Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

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Public education was already seen as an important stimulus to social

and moral improvement by the late 19th century (Rutherford 1974;

Stelter and Artibise 1977). One of the main objectives of educational

reformers was to increase the years of formal attendance at school. In

Ontario, for example, education was made compulsory and free for chil-

dren up to 12 years of age in 1871 and up to 14 years of age in 1891.

Inﬂ uenced by Friedrich Froebel, a German educational philosopher,

some reformers contended that education should also be made more

child-oriented through the establishment of kindergartens for younger

children. In 1883 James L. Hughes, a Toronto school inspector, and his

future wife, Ada Marean, established the ﬁ rst Canadian public school

kindergarten, and four years later Ontario formally incorporated kinder-

garten into the public school system. The Free Kindergarten Association

in Winnipeg advocated the same for Manitoba, arguing that “the proper

education of children during the ﬁ rst seven years of their lives [did]

much to reduce poverty and crime in any community.” The Adolescent

Attendance Act of 1919, which raised the age of compulsory schooling

to 16 years, proved to be a boon to secondary education in Ontario and

was soon followed by similar legislation in the other provinces.

Educational reformers also endeavored to link the elementary schools

with the public health and child welfare movements. The school was a

logical place to conduct the campaign to inculcate personal hygiene

practices that would contribute to the development of a healthier com-

munity because children were the parents and taxpayers of the future.

After 1910 medical and dental inspection of schoolchildren by a public

health nurse became a regular feature of the elementary system. A con-

cern for the physical and moral outlook of children also led to an

expansion of public libraries, as well as parks and recreational facilities.

In 1882 the Ontario Legislature provided for the establishment of free

libraries supported by a levy on local property taxes. British Columbia

(1891), Manitoba (1899), Saskatchewan (1906), and Alberta (1907)

soon followed Ontario’s lead, while the Maritimes did not act until the

1930s and Quebec not until 1959. John J. Kelso, a leading child welfare

reformer, founded the Children’s Aid Society in 1891 and was active in

closing reformatories and organizing playgrounds as an alternative out-

let for children of poor families.

Other urban reformers were concerned about the proliferation of

social ills that made the modern city a haven for slums, prostitution,

and criminal activity. As they industrialized, cities tended to become

more socially stratiﬁ ed. Electric streetcars and eventually automobiles

enabled the more afﬂ uent members of society to reside in the suburban

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districts, where they could escape the congestion and pollution of the

inner city. Because they were less able to afford transportation, the

working-class groups, particularly new immigrants, tended to congre-

gate in rental accommodation within the less attractive areas of the

inner city (Harney and Troper 1975).

Working-class life was consistently plagued by economic insecurity.

Limited educational opportunities meant that workers were restricted

to low-paying jobs from which they often faced the prospect of layoffs,

particularly in winter or slow economic periods. In an age before gov-

ernment-funded social welfare programs, layoffs could mean months of

subsistence without wages or alternative sources of income support.

Illness, injury, or advancing age could also relegate workers and their

families to prolonged poverty and destitution. Besides family and

friends, the only recourse for inner-city residents experiencing eco-

nomic misfortune was to seek charity from the various churches and

private philanthropic organizations. In the late 19th century, local gov-

ernment in the larger cities, such as Toronto and Montreal, responded

to pressure from private charitable organizations to provide them with

ﬁ nancial assistance to service the growing number of impoverished

citizens.

The willingness of organized religion to assume an active role in deal-

ing with the social problems of urban life gave rise to the social gospel

movement, which was prominent from the 1890s to the 1920s (Allen

1971). The social gospel movement attracted members of all of the

major Protestant denominations who shared a belief in environmental

determinism. In essence, they believed that improvement in social con-

ditions would lead to improvement in individual social behavior.

Accordingly, social gospellers wanted churches to be concerned with

social problems, such as prostitution, alcoholism, intolerable living and

working conditions, and the plight of immigrants, rather than merely

with such personal “sins” as sex, drunkenness, and negligence. In 1908

the Protestant denominations that embraced social gospel joined together

to form the Moral and Social Reform Council, reorganized as the Social

Service Council of Canada in 1912. Two years later, the council spon-

sored the ﬁ rst national congress on social problems.

