Piling On: The Death of Small Town Canada, part 1.

This post, my first in ages, was inspired by the recent Aaron Hutchins article in Maclean's, "What's Killing Rural Canada." It's a nice piece of reporting in how it focuses on the people, there today. What is missing, though, is a historian's take on the decline of rural Canada - a process which isn't even unique to here, either, but which is happening in almost every country, worldwide. The reasons may be different, but the final effect has not.

So what has happened in Canada? Why is this question so important? The truth is, the question of "rural decline" is central to the very existence of Canada as an independent state. It is an old process, which afflicted the British colonies of North America so severely that it inspired desperate political action to prevent the loss of land and people to the United States.

By the middle of the 19th century, the agricultural frontier of British North America had been pushed to its maximum extent. Further, as legacy of European settlement along the Atlantic going back to the early 1600's, many parts of Canada were experiencing land exhaustion and frequent crop failure. Canada is a cold and difficult land, and at rural Canada's greatest extent, could only call itself home to a handful of British colonies amounting to barely three million people. The colonies were generally poor, and home to poor people - because of poor land and unskilled and poorly paid work. This was terribly apparent in relation to the wealth, prosperity, and dynamism of the United States.

It was at this time that Canada began to lose population to the United States. Canadian history talks of this period as the time of the Great Migration, when the country received its first great wave of immigrants from Europe. What is usually unmentioned is that many of the immigrants were using British North America as a stepping stone to the United States (like the father of Henry Ford), and were joined in their movement west and south by many British North Americans. My ancestors, the Loyalist Powells of New Brunswick, were just one such family to move to the United States at this time.

Now, how does one prevent the loss of population to a neighbour - or rather, a rival and frequently hostile expansionist country? If your population is leaving rural areas they are moving to two possible places: either new rural areas or urban ones. Accordingly, you can pursue two strategies: open up new areas to rural settlement, or create an industrial base to take in the excess population. The United States, in its 300-year long prosecution of permanent war against First Nations people, succeeded greatly in the former, allowing more and more arable land to open up to new cultivators, many of whom were migrants from British North America. The United States, of course, was also wildly more successful at industrializing than Canada, with its open waterways, coasts, and abundant, wealthy consumer base.

The British North American strategy was centred on the same principles. Industrialization would be encouraged within the colonies (as much as it went against Imperial policies). Secondly, the acquisition of Rupert's Land would finally push the agricultural frontier of the country outwards. Much is often said that the West would become home to immigrants from Europe who would become customers for products from the East. However, perhaps more importantly, it would become home to migrants from within Canada. Of course, it would also deny the Americans the chance of taking the expanse of farmland and resources for themselves.

Against great odds, the British North American colonies seemed to succeed in both goals. Rupert's Land was bought from the Hudson's Bay Company. A "National Policy" was set up to prevent international trade in manufactured goods from destroying Canadian industry, and diplomats went west to secure the land peaceably from its original inhabitants. The country grew in wealth and population, as it has largely continued ever since.

However, this is to overlook the difficulties experienced along the way. The obvious were the resistances of the Metis in 1869-70 and 1884-1885. However, there was also the apparent failure of both settlement and industrialization policies. The Canadian population grew from 3 million to 5 million, but the country was often in depression, the government on the verge of bankruptcy, and the drain of talent to the United States remained in full effect. While Canada added two million people in its first 30 years, the United States went from more than 30 million to 70 million. It was also rivaling the greatest powers in the Old World in its industrial power and naval might.

Canadian policies to expand and protect "small-town" Canada in this time can be viewed largely as a failure. Notwithstanding the greener pastures of the United States, which had higher quality land, a longer growing season, and bigger markets, Canadians had to deal with high costs for moving grain, expensive Canadian goods, terrible weather, and a mercurial government. The aforementioned Metis resistance of 1884-1885 overlooks by its name the fact that initially the Metis enjoyed the support of all the White settlers in the area, who were angered by the Canadian Pacific Railroads decision to move the planned rail-line hundreds of miles to the south, stranding them in the wilderness.

The Canadian situation only began to improve in the late 1890s under the leadership of Sir Wilfred Laurier's Liberals. The Liberals began to take immigration more seriously, devoting more energy and resources to the file. There weren't enough farmers in the west for a viable market, and the Conservative focus on Anglo-Saxon immigration was failing to attract immigrants. So, the Liberals did away with it - enabling immigrants from less desirable backgrounds to immigrate to Canada, for example, Slavs. The population of the country began to expand rapidly, opening up business opportunities throughout. It was at this time that my American great-grandparents, including Grace Powell, UEL, moved to Calgary.

There were markets; there was free land for the taking; there were business opportunities to be had. Modern sanitation and health care allowed for huge families to take root in the west. New farmlands opened up in the Palliser triangle of the southern prairies, to the Peace Country in the north. There was room to grow and money to do it. And there wasn't much choice - communities were bound to their local stores, grain elevators and railway stations. Communities were as far apart as these stations - five miles, which was enough to prevent competition from other stores, churches, schools, etc. Money circulated locally before going off to banks in the "cities" of Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg. Saskatchewan was catapulted in population so much it was the third biggest province. Winnipeg was the third greatest city in Canada.

The outlook in the West was bright. Rural Canada, small-town Canada, here was thriving in this "virgin-land." These new settlers were enough to support in the industries of the east, preventing their populations from stagnating. Well, not the whole east... just the central part, Ontario and Quebec. The Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are today the most rural provinces in Canada. Their industries, far from the action, were failing, and even then, their population was barely growing. Instead, their people were migrating west or south, to where opportunity might lie. So, the problem of small-town Canada continued, without pause, just in one corner of the country.

So, while the article mentions the issues of the modern West, we can see historically similar problems afflicting the rural populations of the Maritimes over one-hundred years ago. There was no room to grow, no new resources to exploit. Only so much industrialization could occur on the fringe of the country. The big opportunities lay elsewhere, and so the excess youth of those provinces departed. However, while farms remained small, industries remained demanding in manpower, and transportation remained inefficient enough for growth to continue. In the 20th century, all of that would change, spelling for small-town Canada a precipitous collapse in population, wealth, health and influence.