Nineteenth-Century Ontario Research Articles

Social integration on the Upper Canadian frontier: elements of community in Essex County 1790–1850

Individuals settling new areas have had to rely on a variety of resources, including the social structures inherent in their culture. This study focuses upon the elements of family, kinship and origin in part of nineteenth-century Ontario. It approaches them from the perspectives of interaction over distance and of sociological institution, the particular institution being that of land conveyancing. Data drawn from the surviving parts of the personal and agricultural schedules of the Census of Canada for 1851/52 were searched for the propinquity of individuals to one another. Social interaction seems to have occurred within two miles for most people. Random samples and a series of t-tests suggest that there were no differences in proximity for the members of the different cultural groups but that there were differences between immigrant and established groups with respect to the desires of kin for proximity to one another. These differences were paralleled by differences in the structure of the family. Kinship was also important in determining to whom land was sold; most sales occurred within the particular community. That this was so suggests, according to the model of Steeves, that the level of integration in mid-century Essex was simply embryonic.

Professional aspirations and the limits of occupational autonomy: the case of pharmacy in nineteenth-century Ontario.

This study of the professionalization of pharmacy in nineteenth-century Ontario investigates the ambivalent nature of pharmacists' work which linked it both to the professions and to mercantile activity. Despite the profession's ambiguous position, and the contest for authority with the orthodox medical profession, pharmacists in nineteenth-century Ontario, as elsewhere, were largely successful in securing their professional bona fides. Based primarily on an analysis of nineteenth-century medical and pharmaceutical journals, this article is an initial attempt to understand the conflicts which helped define pharmacists' place in the Ontario occupational hierarchy in general, and the health services sector, in particular.

Beware of the “Evil American Monster”: Upper Canadian views on the need for a penitentiary, 1830-1834

Over the years numerous studies have focused on explaining the emergence of the penitentiary in nineteenth century Ontario. The routine question addressed in these studies is that of why Upper Canadians enacted legislation in the 1830’s to provide for the construction of a penitentiary based on the Auburn model. While the accounts historians have offered of the circumstances that led to this decision differ in other respects, they commonly agree that Upper Canadians living in the 1830’s began to view crime as a serious problem, and that they saw the construction of an Auburn-model penitentiary as an important part of the solution to this problem. This paper offers an alternative account of the circumstances that led to the establishment of an Auburn-model penitentiary in Upper Canada. This account highlights the opposing views Upper Canadians expressed about the “success” of American penitentiaries, and the outcome of the politics of penal reform in the 1830’s. Although other unique circumstances also contributed to the direction taken by the development of the penitentiary in Upper Canada, this investigation shows that the acceptance of the penitentiary among Upper Canadians was most importantly the result of conflict and compromise between the advocates of reform and their opponents.

Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario.

Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario.

Women's Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario.

Cohen focuses on the productive relations in the family and the significance of women?s labour to the process of capital accumulation in both the capitalist sphere and independent commodity production.

Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Two worlds: the Protestant culture of nineteenth-century Ontario

Religion was at the heart of Ontario life for many years. In Two Worlds, Westfall examines the origin, character, and social significance of the powerful and distinctive Protestant culture that grew and flourished in Southern Ontario in the mid-Victorian period.

Curtis, Bruce. Building the Educational State: Canada West 1836-1871 Houston, Susan E, and, Prentice, Alison. Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth Century Ontario

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Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Women's Work, Markets and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Women's Work, Markets and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

A Rural Practice in Nineteenth-Century Ontario: The Continuing Medical Education of James Miles Langstaff