Perhaps the most prominent social gospeller was J. S. Woodsworth,

a Methodist minister and avowed socialist whose book My Neighbour

(1911) was an impassioned plea for the reform of living conditions in

Canada’s cities. Woodsworth would go on to distinguish himself as a

labor leader in the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and he would be

instrumental in pressing for the ﬁ rst old-age pension legislation in

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1927. He would become best known as the leader of the Cooperative

Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a national political party estab-

lished in 1932. Social gospel supporters also contributed to the passing

of the Workmen’s Compensation Act in Ontario in 1914, which estab-

lished ﬁ nancial beneﬁ ts for those who suffered injuries in the work-

place, and the Manitoba Pensions Act in 1916, which provided a basic

allowance to widowed, divorced, or deserted wives with children.

Social gospellers were actively involved in other social and moral

reform movements, including prohibition, women’s suffrage, and urban

reform. Besides preparing the way for the modern welfare system,

social gospel is also credited with providing the impetus for the ﬁ rst

sociology programs in Canadian universities.

The social and moral reform movements of the late 19th and early

20th centuries gave women an opportunity to become more actively

involved outside the home (Strong-Boag 1994; Prentice 1996). Until

then, most women lived in domestic obscurity with no political or legal

rights; their role was deﬁ ned in terms of being wives and mothers serv-

ing the needs of their husbands and children. In her relatively short life

span, the rural woman was conﬁ ned to performing backbreaking labor

on the family farm and enduring the hardships of many childbirths in

an age before medicalized deliveries and birth control. Although the

urban woman had a greater opportunity to ﬁ nd work outside the home,

she was usually hired as a domestic or as cheap and unskilled factory

labor. Educational opportunities were customarily limited to females

from afﬂ uent families, who could then aspire to become teachers or to

marry well. While industrialization and urbanization did little to

improve the lot of working-class women, their middle-class cohorts

came to believe that they could reform society through their “natural”

nurturing instincts.

By the turn of the 20th century, local, provincial, and national wom-

en’s organizations, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union,

the National Council of Women, the Young Women’s Christian Asso-

ciation (YWCA), and the Dominion Women’s Enfranchisement Associa-

tion were emerging as inﬂ uential agents of social change. Like their

counterparts in Britain and the United States, women reformers in

Canada fought for the right to vote. As early as 1876, Dr. Emily Stowe,

who had been barred from medical school in Canada because she was a

woman, launched the Toronto Women’s Literary Club, which was

renamed the Toronto Women’s Suffrage Society in 1883 and the Domin-

ion Women’s Enfranchisement Association in 1889. Besides campaign-

ing for basic voting rights, women reformers were active in the

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prohibition movement, which

waged war against the evils of

liquor. The Woman’s Christian

Temperance Union, formed in

1874, identiﬁ ed “demon drink”

as the leading cause of domestic

violence and divorce, in addition

to inefﬁ ciency and underproduc-

tivity in the workplace. Thus,

prohibitionists called upon the

power of the state to outlaw the

sale of alcoholic beverages.

The suffrage movement gained

support during World War I as

women’s groups were able to

point to the catastrophic over-

seas conﬂ ict as evidence of male

aggression that would be tem-

pered if women had the right to

vote and the opportunity to rule.

The contributions and sacriﬁ ces

of women working in the muni-

tions factories and ofﬁ ces, serv-

ing as nurses in the armed forces,

and supporting their families

while their husbands were ﬁ ghting overseas was compelling testimony

that they deserved to participate fully in political life. Led by Nellie

McClung, women in the four western provinces won the right to vote

in provincial elections in 1916, and within six years, all of the other

provinces followed suit with the exception of Quebec, which waited

until 1940. The federal government extended voting rights to women

in war service or those whose fathers, husbands, or sons were serving

overseas during the controversial conscription election of 1917. Finally,

on January 1, 1919, all non-Native women over 21 years of age were

granted the right to vote in federal elections. In 1920 Edith Rogers of

Manitoba became the ﬁ rst woman to be elected to a provincial legisla-

ture, while in the following year, Agnes Macphail, running for the

Progressive Party, became the ﬁ rst woman to be elected to the Cana-

dian Parliament. The climax of the struggle for legal rights came in the

famous Persons Case of 1929. The Alberta provincial court and the

Supreme Court of Canada had maintained that ﬁ ve Alberta women,

Novelist, legislator, prohibitionist, and suffragist

Nellie (Mooney) McClung (1873–1951) was

elected to the Alberta legislature in 1921.

She was the ﬁ rst woman on the CBC Board

of Governors, a representative to the League

of Nations, and a principal in the infamous

Persons case of 1929 that legalized women

as persons.

(Cyril Jessop/Library and Archives

Canada PA-030212)

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274

including McClung, did not qualify for a Senate appointment because

they were not “persons” in the legal sense. In overruling both courts,

the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council called the exclusion of

women from public ofﬁ ce “a relic of days more barbarous than ours.”

