Canadian Social History

A song associated with the “Shantymen.” Rural workers who cleared land and created lumber during the early-mid nineteenth century. Songs such as “The Jam on Jerry’s Rocks” can provide historians an insight into the lives these often neglected workers.

The Social Gospel is an attempt to apply Christianity to the collective ills of an industrializing society, and was a major force in Canadian religious, social and political life from the 1890s through the 1930s.

Term is used in regards to tracking population growth. Connect the term with baby boomers and immigration growth in post World War II Canada.

Gregory Kealey refers to the term “Autonomous Workman” in his article “Honest Workingman.”  The term is used in regards to skilled workers in the late nineteenth century. These workers had significant control over the quantity and quality of products, the method of wage payment, wages and hours, hiring, and conditions of work.

However, by the early twentieth century, scientific management came into conflict with the control of the “Autonomous Workman.”

Canadian feminist, political and social activist, involved in the suffrage and temperance movement.

McClung came to prominence during World War I, arguing how the important role that women played in the war effort should be translated to social and political rights (the public realm).

Challenged the conventions of the “separate spheres” ideology of the nineteenth century. However, as Carol Bacchi notes, “most Canadian suffragists were social reformers and members of a social elite … [who] asked that women be allowed to vote in order to impress certain values upon society, [including] Protestant morality, sobriety and family order.”

Approximately 40,000 Loyalists came to British North America from the late 1770s to mid 1790s.

The Loyalists emerged as an idealized group whose constructed history made them the founders of English Canada, and the group established for English Canadians an identity separate from that of Americans.

Values were conservative, emphasizing Canadian deference to authority, devotion to law and order, and willingness to employ the state on behalf of the common good.

Connections with British imperial sentiment of the late nineteenth century.

Introduction

The end of World War I signaled a return to the status quo in society. While many individuals returned from war disillusioned, the social structures remained largely intact. On the other hand, World War II proved to be a catalyst that ushered in a new and largely different era in Canadian society.

Historiography

Social historians interested in wartime experience as a lens through which to study the way societies react during times of stress. The demands of war strain the fabric of society, exposing ethnic, racial, class, and gender relations.

Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time – explores baby boom

Theories

So why was World War II such a catalyst for change?

Linking the war to the establishment of a social security system encouraged Canadians to believe that, while tremendous sacrifices were made, they were not made in vain.

Creation of a new role for government.

Controversies

Was post World War II society uniformly prosperous, conservative, and conformist?

Sources and methods

Different approaches to analyzing Canadian society post World War II – consumer, baby boom, immigrant.

Economic – wage rates.

Government involvement.

Events and incidents

Many Canadians concurred with the Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, that a “new world order” could be created from the ashes of World War II. The Prime Minister noted in a speech in 1942: “men who have fought in this war, and others who have borne its privations and suffering, will never be satisfied with a return to the conditions that prevailed before 1939.”

Expanding social security benefits, implementation of a national unemployment scheme and a family allowance program – creation of a “welfare state.”

1940 Unemployment Insurance Act passed

Conclusion

With change we see continuity, and with continuity we see change. The era is one of transition. The events that informed Canada post World War II had origins in the thirty years post World War I.

Introduction

Historical assessments of post-war Canada tend to conclude that the period from mid-1940s to early 1970s was one of economic progress and great prosperity. But who benefited from economic expansion?

Historiography

John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic, argues that Canada may have been a “mosaic” of different peoples whose diversity Canadians were proud to celebrate, but these same people were organized hierarchically, where race/ethnicity were closely interconnected.

Theories

Rising standard of living, increase wages, low unemployment rate – equated to the argument for economic prosperity.

Controversies

Increasing number of women joined the workforce. Taking employment that was segmented by gender, and paid less.

Race and ethnicity also factors in how others did not share the “great prosperity”. Unskilled Italian workers, south Asian agricultural workers.

The gap between the rich and poor remained the same.

Many of Canada’s poor were working poor.

Privileged social influence of two groups: men, and people of British heritage.

Sources and methods

Consumer culture

Agricultural work. Unskilled labour. The failed unionization of the mostly female workforce at Eaton in 1948.

Events and incidents

Quiet Revolution – increased role of the state.

Conclusion

Problem with defining economic analysis – the charting of economic prosperity. Doesn’t tell the whole story. Class, race, and gender tell a different story about post war Canada. Unskilled immigrant labour. Increase number of women joining the workforce, but in low paid unequal roles.

Huronia represented one of the largest concentrations of First Nations people in the eastern part of what is now Canada. Both the Huron, and their enemies, the Five Nations Iroquois, were Iroquoian speaking nations that produced much of their food from horiculture.

Although the Five Nations Iroquois vanquished the Huron, the recent arrival to the region of French fur traders and missionaries raise questions about the European influence.

An anthropologist, Carol Devens has focused on gender and aboriginal peoples. In her article, Separate Confrontations: Gender as a Factor in Indian Adaption to European Colonization in New France, Devens argues that the efforts of the aboriginal women of New France to protect their interests as women may have been the means to ensure, even down to the present, the persistence of Native culture and ideology through women’s identity.