James Langstaff was one of the early graduates of John Rolph's Toronto School of Medicine and, for a time, one of its professors. From 1849 until his death, he practiced general medicine in a rural community near Toronto. The handwritten daybooks and accounts of almost 30 years of this practice contain information about many thousand patient visits, the diagnoses, the recommended treatment, the fee and whether or not it was paid. Lengthy annotations give details of medical conditions and techniques and often include brief but disarmingly frank personal comments. These records have been computerized to give a comprehensive statistical analysis of this practice, its theories, techniques, pharmacopeia, finances, and its substrate, that is the balance of diseases affecting a mid-nineteenth-century farming community in Ontario. In this preliminary report, the changes implemented over 30 years and their origins are explored and comparison is made between this and other contemporary practices in Canada, the United States and Europe. More than a compendium of anecdotes, this record is a valuable social document and a rich source of early Canadian medical history that reflects conceptual priorities and their manner of change.

'The Most Disgusting, Disgraceful and Inequitous Proceeding in Our Law': The Action for Breach of Promise of Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

This study examines judicial management of the action for breach of promise of marriage in nineteenth-century Ontario through an analysis of reported cases, trial records, and newspaper accounts. This seldom researched area of legal history sheds light on the interplay between cultural ideology and legal developments. Breach of promise of marriage cases elicited much societal attention and often consternation because they challenged widely held attitudes on women’s participation in the legal system. This study also illustrates how judges at the time exhibited a strong commitment to judicial autonomy in the face of contentious juridical gender issues, as these cases often threatened Victorian visions of social order.

Legal Justice, Social Justice: An Incursion into the Social History of Work-Related Accident Law in Ontario, 1860-86

The historiography of work-related accidents in nineteenth-century Ontario is a product of two complementary but as yet unsynthesized lines of inquiry. On the one hand, legal historians have focused on the genesis of judge-made and statutory law respecting the liability of employers for the work-related accidents of their hired labor. Considerable light has been shed on political and ideological as well as formally “legal” factors that shaped judicial and legislative decision making concerning personal injuries at work. However, the legal historiography of the Victorian Ontario workplace pertains mainly to the law and those who made the law, rather than those subject to it. These studies of the dynamics of legal change, important as they are, lack a firm basis in tangible sociohistorical experience.

Making the Workplace 'Safe' in Capitalism: The Enforcement of Factory Legislation in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

The development of industrial capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century in Ontario brought new and more serious hazards into the workplace and drew women and children into the waged labour force. As a result of working class lobbying and the efforts of middle class reformers, the state empowered itself to regulate health and safety conditions in factories and to protect child and female labour. The implementation of these regulations was left to an inspectorate which was armed with substantial legal powers to enforce the law. These powers were rarely invoked by the inspectors. However, the failure to prosecute does not in itself indicate that the law was unenforced. An alternative enforcement strategy based on persuasion was followed by most inspectors. It has been argued that persuasion was chosen over prosecution because it made more efficient use of the scarce enforcement resources available to the inspectors, and that persuasion was effective. This paper argues that although it is true that the government chose to devote woefully inadequate resources to enforcement of factory legislation, this is not an adequate explanation of the inspectors' enforcement behaviour. The belief that persuasion was an effective enforcement model also flowed from the inspectors' values and assumptions, including the following: that worker carelessness was the major cause of accidents; that employers were socially responsible; that workers and employers had common interests in occupational health and safety; and that women and children needed special protection. It is further argued that persuasion was not an effective enforcement strategy, especially because it was linked with an acceptance by the inspectors of 'normal' industrial practices, even where those practices generated significant risks for workers. In effect, health and safety regulation probably did as much to legitimate industrial capitalism as it did to protect workers health and safety. Resume Dans la seconde moitie du dix-neuvieme siecle, en Ontario, le capitalisme industriel entraina de nouveaux risques et augmenta les dangers inherents au milieu de travail, en meme temps qu'il attirait les femmes et les enfants dans la main-d'œuvre salariee. Les pressions exercees par la classe ouvriere et par les reformateurs bourgeois inciterent l'Etat a assumer la reglementation des conditions sanitaires et securitaires dans les usines et la protection du travail des femmes et des enfants. La mise en vigueur de ces reglements etait laissee a des inspecteurs armes d'assez de pouvoirs pour appliquer la loi. Ces pouvoirs etaient cependant rarement invoques. L'absence de poursuites judiciaires n'indique toutefois pas que la loi etait ignoree. La plupart des inspecteurs soucieux d'appliquer la loi poursuivaient une strategie alternative basee sur la persuasion. On a maintenu que la persuasion etait preferee aux accusations non seulement parce qu'elle etait plus efficace mais aussi parce qu'elle se basait sur une meilleure utilisation des moyens limites mis a la disposition des inspecteurs. Le present article demontre que, bien que le gouvernement eut choisi d'allouer des ressources tres inadequates pour l'application de la legislation ouvriere, la penurie de moyens ne fournit pas une explication suffisante au comportement des inspecteurs. La conviction que la persuasion constitue un modele capable de faire observer les reglements decoulait aussi des postulats et des valeurs auxquelles adheraient les inspecteurs. Ainsi, certains croyaient que la negligence des travailleurs etait la cause premiere des accidents; que les employeurs assumaient leurs responsabilites sociales; que travailleurs et patrons possedaient un interet commun dans la sante et la securite au travail; enfin, qu'il fallait accorder une protection speciale aux femmes et aux enfants. L'auteur maintient, de plus, que la persuasion ne forme pas une strategie efficace pour faire observer la loi, en particulier parce qu'elle etait liee a une acceptation, de la part des inspecteurs, des pratiques industrielles normales, meme lorsque ces pratiques provoquaient des risques certains pour les travailleurs. En somme, les reglements sur la sante et la securite au travail contribuerent autant a legitimer le capitalisme industriel qu' a proteger la sante et la securite des ouvriers.