Prohibitionists also gained support during the war as they urged

government to “remove a greater enemy than the Hun from our midst.”

Although prohibition was successful in the three Prairie Provinces dur-

ing the war, opposition from the returning soldiers undermined the

further success of the crusade. By the end of the 1920s, the provinces

had opted to sell liquor in government-regulated outlets. With the wan-

ing of prohibition and the success of the women’s suffrage movement,

the various reform movements lost their momentum during the 1920s.

But those reformers who advocated a more active role of the state in the

social and economic lives of its citizens would reemerge during the

Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II to help prepare the

way for the rise of the welfare state.

The Emergence of National Culture

The expanding cities and towns became the locus for the development

of Canadian culture after Confederation. Cultural development in the

colonial period was essentially derivative as successive waves of immi-

grants transplanted their interest in European literature, art, and music

to their frontier environment (Klinck 1965). The proliferation of local

newspapers starting in the early 19th century represented the earliest

expression of a “Canadian” culture. The ﬁ rst Canadian to gain an inter-

national reputation in the literary world was Judge Thomas Haliburton,

whose series of 22 satirical essays about Maritime life and politics

appeared in Joseph Howe’s newspaper Novascotian before being pub-

lished in book form as The Clock Maker in 1836. As many as 80 editions

of The Clock Maker were printed during the 19th century. Also impor-

tant were the journals of travelers, explorers, and settlers, which fasci-

nated European audiences who were curious about the unique North

American wilderness. Samuel Hearne, Alexander Mackenzie, David

Thompson, and Alexander Henry recounted their adventures in the

western fur trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, while

William Dunlop, Catherine Parr Trail, Anna Jameson, and Susanna

Moodie romanticized the hardships of Upper Canadian pioneer life

from the 1820s to the 1850s. The majestic landscape of the Canadian

wilderness also inspired two of the more well-known mid-19th century

artists: Cornelius Krieghoff, a German immigrant, captured the charm

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and quaintness of Quebec rural life through his colorful paintings,

while Paul Kane, an Irish immigrant residing in Toronto, portrayed

Native life in the northwest before the encroachment of the settlement

frontier.

After Confederation, an emerging sense of nationalism, initially pro-

moted by the Canada First movement, inspired a more vigorous and

diverse expression of a distinctly Canadian culture through music, art,

literature, and even sports. In 1880 the lieutenant governor of Quebec

asked Calixa Lavallée, then considered to be one of Canada’s greatest

musicians, to compose a patriotic song for the celebration of St. Jean

Baptiste Day (June 24), now recognized as the province’s “national”

holiday. Within a few days, Lavallée composed the music while Adol-

phe-Basile Routhier, a justice of the Quebec Superior Court, wrote the

lyrics to “O Canada.” The Quebec press proclaimed: “At last we have a

truly French-Canadian National Song” (Potvin and Kallmann 2006). “O

Canada” was not performed in English until 1901, and exactly a century

after its original composition, the song was ofﬁ cially adopted as Cana-

da’s national anthem. A more popular song in English Canada at the

turn of the 20th century was “The Maple Leaf Forever,” originally writ-

ten in 1867 as a poem by Toronto school principal Alexander Muir. By

the late 19th century, almost all Canadian cities had choir-singing

groups, while Montreal, Quebec City, and Toronto developed sym-

phony orchestras and opera companies. Canadian music received a

further boost when the University of Toronto’s faculty of music opened

in 1919, and Vincent Massey founded the Hart House String Quartet

housed at the university from 1924 onward. The advent of the radio and

the phonograph, which brought music directly into Canadian homes,

would expand the audience for Canadian productions by the 1920s.

The Canadian government established an early precedent for sup-

porting national cultural development through the active involvement

of British governor-generals and lieutenant governors who regularly

hosted and attended important social functions, in addition to encour-

aging the purchase and display of the works of Canadian artists (Reid

1989). For example, Lord Dufferin and the Marquis of Lorne both

helped to establish the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 1880,

the predecessor to the National Gallery of Canada. The ﬁ rst president

of the academy, Lucius O’Brien, and other members, such as Homer

Watson, Daniel Fowler, and John Fraser, were recognized as being

among the leading landscape painters of the time and were the precur-

sors of the better-known Group of Seven. Also signiﬁ cant in the late

19th and early 20th centuries was a group of Canadian artists trained

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276

in Paris, the art capital of the world. Besides Watson, this group

included William Brymmer, Robert Harris, Percy Woodstock, George

Reid, and Paul Peel, perhaps the best-known Canadian painter in

Europe. Quebec produced a talented coterie of artists, including the

French-speaking Napoleon Bourassa, Louis-Philippe Hébert, and Ozias

Leduc along with the English-speaking James Wilson Morrice and

Maurice Cullen. The Newfoundland-born Cullen would be an inspira-

tion to A. Y. Jackson, who became a member of the internationally

renowned Group of Seven.

