Douglas McCalla

The Commercial Politics of the Toronto Board of Trade, 1850–1860

T•E 1850S sero GENERALLY CoNsmEIIED to have been the first great boom period in Canadian economic history. More precisely, it might be said that the businessmen of the time found the years 1850 to early 1857 ones of unprecedented prosperity, but from 1857 to 1859 at least hey felt they were suffering under an unprecedented depression. Toronto shared in this. From 1850 to 1856 its population grew from 25,166 to 41,760, and the annual value of imports handled by its traders rose from

‘We aint “gentlemen” merchants’: the country retailer in Upper Canada

2,539,000 to

Ontario: Image, Identity, and Power (review)

6,955,000. During the remainder of the decade, population increased by just 3000, and import values fell from their 1856 peak to a fairly steady

Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784-1870

4,000,000 in 1858, 1859, and 18607 Rapid growth from 1850 to 1856 far from satisfied the ambitions of businessmen; their appetites were merely whetted for still greater changes. Those who lived through these years tended to consider this pace of change normal and anything short of it inadequate. At the same time, both rapid growth and sudden depression underlined deficiencies and insecurities in the provincial business ystem. The existing system, though it had permitted the rapid increase in volume of trade, did not satisfy those who operated it. Many of the problems arising in the existing trade and many of the steps towards the greater development which the merchants desired seemed too great for individuals or small groups of businessmen to deal with. Instinctively,

Perspectives on Canadian economic history

Country stores were universal in Upper Canada, and they are a necessary component of every living history site. Yet systematic explorations of the actual work of such stores in nineteenth-century North America, based on direct primary evidence, are uncommon; and powerful (and often conflicting) stereotypes of them persist, in living history settings and in the historical literature. This article goes beyond such standard images by using evidence from seven country stores. The starting point is that no one bought all his or her goods at a single store; besides local stores, rural families had access to retailers in towns and well-located villages. Competition demonstrates that retail success was not automatic; it involved relationships, decisions and strategies. Merchants did not need to write these down, however. Hence, the argument of the article must sometimes be indirect. What is clear is that selecting and knowing a wide variety of goods, pricing them, hiring and working with clerks, attending to and working with customers, managing credit and securing and making payments, handling goods taken in payment, and integrating non-retail elements (a crucial component of many Upper Canadian rural businesses) all involved judgement, strategy, daily decision-making and hard work.

The Wheat Staple and Upper Canadian Development

judgment in all matters. At times, though, Betcherman hints that the relationship was more one-sided and that Lapointe may have deluded himself about his capacity to influence. What did Lapointe actually achieve and, more specifically, what did he initiate beyond matters largely of concern to French Canada? As John MacFarlane has convincingly argued in Ernest Lapointe and Quebec’s Influence on Canadian Foreign Policy, Lapointe ensured that Quebec’s voice was heard in Canadian foreign policy – no mean feat. Ernest Lapointe points to little more. To all intents, the country was as divided when Lapointe died as it had been when he and King assumed office twenty years earlier. Betcherman argues that ‘Lapointe wisely did not press Quebec’s demands beyond what English Canada would tolerate.’ But given that his greatest aspiration was ‘to help construct a Canada broad enough to embrace French and English viewpoints,’ the situation in 1941 has to cast doubts about his ‘successes.’ Betcherman’s research draws heavily on English-language sources, giving the impression at times that this book is a study of Lapointe as English Canadians saw him. Among the secondary sources, only nine were French, while the personal papers of only four francophones are listed. The absence of the Montreal Star, Quebec City’s Le Soleil, and a Conservative Toronto newspaper are also deficiencies. Ernest Lapointe gives us new insights into this important national and Quebec political figure and deserves to be read. Lapointe could ‘deliver’ Quebec, and we find out in great detail how that was done. We learn much, too, about his failure consistently to influence national events, admittedly a Sisyphean task for any Quebec politician before Trudeau. In the end, however, despite a determined effort to reveal the man, both Lapointe and his legacy remain something of an enigma. PATRICK H. BRENNAN University of Calgary