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3. The Canadian Industrial Boom
From Canadian History Portal - HCO
| C. Demand For Change →→ 1. Our Struggle for Rights →→ 2. Industry and Labour →→ 3. The Canadian Industrial Boom →→ 4. Gold and Imperial Adventure →→ →→ 5. The Immigration Boom 1895-1914 →→ 6. The New West 1885-1905 →→ D. World War I |
| Canadian Industrial Boom - Gallery | Stories & Texts | Web Links | Student Activities | Shared Projects | Quizzes |
"As the 19th century was that of the United States, so I think the 20th century shall be filled by Canada."
- Wilfrid Laurier, Speech to the Canadian Club, Ottawa, Jan 18, 1904. This is the first version of his statement 'The Twentieth Century belongs to Canada.'.
Background to Change
The half-century after Confederation were years of momentous change in Canada. The land area grew more than seven times, most notably with the purchase of Rupert's Land in 1869. The number of provinces went from four in 1867 to nine, five years after the turn of the century. The population of the country similarly rose at a startling rate by doubling from under the four million figure at the time of Confederation to over eight million thirty years later.
Much of that growth occurred due to a huge surge of immigration during the Laurier "Golden Years" (1896-1911) The economy prospered, due to Macdonald's high-tariff National Policy that became the economic rule, and to the new industries that served the growing population.
The last quarter of the nineteenth century also saw a growing demand for social change. Urban reformers emerged to combat the ills of growing cities. Prohibitionists railed against the evils of alcohol. Many people joined anti-immigrant leagues as the tide of xenophobia was on the rise. Women's groups actively championed the cause of greater equality. Reformers targeted many other areas as well, including the condition of the workingman, education, and religion.
One of the most subtle and yet profound changes was the pace and rhythm and pace of life. For decades, people had experienced a very natural tempo to their lives. Their daily lives were dictated by nature. They would get up when the sun rose and would go to bed when the sun went down. The seasons determined when they planted, irrigated, and harvested. On the farm, their lives were very much set by nature, by seasons of planting and harvesting and by the care of animals. The tractor had not yet replaced the horse.
However, the days of the rural, pioneer, agrarian society were rapidly giving way to something much more complex and fast-paced. The industrial revolution, based on large-scale manufacturing and new sources of power, was transforming the landscape. As the factory system developed, the lure of jobs drew prospective workers to the newly emerging towns and cities like a magnet. The natural rhythm gave way to the clock and a much more artificial system. The modern industrial state brought innumerable and far-reaching changes. Some were positive, while some far less so.
Movement to the Cities
The statistics tell a story of great demographic change. In 1851, 80% of Canada's population lived in rural areas. Forty years later, in 1891, that figure had declined to 65%. Or to view it another way, in 1871, four years after Confederation, one out of every six Canadians lived in a town or city. By the turn of the century, fully one out of every three Canadians was an urban dweller. In 1881, 77% of Canada's 4.3 million people lived in the countryside. Only forty years later, in 1921, just slightly more than 50% of Canada's 8.8 million people did so.
The principal cities that emerged were large. By the end of World War One, 20% of the population lived in cities of more than 100 000. The main cities were Toronto and Montreal in central Canada, Saint John and Halifax in the Maritimes, and Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver in the West.
All the cities had witnessed tremendous growth. Montreal's population more than tripled from 115 000 in 1871 to more than 380 000 in 1901. The same was true for Toronto which mushroomed from 59 000 in 1871 to 210 000 in 1901. However, as great as was the growth of the two leading cities, it was eclipsed by the dramatic growth rate of western cities. Winnipeg, for instance, went from a mere 240 people in 1871 to 42 000 only thirty years later.
A number of factors, over and above the lure of jobs, lay behind the tremendous urban growth. Emerging cities offered more in the way of amenities, such as schools, stores, and services. The increasing numbers of immigrants also fed the boom. Many came from urban Europe, and were looking for work. Others were attracted to western Canada by the Homestead Act, which provided 160 acres for $10.00. Some farm families arrived in eastern cities fully intent on homesteading out west, but thousands had to remain where they arrived because they did not have the financial means to travel further.
Another factor behind the urban growth was the transportation boom. Much of the greatest growth, particularly in western Canada, occurred in the places favoured by being located on at first the railway line and later on a provincial highway.
Given very limited resources coupled with massive - and increasing - demands, the newly emerging cities had great difficulty in building the necessary infrastructure - adequate housing, police and fire protection, sewage, and recreation. As a result, late nineteenth century cities were crowded, squalid, and filthy for the great majority of their inhabitants.