Jackson, Frank Carmichael, Lawren Harris, Franz Johnston, Arthur

Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and F. H. Varley ofﬁ cially formed the

Group of Seven in 1920. (Tom Thomson was an associate of and an

inspiration to members of the group, but he had drowned in a canoe

accident in Algonquin Park in 1917.) The Group of Seven depicted the

Canadian North as the mythical embodiment of the national spirit, in

the way that the West was in the American tradition. The North coun-

tered the inﬂ uence of the South not only in terms of the United States

but also in terms of urban and industrial development undermining the

national spirit within Canada. Even after disbanding in the early 1930s,

the inﬂ uence of the group endured, and its body of work continues to

be celebrated as a summit of Canadian artistic achievement. A contem-

porary of the Group of Seven who found inspiration in its art was Emily

Carr. Her art focused on the natural wonders of British Columbia

before she turned to literary pursuits later in life. David Milne did not

enjoy the attention in Canada that the Group of Seven received, but he

was recognized in the United States and was highly acclaimed by suc-

ceeding generations of artists.

The main literary achievements in the late 19th century were in the

realm of poetry. Charles G. D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Car-

man, and Duncan Campbell Scott became known as the “Confedera-

tion Group” because of their romanticized efforts to capture the essence

of the new Canadian nationality in nature. The imperialist nationalist

sentiments reﬂ ected in their poetry were also expressed by Pauline

Johnson, daughter of a Mohawk chief and his English wife. Also using

her Mohawk name, Tekahionwaken, and often dressing as a Native

princess during her poetry readings, Johnson celebrated her Iroquois

heritage while serving as a cultural ambassador for Canada in her trav-

els throughout Britain and the United States. By the 1920s, the imperi-

alist themes had been replaced by a more realistic and unsentimental

view of Canadian life as expressed in the poetry of E. J. Pratt at the

University of Toronto and a group of McGill University poets, includ-

277

ing F. R. Scott, A. J. M. Smith, A.

M. Klein, and Leo Kennedy, who

endorsed the modernist move-

ment (Tippett 1990).

In Quebec, the poetry of

Octave Crémazie and Louis Fre-

chette expressed a patriotic con-

cern for la survivance of the

French-Canadian nationality in

the late 19th century. Crémazie’s

romantic verse commemorated

the past glory of Quebec under

the French empire as did Fre-

chette’s, which also alluded to

current injustices in the wake of

the hanging of Louis Riel. With

the founding of a school at the

turn of the century called the

École littéraire de Montréal in

1895, Quebec poets began to

depart from their romantic and

patriotic themes in favor of a

more somber, humanistic out-

look. Perhaps the most dynamic

member of the school at the turn

of the century was Emile Nelligan, who produced 170 poems by the

time he was 20 years of age before suffering an emotional breakdown

that conﬁ ned him to a mental institution for the last four decades of his

life. His poetry is still widely read in Quebec, where he continues to

enjoy legendary status.

Corresponding with the rise of free public libraries, writers of novels

and short stories also came into prominence in the late 19th and early

20th centuries. The themes of nationalism and imperialism pervaded

novels such as William Kirby’s The Golden Dog (1877), Gilbert Parker’s

The Seats of the Mighty (1898), and Sara Jeannette Duncan’s The Imperi-

alist (1904). After the turn of the 20th century, novels were inspired by

Canada’s regional diversity. For example, Charles Gordon (writing

under the pseudonym of Ralph Connor) romantically depicted the

adventure and physical challenge of settlement in the West in The Sky

Pilot (1899) and The Foreigner (1909); Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Ann of

Green Gables (1908) conveyed the charms of Prince Edward Island to an

A SOCIETY TRANSFORMED

Pauline Johnson, or Tekahionwaken (1861–

1913), daughter of a Mohawk chief and his

English wife, was one of the most celebrated

poets of her era.