Much To Be Done: Private Life in Ontario from Victorian Diaries by Frances Hoffman, Ryan Taylor, and: I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill ed. by Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, Michael A. Peterman

Morris was “no longer treated in himself” (132) by Communist intellectuals of the 1930s, who attempted primarily “to deploy him as an aid to facilitate the swaying of public opinion” (132). Weinroth seems unwilling to “deploy” Morris in even so reified a fashion; he “in himself” or as represented by his works is, quite simply, left unaccounted for. p e t e r sinnem a / York University Frances Hoffman and Ryan Taylor, Much To Be Done: Private Life in On­ tario from Victorian Diaries (Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc., 1996). vi, 278. $19.95 paper. Carl Ballstadt, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Michael A. Peterman, eds., I Bless You in My Heart: Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). xxi, 437. $39.95 cloth. Much To Be Done is probably best described as a series of linked essays on private life in nineteenth-century Ontario that are based on “diaries, a few extracts from letters, in addition to quotations from other publications” (vi) written chiefly during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). Each essay highlights a different aspect of domesticity in the British North Amer­ ican province called sequentially during this period Upper Canada, Canada West, and Ontario. Although the authors intended originally to include “only writings from the diaries of women living in Victorian Ontario ... , as the pleasure of discovering and reading diaries progressed, it became clear that there would be some input from men” (v). As a result, the essays are drawn from the works of “fifty women” and “six men” (v), whose lives are summarized briefly in a section on “Biography.” Their writings are listed in the “Bibliography” that concludes Much To Be Done along with “Ac­ knowledgements,” “Notes,” an “Index,” and an entry “About the Authors,” Frances Hoffman, an “oral historian” (277) at the Kitchener Public Library, and Ryan Taylor, a librarian who “began the oral history programme” (278) at this library. The National Library of Canada catalogued this volume under “OntarioSocial conditions-19th century.” It is, however, a slightly awkward produc­ tion, somewhere between history and literature, life documents and critical interpretation, and data, in so far as diaries and other similar writings report facts, and opinions. Yet its contents and the modesty of its presentation kept me reading and in the end gave me both instruction and delight. I was particularly intrigued by details on such topics as “Illness,” “Fu­ nerals and Mournings,” and “Celebrations and Holidays.” A diarist, for 105 example, who visits Lakefield, Ontario, in 1891 and meets Catharine Parr Traill, records reservations that the “venerated author” held about “current medical practice: She is 91 years old. Had Grippe [influenza] last winter and was recom­ mended during convalescence to take brandy and water, which she did not do. Explained afterwards to Mrs Tate that she was afraid of contracting a bad habit. (172) The Victorians’ “fear of being buried alive” was the reason, according to the authors, that a “noisy wake was considered to be a good precautionary measure” (189). Their inclusion from Sara Jeannette Duncan’s The Imperi­ alist (1904) of her description of “The Queen’s Birthday” and the “ ‘rhyme about it — The Twenty-fourth of May Is the Queen’s Birthday If you don’t give us a holiday, W e’ll all run away’ ” (232) took me back to my own childhood in London, Ont., where we all cheerfully chanted the ditty to honour the day — not the weekend — that still “marked the beginning of summer, when light-coloured clothes could first be worn” (232). These essays, then, provide not only glimpses “into a bygone era” (vi) but also points of departure for the postmodern and multicultural Ontario that we are today. As it happens, Much To Be Done also provides contexts for I Bless You in My Heart. This volume includes one hundred and thirty-six of the “nearly five hundred” (ix) letters of Catharine Parr Traill that are known to be ex­ tant. When the editors chose the letters to be published, their “immediate aim” was to “make Catharine’s personality, experiences, and interests acces­ sible to general as well as specialist readers” (ix). Certainly, from this point of view the...

Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota by William K. Powers

364 Western American Literature Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota. By William K. Powers. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. 247 pages, $24.95.) Powers, an anthropologist, is fluent in the Lakota language, and in thirtysix years of field trips to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has established close and enduring relationshipswith Lakota people. Consequently, this scholarly and readable addition to his writings about the Oglalas is also revealing and insightful. It should appeal to specialists in language, music, philosophy, and religion, and to others interested in understanding American Indian ways. The author explains how Lakota sacred language comes into being and says it isof two types: that used by medicine men and women to address super­ naturals and that used by medicine men and women to communicate philo­ sophical ideas among themselves. It ismarked, as is all Lakota language, by its contemporaneity and readiness to change. Though its words and phrases are incomprehensible to the common people, sacred language and common lan­ guage are “one and the same;only the contexts provide the senseofopposition.” In conjunction with linguistic analyses, the author treats Lakota song and song texts, sacred numbers, and shamans and priests, all part of the religious and social life of which Lakota sacred language is an integral part. Along with his own experiences and observations, Powers uses relevant literature, com­ paring and contrasting his conclusions to those of others and taking issue with thosewith whom he disagrees. His appended notes add considerably to the text. Beyond its interest to scholars, the book would appear to have value for the Lakota because it records and preserves some of both their language and their way of life, either of which might otherwise disappear as succeeding generations lose their Indian tradition. DONALD E. GRIBBLE Hibbing, Minnesota The Moccasin Maker. By E. Pauline Johnson. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. 266 pages, $9.95 paper.) The intersections of race and gender in American literature have stimu­ lated new critical study and compelled renewed interest in hitherto unknown literary documents. E. Pauline Johnson’squasi-biographical talesofCanadian/ Mohawk relations in nineteenth-century Ontario are collected in her book, The Moccasin Maker (first published by the Ryerson Press of Toronto in 1913) and are re-issued with an introduction and annotations by LaVonne Ruoff in order to provide a distinctive Native American variant on women’s sentimental fiction of the last century. Ruoff provides careful annotations and ...

