Industrialization -
Capitalism and Changes

Of migrations, cheap labour, and urbanization.

Remember that the demographic pressure on Lower Canada continued to occur throughout the late 1800s. Most French Canadians continued to live in the St. Lawrence Valley, between Montreal and Quebec City. Some had settled in the Eastern Townships and in Western Quebec, but these areas were predominantly Anglophone. In general, though, the lack of farmland during these times required many people to look elsewhere for opportunities. (Read more)

Some migrants to Canada received land grants that allowed them to settle in farming communities near to their relatives. However, many Irish migrants also settled in the cities of Canada. So, as Quebec, Montreal and Toronto grew, they all developed large Irish communities as well. These urban Irish became labourers in the burgeoning industrialized factories, as well as itinerant workers on canal construction projects. And this growing, English-speaking workforce was a boon for Anglo-Canadian capitalists, not simply because of the common language, but also since the Irish actively competed for work with French Canadians. (Read more)

In other words, the numbers of people moving to the cities and the competition between them for jobs meant that there was 1) an abundance of people willing to work in factories, and 2) the cost of their labour was very cheap. However, while this allowed the factories and our economy to grow, it also created many related social problems. “The economics of industrialization are staggering insofar as they require the movement of capital, raw materials, personnel, and products across huge distances. Industry requires, too, the mobilization, training, housing, and discipline of a workforce with little to no prior exposure to industrial systems. [...] Workers were being recruited from industrializing Lancashire and Yorkshire, Wales, Lowland Scotland, and Germany. Industrial workers were also coming to Canada from rural and non-industrialized corners of Italy, Ireland, Hungary, and China. The intensification of mechanized, and then automated, work ensured that peasant populations whose home countries were still mostly feudal would be thrust directly onto the cutting edge of industrialization. It also meant that untrained Canadian labour — specifically children — would find themselves very literally at the coalface.” (Source)

Related to this influx of people, and to the disparities between the classes, was also an expansion of industries required to cater to them. And so, more and more stores of various kinds were opened, where businesses provided both the services and goods for the people who lived there. Transportation systems were built, with streetcars to take people to and from work. This caused neighbourhoods to become segregated from one another.

Urbanization then implied the growth of so-called working class neighbourhoods, where the people who worked in the factories or in the other types of industries lived. These areas were visibly less well-off, where the streets wouldn’t have been paved and sanitation was sadly lacking. “Overcrowding was widespread. Health conditions were often poor. Sewage systems were deplorable and only began to improve in the 1890s in most Canadian cities and towns. Water supplies were regularly tainted. Immigrant, Aboriginal, and African-Canadian neighbourhoods generally endured worse conditions than those occupied by Anglo- and Franco-Canadians. Housing in some industrial areas was more like dormitories than apartments because of the extensive occupancy of single men and single women.” (Source)

The growing economies and the abundance of various forms of employment also permitted the emergence of a middle class, and of middle-class neighbourhoods in other areas of town. “A kind of no-man’s land between Catholic French-Canadian districts to the east and the Anglo-Protestant west, Mile End was a place of social and cultural mixing, on which the stamp of several generations is still visible." (Source) Profiting from both the cheap labour in their factories, and the larger populations and markets for the goods and services they provided, the industrial capitalists of the times built houses in these very wealthy areas of the city. “The Anglophone elite continued its migration further west and higher up the mountain. This was the period of the Golden Square Mile, whose heyday was between 1890 and 1930. There lived the McTavishes, Molsons, Redpaths, Shaughnessys, and other families whose names are synonymous with turn of the century Canadian capitalism.” (Source). And finally, these neighbourhoods also had access to more services and to a cleaner and safer environment, since they lived far from the polluting factories and worker districts of the lower parts of the city.

Texts above by Matt Russell and Paul Rombough unless indicated inline with quotes and sources

Note all texts by Matt Russell and Paul Rombough are © LEARN under CC license BY-NC-ND