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An Introduction to Canadian Agricultural History*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

V. C. Fowke
V. C. Fowke*
Affiliation:
The University of Saskatchewan
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Extract

The Dominion government's wheat policy for 1941-2 has been widely interpreted as marking the end of a great Canadian agricultural era. Historians, sporadically interested in Canadian agriculture, have emphasized the significance of events which occurred just over a decade ago, and have thought them sufficiently important to mark the end of the latest agricultural period. It is impossible yet to measure the relative importance for Canadian agriculture of war-created conditions as compared with those of the pre-war years. A decade more or less is of little consequence in relation to eras, and a lengthening of perspective forces us to recognize that the position of agriculture within the Canadian economy has changed markedly since 1920, and continues to change. Many factors such as drought and world depression, and possibly the far-reaching impact of the present war, have served to shrink the stature of the wheat economy; but, more particularly, the phenomenal rise since 1920 of the newer staples, minerals and newsprint, is placing the wheat economy and Canadian agriculture in general in a position of shrunken relative importance, despite record wheat acreage and production for the biennium 1939-40.

The main purposes of this paper develop in relation to the above considerations. Now is an obvious time to take stock in the field of Canadian agricultural history, and to note what research has been done. Since, however, bibliography requires some frame of reference, it is necessary to postulate something of the historical role of agriculture within the Canadian economic framework, and to use this hypothesis as a guide for the arrangement and evaluation of relevant materials. This approach is at once a method of analysis and a plea that agricultural history be not thought to consist solely in changing censuses of rural populations and farm stock, in acres cultivated and bushels produced. Detailed studies in agricultural history should be designed to integrate rather than to atomize the field.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , February 1942 , pp. 56 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1942

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Footnotes

*

A paper read at the joint session of the Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Political Science Association at their Annual Meetings at Kingston, May 22, 1941. The paper by Proiessor E. E. Edwards on “Agricultural History as a Field of Research,” which was also read at this session, has been published in the Report of the Canadian Historical Association for 1941.

References

1 This policy, announced at Ottawa on March 12, 1941, combined financial assistance with financial sanctions in an attempt to persuade western farmers to direct as much as one-third of their 1940 wheat acreage to other specified uses. See Canada, House of Commons Debates, 03 12, 1941, pp. 1595–1601.Google Scholar Commenting on this policy the Financial Post asserted (03 22, 1941, p. 11 Google Scholar): “Canada [has] reversed its historic agricultural role of endeavouring to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. Instead Ottawa now urges that only two-thirds of a blade be grown where one grew and flourished in 1940. … For the time being at least it [Canada's war-time wheat policy] spells the end of the great era of farm expansion, …” The Canadian Forum (04, 1941, p. 4 Google Scholar) declared: “The great era in Canadian history which was marked by the rise of the prairie and its dominant position in our export economy is over … the west will not again count for so much either economically or politically. This is a tragedy from every point of view. But it is only a part of the general decline of agriculture in Canadian life.”

2 Professor Martin has stressed the definitive nature of conditions surrounding the transfer of natural resources to the Prairie Provinces in 1930. See his “Dominion Lands” Policy (“Canadian Frontiers of Settlement”: Toronto, 1938), p. 197 Google Scholar and chap. XII. Mr. R. G. Riddell remarks that: “Seldom are historians presented with so sharply delimited an historical process as that which begins in Western Canada with the transfer of the territory to the Dominion of Canada and ends in economic crisis sixty years later” (“A Cycle in the Development of the Canadian West,” Canadian Historical Review, 09, 1940, pp. 268–84).Google Scholar

3 See Taylor, K. W., “The Commercial Policy of Canada” (Canadian Marketing Problems, Kemp, H. R. (ed.), Toronto, 1939)Google Scholar; The Economic Background of Dominion-Provincial Relations: A Study Prepared for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, Appendix 3 by Mackintosh, W. A. (Ottawa, 1939)Google Scholar; Innis, H. A. “Economic Trends” (Canada in Peace and War, Martin, Chester (ed.), Toronto, 1941).Google Scholar

4 Professor D. C. MacGregor suggests that significance attaches to the role of Canadian agriculture as a reservoir of surplus labour for industry, commerce, and the professions. This approach offers interesting possibilities for historical analysis, beginning with the earliest days of North American settlement. From the very beginning the colonists on the St. Lawrence forsook their grants and meagre clearings to take part in the fur trade; later to go to the timber bush, and later still to the factories.

5 Lower, A. R. M., The North American Assault on the Canadian Forest (“Relations of Canada and the United States”; Toronto, 1938), p. 64.Google Scholar

6 Innis, H. A. and Lower, A. R. M. (eds.), Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, 1783-1885 (Toronto, 1933), pp. 10–11, 18–20 Google Scholar; Burt, A. L., The Old Province of Quebec (Toronto, 1933), chap. XV.Google Scholar

7 Lower, A. R. M., “Immigration and Settlement in Canada, 1812-20” (Canadian Historical Review, 03, 1922, pp. 37–47).Google Scholar