban history when they deal with the urban past. In general terms, urban history is an attempt to explain some of the most basic phenomena of modern history — the growth of cities and the urbanization of society. Its approach is closely related to those who study major elements of social change such as class and family formation; the specific contribution it makes to questions such as these is a concern for grounding these questions in specific places. As a result, the growth of urban history as a self-conscious field of study is tied to the general increase of interest in local history. Is urban history really just another name for the local history of towns and cities? The answer is yes

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THE CANADIAN CITY

if a local study is put into the perspective of regional or general community development. What often characterizes local history, however, is an antiquarian interest in specific details and events, without any concern for whether these represent unique or typical occurrences. The urban historian's approach thus tends to fall between that of the local historian and that of the social scientist. What this amounts to, in practice, on the one hand, is an interest in particular places and in the extent to which people — individuals and groups — can and do affect events; and, on the other hand, an awareness of general patterns and large-scale forces over which the people of a specific community have little or no control. In some respects the study of urban history in Canada is simply a logical development of some of the traditional interpretations of Canadian history. The so-called Laurentian school of historians — including Harold A. Innis, Donald G. Creighton, and A.R.M. Lower — brought a metropolitan focus to their work on the staples trade. Their books still provide a necessary background for an understanding of the growth of the dynamic entrepreneurial cities of the 18th and 19th centuries.5 The relationship between city development and the staples industries was made more explicit in a seminal examination of the concept of metropolitanism by J.M.S. Careless in 1954.6 A second stage of urban history was ushered in during the 1960's and early 1970's when much of the stimulation for the study of urban history was due to the importation of American concepts and methodology. Particularly influential were the ideas of Sam Bass Warner on the social consequences of suburbanization and those of Stephan Thernstrom on social mobility. Unfortunately, Canadian scholars often treated Canadian cities as though they were merely extensions of American society without even asking if the national border made a difference. By the late 1970s a reaction against these rather uncritical importations was reflected in a greater concern for what was indigenous to the Canadian experience. The first national conference in Canadian urban history in 1977 served as a kind of barometer of a changing climate. By the kinds of questions asked, and by the sources used, Canadians consciously declared their independence of American urban history and its concentration only on a limited set of social processes such as mobility.7 Despite the growing sophistication of the study of urban history the field is still in its infancy in many respects. Some of the promising new directions are listed below but these are by no means exhaustive. First, there is an increasing recognition that the urban dimension makes sense only when seen as one part of a total society. What this means is that towns and cities are subsystems of a larger political and social system and have to be examined from the perspective of that larger system. Urban and rural history thus could be regarded as different sides of the same scholarly coin.8 Second, there is a new interest in how the power structure of society is related to the formation of cities and how it affects the nature of urban society. As one observer has put it, "the urban history of the 1980s calls for an analysis of institutionalized urban political and economic power in all of its facets — not only as it is expressed and implemented by those who rule, but also how it is

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

3

interpreted by the powerless who must live with or combat these rules."9 Third, there are signs that urban historians are looking beyond one national setting and asking comparative questions. What seems especially possible at this stage of development are comparisons with urban development in countries which, like Canada, are "regions of recent European settlement" — the United States, Australia, and several Latin American nations. We may then be able to begin to distinguish between what is more generally typical of urban development and what is the product of a particular societal context.10 NOTES: 1. "Agenda for Urban Historians," in H.J. Dyos, ed., The Study of Urban History (London, 1968), p. 6. 2. Alan F.J. Artibise and Gilbert A. Stelter, Canada's Urban Past, A Bibliography to 1980 and Guide to Canadian Urban Studies (Vancouver, 1981). 3. For general assessments of Canadian urban history see Gilbert A. Stelter, "The Historian's Approach to Canada's Urban Past," Histoire social/Social History, 7 (May, 1974), pp. 5-22; Stcltcr, "Urban History in North America: Canada," Urban History Yearbook, 1977 (University of Leicester, England), pp. 24-29; and John Weaver, "Urban Canada: Recent Historical Writing," Queen's Quarterly, 86 (1979), pp. 75-97. For an analysis of development in Quebec see Annick German, "Histoire urbaine et histoire de ('urbanisation au Quebec," Urban History Review, 3-78 (February. 1979), pp. 3-22. The contributions made by geographers are outlined in James T. Lemon, "Study of the Urban Past: Approaches by Geographers," Canada Historical Association, Historical Papers (1973), pp. 179-190 and in John U. Marshall, "Geography's Contribution to the Historical Study of Urban Canada," Urban History Review, 1-73 (May, 1973), pp. 15-24. The literature on urban growth is summarized in Elizabeth Bloomfield, "Community, Ethos and Local Initiatives," Urban History Yearbook (1983); that on land development in Michael Doucet, "Urban Land Development in 19th Century North America: Themes in the Literature," Journal of Urban History, 8 (May. 1982), pp. 299-342; that on building and architecture in Deryck Holds worth, "Built Forms and Social Realities: A Review Essay of Recent Work on Canadian Heritage Structures," Urban History Review, 9 (October, 1980), pp. 123-138; that on urban society in Chad Gaffield, "Social Structure and the Urbanization Process: Perspectives on Nineteenth Century Case Studies," in this volume. For informal discussions about the growth of urban history, see Bruce Stave, The Making of Urban History: Historiography through Oral History (Beverly Hills, 1977) and two Stave interviews, "Urban History in Canada: A Conversation with Alan F.J. Artibise," Urban History Review, 8 (February, 1980), pp. 110-143 and "A Conversation with Gilbert A. Stelter: Urban History in Canada," Journal of Urban History 6 (February, 1980), pp. 177-210. 4. Perhaps the clearest statement is H.J. Dyos, "Urbanity and Suburbanity," in David Cannadine and David Reeder, eds.. Exploring the Urban Past: Essays in Urban History by H.J. Dyos (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 19-36. 5. This approach is well described in Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History (Toronto, 1976). 6. " Front icrism. Metropolitan ism, and Canadian History," Canadian Historical Review, 35 (March, 1954), pp. 1-21. 7. David B. Knight and John H. Taylor, "Canada's Urban Past: A Report on the Canadian Urban History Conference," Urban History Review, 2-77 (October, 1977), pp. 72-86; Stelter and Artibise, "Urban History Comes of Age: A Review of Current Research," City Magazine, 3 (No. 1, 1977), pp. 22-36.