(Library and Archives Canada

C-016748)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

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international audience; and Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a

Little Town (1912) satirically captured small-town Ontario life. Mazo de

la Roche’s romantic depiction of rural Ontario life in Jalna (1927) sold

upwards of 100,000 copies, prompting 16 sequels. Her work contrasted

sharply with the brutal realism of Frederick Phillip Grove’s Settlers of the

Marsh (1925), which explored the inner psychic tension of a Norwegian

settler on the Prairies. By far the most famous French-Canadian novel

was Louis Hemon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1913), written in the tradition

of rural idealism. The heroine, Maria, must choose between two suitors,

one promising the material advantages of life in the United States, the

other remaining dedicated to the spiritual beneﬁ ts of the Quebec coun-

tryside. In deciding to remain true to the traditional French-Canadian

values of agrarianism, Catholicism, and family, Maria was defying the

early 20th-century realities of urban and industrial Quebec.

Popular culture increasingly ﬂ ourished in cities and towns after

Confederation. In particular, sporting activities and events attracted a

growing audience as the age of professionalization was inaugurated

(Morrow and Wamsley 2005). The most internationally celebrated

Canadian athlete of the late 19th century was Toronto’s Ned Hanlon,

who in 1880 won the professional rowing Championship of the World.

Canada’s ﬁ rst world champion held on to his rowing title for the next

four years. Other notable Canadian athletes to achieve such distinction

were Tommy Burns (born Noah Brusso), who was the world heavy-

weight boxing champion from 1906 to 1908, and Six Nations Native

Tom Longboat, who won the World Professional Marathon Champion-

ship in 1909.

Canada’s national sport in the 19th century was undoubtedly the

traditional Native game of lacrosse. When it was formed in 1867, the

National Lacrosse Association, the ﬁ rst sports organization in Canada,

adopted as its motto—“Our country, our game.” As lacrosse declined

in popularity, ice hockey, which was ﬁ rst played in Montreal in 1875,

would emerge as the national game by World War I. The Amateur

Hockey Association of Canada was formed in 1886 as the ﬁ rst national

organization, while the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) became the

ﬁ rst provincial body in 1890. Governor-General Lord Stanley donated

the coveted Stanley Cup to the national champions, the Montreal Ama-

teur Athletic Association, in 1893. Within a decade, hockey was being

played by professionals, leading to the formation in 1908 of the

National Hockey Association (NHA), which was reorganized as the

National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917. The popularity of the NHL

was enhanced by the inauguration in 1923 of Foster Hewitt’s radio

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broadcasts of Hockey Night in Canada, which (along with its French

counterpart, La Soirée du hockey) became an enduring tradition, par-

ticularly with the later advent of television. Canada demonstrated its

supremacy in amateur hockey by winning the gold medal at the 1924

Olympics and repeating the feat four years later. While professionals

competed exclusively for the Stanley Cup after 1908, the Allen Cup and

the Memorial Cup became emblematic of the amateur championship at

the senior and junior levels, respectively.

Although football was played as early as 1865 in Canada, it became

recognized as a national sport only when Governor-General Earl Grey

donated the cup that bears his name in 1909. Still, the British version

of football, now known as soccer, tended to be more popular in the

19th century. During the 1870s, the distinctly American sport of base-

ball began to compete with the British game of cricket for popularity in

Canada. While the sport became the national pastime in the United

States, baseball was played only at an amateur level in Canada. In 1891

James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor at the School

of Christian Workers in Springﬁ eld, Massachusetts, invented the game

of basketball, which likewise would become a popular professional

sport in the United States but would be played only at the amateur level

in Canada. Nevertheless, the Edmonton Grads dominated women’s

basketball from 1915 to 1940, winning the world amateur champion-

ship four times. Although Scottish immigrants formed curling clubs in

the early 19th century, the popularity of the sport was given a boost by

the inauguration of a national competition for a trophy known as the

Brier in 1927. This annual event also gave impetus to Canada’s contin-

ued dominance in world curling competition.

By the 1920s, Canadian popular culture was becoming more Ameri-

canized through the importation of magazines, radio programming,

and movies (Tippett 1990). American magazines such as the Ladies’

Home Journal, McCall’s, and the Saturday Evening Post were far outsell-

ing the leading Canadian mass-circulation magazine, Maclean’s (pub-

lished under that title since 1911). More than three-quarters of the

radio programs to which Canadians listened came from the United

States. In 1928, the Canadian government established a royal commis-

sion to review public broadcasting. The Aird Commission’s report rec-

ommended that broadcasting become a public monopoly to ensure

greater Canadian content and to help unite Canadians. American-pro-

duced movies from the Hollywood studios that came to dominate the

North American ﬁ lm industry as the 1920s progressed also began to

exert a profound inﬂ uence on Canadian culture and lifestyle.

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