Many urban dwellers lived in crushing poverty. The number of people living below the poverty line more than tripled in the fifty years from mid-century, to a point where half of the urban population was classified as poor. Their abject poverty was in sharp contrast to the displays of great wealth and consumption of the few wealthy families, such as the Molsons and Van Hornes of Montreal. Their favoured location in Montreal was central Sherbrooke Street while in Toronto, the rich tended to concentrate along Jarvis and Sherbourne Streets.
Finance and Banking
The year 1900 saw several stock exchanges in action. A Montreal Stock Exchange seat sold for $10,250, a a Toronto Stock Exchange seat for $12,000. Toronto became the centre of mining speculation, with two exchanges - the Mining and Industrial Exchange and Standard Mining Exchanges. In 1901, they amalgamated as the Toronto Mining Exchange, and financed a new gold & silver boom. Also in the year, George Cox of Central Canada Savings & Loan founded Dominion Securities, now part of the Royal Bank of Canada.
Also in 1900, in Lévis, Québec, parliamentary reporter Alphonse Desjardins and his wife Dorimène founded the first Caisse populaire, or people's bank, after studying European co-op models. It was the credit union in North America. Their goals were to fight usury, improve the living conditions of workers, let French Canadians build savings and slow the exodus to US mill towns. With support from the Roman Catholic Church, he expanded the concept through Quebec and French Canada, founding 205 branches before he was forced to retire due to ill health in 1916; in 1913, the institutions were renamed 'les Caisses populaires Desjardins'. Today Desjardins is a power in Quebec, and increasingly in the world.
1901 also saw the founding of the Canadian Bankers Association.
 Sidelight: Marconi and the First Transatlantic Radio MessageOn December 12, 1901, at the Signal Hill observatory in St. John's, Newfoundland, Italian scientist and engineer Guglielmo Marconi sent and received the first transatlantic radio message. The test signal was sent by electrical engineer John Ambrose Fleming in Poldhu, Cornwall, 3,200 km away across the Atlantic Ocean. It came in through a 121 metre long copper wire antenna trailing from a box kite and out through a radio speaker. Marconi had set up temporary masts, but high winds had blown them down. The kite contraption worked. Marconi heard the first signal as the faint clicking of Morse code - of the letter 'S' --three short clicks-- repeated over and over, and he passed the ear piece to his assistant, G. S. Kemp for corroboration. Marconi first started experimenting with radiotelegraphy around 1895 and he realized that messages could be transmitted over much greater distances by using grounded antennae on the radio transmitter and receiver.  A few years after his successful transmission with Fleming, Marconi opened the first commercial wireless telegraph service.  Marconi then decided to move his base of operations to Cape Breton. Alexander Graham Bell offered the use of his estate at Baddeck, but Marconi declined as it was too far inland for his purpose. In 1902, the Canadian government chartered the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of Canada and provided the company with $80 000 to set up wireless operations at "Table Head" near Glace Bay, Cape Breton. On December 5, 1902, Marconi transmitted the first readable wireless radio signals from Glace Bay to Poldhu in Cornwall, England. Marconi was simply sending sparks through the air. Canadian physicist physicist and inventor Reginald Fessenden was far in advance of Marconi. While working for the US Weather Service, Fessenden broadcast the world's First voice communications by AM (amplitude modulation) radio wave on December 23, 1900. Marconi's companies will eventually adopt Fesesenden's radio patents. |
The Birth of Canada's Oil Industry
The oil industry in Canada began in southwestern Ontario, where for centuries First Nations people had used gummy oil deposits for medicine and to waterproof their canoes. It was there in the summer of 1858 that carriage maker James Miller Williams drilled the first commercial oil well in North America, in a tar pit at Oil Springs in Lambton County.
The oil and gas industry in western Canada developed slowly. In 1867, Geological Survey of Canada scientist George Dawson reported oil seeps in the Waterton area of Alberta, and in 1883, the first gas was found at Langevin, near Medicine Hat, by CPR water drillers.
Farther north, government geologists surveyed petroleum seepages along the Athabasca River on Sept. 14, 1890. These were first noted in 1778 by fur trader Peter Pond at the confluence of the Clearwater River, where first nations people were using the tar to caulk their canoes. Today they are the centre of one of the world's richest oil reserves - the Athabasca Oil Sands. These deposits are a $1.4-trillion bonanza, based on prices of just $40 (U.S.) a barrel of synthetic crude, and likely the world's largest single deposit of oil.
