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Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine

Reid, Richard M., ed. The Upper Ottawa Valley to 1855, The Publications of the Champlain Society, ONTARIO SERIES XIV. Don Mills: Carleton University Press, 1990. Pp. cxxxi, 354. Black and White photographs, maps. $21.95, (paper) Robert Peter Gillis

Volume 19, Number 3, February 1991

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1017605ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1017605ar

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Cite this review Gillis, R. P. (1991). Review of [Reid, Richard M., ed. The Upper Ottawa Valley to 1855, The Publications of the Champlain Society, ONTARIO SERIES XIV. Don Mills: Carleton University Press, 1990. Pp. cxxxi, 354. Black and White photographs, maps. $21.95, (paper)]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 19(3), 244–245. https://doi.org/10.7202/1017605ar

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Daniel Knechtel, in contrast, was a model In her conclusion, Parr argues that "we For urban historians, her brief compari• for his workers of Christian manliness in are burdened in trying to understand son of the two communities tends to over• work, thrift and public service. The craft what work means within a way of life by a simplify their situations. For example, the ethos of the Hanover furniture industry was history of analytical dualisms—capitalist two places are described as "still rural underlined by the failure of the efforts of and non-capitalist production, waged villages" in 1880, that grew in population Knechtel's son to introduce managerial and non-waged labour, public and pri• "from roughly 1,000 to 4,000" between Taylorism in the strike of 1923. vate life, masculine and feminine roles." 1880 and 1950. In fact Paris, with a popu• She finds that class, gender and ethnic lation of 3,173 in the 1881 census, In the third chapter of each sequence, Parr identities and solidarities were uniquely ranked 38th among all Ontario urban cen• explains the technicalities and gendering intertwined and constantly changing in tres, being somewhat larger than such of work processes in Penmans knitting each community and that they cannot be county towns as Whitby or Brampton. mills and Knechtel's furniture factory. She fully understood or explained either in Hanover, in contrast, was not incorpo• shows that "sexual division in the labour terms of mainstream ideologies of the rated as a village until 1899. With a popu• force is the sum of the sex labelling of spe• day or of categories of social theory of lation of perhaps 850 in 1880, it might cific tasks," and that "the same jobs have our times: "[n]ever did class and gender, have ranked 150th in southern Ontario. been assigned to different genders at dif• either singly or in conjunction, map the While Hanover's population grew at a ferent times in the same place and in differ• whole of social existence; both person• faster rate in most decades thereafter, ent places at the same time." The ally and collectively, understandings and Paris with 5,249 people in 1951 was still relationships between wage work, the obligations were also framed in religious one and a half times the size of Hanover domestic division of labour and family and faith, ethnicity and nationality." She advo• at the end of the study period. Perhaps community attitudes and values are dis• cates "putting questions that tolerate this minor criticism simply points out a cussed in the fourth chapter of each study. specificity and diversity as answers" as challenge to some Canadian urban histo• Paris mill families headed by women were "a way to begin to craft explanations that rians to provide a better comparative accommodated rather than accepted, with more fully comprehend both the access understanding of communities in the a "denying and dismissive tolerance of to power and the grounds upon which urban system. their domestic values and family forms." In this access, successfully and unsuccess• Hanover, "there was no doubt. .. that fully, has been challenged." Elizabeth Bloomfield wage work was both men's to do and part Guelph, Ontario of the measure of a man's worth"; men's In The Gender of Breadwinners, Paris privileged position in community life rested and Hanover are used as settings for Reid, Richard M., ed. The Upper Ottawa also on their married status as well as their detailed and sensitive explorations of the Valley to 1855, The Publications of the essential maleness and entitlement to paid inter-relationships of work, gender, class Champlain Society, ONTARIO SERIES work. The final chapter of each study con• and community. With the author, the XIV. Don Mills: Carleton University Press, siders labour unionism. Paris was seared reader may wonder how typical these 1990. Pp. cxxxi, 354. Black and White by the experience of "womanly militance places are of other small industrial com• photographs, maps. $21.95, (paper). and neighbourly wrath" in the 1949 strike munities. Could there be other places against Penmans. Failure of the strike "more authentic and less anomalous," The Upper Ottawa Valley to 1855 is part "intensified local distrust of class-based "where class and gender relations were of the long-standing Champlain Society actions as a way to bring social change," more systematic and predictable, where project to publish documents relating to and reinforced the earlier "gender- and meanings were more straightforward and unique events, institutions and regions in community-based solidarities." The greater settled"? Or would any town or village, Canadian history. This particular volume success of Hanover men in the strike of examined under the social historian's is done in cooperation with the Ontario 1937 is explained less by class conscious• microscope, be revealed to have equiva• Heritage Foundation, and the paper edi• ness than by their consensus of brother• lent idiosyncrasies? tion forms part of the Carleton Library hood grounded in "common standards of Series. dignity and self-worth in their common gen• Parr herself provides little context of der." time and place for Paris and Hanover.