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THE CANADIAN CITY

8. Robert Swierenga, 'Toward the 'New Rural History': A Review Essay," Historical Methods Newsletter, 6(1973), pp. 111-122. 9. Daniel Shaffer, "A New Threshold for Urban History: Reflections on Canadian-American Urban Development at the Guclph Conference," Planning History Bulletin, 4 (No. 3, 1982), pp. 1-8. 10. For some suggestions in this regard see Richard M. Morse, "The Urban Worlds of Latin and Anglo America: Prefatory Thoughts," in Woodrow Borah, Jorge Hardoy and Gilbert Stelter, eds., Urbanization in the Americas: The Background in Comparative Perspective (Ottawa, 1980), pp. 1-6.

II CITIES IN THE NEW WORLD: CANADIAN URBAN HISTORY BEFORE 1850

The tiny communities of early Canada have been relatively neglected or downgraded in significance by scholars. A typical assumption is that of A. R. M. Lower. "A History of Canada, any history, must have much to do with untamed nature and with the countryside. Cities will come into it, but late."1 Lower's view might be considered the Canadian equivalent of Richard Hofstadter's oft-quoted statement that "the United States was born in the country and has moved to the city."2 But there is increasing evidence to suggest that urban life was a significant feature of Canadian development long before the dramatic urban growth of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, the basic essentials of the present network of cities in eastern and central Canada were firmly established by 1850. By this time the tiny outposts of the French and British empires had developed into dynamic commercial centres, had won metropolitan hegemony over sizeable hinterlands, and were beginning to produce some of the goods that were formerly imported. The major cities had achieved a degree of autonomy through city charters, and their leadership had shifted from an aristocratic elite based on representatives of imperial governments to an elite based on commerce. The cities were still relatively compact communities with commercial, residential, and industrial functions mixed together. But in the largest cities, specialization of areal functions had begun with the growth of industrial and residential suburbs, and residential segregation by class and ethnicity had made its appearance. The manner in which cities and urban life originated in Canada was due to a process almost as old as civilization itself. Great empires, with dynamic metropolises as their hearts, expanded by establishing colonial outposts. The Roman Empire provides one of the clearest examples of the use of urbanization as an instrument of expansion. Even with the collapse of the

5

6

THE CANADIAN CITY

Roman Empire and the general decline in urban life in the medieval period, new towns continued to be founded, especially as frontier posts on the borderlands. From the 16th century, young aggressive nation-states of western Europe — centred in Madrid, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Paris, and London — began a worldwide competition for hegemony by founding colonial towns in the Americas and Southeast Asia.3 The colonial towns planted in early Canada were part of this large-scale phenomenon and they served as agents of the urban metropolitan centres. Economically, they served to exploit the colony's staples; culturally, they represented the metropolis in the transmission of the metropolitan centre's style of life to a new frontier; in terms of military and administrative functions, they were often the means of occupying and holding the colony. The economic function is particularly basic to the relationship. The towns were generally entrepots, collecting staples from their region for shipment to the metropolitan centre for final processing and, in turn, distributing the manufactured goods from the metropolis.'1 The colonial towns of the French and British colonies often preceded the general settlement of a region. They could thus be regarded as constituting an "urban frontier," a term used by Carl Bridenbaugh and Richard Wade to describe a similar process in early American development.5 The future growth and prosperity of the colonial towns depended, of course, on the potential of their hinterlands. The relationship between the colonial town and its region appears to fit into a pattern in early Canadian history. In the initial phase, the towns acted as channels for the development of the region. During this period they contained a relatively high proportion of the population. In the second phase, however, a process of decentralization set in. The town's proportion of the total population dropped, even though the towns tended to grow rapidly. The smaller secondary centres which emerged developed a good deal of autonomy during this second phase because the primitive transportation system left them isolated, and because the original town of the region did not yet have the necessary facilities to dominate all aspects of life of the region. This decentralization process was ultimately reversed during a third phase when colonial towns such as Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, and Halifax became major urban centres in their own right. The colonial towns also played a significant role as agents for the transportation of social and cultural institutions from the metropolis to the frontier. Another characteristic of the colonial town was its lack of significant connections with other colonial towns, even with those of its own region. The primary connection and concern of the colonial town was the overseas metropolis. The beginning of regional and inter-regional connections represented the end of the colonial phase, as towns began to produce goods and services for not only themselves but also for the entire region. In the