On June 16, 1894, the Edmonton Bulletin suggested boosting a commercial oil industry in the province, and there was a mini boom on the Calgary Stock Exchange. But it was not until 1901 that Canada's first commercial gas field was developed at Medicine Hat. Visiting British author Rudyard Kipling described the town as having "all hell for a basement".
In 1908, an Ontario driller named Eugene Coste spudded the "Old Glory" gas well at Bow Island, Alberta. Four years later, Coste's Canadian Western Natural Gas built Alberta's first gas pipeline 275 km from Bow Island to Calgary, and 12,000 Calgarians gathered to watch Mrs. Coste light the inaugural flare with a roman candle.
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In the early 1910s, William Stewart Herron, an Okotoks farmer, noticed gas bubbling along the banks of Sheep Creek in the Turner Valley, southwest of Calgary. In 1913, Herron partnered with Archibald W. Dingman to found the Calgary Petroleum Products Company. On May 14, 1914, they struck wet gas at Dingman No. 1 well. This discovery sparked furious financial speculation on the Calgary Stock Exchange, with speculators forming over 500 companies. But the Coste and Herron discoveries failed to attract eastern Canadian investment, and interest waned when World War I began. Ten years later, the Royalite No. 4 would put Turner Valley on the oil and gas map.
By 1921, Standard Oil of New Jersey and its Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Oil (Royalite Ltd.) had signed a profit sharing agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). They struck gas in 1924 near the original Dingman well, and built a pipeline from Turner Valley to Calgary. Exploration uncovered oil beneath the field's gas wells, and Imperial Oil built Alberta's first oil refinery in Calgary in 1923.
The real beginnings of Alberta's oil and gas industry began on June 16, 1936, when driller Bob Brown hit a gusher at Turner Valley, turning it into a major oilfield overnight.
Canals & Railways
On Sept. 190, 1895, the new Sault Ste. Marie canal opened. Capable of carrying wide steamships and some ocean going vessels, it let ocean liners sail as far as Thunder Bay on Lake Superior to link up with the CPR main line and grain trains.
In 1897 the Government signed the Crow's Nest Pass Agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway. The CPR got a $3.3 million subsidy to extend its lines into the mining and smelting areas of southern BC in return for lower fixed freight rates on Prairie grain eastbound, and westbound rates on 'settlers' effects'.
The Second Transcontinental
On January 13, 1899, Winnipeg contractors William Mackenzie and Donald Mann founded the Canadian Northern Railway, by amalgamating the Winnipeg Great Northern Railway and the Lake Manitoba Railway and Canal Company. They started building the CNoR main line through the fertile belt from Winnipeg via Saskatoon to Edmonton in 1903.
At the same time, Laurier's Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton was also pressing for a second transcontinental railway line to rival the CPR and destroy their western monopoly. In 1903, the government passed a bill creating the "Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company."
This "Liberal Line" - Canadian Pacific had been a long time supporter of the Conservative Party - was to join and build upon two existing roads - the Grand Trunk Railway in the east with Mackenzie & Mann's Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) in the west. Grand Trunk were to build a new railroad from Edmonton to Prince Rupert, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the federal government were to build a government line from Moncton, New Brunswick to Levis, Quebec. The railroad eventually continued through northern Ontario and Quebec to Winnipeg, and via Jasper to Vancouver, providing ice free ports at both ends of the line.
The CNoR construction train reached Edmonton on November 24, 1905, and Alberta Lieutenant Governor G.H.V. Bulyea drove home a silver spike to mark the completion of the Canadian Northern Railway to Edmonton. The first outgoing eastbound scheduled passenger train left Edmonton on November 30, 1905.
Last Spike of the Grand Trunk Pacific
On November 17, 1913, H. B Kelliher, chief engineer of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, drove in a last spike at the Québec boundary to mark the completion of Québec division of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad (GTPR), the last leg of the National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) from Prince Rupert to Moncton via Winnipeg, Sioux Lookout, Kapuskasing, Cochrane and Québec City started in 1903. Only the Prince Rupert leg and the $40 million Québec Bridge - the largest cantilever span in the world - remaind unfinished.
On April 7, 1914, 2 km east of Fort Fraser, BC, Kelliher drove in the last spike of the western division of the GTPR at Nechako River Crossing west of Prince George.
The first train will arrive in the newly constructed seaport of Prince Rupert, BC on April 9, 1914.
The Winnipeg, Manitoba to Prince Rupert line will officially open on September 9, 1914.