244 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XIX, No. 3 (February 1991) Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

Canadian history. This particular volume yes, but the amount of documentation in good counterpoint to the more traditional is done in cooperation with the Ontario the volume directly reflecting any area view of the lawless timber frontier, though Heritage Foundation, and the paper edi• beyond Amprior is minimal. This is par• it does fail to look at the nature of the tion forms part of the Carleton Library ticularly troublesome in the chapters deal• transient population that resided in the Series. ing with the settlement and growth of woods up above the Chaudière, the true villages, both of which centre on an axis Upper Ottawa Valley. By the same token, The editor, Richard Reid, has done a through Smiths Falls, Perth, Lanark and the work on urban growth in Bytown, competent job in pulling together a Bytown. Finally, does it encompass the Smiths Falls and Perth provides a good myriad of documents, organizing them Quebec side of the Valley? Always a overview of that process. and producing a full introduction based problematical question when dealing on this information. The Introduction and with the Ottawa Valley, but particularly so Unfortunately, however, these remain the Documents parallel each other under when the volume is part of a provincial pieces which do not meld into a satisfac• seven chapter headings—British Emigra• series. Nevertheless, the nature of the tory whole. There is a failure to adequate• tion Policy and the Settlement of the Ot• Valley is as an integral whole and Reid ly capture the essence of all the various tawa Valley; Social Order and Growth in does, at times, recognize both its sides. communities which formed the socio• the Valley; From Timber to Lumber; But the author is, at best, tentative in his economic fabric of the early Upper Ottawa Changing Patterns of Transportation; approach to boundaries and location. Valley. The book is strong when it deals with Urban growth in the Ottawa Valley and This vagueness results, in turn, in a the Scots and Irish farming communities of the Rise of Bytown; Ottawa Valley missed opportunity to begin to delineate Carleton and Lanark Counties, but strug• Politics, 1820-1855; and Religion and the unique set of communities which are gles when it deals with the French, Irish and Education in the Valley. The documents the subjects of his book. American communities centred on the tim• are keyed to the Introduction by number ber trade. It misses the dynamism of com• and accompanied by extensive and use• Equally disturbing, the book lacks defini• munities striving to find a place on the ful biographical notes on the creator, tion of period or periods. Its title indicates resource frontier which was the Upper Ot• recipient and subjects of the information that it will look at the Upper Valley up to tawa Valley portrayed so vividly in the open• involved. All this makes for interesting 1855. Is this intended to include the era ing chapter of Ralph Connor's The Man reading, since many of the documents of first contact and the French Regime? from Glengarry. Reid provides glimpses of have not been published before, and Apparently not, since there is virtually these struggles in his chapters on social several excellent maps help give a sense nothing about natives in the volume, order and resource exploitation, but misses of place and distance. even though they have had an important it in others such as the chapter on politics. role in the history of the Valley, nor of the The result is an uneven book which does Having stated the above is not to ab• French penetration or the fur trade. No not quite achieve a synthesis of the nature solve the book from some flaws. The note places these subjects beyond the of that unique area which is the Upper Ot• most basic of these is a failure to locate scope of the volume and one is left think• tawa Valley. what exactly comprises the Upper Ot• ing that British settlement marks the tawa Valley. Is it the whole area above beginning of history on the Upper Ot• Robert Peter Gillis Montreal? Sometimes Reid would have tawa. Even more puzzling is the selection Treasury Board Secretariat Canada us think so with references to everything of the terminal date of 1855, which up from the St. Lawrence front. It definite• seems to have no particular significance ly includes the townships stretching out for the Valley in historical terms. from the Rideau and Mississippi Rivers; an area in which the author seems most This is not to say that there is not a lot of at home with his research and which he useful insights in The Upper Ottawa Val• uses to try to counter-balance the in• ley. As mentioned above, the sections on fluence of the timber frontier on the the settlements off the Rideau and Missis• Upper Ottawa. Does it include the area sippi river systems are strong and useful. above Bytown and the Chaudière? Well The chapter on social order presents a

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