Westward Ho? The Shifting Geography of Corporate Power in Canada

Abstract

This paper maps the changing network of large Canadian corporations in the half-century following the Second World War, using location of corporate head offices as a window on the geography of corporate power. In this era, the network of interlocking directorates was reshaped by several developments: consolidation of corporate headquarters in major metropolitan zones, the decline of Montreal and the increased importance of Toronto as the principal metropolis, the movement of industrial capital westward and concomitant rise of Calgary and Vancouver as corporate command centres, the nationalist politics of Quebec, which led some major corporations to defect from Montréal while nurturing a French-Canadian segment of the corporate élite, and the continuing hegemony of Toronto and Montréal in the world of corporate finance. By the close of the twentieth century, the Canadian corporate élite appeared to be well integrated across the main urban centres of économie power, across the financial and industrial forms of capital, and across the anglo-French ethnic différence. Viewed in light of related research on the élite’s reach into civil society, this pattem of spatial, sectoral and ethnie intégration presented a structural basis for strong business leadership in both economic and extra-economic fields. Whether such corporate hegemony is ultimately compatible with a democratic way of life is altogether another matter.