Farming, Agrarian Ideals, and Life in Ontario, 1890-1930

368 Pages·2001·24.22 MB·English

TIES THAT BIND:
FARMING, AGRARIAN IDEALS, AND LIFE IN ONTARIO, 1890-1930
Adam Crerar
A thesis submitted in confomiity with the requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Depariment of History
University of Toronto
é Copyight by David Adam Carruthers Crerar. 1999
1+1 National Library Bibbth% ue nationale
of Canada du Cana
Acquisitions and Acquisitions et
Bibliographie Senrices senrices bbliagraphiques
395 welfhigton Sbwt 395, nie Watlgton
-ON K1AW ûtiauaON K1AONQ
Canada Canada
The author has granted a non- L'autem a accordé une licence non
exchisve licence dowhg the exchuive pennettant à la
National Ijtbrary of Canada to Bibliothèqpe naîionaie du Canada de
reproduce, Ioan, distribute or seil reproduire, prêter, distn'bner ou
copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous
paper or electronic formats. la forme de microficheffilm, de
reproduction sur papier ou sur format
6Iectronicpe.
The author r e W o wnersbip of the L'autem conserve la propriété du
copyright m this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse.
thesis nor substantial exûacts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels
may be pdedo r otherwise de ceHe4 ne dofient être imprimés
reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son
permission. autorisation.
TIES THAT BIND:
FARMING, AGRAMAN IDEALS, AND LIFE IN ONTARIO, 1890-1930
Adam Crerar
Ph.D 1999
Department of History, University of Toronto
Histonans have rightly regarded the period corn 1890 to 1950 as the time when
Ontario emerged as an urban and industrial province. But their acceptance of the idea that
this development was accompmied by a cnsis of "mld epopulation" in the countryside has
led them to dismiss the life of the f m . and ideas about that life. as anachronistic. The
prevailing assumption of niral decline in the face of aeady urbanization has also meant that
littie attention has been paid to the interaction between the country and the city, save perhaps
to present urban areas as the final destinations of mihgrating fmen.
ïhis study contends that there was no crisis in Ontario's farming communities in this
period. The adult farming population remained stable and relatively prosperous. F m
children lefl home because of the lack of available land in their neighbourhoods, not out of
any widespread rejection of their parents' occupation. Their departures were neither sudden
nor disntptive. but rather undertaken in stages and negotiated in the context of the farnily
farm economy.
The existence of pmsperous famiing dimicts and a large urban population with roots
in the countryside ensured that fming and conceptions of faming played a central role in
the province's society and culture even as towns and cities expanded and the proportion of
people engageci in agricuIture declined. Pubüc defences of fanning were creative and
vibrant. and rooted in contempomy ideas about history, racial decline. science, gender, art,
and Literature. The thesis presents an overview of these agrarian ideas, and then traces their
influence over individual lives. educational institutions, and the home fiont in the First World
War. A final chapter details the fist challenge to the idealization of f a d gi n Ontario, at
the hands of sociologists and public health officiais in the 19 10s and IWOs.
Through an examination of census material. personal papers. the fam press, and
govemment records. this work argues that the history of Ontario from the 1890s through to
the Depression should not be seen primnrily as an era of urban triumph. but rather one of the
complicztted intermingling of rural and urban worlds.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1 wotdd like ihto f al1 to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Cowicil
of Canada the University of Toronto. and the C.P. Stacey and Margaret S. McCullough
scholarship h d sf or their generous financiai support of this work.
No project of this kind would be possible without the expertise and kind assistance of
archivists and librarians. Thanks to the staffs of the National Archives. the National Library
of Canada the Archives of Ontario. J.F. Robarts Library, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book
Library. Victoria University Library. the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, the
Regional Collection of D.B. Weldon Libnry (U.W.O.), the University of Guelph Archives.
McMaster University Archives. Queen's University Archives. the University of Toronto
Archives. the Art Gallery of Ontario Archives. the Anglican Church Archives. the United
Church Archives, the Historical Collection in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
the Ontario Agricultural Museum. the Simcoe County Archives. and the Bruce County
Museum. Special thanks to Mary McTavish for her enthusiasrn and generous assistance. 1
would also like to thank the administrative staff of the History Department at U of T for their
considerate and effective assistance over the years.
