{"id":275,"date":"2020-09-25T20:41:53","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T00:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/preconfederation2e\/chapter\/10-5-city-life\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T16:39:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T20:39:19","slug":"10-5-city-life","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/preconfederation2e\/chapter\/10-5-city-life\/","title":{"raw":"10.5 City Life","rendered":"10.5 City Life"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_2874\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 10.5 This grand structure embodies the neo-classical institution of the era. In this case, it is the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto, opened in 1850.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAt the start of the post-Napoleonic era cities in British North America were mostly large towns. They were small in population and area, they served very local markets, and their people consisted mainly of merchants, artisans, physicians and lawyers, government and military\u00a0officials, clergy, and not much more.\u00a0Until the 1840s,\u00a0Halifax, for example, was essentially a city built of wood; in the generation that followed, its centre would be largely rebuilt in stone and brick. By the 1860s, the most dynamic cities had grown significantly and were much more complex places.\r\n

The Modern City<\/h2>\r\nCivic buildings<\/strong> became common and were a source of pride for the citizens. There was confidence and ambition in a young city that invested in stone buildings; the resident merchants and professionals\u00a0located\u00a0their mansions near\u00a0the centre of town\u00a0where they could be pointed to as evidence of community wealth; infrastructure like waterworks, board sidewalks, and a firehall were indicators of a commitment to the future and an enterprising attitude. The optimism of the age -- the belief that a community's\u00a0citizens were building a glorious society with a long life expectancy -- was embodied in the move to neoclassical design in these new public and civic spaces that suggested (not very modestly) a common and timeless connection\u00a0with ancient Greece and Rome.\r\n\r\nFew of these small cities had rows of shops just yet\u00a0--\u00a0they typically had public markets<\/strong> where grocers, butchers, fishmongers, and bakers hawked their wares. There was space as well for farmers from the nearby countryside to sell cash crops to the growing town population.\r\n\r\nMichael Katz studied the people and patterns of life in mid-century Hamilton and he closely observed the transition that was underway there (and in many other cities):\r\n
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[B]y 1861 some men could see that the future lay not only in trade but even more in manufacturing. By that time advocates of industry had begun a campaign to persuade the entrepreneurs of the city that the future lay in the factory as much, or more than, in the countinghouse. At first their successes remained modest. In 1861 the Wanzers moved their sewing-machine factory to Hamilton from Buffalo; someone partially manufactured shoes which were finished by hand; there were a prosperous factory that made pianos, one that manufactured hats, and, of course, the yards of the Great Western Railway and the construction of locomotives. Overall, in 1861 Hamilton remained a commercial city, though the future already was clear to anyone who read the signs. The ambitious little city would become the Birmingham [England] of Canada.[footnote]Michael B. Katz, The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City<\/em> (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), 4-6.[\/footnote]<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\nBy mid-century some cities were ready to leave behind Katz's \"commercial city.\" For less than a century they had developed as nodes of commerce and local trade, sometimes tentatively\u00a0reaching out into a larger global economy but (with the exception of Montreal and perhaps Quebec and Saint John), as commercial towns they had reached their upward limits: Toronto held\u00a0about 40,000 and Hamilton a little more than 10,000; Halifax was creeping up above 20,000 and Charlottetown 7,000. Montreal was the giant with a population around 90,000 and was thus an example of where the future might lie.\r\n\r\nIndustrialization in these days, however, meant consolidation of some producers, heavy secondary manufacturing like an iron foundry, and other similar operations that might hire a few dozen employees at best. Full-on industrialization would come later in the century and, with it, massive growth in city size and a complete overhaul in what it meant\u00a0in practical terms\u00a0to be a citizen.\r\n\r\nIt is worth noting, however, that from 1851 to 1861\u00a0about 13% of British North Americans lived in cities of 20,000 or more, which put the emergent confederacy above the world average of 5%. The proportions in New Brunswick and the Province of Canada were highest, at around 14% living in cities in 1851, with Canada West accelerating to 18.5%\u00a0 in 1861. These numbers show that more British North Americans were moving to a handful of large centres and, simultaneously, more centres were passing the 20,000 threshold to qualify as cities. Some people, in other words, \"urbanized\" by sitting still. [footnote]Leroy O. Stone, \"Urban Development in Canada,\" in\u00a0Perspectives on Canada's Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues<\/em>, eds. Frank Trovato and Carl F. Grindstaff (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 1994), 372.