Canada: A Changing Society

Imagine leaving Canada in 1890 and coming back twenty years later. You would recognize the country—but parts of it would feel completely different.

Cities had grown. Factories had multiplied. Railway lines stretched across the map. Electric lights were appearing. Streetcars moved people through expanding neighbourhoods. Telephones connected businesses and homes. Manufactured goods filled shops. Immigration was changing communities. And millions more people lived in Canada.

The city gets bigger

Montréal and Toronto grew enormously. So did Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton, Ottawa, and many smaller industrial towns. Cities attracted factory workers, clerks, business owners, immigrants, domestic workers, construction labourers, professionals, and families looking for opportunity.

Rapid growth also created crowded housing, poor sanitation in some neighbourhoods, pollution, workplace accidents, poverty, and large gaps between rich and poor.

ENLARGE SOURCE

A city of machines

Factories divided production into many tasks. Machines could produce goods faster, cheaper, and in larger quantities. That could create jobs, products, profits, and economic growth. It could also create dangerous workplaces, repetitive labour, long hours, low wages, and conflict between workers and employers.

ENLARGE SOURCE

Why organize?

One worker had limited power when an employer decided wages, hours, and many working conditions. Hundreds of workers acting together could petition, negotiate, strike, and pressure employers or governments. Employers often resisted unions, and governments did not always side with workers.

Slavery was gone. Racism was not.

Black communities had built churches, schools, newspapers, businesses, farms, and political organizations before 1890. Those communities continued. But abolition had never guaranteed equality.

Black Canadians encountered discrimination in education, housing, employment, business, public accommodations, and immigration. Segregated schooling continued in some places. A person could be legally free and still be denied a job, a home, a hotel room, a place in a school, or equal treatment.

William Peyton Hubbard

Hubbard was born in Toronto to parents who had escaped slavery in the United States. He worked as a baker and driver before entering politics. In 1894, he won election to Toronto City Council and became the city’s first Black elected official. Over a long municipal career, he served on the powerful Board of Control and sometimes acted in the mayor’s place.

ENLARGE SOURCE

John Ware

John Ware had been born into slavery in the United States. He became an expert cowboy and came north with cattle into the region that became Alberta. Ware established his own ranch and became one of the best-known ranchers in the region while working in an overwhelmingly white industry and facing racism.

ENLARGE SOURCE

New Black communities in the West

In the early twentieth century, Black families from the United States began moving into Alberta and Saskatchewan. Many were fleeing Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, and political exclusion. They hoped Canada would offer land, safety, and greater opportunity.

Families farmed, built churches, created schools and community organizations, and made permanent homes. Amber Valley, north of Edmonton, became one of the best-known Black settlements.

ENLARGE SOURCE

But Canada did not simply welcome them

Some white Canadians petitioned to keep Black settlers out. Canadian officials used discriminatory tactics to discourage Black migrants. In 1911, the Laurier government approved an Order-in-Council aimed at prohibiting Black immigration for one year using the racist claim that Black people were unsuitable to Canada’s “climate and requirements.”

The order was cancelled shortly afterward and does not appear to have been officially invoked. That does not make it unimportant. It shows what federal officials were prepared to put into law.

ENLARGE SOURCE

Canada wanted immigrants. Just not everyone equally.

The federal government wanted settlers who could farm land, build communities, buy goods, pay taxes, use railways, and strengthen Canadian control across the Prairies. Under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, Immigration Minister Clifford Sifton became associated with aggressive recruitment of agricultural settlers.

ENLARGE SOURCE

Who came?

Large numbers arrived from Britain, the United States, and continental Europe. Communities grew among people with roots in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, and elsewhere. Immigrants brought languages, religions, food, farming knowledge, political ideas, and community traditions. They did not become identical Canadians the moment they arrived.

Canada was selective

“Canada wanted immigrants” is too simple. Government officials treated potential immigrants differently according to race and ethnicity. Canada wanted particular kinds of immigrants.

ENLARGE SOURCE

The federal Head Tax targeted most Chinese immigrants. The amount rose from $50 to $500—an enormous barrier for working families. The same Canada that had relied heavily on Chinese labour to build its western railway then imposed a race-specific cost on Chinese newcomers. The tax could delay migration and separate families.

A neutral-sounding rule can have a targeted effect

The Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908 required immigrants to arrive by a continuous journey from their country of birth or citizenship using tickets purchased before departure. The rule did not say “South Asians are banned.” But there was effectively no direct continuous steamship route from India to Canada. The rule became a major barrier to South Asian immigration.

