Ontario History

In the 18th century the Indigenous peoples of the James Bay region shared land near the coast, a few resources, and furs from a vast hinterland with European newcomers. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 excluded Rupert’s Land – an appropriate decision for it was quite distinct from lands in the south where settlers were acquiring Indigenous land on the fee simple real estate model. What were the James Bay indigenous people’s conditions for sharing their land? It was arguably their principles, and not King George’s edict, that characterized the year 1763 at Moose Fort (Moose Factory). This paper draws on Hudson’s Bay Co. records to examine what was being shared with the newcomers in this northern region. Unlike in the southern regions, the newcomers had no intention of displacing Indigenous peoples. A modest sharing of land and a generous sharing of food and fur resources, on terms congenial to its first inhabitants, characterizes 1763 in this northern region.

From the end of the Second World War to the mid-1980s, many changes occurred in Ontario’s public libraries. Annual statistics reported dramatic expansion. Improved economic conditions, advances in technology, new buildings, revised legislation, and changing public attitudes reshaped this social agency. Within the library profession, specialized skills and ideas about the management of services also developed rapidly.

However, throughout this important transitional period there was a fundamental continuity in the thinking and practice of public library government. Within the library community and at Queen’s Park there was a consensus favouring local special purpose bodies because it was generally felt that appointed boards best fulfilled community needs and provided a satisfactory basis for public acceptance of political authority.

In the ongoing discussion of how Canada’s economy developed and how the land was colonised, little attention has been paid to the role of farm animals. The strategies of Scottish immigrants to rural Upper Canada show the centrality of livestock in subsistence, in the informal economy of barter, exchange and credit, and in off-farm sales. Raising stock—particularly cattle, sheep and pigs—was not an addition to settlers’ sources of income and subsistence, but underpinned most of them. Letters back to Scotland, supplemented by surveys and census data, show that animals’ contribution to clearing forest, raising crops, maintaining soil, providing food and clothing, raising cash or credit, maintaining reciprocal relationships and passing on property was integral to the success of backwoods farmers as they strove first for survival, and then for comfort.

In 1936 George Drew, future Premier of Ontario, was greatly concerned that a false and very dangerous impression of the Russian experiment in government was being spread in Ontario. So he traveled to Russia in 1937 where he confirmed his preconceived ideas with first-hand observation. For him, toleration of domestic communism could lead either to the horrors of Stalin’s USSR or to the fascism of Hitler or Mussolini. Canada’s best option, he felt, was to follow Britain in ending partisan politics and establishing a “National Government.” Thus, in the 1930s, he worked, unsuccessfully, to create coalition governments in Toronto and Ottawa. This article concludes that the lens through which Drew viewed the USSR can be reversed to gain insight into the Canadian political culture of which he was a part. The right-wing solutions that Drew advocated were conveyed to the public through international comparison and analogy based on Drew’s eye-witness account of his European tour.

The American writer H.L. Mencken is often credited with the observation that a national political campaign “is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.” Louis St-Laurent’s 1949 pre-campaign tour of Western Canada had all these ingredients. Like all good political tours (campaign or otherwise), maps were essential, and I found one that highlights a number of key features of Fort William and Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario.