{"id":282,"date":"2015-07-21T16:41:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T16:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/?post_type=chapter&p=282"},"modified":"2019-07-12T23:30:12","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T23:30:12","slug":"3-5-urbanization-and-industry","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/chapter\/3-5-urbanization-and-industry\/","title":{"raw":"3.5 Urbanization and Industry","rendered":"3.5 Urbanization and Industry"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_284\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 3.21 The largest city in English-Canada, Toronto covered a relatively small area. Public celebrations\u2060\u2014like this one for the Boer War in 1901\u2060\u2014brought thousands into the streets. Notice how pedestrians, cyclists, streetcars, and horse-drawn wagons compete for space.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIndustrialization took place in existing cities and it called into existence new \u2014<\/span><\/strong> industrial \u2014<\/span><\/strong> cities. There was, therefore, a changing urban landscape in some cases, but also a kind of urban template was developed for emergent cities, onto which industrial relations were imposed. Cities were sites of class struggle and the negotiation of new social relations, regardless of whether they were Canadian metropolises or small mining towns like Greenwood, BC or Frank, AB. The common denominator was the role that capital played in creating landscapes and cityscapes that gave priority to productive processes, sometimes with a brief horizon in mind.\r\n

The Dominion of Cities<\/h1>\r\nBetween 1871-1911, the population of Canada nearly doubled, from 3,689,000 to 7,207,000.[footnote]Statistics Canada, Historical Statistics of Canada<\/em>, 2nd ed., ed. F. H. Leacy (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1983): A78-93.[\/footnote] Most of that growth was in urban areas as the share of the workforce engaged in non-agricultural pursuits rose from 51.9% to over 60% in the same period. [footnote]ibid., D1-7[\/footnote] Even in Nova Scotia, where the benefits of industrialization were not long lasting nor very deep, the impact on the scale of urban settlements was very dramatic: in the decade after Confederation,\u00a0Halifax grew by 22%, New Glasgow by 55%, Sydney Mines by 57%, and Truro by 64%. From 1891-1901, a\u00a0decade of immigration strongly\u00a0associated with the growth of population and farm settlement in the West, Sydney tripled in size, emerging as the second largest city in the province.[footnote]Statistics Canada, Census of Canada, 1931<\/em>, vol.1, Table 13 (Ottawa: 1932).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nThese figures, respectable though they were, are totally eclipsed by the growth of Western towns and cities. Calgary held fewer than 4,000 people in 1891, and added only 500 over the next 10\u00a0years. Then its population leapt to 43,704 in 1911 and 63,305 in 1921 with an economy built mainly around distribution, food processing (e.g., meat packing), and housing materials.[footnote]Max Foran with Edward Cavell, Calgary: An Illustrated History<\/em> (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1978), 70.[\/footnote] In 1891, Winnipeg became the first western city to join the ranks of the 10\u00a0largest centres in Canada, arriving in ninth\u00a0spot with a population of 25,642. The very next census saw it pull ahead of all the Maritime cities (including Halifax), and in 1911, it was the third largest city in the country, with 136,035 people. Likewise, Vancouver joined the top-10 in 1901, with only 26,133 people, and moved into fourth place in 1911 with 120,847. By 1921, four of the 10\u00a0largest cities in Canada were in the West, but the older eastern members of this club of leading cities were not going to be easily overtaken. Ottawa, after all, doubled every 20 years from 21,545 in 1871 to 44,156 in 1891, and 87,082 in 1911; the Dominion capital passed the 100,000 mark by 1921, but by that time its population had dropped from its best ranking of fourth\u00a0(in 1901) to sixth.\r\n\r\nNone of these cities was without an important industrial component. Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, and Winnipeg each had important rail yards and repair shops associated with the CPR (as did, to a lesser degree, Kamloops, Medicine Hat, and Brandon). Industrializing the production of food was another shared feature, whether in the form of canning salmon or packing meat or shipping enormous quantities of grain. Housing materials was also important to the regional booming population. Door and sash factories and lumber mills appeared in all of the biggest cities, in addition to other expressions of industrialism such as printers, cigar makers, and newspapers. Each of the western cities, too, had a role to play in goods distribution. This involved the handling of foodstuffs and construction materials needed by an increasing population, but also the manufactured goods produced in central Canada. An example of this is the distribution system developed in the 1890s by Toronto department store owner Timothy Eaton (1834-1907). Warehouses for Eaton\u2019s goods were built in the major centres but actual stores only appeared in the West in 1905. In the meantime, one could order from catalogues and have delivered a huge variety of manufactured products \u2014<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0including houses as buildable kits.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_285\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"]\"Two-story<\/a> Figure 3.22 The Neils Hogenson House in Stirling, Alberta, was ordered from the Eaton's Catalogue in 1917 as an assemble-it-yourself kit.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWhat is conspicuous by its absence from the western cities at the turn of the century is heavy industry. Textiles did well for a while in Winnipeg, but steel manufacturing and the production of machinery both remained an effective monopoly of central Canada. When the automobile industry arrived in Canada, it was in Walkerville and Montreal, not Edmonton or New Westminster (let alone Halifax or Charlottetown). Processing primary products with very little value added was the norm in the West. It is partly for this reason that workers in the emergent service industries \u2014<\/span><\/strong> streetcar drivers, milk deliverymen, fire fighters \u2014<\/span><\/strong> were important players in the trade union landscape of the West.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_5282\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1000\"]\"Brick<\/a> Figure 3.23 The clean lines of brick factories, the bold smokestacks and water towers, and the promotional branding visible on this textile mill were all indicators of industrial progress and capitalist confidence in central Canadian communities like Renfrew, Ontario.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWhile urbanism was spreading alongside industrialism and capitalism, the power of Montreal and Toronto was growing greater with each passing generation. In 1871, there were slightly more than 100,000 people in Montreal; Toronto \u2014<\/span><\/strong> at 56,092 \u2014<\/span><\/strong> was slightly smaller than Quebec City. By 1891, Montreal had a population of nearly 220,000 and Toronto was three-times the size of Quebec City at 181,000. These two economic and industrial centres were rapidly emerging as a first-rung category of cities, the country's\u00a0two metropolises. In 1911, the census found nearly half a million people in Montreal and 380,000 in Toronto. By the end of the Great War, both had passed the half million mark and the next nearest city, Winnipeg, was less than half as large with\u00a0fewer than 200,000. Toronto\u2019s rate of growth and transformation was more sudden and spectacular than Montreal\u2019s but both were, even in 1900, nothing like what they had been in 1867. Both cities hosted large manufacturing operations, as did second- and third-tier cities in Ontario and in Quebec\u2019s Eastern Townships. In the immediate catchment of each of the two major cities, a metropolitan influence was obvious as the local economies became more closely knit. The foremost example of this is the so-called \"golden horseshoe\" at the western end of Lake Ontario: Toronto was the unchallenged heart of this conurbation that grew\u00a0(and became an almost continuous urban sprawl) through the 20th century.\r\n
\r\n\r\nThe links between the second industrial revolution and urbanization<\/a> are described by historian Craig Heron (York University).\r\n