Construction of the line, a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, began in 1905, and proceeded west to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1907, Edmonton, Alberta in 1909, and through Jasper, Alberta into Yellowhead Pass. crossing the Continental Divide in 1910-1911.
By 1914, the Grand Trunk Pacific and Mackenzie & Mann's northern transcontinental were complete, and the system had 9,362 miles of track running from Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton to Vancouver. The CNoR itself was responsible for the creation of over 500 communities in the prairie provinces. Mackenzie himself drove in the last spike of the CNoR on January 23, 1915, at Basque, British Columbia.
Canadian National Railways
Canada's railway building effort was huge in these years. Total miles of track had soared, from 18,998 in 1903 to 34,882 in 1915, and fixed liabilities from $908 million to $1.9 billion. But the lines overreached themselves, and the financial crisis coming with the outbreak of World War I bankrupted the companies. The CNoR was taken over by the Federal Government in stages around 1916. and in 1917 became the nucleus of the Canadian National Railways (CNR).
By 1919 it was obvious that the GTPR was not paying its way. The financial strain broke on March 7, 1919 when the GTR defaulted on repayment of construction loans to the federal government, whereby the GTPR was nationalized and taken over by a Board of Management operating under the Department of Railways and Canals. On July 12, 1920 the GTPR was placed under the management of Crown corporation Canadian National Railways (CNR) and in 1923 was completely absorbed into the CNR.
After the War, on Dec. 20, 1919, Prime Minister Borden's Cabinet passed an Order in Council creating the government owned Canadian National Railways, to unite and rescue five near-bankrupt railroads: the Grand Trunk, Grand Trunk Pacific, Canadian Northern, Intercolonial and Canadian Government Railways [National Transcontinental]. Canadian National Railways was incorporated on June 6, 1920.
Fessenden First Transmits Voice by Radio Waves On December 23, 1900, Canadian physicist and inventor Reginald Fessenden was working as a wireless expert for the US Weather Service at Cobb Island, 100 km down the Potomac from Washington, DC. Using a new "interruptor" that made it possible to generate a more or less continuous wave, Fessenden broadcast the world's First voice communications by AM (amplitude modulation) radio wave for a distance of 1.6 km between two 13 metre towers, asking his assistant, Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen? Fessenden had invented and soon perfected the heterodyne principle, the basis for all modern broadcasting, as well as the AM (amplitude modulation) broadcasting principle. Both relied on the transmission of voice over continuously generated waves. This led to true wireless radio broadcasting that could carry intelligible sound on the basis of amplitude modulation of a continuous wave.  Fessenden with his crew at Brant Rock Fessenden followed up this triumph on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1906, when he made the world's first public radio broadcast and the first broadcast of music from his station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts. By that time, Fessenden was far ahead of Marconi, Tesla, DeForest and other scientists, having invented the heterodyne principal, the basis of all modern broadcasting, and the AM (amplitude modulation) broadcasting principle, relying on the transmission of sound over continuously generated waves.[1] As he related in a letter written a few weeks before his death, Fessenden had already sent and received a voice signal across the Atlantic, and planned to do a major public demonstration for his financial backers, but a storm on December 6 knocked down his 50-metre radio tower in Machrihanish, Scotland. So he decided to send a Christmas Eve audio signal to the banana boats of the United Fruit Company who had installed his receivers. That afternoon, he and his wife Helen travelled out to Brant Rock, a small village about 50 kilometres from Boston, and the crew fired up the generator. At 9:00 pm they started their Christmas Eve radio show for the lonely sailors at sea.  One letter came in to Fessenden reporting that his first pioneering broadcast was heard as far away as Norfolk, Virginia, over 800 km away.  Despite Feddenden's success, commercial radio really didn't catch on with the public until the late 1920s, when another Canadian radio expert, Edward S. Rogers, Senior invented the alternating-current tube, allowing plug-in batteryless radios. Historica Minute:
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Turn of the Century Industry
From 1870 onward, The National Policy of high tariffs, railway building and the settlement of the West, led to growing foreign investment as Canada became more attractive to industrialists. The period also saw the the entry of many American branch plants, who jumped the tariff wall and built factories in Canada, especially in Ontario and Quebec. Two of the biggest were Ford of Canada and General Electric who built a large Canadian factory in Toronto at the turn of the 20th Century.
Industrialization began to falter in the Maritimes, because of US tariff walls and distance from markets, except for Sydney, Nova Scotia where, on Feb. 2, 1901, Dominion Iron and Steel Company started up the first of four new blast furnaces. In BC resource industries dominated. The Prairies, of course, were dominated by agriculture, and when the new frost resistant Marquis wheat was developed, it soon became the standard.
Mining and smelting boomed in the period. In 1902, Francis Clergue produced the first steel from Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, and in the same year Mond founded the International Nickel Company at Sudbury. In Shawinigan, a new process for smelting bauxite ore into aluminium using hydro electricity led to the founding of Alcan Aluminum.
Government and business grew closer in these years, and more support for business - bonuses, subsidies and guarantees - led to growth. As well, there was very little government interference in business.
The period also saw major consolidation of businesses and banks in order to compete nationally. From 1880-1920 the number of Canadian banks declined from 48 to 18. Financiers like Max Aitken - the merger king - pulled together large cement, steel and power firms. From 1909-12, a total of 275 Canadian firms consolidated into 52 large enterprises.
New marketing practices also arose, led by Timothy Eaton, whose department store and catalog empire was fouded on posted prices and a motto of "satisfaction guaranteed or your money refunded".
Industrialization on the Farm
The growth of labour-saving machinery like steam tractors and threshers, as well as combine harvesters made by Massey Harris, led to a huge boom in Prairie agriculture. Still, there was some opposition to farm machanization. In 1897 The Winnipeg Daily Tribune warned that the combine had been invented to keep the price of grain low.
The wheat farmers of the Prairies soon set up cooperatives and pools to help their bargaining position on the new Winnipeg Grain Exchange and in other markets. On Jan. 27, 1899, the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Grain Company was organized in Sintaluta, and three years later, on Dec. 18, 1901, William Richard Motherwell founded the Territorial Grain Growers' Association - today's United Grain Growers - in Regina.
With the opening of Winnipeg's busting grain exchange, there was a thirst for information on the price of wheat, barley and oats, and a woman named Cora Hind became the oracle of the grain market. Hind was a brilliant market analyst and grain exchanges waited nervously for her reports on the size of the crop yield. Prices on the international market rose or fell on her predictions.
Born in Toronto in 1861, Hind moved with her aunt to Winnipeg in 1882. She wanted to become a journalist, but the male dominated profession rejected her. So she trained as a legal legal secretary, then founded her own business in 1893, becoming the province's first public stenographer or "typewriter."
In 1901, J.W. Dafoe, the new editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, hired her as a regular reporter and his Commercial and Agricultural Editor. Hind gained an international reputation for the accuracy of her analyses of crop yields, livestock breeding and food production and marketing. She worked hard at her job - in 1924, she reported travelling over 10,000 km on her field inspection tour.
Hind was also dedicated to social reform, and the promotion of women's rights. She was an active worker in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and was a founding member of the Manitoba Equal Franchise Club, a group formed to lobby for the vote in 1894. In the 1890s she worked with Dr. Ameila Yeomans for factory and prison reform, and with Lillian Beynon Thomas and Nellie McClung in the promotion of Women's Institutes in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In 1912, she was a founding member of the Political Equality League, which played a central role in the campaign which led to the granting of full female suffrage in Manitoba in 1916.
Bell Founds the Aerial Experiment Association Curtiss, McCurdy, Bell, Baldwin, Selfridge, September 30, 1907
 Two American members joined the group: engine maker, motorcycle racer and World speed record holder Glenn Curtiss and Lt. Thomas Selfridge, who had led the US Marines during the San Francisco earthquake and fire. The AEA first expermented with tetrahedral kites, then built 4 biplanes at Curtiss' motorcycle plant at Hammondsport, New York. In March, 1908, Casey Baldwin flew the AEA Red Wing for about 100 metres, becoming the first Canadian to fly a heavier-than-air machine. On July 4, 1908 Curtiss flew the June Bug and made the first recorded one-kilometer flight in North America. After this success, the AEA started work on the Silver Dart, and on the cold morning of February 23, 1909, McCurdy flew the plane off the ice at Baddeck, in the first airplane flight in Canadian history. The Aerial Experiment Association disbanded on March 31, 1909. 
 Baldwin, Selfridge, Curtiss, Bell, McCurdy (on crutches) and Augustus Post, founder of the Aero Club of America |
| Canadian Industrial Boom - Gallery | Stories & Texts | Web Links | Student Activities | Shared Projects | Quizzes |
| C. Demand For Change →→ 1. Our Struggle for Rights →→ 2. Industry and Labour →→ 3. The Canadian Industrial Boom →→ 4. Gold and Imperial Adventure →→ →→ 5. The Immigration Boom 1895-1914 →→ 6. The New West 1885-1905 →→ D. World War I |
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