Craig Brown. my advisor. has seen me through from early discussions and outIines to
the final draft: I've especially valued his keen editoriai eye. and his constant faith in rny
abilities and this project. Thanks also to Franca lacovetta and Ian Radforth for theV generous
enthusiasm and valuable advice.
I wouId also like to thank David King and Shirley Thompson for their support and
faith in the value of ulis enterprise. and for providing me with places to stay and work.
I have been fortunate beyond belief to have shared my graduate years with a range of
bright. interesting. h y . a nd gnerous people. Thanks especially to Jane Thompson, Jeff
McNaVn. and Jane Hanison for their fnendship. intellectuaI companionship, enthunam, and
good humour-and invaluable help. My parents. Dory and Tom Crerar. have lived this
project with me through long talks in London and ai Pointe au Baril. and over the phone. 1
can't thank them enough for their friendship and support. and for sharing with me their love
of languap and appreciation of the interconnectedness of past and present My partne.
Deborah Van Seters. has seen me through it all. bolstering me with unfailing enthusiasm.
sharing with me her love of books and the Ontario couneside. and using her wisdom and
good judgement to improve al1 aspects of this work. I couldn't have done it-and had so
much fun-without her.
CONTENTS
A bstruct
A cknowledgemen;~
htroduct ion
1 Rural Ontario. 1 890- 1930: Plagued by Depopulation?
II Rural Emigration and Family Reciprocity: The Mathesons of
Annow. 1 890-1 9 10.
III The Cultivated Faxmer: Agrarian Ideais at the Tum of the Century
IV Living the Sonnets: The Life and Work of Peter McArthur
v
Farm and School: Nature Study and the Ontario Agicultural College
VI An Agarian on the Land: W.C. Good
VI1 The Apotheosis of Ayrarianism: Ploughshares and War. 19 14- 19 18
VI11 Pathologizing the Countryside: New Themes in the 19 10s and 1920s
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliopphy
INTRODUCTION
There is a portrait of the history of Ontario that looks something like this: in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. the population of towns and cities blossomed. The
men and women who lived in these burgeoning places took up new kinds of work at
machines in factories and desks in offices. The streets and sidewalks they traversed, and the
buildings in which they worked and resided. spread out From urban centres to envelop old
farm houses and cover once-tilled fields. .At the same time. hundreds of thousands of people
migrated From the Ontario wside. apparently abandoning the life of the farm for the life
CO
of the city.
This narrative. of urban ascendancy in the face of niral and abpicultural decline. is
central to the hinory of Ontario since Confederation. Contemporaries saw proof of the
decline of farming as a way of life in the phenomenon of "niral depopulation." which became
a subject of vigorous public debate followllig the discovery in the early twentieth cenw
censuses that the province's country districts were fdling behind its towns and cities.
Agitated social cornmentators filled the pages of agarian jownals with their solutions to the
problem of "How to keep the boys and girls on the farm."' In the wake of the 191 1
' See. for example. the foltowing articles in the Onrarb Agrict(1uml CuifegeR eviery: EX. Drury, "Canada's
Parasites: A Study of Economic Conditions in Canada as Affdng Our Rural Population," May 1902; J.H.
Reed. "The Farmer's Boy and the Hone" October 1905; HL. Hat," Beaunfying of School Gmunds," Apnl
2
calculations. the "nnal problem" even received the attentions of a short-lived, prosaically-
named. Senate Committee. struck to examine "The Unsatisfactory Character of the
Movement of the Population. ..i n the Older Provinces of the Dominion."'
