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Ontario History
The Canada Company and the Huron Tract 1826-1853: Personalities, Profits and Politics. By Robert C. Lee John Clarke
Volume 97, numéro 2, fall 2005
URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065888ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1065888ar
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Éditeur(s) The Ontario Historical Society
ISSN 0030-2953 (imprimé) 2371-4654 (numérique)
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Citer ce compte rendu Clarke, J. (2005). Compte rendu de [The Canada Company and the Huron Tract 1826-1853: Personalities, Profits and Politics. By Robert C. Lee]. Ontario History, 97(2), 231–234. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065888ar
Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2005 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/
Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ book reviews 231 ers, servants, and immigrants she met along exist ten years earlier, and notes the wagons the way. She noted that the democratic spirit of westbound immigrants. The stars are still caused servants to be relatively well treated vivid above Manhattan, the peaches already and averred that “Americans do not mean divine in St. Catharines. She clucks over cal- to be other than civil. Their manners arise lous Gaspé ladies weeding their gardens in from considering everybody on an equal silk stockings and lace gloves snatched from footing.” Noting many blacks in American shipwrecks when they should have been and Canadian jails, she laid it down to lack rescuing the survivors instead. She arrives of education rather than anything innate. at Saratoga when banished patriote Louis- What does this volume add to the Joseph Papineau and future Canadian states- bookshelf of colonial women’s diaries? One men Louis Lafontaine and George-Etienne picks up Susanna Moodie for an impas- Cartier are there, the latter already having sioned rendering of character and incident, second thoughts, telling her newspapers Catherine Parr Traill for serene practical exaggerated the disturbance. She compared advice, Anna Jameson for early feminism. “freedom and ease and smart appearance” Millicent Mary Chaplin’s account, while south of the border to the “more homely briefer, has a wider scope, recording travels but respectable and respectful manner and through New York, New England, Upper demeanour” north of it. Here is a well-read and Lower Canada, and the Maritimes. A re- and judicious commentator on Canada and freshing change from Victorian invalids, this the northern United States circa 1840. His- fifty-year-old stays on her feet in a squall. torians of travel and leisure and students of One day she rises at five a.m. for a four hour penal institutions will be particularly inter- coach ride, then a hike in the Catskills, dines ested in her detailed descriptions of hotels, with forty people at a lodge, then off to a conveyances, attractions, and of practices waterfall in a coach “outstretched hands at Kingston and American penitentiaries. holding on to each side to prevent being With much to say about class, race, gender, shaken to pieces,” back in a wagon when imperial attitudes and daily life, the book other tourists commandeered her coach, will intrigue the general reader and the then downriver to Manhattan trying to historian alike. sleep on a bench on the deck. The society too moves at a fever pitch; she frequently Jan Noel passes through bustling villages that did not University of Toronto The Canada Company and the Huron Tract 1826-1853: Personalities, Profits and Politics. By Robert C. Lee. Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2004 303 pp. Illustrations. $26.95 softcover. ISBN 1-896219-94-2.
he origin of the Canada Company politically embarrassing, and there was a is well known. In the 1820s, the need to produce revenue to conduct the Treserve lands established by the business of the state, specifically to com- Constitutional Act of 1791 were proving pensate people for losses during the War 232 Ontario History
of 1812-14. There was no real alternative sioners operating at a considerable distance to the Company’s proposal because the from London and because of changing Corn Laws limited exports to the British dynamics in Canada, including the need for market, and increased taxation was judged infrastructure to promote sales. Addition- to be inimical to settlement and develop- ally, the company found itself in competi- ment. To the propertied, many of whom tion with the state, which continued to would design the system under which the make free grants or with state institutions colony would operate, the disposal of the such as the Clergy Corporation. Inevitably, resources of the state seemed both appro- there would be claims that commissioners priate and logical. The proposal included operated independently. annual payments and offered government Lee illustrates this in the lives of the first the possibility of independence from the commissioners, especially Galt and Jones. legislative assembly. Ultimately, the Clergy Galt regarded his personal position as on a reserves would be excluded from the final par with the lieutenant-governor and oper- agreement, and suitable compensation (the ated in a manner that alienated his directors 1.1 million acre Huron Tract) had to be in Britain, and upset officialdom by his politi- paid the company. The company received cal and social insensitivities. In one case he its charter in 1826, the directors accepting threatened their power, and in another he sixteen terms which Lee outlines including withheld required payments from the British a purchase price of thirty-eight pence ster- government! Jones, appointed commissioner ling per acre, payment over sixteen years in 1829, promoted a rival railroad to that ap- and the right to abandon the contract for proved of by the British directors! such land as it had not taken up by 1843. Uncertainty was characteristic of the It had done very well indeed. system in the early years, especially in 1829, Thereafter, Lee describes the probabil- the year of Galt’s dismissal. In the belief ities of success for the company because, that the company could in fact fail and have in spite of to surrender its charter, the company was the received restructured under the aegis of Edward w i s d o m , Ellice, the son-in law of the British Prime this was not Minister and a major corporate investor and absolutely land speculator. Not one but two commis- certain. In sioners were appointed: Thomas Mercer doing so Jones and William Allan. This seemed a h e s