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Ontario History

Consumers in the Bush: Shopping in Rural Upper Canada by Douglas McCalla Chris Raible

Volume 107, Number 2, Fall 2015

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050642ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1050642ar

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Publisher(s) The Historical Society

ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital)

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Cite this review Raible, C. (2015). Review of [Consumers in the Bush: Shopping in Rural Upper Canada by Douglas McCalla]. Ontario History, 107(2), 272–274. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050642ar

Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2015 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/

This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 272 ONTARIO HISTORY

trepreneurs, real estate tycoons, and planning business elite” (273)—and immediately de- visionaries, for better or for worse, reinvented votes paragraphs to them. with social housing projects, super- Similarly, Levine’s resolutely chrono- highways, sprawling suburbs, and shopping logical structure, which means that fasci- plazas” (199), underscores the reality that nating subjects (particularly those dealing contemporary debates over development with immigration, social conditions and the have a long and messy history in Toronto. conditions of everyday life) are introduced, These discussions, while absorbing, point dropped and returned to, is somewhat dis- to a shortcoming in Levine’s narrative ap- jointed. This is especially unfortunate given proach: if Toronto is personified as a biograph- that these analyses are Levine’s strongest ical persona, it is clearly male. From Simcoe and most innovative (particularly outstand- to , Mackenzie to Ford, George ing are an account of Thornton and Lucie Brown to Conrad Black, and “Big Daddy” Blackburn, ex-slaves who successfully ran Gardiner to Megacity Mel Lastman, those the city’s first taxi company, and discussions credited with shaping the city’s destiny are of the immigrant “slums” of Corktown and nearly all men. Even renowned urbanist Jane St. John’s Ward). A more thematic approach Jacobs, whom Levine does credit in a chap- might have improved the book’s continuity ter titled “Jane’s Disciples,” is shunted aside and highlighted the originality of Levine’s in favour of a discussion of the longstanding reporting. acrimony between and Paul God- Levine concludes by invoking Toron- frey. We know Toronto best in its early days to’s status as an “Alpha City”—a term aptly through the diary of Elizabeth Simcoe, but it underscoring the city’s identity not only as is her husband’s declaration, “Here let there a confident (some might say arrogant) cen- be a city,” that Levine emphasizes. In other tre, capable of throwing its economic weight places women are reduced to their supportive around, but also as a place where something and occasionally biological roles: population new is always unfolding. As Levine shows in growth in the city’s early years is credited to this rich and fascinating book, beginnings “the prolific nature of York’s women, who are what have always drawn people to To- married young and quickly thereafter had lots ronto: the sense of possibility, the promise of of children” (28). Levine does note that by the growth. 1970s “talented female journalists, and other women, were breaking through barriers,” but Amy Lavender Harris, adds that “the only women who truly seemed Award-winning author of Imagining Toronto to count... were the wealthy wives of the city’s (Mansfield Press) Consumers in the Bush Shopping in Rural Upper Canada By Douglas McCalla Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. Xiv+296 pp. $100.00 hard- cover. ISBN 978-0-77354-499-4. $ 34.95 softcover. ISBN 978-0-77354-500-7

ere is a book which offers in extraor- general stores, like all small businesses, kept Hdinary detail the consequences of pur- careful business accounts. Each store kept a suing a very simple idea. Upper Canadian day book, a record of every transaction made