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1038\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]\"An<\/a> Figure 10.6 A photograph of Toronto, 1856. Government House looms in the upper left while artisanal factories take up the foreground. Pianos were a mark of sophistication and in high demand in middle-class households. Note, too, the board sidewalks.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nHistorians on Video<\/strong>\r\n\r\nUrban spaces created a public domain in which people gathered to celebrate, protest, and mourn, among other things. Royal visits are an example of this, something that would have been largely unthinkable in an entirely rural environment of farmland, hamlets, and villages. Historian Ian Radforth (University of Toronto) considers such events in the first video below and then, in the second video, addresses the far more regular phenomenon of public displays and spectacles. The transcripts, respectively, may be found here: transcript for introductory video and video on royal visit of 1860 [PDF]<\/a> and transcript for video on street spectacles [PDF]<\/a>.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/AcIM03T8h9o?si=VA5DdyD9KOGjQt1R\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/raMa4NKyilo?si=YAmh8yRRujWEy6kl\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/GitS_zPjxNM?si=k2rfG2CYONJ2Ma6Q\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Sin City<\/h2>\r\nThe emergence and growth of cities brought to light many social problems \u2014\u00a0crime, poverty, and alcoholism being the most obvious. There were, as well, so-called moral issues like unwed motherhood, gambling, and prostitution (the last of these was not always regarded as a criminal activity in the 19th century).\u00a0The response was the creation of institutions such as prisons, insane asylums, orphanages, and shelters for the poor.\u00a0The protection of property (manifest in police stations, courts, and jails) and care for the weakest members of society (in asylums and hospitals) was part of a continuum of middle-class values that patrolled deviance and enforced the emerging standards. The wide support for these values was evident by the sometimes-competitive frenzy of funding and building the institutions that would mark a city as a \"go-ahead\" place. In the 1850s alone Halifax added to its list of government buildings the Lunatic Asylum, the City Hospital, Rockhead Prison, the Halifax Court House, and the County Jail.[footnote]Susan Buggey, \"Building Halifax, 1841-1871,\" Acadiensis<\/em>\u00a0X, no. 1 (Autumn 1980): 90.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2778\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]\"""\"<\/a> Figure 10.7 The Toronto Jail in 1835 was one of many solid-looking urban institutions that spring up around British North America.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe mid-19th century witnessed the emergence of philanthropy\u00a0<\/strong> as a social phenomenon in British North America. To be wealthy was one thing; to be a\u00a0philanthropist\u00a0<\/strong>was something else altogether.\u00a0Philanthropy had deeper roots in England where money had accumulated in the cities a century or two earlier. It was informed by Protestant values that placed a premium on doing good deeds as a means of achieving personal spiritual growth. And where one or two philanthropists could not make a project come together, an organization might.\u00a0The Ladies Benevolent Society and the Hamilton Orphan Society, for example, addressed\u00a0a constellation of concerns and were backed by middle-class Protestant women in Hamilton, Canada West. Their projects included\u00a0a home for elderly women and an orphanage as well as a social work visitors initiative.[footnote]Carmen J. Nielson, Private Women and the Public Good: Charity and State Formation in Hamilton, Ontario, 1846-93<\/em> (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIn\u00a0Montreal and\u00a0Quebec, most of these institutions were\u00a0 Catholic, but there were Protestant operations as well. As Montreal grew, so did the Catholic institutional presence; the Protestants had to play catch-up. Civic leaders faced issues like poverty with mixed feelings: charity and care were needed but leading Protestants\u00a0were fearful that their efforts would lead to more poverty and less individual effort on the part of vulnerable populations. But also, \"the Montreal Protestant community was torn between the need to create its own relief network to alleviate destitution, in order to avoid forcing Protestants to compromise their souls by using the Roman Catholic system, and the prevalent ideology against making relief too easily available or too abundant.\"[footnote]Janice Harvey, \"Dealing with 'the destitute and the wretched': The Protestant House of Industry and Refuge in Nineteenth-Century Montreal,\" Journal of the CHA 2001 Revue de la SHC<\/em>,12 (2001): 74-5.[\/footnote] The result was a House of Industry<\/strong> in the 1860s that distinguished between the \"deserving poor\" (such as the elderly) and the able-bodied poor who could work for their keep.\u00a0The division in Canada East between Catholic social work institutions and privately funded Protestant institutions kept the state out of the system for the most part (unlike in Canada West and the rest of English-speaking British North America), a fact that would come to have some bearing on the shape of Canadian federalism in the years to come.\r\n
\r\n\r\nHistorians on Video<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe development of institutions is a manifestation of what historian Ian Radforth (University of Toronto) refers to as \"state formation.\" Here is a link to the transcript for video on state formation [PDF]<\/a>.\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/dDBfgqCYlhQ?si=dJNaMWTcqAbyT1O_\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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Key Points<\/h2>\r\n