e e k s sensible adjustment at a time when share- to demon- holders were wary of the Canadian opera- strate the tion and anxious about a call for renewed problems capital investment. In these circumstances that arose it was thought that the company might re- because of negotiate the initial agreement, abandoning t h e p e r - responsibility for the remaining scattered sonalities reserves, concentrating upon the Huron and predis- Tract and in this way reducing its manage- positions ment costs. Fiscal stringency and reduced of specific management costs were, in fact, a constant c o m m i s - feature of company operations throughout book reviews 233 its history, and especially in this time frame which sold at 11s/10d – that is, more than when, as the author points out, the company twice what the government was asking for was unable to set prices above those of the adjacent properties on a cash basis. Its suc- state and state institutions. In the light of cess allowed the company to face struggles such competition, share value plummeted with municipal councils over taxation and to more than an eighth of its actual value continued competition. By 1849, though and in 1828 revenues ran at forty-three per the company still had overdue accounts of cent of expenditures. However, the govern- £170,000, and arrears in rent of £35,000, it ment was resolute in holding to the original was meeting all of its expenses in Canada agreement. and had a surplus of £123,287. So by mid- Uncertainty persisted throughout the century the company, through successive 1830s because the company appeared adjustments, was profitable. linked to the Family Compact, required This work, which traces the history of increased expenditure on infrastructure to the company from its 1826 charter until liq- promote its enterprises, and because chol- uidation in 1853, is a revised and extended era in Upper Canada and improvements in version of the author’s MA thesis. It adds the British economy reduced emigration to an established literature on the Canada and thereby sales. It persisted even after Company, which includes the work of the the rebellion of 1837. In 1839, as Lee Lizars, Karr, Timothy, and most recently points out, land sales produced a minute Hall. Using extensive archival materials, deficit of about £237 (0.2 per cent). This the book is admirably written in a style was met by the usual cuts in expenditures which, because of the constant threat of and in personnel, including the departure failure, correctly emphasises the dynamic. of William Allan, by enforcement of the One is grateful for this insight because government-legislated requirements of there has been considerable emphasis on statute labour, and by concentrating efforts the negative capitalist nature of a venture upon the Huron Tract. seemingly endowed with the resources of Allan was succeeded by Frederick Wid- the state to guarantee success but, even der who introduced a much heralded rental then, unable to make a profit for many scheme and, as a result, sales increased years, and yet seeking renewed privilege. almost five fold between 1841 and 1843. No doubt Robert C. Lee, the historian, Land was leased at a progressive rate over possesses an empathetic understanding of twelve years starting at five pence per acre such enterprises because he was for many in year one and ending at forty pence in years a trade commissioner and therefore year twelve; generally rents were set at six appreciates this company as an economic per cent of the total value of the land enterprise. Such a trajectory might seem to but at any point during the lease the land have equipped him to make the judgment could be bought for an agreed price, and on the role of the company in Upper Ca- premium. This scheme marked a turn in nadian development but this is left to the fortunes for the company. It increased the reader, as is the social consequences of the price of leased land beyond that sold on company’s actions, though admittedly this time payments and understandably permit- is not an explicit objective of the work. ted conversion to leasing. In this way the We have to be grateful for this work, asking price for such land was now set which is conceptually clear and well il- at 13s/10d compared to purchased land lustrated with well-placed maps, photo- 234 Ontario History graphs, portraits, and diagrams. With its Bibliography: publication it is clear that there is need to redefine the field. We still know little about Clarke, John. Land, Power and Economics on the Fron- the timing of acquisition by the company tier of Upper Canada (Montreal and Kingston: or about the pattern of its holdings on the McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001). ground. The whole issue of whether the Hall, Roger. “The Canada Company, 1826-43.” existence of such large amounts of prop- Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1973. erty in the hands of such a corporation Karr, C.G. “The Foundation of the Canada Land inhibited the development of particular Company, 1823-1843.” Unpublished M.A. the- areas, and the extent to which the company sis, University of Western Ontario, 1966. made unconscionable profit, is still largely Lizars, Robina, and Kathleen M. Lizars. In the Days of the Canada Company: The story of the unexplored. (Clarke, pp. 424-42) With the settlement of the Huron Tract and a view of the social insights provided by Lee and others, it is life of the period, 1825-1850 (Toronto: William to these topics that our collective work Briggs, 1896). Online access:
To the Outskirts of Habitable Creation: Americans and Canadians transported to Tasmania in the 1840s. By Stuart D. Scott. New York: Universe Inc., 2004. 490 pp. Il- lustrations. US$30.95 softcover. ISBN 0-59532412-6. Convict Words: Language in Early Colonial Australia. By Amanda Laugesen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xxiv + 208 pp. US$22.95 softcover. ISBN 0-195-51655-9. he events associated with the 1838 six major works dealing with this aspect Rebellion (or “Patriot Wars”) in of our heritage have been published. The TUpper Canada and the subsequent first four – by Douglas, Duquemin, Graves, transportation of North American political and Pybus and Maxwell-Stewart – have prisoners to Van Diemen’s Land occurred now been followed by two more that merit over 165 years ago. Even after all this time reading, and are the focus of this review: there is continued interest in this topic Scott’s To the Outskirts of Habitable Creation from the past, which links Canadian and and Laugesen’s Convict Words. Australian history. In the last five years Scott’s work is a major contribution