The rapid settlement of the western agricultural plains overshadowed an even more striking feature of the Laurier years: the explosive growth of the country’s major cities. It was this development rather than rural settlement that had the most profound long-run consequences for the shape of Canada. In 1901 about 60 per cent of the Canadian population was rural; this figure declined by 10 per cent over the next two decades. Even in the agricultural West the growth of cities was
Spectacular. Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, and Saskatoon were themselves creations of the period: in 1901 there were just over 4,000 people in Edmonton; by 1921 the number exceeded 58,000. Winnipeg, which jumped from a population of 42,000 to nearly 180,000, grew at a faster rate than that of the agricultural areas of Manitoba. Vancouver’s population increased fivefold. Montreal and Toronto, the two largest cities, doubled in size. While the urbanization of the Maritimes was much slower, Halifax and Saint John experienced steady growth. People moved into the cities from two sources. Many, especially those who created the mushrooming cities on the prairies, were recent immigrants. Urban growth in central Canada was also fed by new immigrants, but equally important was the movement of population from the countryside to the city. By 1911, Quebec and Ontario were predominantly urban provinces, and that trend was accelerated by the industrial expansion of the war years.
Rapid urban development created new opportunities for real-estate promoters, new demands on civic government, and new social problems. While the centre of older cities, such as Halifax and Montreal, combined affluent neighbourhoods and substandard working-class housing, the new population pressure led to the growth
Before the Second World War, the poor, the unemployed, and the underprivileged of large urban centres were largely dependent on voluntary charity.
Of suburban areas, such as Maisonneuve in Montreal, and new subdivisions on the west and northern edges of Toronto. Verdun, a working-class suburb of Montreal, expanded from about 1,900 to 12,000 in the first ten years of the century. Transportation
Between these outlying developments and the urban factories and offices was provided by electrically operated street railways. The increasing availability of cheap electricity led to widespread domestic and industrial lighting. So, too, the telephone became more common, contributing to commercial efficiency and domestic convenience. “All the modern conveniences of street railways, electric light, etc., are furnished in abundance,” one visitor wrote of Winnipeg in 1906. “The brand new Manitoba Club, where the city magnates meet for lunch, leaves nothing to be desired in comfort or ‘elegance’, while the store set up by Eaton’s of Toronto occupies a solid block....” Every city, and many small towns, were caught up in the spirit of booster-ism that dominated the age. Claims about the finest civic facilities, the lowest taxes, the healthiest work force, and many other wonders were made in the most blatant fashion. Winnipeg boosters called their city “the Chicago of Canada,” while their confreres in Maisonneuve, with even less discrimination, adopted for their city the title of “k Pittsburgh du Canada”:
C’est dire que Maisonneuve avec ses trois chemins defer nationaux, avec sa ligne electrique pour le transport des marchandises, operant sous une franchise speciale a travers les rues de la ville etfaisant raccordement avec les chemins defer, avec ses superbes installations maritimes, installations qui n’ont pas de rivales dans tout le Dominion, Maisonneuve, au point de vue de Vexpedition, est unique dans son genre. (That is to say that Maisonneuve, with its three national railways—with its electric goods-transport system, operating through city streets under special franchise and connecting with the railroad—and with its superb maritime installations, unrivalled throughout the Dominion—Maisonneuve is, in terms of distribution, unique in its facilities.)
Progress meant growth, and communities were frequently willing to provide tax concessions and subsidies in the drive to attract new industries. For city politicians— some of whom benefited directly from the sale of unoccupied lands, factory construction, or real-estate development—cheap power, tram lines, and a growing work force were more important than housing, schools, and parks. Consequently, as cities grew, so did social problems. Housing, especially of the sort that working people could afford, was constantly in short supply. A public official reported in 1904 that in Toronto, “there is scarcely a vacant house fit to live in that is not inhabited, and in many cases by numerous families.” Such conditions existed, in varying degrees, in virtually every urban centre despite the fact that about 400,000 new
Houses were built in Canada between 1901 and 1911. City priorities were explained this way in 1913:
In the mad scramble to secure the location of industries, our cities have appointed industrial commissioners to bring in factories with their hordes of workers and yet the problem of shelter for those poor people who will contribute so much to the ideal of industrial progress, which the towns have set up, receives scarcely a thought. There have been many unholy unions of city and industry.
Housing was not the only problem that plagued the crowded urban areas. Sanitation, clean water, public health, education, parks, and recreation facilities, all became matters requiring attention. The lack of proper sewage facilities, the consumption of unpasteurized milk, and the ineffectiveness of public-health programs contributed to a high mortality rate among children and astonishing numbers of deaths from communicable diseases. In 1911 in Toronto, eleven infants under one year of every thousand born died of a communicable disease, and forty-four died of a digestive problem. Figures like that led Dr. Helen McMurchy to state in a report on infant mortality that “...the Canadian city is still essentially uncivilized—it is neither properly paved nor drained, nor supplied with water fit to drink, nor equipped with any adequate public health organization.”
These and other urban problems did not go unnoticed by those directly affected, though they were often denied the franchise and could do little to protest. A vocal group of middle-class Canadians, conscious of the human suffering and environmental ugliness that accompanied unregulated development, raised their voices in a demand for reform. These reformers, who insisted that changes be made in city government and urban social conditions, acted out of conflicting motives of selfinterest and altruism. On the one hand, those same business and political leaders who led the campaign for growth soon came to recognize that cities without adequate sewage and sanitation, suitable housing, and accessible parks and schools would never produce the healthy and contented labour force that economic progress required. Consequently, businessmen often took the lead in demanding that civic politicians enact measures to improve the city. Attempts were also made to suppress prostitution and illegal alcohol sales, though, as with other reforms, success varied from city to city. So, too, there were campaigns to root out corruption in civic politics and to bring some privately owned utilities, such as street railways and electric generating plants.
By the turn of the century electricity was becoming a normal part of city life; on hot days Ottawa residents could escape to Britannia Bay on the electric railway. Life was changing in the country, too—in October 1908 the first free rural mail delivery began, between Hamilton and Ancaster, Ontario.
Under public control. Stephen Leacock captured the spirit of businessman’s reform in his wonderfully ironic chapter, “The Great Fight for Clean Government,” in his Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich.
The greatest triumph of “civic populism” in these years was the successful campaign to create a publicly owned hydroelectric system in Ontario. The campaign’s leader, a cigar-box manufacturer turned politician, Adam Beck, brought together a coalition of municipal leaders, businessmen, public-ownership advocates, labour leaders, and churchmen to argue that such a natural monopoly as electricity should Belong to the community, not to private interests. If the wonder-working “white coal” was to be available to all Ontarians for industrial and domestic use on an equitable basis, government control was essential. The public campaign began to bear fruit in 1905 when Beck was included in a newly elected provincial Conservative government. Within the next five years public ownership was a reality. Though some business interests, pushed out of this lucrative area, denounced Ontario Hydro as socialism, most accepted it because it ensured the delivery of cheap power to the industries developing around the province.
World History