CITIES IN THE NEW WORLD

7

urban development of Canada in the period prior to 1850 however, this phase had barely begun. NOTES 1. Canadians in the Mating (Toronto. 1958), p. 1. 2. The Age of Reform (New York, 1956), p. 23. 3. The process is described in Gideon Sjoberg, The Pre-lndustrial City Pott and Present (New York, 196Q); Ervin GtJanty, tow Towns: Antiquity to Ike Present (New York, 1975); Jorge E. Hardoy, Urbanization in Latin America: Approaches and Issues (New York, 1975). 4. For a general discussion of the process in Canada see Gilbert A. Stelter, " The Urban Frontier in Canadian History," Canadian Issues, vol. 1 (Spring, 1973). pp. 99-114, reprinted in A.R. McConnack and Ian MacPhenon (eds.), Cities in the West (Ottawa, 1975). See also John W. Reps, Town Planning in Frontier America (Princeton, 1969) and J. David Wood, "Grand Design on the Fringes of Empire: New Towns for British North America,'* Canadian Geographer, 26 (No. 3, 1982), pp. 243-255. 5. Cities in the Wilderness (New York, 1938); The Urban Frontier (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). Perhaps the strongest theoretical statement of what could be called "urban primary*' is Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities (New York, 1969), particularly chap. 1 entitled "Cities First — Rural Development Later.*'

The Political Economy of Early Canadian Urban Development GILBERT A. STELTER

The towns and cities of early Canada were part of a large-scale phenomenon whereby western European empires expanded to the Americas and southeast Asia by establishing colonial outposts. Urban life thus became a significant feature of the Canadian experience long before the dramatic urban growth of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, the basic essentials of the present network of cities in eastern and central Canada were firmly established by 1850. The manner in which the urban environment was shaped during this early period furnishes clues not only to the nature of early urban development but to the character of colonial life in larger terms. These towns and cities were physical and social entities whose form and structure were determined by a variety of factors which can be regarded as independent variables. I will concentrate particularly on decisions affecting land use. I intend to sum up the key variables with the term "political economy", which has a long tradition of usage in Canadian history (in the works of Harold Innis, for example) simply because I find it difficult to divorce "politics" and "economics" in early Canadian history.1 In regard to the significance of the political economy in city-building, several perspectives are particularly useful. One involves the place of the town or city within the larger society. Gideon Sjoberg has effectively argued that cities should be seen as nodes or subsystems within state organizations, SOURCE: This article is a revised and enlarged version of "The Political Economy of the City-Building-Process: Early Canadian Urban Development", in Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe, eds., The Pursuit of Urban History (London: Edward Arnold, 1983). Reprinted by permission of the editors and the publisher. 8

CITIES IN THE NEW WORLD

9

and that urban types and even physical form will vary with the political and economic differences exhibited by different kinds of nation-states. Sjoberg's claim that political factors such as the rise and fall of empires are among the most important elements in determining the pattern, spread and decline of cities in the pre-industrial world seems to be borne out by early Canadian history.2 Sjoberg's model is less useful for dealing with another question — the evolution of communities through successive types. A commercial phase is obviously the missing ingredient in his analysis of the transition from feudal to industrial society. While there were traces of feudalism in the foundations of the French Empire in North America, the essential characteristic of the period was commercial. It is important to make a distinction between two stages of commercialism, even though these are not yet clearly definable. The first could be designated as the mercantile commercial phase: towns and cities of early Canada essentially were colonial entrepots, serving as agencies of imperial trade and control. As in Latin America, the emphasis was on an export economy. In the American colonies, on the other hand, staple production relative to overall production declined in the eighteenth century, because of a new emphasis on production for domestic consumption. I don't have a handy label for the second stage, but it was characterized by interregional and localized trade and art is anal manufacturing for a local market. During this second phase, the largest urban places won a measure of autonomy from direct imperial and provincial control through charters of incorporation. The transition to this second level was clearly evident only by the 1820s in British North America, as much as a century later than similar developments in American cities only a few miles to the south. Some of the reasons for these different rates of development are suggested by the recently elaborated 4