Komagata Maru

In May 1914, the Komagata Maru reached Vancouver carrying 376 passengers of Indian origin. Most were Sikh; others were Muslim or Hindu. They were British subjects. India and Canada were both parts of the British Empire—yet Canadian restrictions prevented most passengers from entering.

ENLARGE SOURCE

ENLARGE SOURCE

The ship remained in Vancouver waters for roughly two months. Passengers and members of the local South Asian community raised money, organized, and challenged the government in court. The legal challenge failed, and the ship was forced to leave with most passengers. They were not passive people waiting for Canada to decide their fate: they resisted the policy.

Half the population. Very little formal political power.

Women worked, farmed, raised families, taught, nursed, ran businesses, organized charities, wrote, studied, and participated in reform movements. Political institutions were still overwhelmingly controlled by men.

There was no single “women’s work”

Women worked in homes, farms, factories, offices, shops, schools, hospitals, laundries, restaurants, and private households. Some work was paid. Much was not. Opportunities depended on class, race, location, family circumstances, education, and marital status.

Industrialization and urbanization opened more paid work in clerical jobs, telephone operation, teaching, nursing, factories, retail, and domestic service. Women generally earned less than men. Many professions remained restricted, and marriage could end a woman’s expected participation in paid employment.

Emily Stowe: women organized before they won

Dr. Emily Stowe became the first woman to practise medicine in Canada and a major organizer for women’s education and suffrage. Her purpose here is not a full biography. Her work proves that women organized for decades before major voting-rights victories.

ENLARGE SOURCE

Political power is not only voting

Women formed organizations around education, health, poverty, temperance, working conditions, family welfare, and political rights. The National Council of Women of Canada was founded in 1893. Local and national organizations created influence even while women were largely excluded from electoral power.

Turn the argument around

Opponents claimed politics was naturally male, husbands represented wives, and women’s participation would disrupt traditional roles. Suffragists asked why people who paid taxes, worked, raised children, obeyed laws, and were affected by government decisions should have no equal political voice.

ENLARGE SOURCE

On 28 January 1914, activists staged a Mock Parliament at Winnipeg’s Walker Theatre. Women played politicians; men became the group supposedly asking women for the vote. Nellie McClung played a fictional female premier who rejected men’s demand using the same kinds of arguments usually aimed at women.

There was no single women’s movement. Many mainstream reform organizations were dominated by white middle-class women. Indigenous women, Black women, Asian Canadian women, and working-class women faced barriers that one suffrage story cannot fully explain. Women were challenging particular systems of inequality; they had not won equality.

Canada had its own Parliament. But was it fully independent?

By the turn of the century, Canada had a Parliament, prime minister, provinces, railways, cities, industries, a growing population, and an expanding national identity. But Canada was still part of the British Empire.

ENLARGE SOURCE

ENLARGE SOURCE

Wilfrid Laurier and the politics of compromise

Wilfrid Laurier became prime minister in 1896—the first French Canadian to hold the office. He governed during extraordinary population growth, immigration, western settlement, industrial development, and national ambition. His political style emphasized compromise because major political groups wanted different things.

The Empire question

Many English-speaking Canadians felt strong ties to Britain. Some imperialists believed Canada should actively support Britain and the Empire. Many French Canadian nationalists asked why Canada should fight Britain’s wars and wanted greater Canadian autonomy. These were major political currents, not opinions shared by every member of either language group.

ENLARGE SOURCE

When Britain went to war against the Boer republics in southern Africa in 1899, English Canadian imperialists demanded support while many French Canadian nationalists opposed involvement. Laurier accepted an initial contingent of roughly 1,000 volunteers rather than compulsory service.

The navy question

A decade later, Britain faced growing naval competition. Imperial defence supporters wanted Canadian help. Should Canada give Britain money, build Canadian ships, or do nothing? Laurier chose a Canadian navy.

ENLARGE SOURCE

Laurier’s Liberals lost the 1911 federal election. Reciprocity with the United States was central; naval politics and Canadian identity also shaped the wider atmosphere. Conservative leader Robert Borden became prime minister just before the crisis of 1914.

The question that will matter

By summer 1914, Canada was larger, more urban, more industrial, more diverse, more politically confident, and more autonomous than in 1867. It controlled much of its domestic government and increasingly built national institutions. Britain still held important constitutional and foreign-policy powers.

WHAT HAPPENS IF BRITAIN GOES TO WAR?

The country changed. Did everyone experience the same Canada?

Nothing here is new. Rebuild the chapter from data, sources, policy, perspective, and cause.