Ontario: A Fine Country Not Half like England?

A Particular Condition in Life: Self-Employment and Social Mobility in Mid-Victorian Brantford, Ontario by David G. Burley, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 1994, xii + 309 pp. cloth $39.95 (ISBN 0-7735-1199-7) Assisting Immigration Upper Canada: The Petworth Project, 1832-1837 by Wendy Cameron and Mary McDougall Maude, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2000, xxiv + 354 pp. cloth $65.00 (ISBN 0-7735-2034-1) English Immigrant Voices: Labourer's Letters from Upper Canada in 1830s edited by Wendy Cameron, Sheila Haines, and Mary McDougall Maude, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2000, lvi + 471 pp. cloth $65.00 (ISBN 0-7735-2035-X) A Sense of their Duty: Middle-class Formation in Victorian Ontario Towns by Andrew C. Holman, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2000, xxii + 243 pp. cloth $60.00 (ISBN 0-7735-1899-1) Making Ontario: Agricultural Colonization and Landscape Re-creation Before Railway by J. David Wood, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2000, xxvii + 205 pp. cloth $55.00 (ISBN 0-7735-1892-4) Writing his English relatives in fall of 1836, William Spencer described town of Bronte where he had acquired small parcel of land. it was, he said new settlement between Toronto and Hamilton, and one that appeared to be in flourishing state: there has been 25 dwelling-houses and two large warehouses put up this season. A river ran through it, and in last four miles of its course, before it entered Lake Ontario, there were five sawmills and flour mill; sixth sawmill was under construction, and though they each produced three thousand feet of boards day, there was plenty of work for them all. There was also, by Spencer's account, plenty of work for every one that will work and good pay. Settlers assisted others who fell into distress, and one and all could fish and fowl as much as ... [they] pleased, for with gamekeepers and waterkeepers unknown, there was none make us afraid. (1) There were powerful messages in this vignette. Upper Canada was place in rapid transformation, where industry, freedom from restraint, and kindness of strangers allowed even unfortunate put setbacks behind them. If were here you would be doing better Spencer told his parents, though he had lost his wife typhus fever shortly after their arrival in new world, and had then spent some years working another's farm for one-fourth share of its yield. Countless letters home echoed such sentiments through first half of nineteenth century. Life was always bowl of cherries on this frontier--some of accounts of hardship and loss are heart-rending. Share John Capelain's grief at toll of great affliction visited upon his family by the Almighty within days of their arrival in Huron Tract: lost my poor little Mary for first, then my poor dearest wife, then my two youngest, and little Edmund, all in space of eight days. And what was more hard for me I was obliged wrap them up in rinds of trees and dig holes and put them in myself. Others, less traumatized, nonetheless found themselves forced adapt their new setting; it was, said recently arrived shoemaker from Sussex, not half like England, everything being very mean, when compared that. Yet even Capelain was able go on, sustained by prospect of a good living be got. Twenty years later, another immigrant, gentlewoman Catherine Parr Traill, encapsulated common view when she wrote: In Canada, persevering energy and industry, with sobriety, will overcome all obstacles. Indeed, claimed J. Sheridan Hogan, author of prize-winning 1855 essay celebrating progress of colony, Canada should be matter of wonder and instruction for way in which upwards of million of working classes had within short space of time, and by means hitherto unknown or unthought of, raised themselves comparative affluence and independence. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.