Presbyterian minister John MacDougali's Rzrrcrl Life in C~~nctti'cilrs: Trends and T i .
published in 19 13. bea encapsulated recent census findings and becarne the principal source
of information on rural depopulation for both conternporary observers and subsequent
historians of the period. MacDougall subtracted the population of growing rurai areas in the
North from that of the rural population as a whole to calculate an absolute loss of 100,000
people corn the countryside of Old Ontario in the first decade of the new centtuy. Further
calculations revealed the emigntion of 37j.000 people from rural Ontario. and a ten to
twenty per cent deciine in the number of dwellings in many rural districts. When
MacDougall bmadened his study to consider the years from 1871 to 19 1 1. he discerned that
prosperous agriculniral districts rhroughout the southern pan of the province had loa from
1908: William Hunt "The Farm Home and Its Environments." March 191 1: Mrs. B.W. Breese. "The Woman
Upon the Fann." June t 9 11: LB, Reyno tds. "The Rural FVoblem." July t 9 13.
See also these articles from the Furmer's AJvocare and Home Mur,pa=ine. R.F., "Give the Boys a
Chance." 15 Me 190 1 :n .&, "Averting the Tragedy of the Washtub," t Juiy 190 1 :H .A.B., "What the Fannets'
hughters Have to Say About the Problem of Domestic Science," 1 December 1900: WJ, Way. "Keep the
Boys on the Farm," 16 November 1903: Editorial, "Why Has Not Eastern Canada a Greater Farming
Population?," 13 October 1904: Mn, Octavius Allen, "Why Boys and Girls Lave the Farm." 19 Janw 1905:
"The independent," "SalariedD aughten." 23 November 1905: Editorial. "The Somnarnbuiist on the Fm," 25
Juiy 1907,
-
:C anada. Senate. JotirnuIs of the Senate. Volume XLVK 19 1 1 t 2. The cornmittee was formed in response
COe arly returns fkom the census that indicated fosses in the ml population of the provinces West of the
Manitoba-Ontario border. The Liberais, who fomed the majority party in the Senate, used the findmgs as a
means of critici- the hi& ttariff policies of the Borden govemment, The effectiveness of the ensuing debate
was undermined by the lack of cl* in the cornmittee's mandate. che incornpkteness of the census returns at
the rime of h&ng, and the partisan md parochial interests of individual members.
one-quarter to one-third of their populations?
These findings were not neutrally reported: the notion of "rurai depopulation" implied
more than the simple reduction of the number of people living outside the province's cities,
towns. and villages. At a tirne when population figures were carefully calculated and
earnestly debated as evidence of national fitness. declining numbea were regarded as a sign
of pathological weakness in the area in question? Moreover. the connotations of
"depopulation" were thoroughly negative: it was denved from a Latin root meaning "to .1
waste." and had been used to describe the clearance of Pasture lands in Britain. and the
effects of plague. locusts. and wu.'
Indeed. contempomy commentators frequently employed images of a countryside
nvaged by "depopulation." MacDougaII himself descnbed desolate fming neighbourhoods
marked by abandoned farmsteads and households weakened by the absence of children who
could no longer tolerate life on the f i . " S peaking to Toronto's Canadian Club in 19 10.
Gordon Waldron of the ahprian Wrrklv Sun outlined the effects of "The Depopulation and
.
Impoverishment of Rural Ontario": "Unrepaired buildings and fences. neglected orchards
.' MacDougall calculated emigntion figures by using birth and death rates. and immiceration figures, to
estimate an espected population for 19 1 t on the bais of bures for 190 1 :a ny shortfail was amibuted to
ern igation- John MacDougall. Rrirtrl tifi in Crrnurla- 11s Trends und Tmks, Toronto: Westminster Co., 19 13 .
pp. 22-32. 37-38.
For Canada's "passion for population" in this period. see W.B. Hurd. "Population Movements in Canada,
I 92 1 -3 1, and Their Implications." Pupers und Proceedings of the Crrnadirrn Politicui Science Associarion,
t 934 p. 220. National depopulation was a matter of public debate in France and Germany folIowing the
Franco-Pnissim War. Peter Gay. The Cziltbution of Hatred, New York: Norton. 1993. p. 60. For the generai
concern in the Western world rrtgarding the implications of population dedine. sec Michael S. Teiteibaurn. The
Feur of Popttfation Derfine. New York Academic Press, C985,
Sec the C;;rxfordE n#& Dictionun.