Restricting Child Factory Labour in Late Nineteenth Century Ontario

This paper investigates the changing experience of child factory labour in late 19th and early 20th century Ontario. It explores the largely accepted, though untested assumptions that restrictive legislation (the Ontario Factory Act of 1884) was achieved at the behest of middle and upper-class social reformers whose concern was motivated by a new concept of childhood. The evidence provided reveals that, contrary to historical myth, organized labour was the motivating force behind the anti-child labour legislation. It also indicates that, once proclaimed, the legislation was poorly monitored and enforced and, as such, was largely ineffective in curtailing the practice of child labour. Despite this, however, the paper provides evidence to show that child factory labour did decline significantly after the mid-1890s. The explanation offered is essentially one of changes in the demand for and the supply of child labor. That is, the centralization and accumulation of industrial capital in concert with technological advances in production restricted opportunities for child factory labor. At the same time, improvements in workers' standards of living reduced the need for families to send children to work. The study does not deny the importance of the changing concept of childhood in curtailing child labour. However, rather than being afforded primacy, the new views of childhood are seen as part of the social backdrop which made employers of children subject to criticism and adult workers desirous of protecting children's 'tender years'. Resume Cet article explore les changements dans le travail d'usine des enfants en Ontario a la fin du dix-neuvieeme et au debut du vingtieme siecles. L'auteur examine la validite de l'hypothese largement acceptee voulant que les lois restrictives, telle la Loi des manufactures du l'Ontario de 1884, aient ete dues a l'action des reformateurs et reformatrices sociaux, motives par une nouvelle conception de l'enfance. Or, contrairement au mythe historiq controlees et peu respectees et demeurerent inefficaces a reduire la pratique du travail des enfants. Ceci dit, l'article demontre que ce travail declina de facon significative a partir du milieu des annees 1890. L'explication de l'auteur est basee essentiellement sur les changements dans l'offre et la demande de ce genre de main d'oeuvre. Ainsi, la centralisation et l'accumulation du capital industriel, de concert avec les developpements technologiques dans la production, sont responsables de la baisse de la demande d'enfants dans usines. En meme temps, grâce a l'amelioration du niveau de vie des travailleurs et des travailleuses les familles avaient moins besoin d'envoyer leurs enfants sur le marche du travail. Cette etude ne nie pas que les changements dans la conception de l'enfance aient aussi influence la participation de la main d'oeuvre enfantine. Cependant, plutot que d'en etre des causes premieres, ces idees nouvelles font partie d'une toile de fond sociale qui contribua a la critique des employeurs d'enfants et qui inspira les tavailleurs adultes desireux de proteger la tendre enfance.

Sir John Beverley Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact

John Beverley Robinson (1791-1863) was one of Upper Canada's foremost jurists, a dominating influence on the ruling elite, and a leading citizen of nineteenth-century Toronto who owned a vast tract of land on which Osgoode Hall now stands. The loyalists had founded a colony firm in its devotion to the Crown, with little room for dissent. As a true loyalist son, educated by John Strachan, Robinson attempted to steer Upper Canada toward emulation of what he perceived to be Britain's ideal aristocratic society. As a young ensign in the York militia, he defended his sovereign at Queenston Heights, and as acting attorney-general he prosecuted traitors who threatened to undermine the colony. Later, as attorney-general and de facto leader of the assembly during the 1820s, he tried to mould the government to the British form. But factors he never understood--the influence of American democracy and liberalism in the Colonial Office--ensured that Upper Canada would never be a 'new Albion.' Robinson was appointed chief justice in 1829, and his judicial career spanned thirty-three years, during which he insisted the courts were subservient to the legislature and established precedents declaring their role should be limited to the enforcement of existing laws, with no independent creative function. His long service on the bench represented both a preservation and a strengthening of the British tradition in Canadian law. In this biography, early Toronto comes alive through the eyes of a powerful man--firm in his beliefs, attractive to women, respected by his fellows--who sought to mould society to his own ideals. For historians, lawyers, and students of jurisprudence who seek an understanding of the roots of legal practice in nineteenth-century Ontario, it is essential reading.