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in the course of a day: each customer’s name, of purchase (e.g. the quantity and price of each product pur- “yard” “pair” chases, and the total sale. Over a period of “pound”), the time, these daybooks thus recorded thou- year first sold, sands of separate purchases made by hun- the number of dreds of individual customers. These day- stores in which books are primary sources worthy of study, it was sold, and although few, if any, scholars have previously the total number tried to do so. of purchasers. University of Guelph Professor Douglas But reader, McCalla—best known for his comprehensive take heart. All economic history of Upper Canada, Planting this statistical the Province—set out to mine these depos- information is its of data for an economic study of Upper prefaced by a Canada, “an experiment in bringing retail ac- clear, thought- counts fully into the study of consumption” ful, and alto- (20). Business accounts have been shown gether humane little interest by historians, he comments; if narrative which used at all, they were “cited anecdotally rather explores and explains the implications of the than exploited systematically” (18). whole study. McCalla gently suggests that Aided by a team of (graciously acknowl- many of our beliefs and assumptions about edged) assistants, McCalla studied the day- the rural settlement of our province need to book entries of general stores in seven differ- be re-examined. Among them: ent rural villages in two different regions of There is little evidence of bartering— eastern Upper Canada. Collecting from each goods were not traded but sold for clearly set the data for a full year—for three of them, for and stable prices. two different years—resulted in a total of ten 1. Even from the earliest period, settlers separate years, from 1808 to 1861, to be sub- were heavily dependent upon the wide vari- jected to analysis. For each store year, a rep- ety of imported goods that were made avail- resentative sample of customers was selected able for purchase. for study. This resulted in a massive, but 2. Yet buyers were able to patronize nonetheless manageable amount of data—a more than one store; “rural Upper Canadian total of more than 30,000 separate financial men and women routinely participated in transactions by 750 different families. the marketplace in multiple locations and Compiling and analyzing this data pro- through numerous points of access” (149). duced 36 different tables plus four appendi- 3. A great range of tools and other hard- ces (more than 60 pages) for study. One ex- ware was commonly purchased—they were ample: Appendix A, an itemized list of all the not too expensive for common use. goods purchased by five or more sample cus- 4. Some household products—cups and tomers. All these commodities are sorted into plates—were regularly purchased; others— 11 different categories; of these, “Textiles” knives, forks, spoons, dishes—less so; but all are of 5 different types; of these “cottons” are were indeed purchased in the earliest years. of 16 different varieties; the first variety of 5. Of the tens of thousands of transac- “cotton” is “calico.” There are thus some 400 tions, there was not one recorded purchase separate items. Columns for each list the unit of chocolate. On the other hand, salt seems

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to have been the only absolute necessity. usual supports of civilization, and fending for 6. For tobacco, tea, and sugar, there was itself,” (8) that this work seeks to contradict. little change in consumption patterns in the Even from the earliest years, settler families course of fifty years. were part of an interconnected world-wide 7. Alcohol was commonly purchased; economic enterprise. although there was some decline over the In his penultimate paragraph, McCalla years, many customers continued to purchase warns: “As the main chronological focus of it; there is no evidence for seasonal alcohol Canadian historical research shifts even far- purchase patterns; many alcohol customers ther forward in time, the settlement era can also bought tea. easily recede in historians’ field of vision, be- The epigraph for the first chapter isa coming an abstract, timeless world ‘before’ quotation from Catharine Parr Trail’s Back- (for example, before markets or industrial woods of Canada: “We begin to get recon- capitalism or modernity). This book offers a ciled to our Robinson Crusoe sort of life...” different perspective” (152). For McCalla, it is this notion, that each early settler family in Upper Canada was, “isolated, Chris Raible, surrounded by the unknown, deprived of the Creemore, Ontario We Share Our Matters (Teionkwakhashion tsi niionkwariho:ten) Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of Grand River By Rick Monture Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015. 228 pp. $27.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-88755- 767-5. $20.00 eBook or digital download. ISBN not provided. (www.uofmpress.ca)

t the community book launch in the We share our matters is based on Mon- ASpring of 2015, the theatre of the ture’s dissertation in English, and as such, fo- Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford cuses especially on the literary history of the was standing room only, while hundreds of community, although it includes analysis of people from Six Nations feted Monture with numerous other sorts of documents and pub- rounds of applause and a standing ovation. lications. The book is made up of six body Clearly, they appreciate Monture’s efforts to chapters which proceed chronologically and publish what he calls an intellectual history thematically throughout the history of the of the Six Nations of Grand River. While Six Nations at Grand River, beginning with numerous scholars from outside Six Nations their arrival at Grand River after the Ameri- have researched and written about the com- can Revolution, and ending with films made munity’s history, myself included, very few by Haudenosaunee artist Shelly Niro in 2012. from within it have done so and published Monture’s focus is on “how our leaders, intel- for a wider audience. Monture’s book is espe- lectuals, writers and artists have consistently cially important for this reason. He is sharing reiterated—in English—our ancient philoso- not only his extensive research and analysis, phies in the context of the political and social but also his knowledge of his community’s environment of their day to build upon the history from an insider perspective, for the central belief structures of traditional thought community itself and the wider public. in profound and creative ways” (218). He

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