Building homes, building citizens: Housing reform and nation formation in Canada, 1900-20

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 79, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 492-523

  Purdy, Sean ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0007027102     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: 17101093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/CHR.79.3.492     Document Type: Review

References (150)

1. For representative examples see R.C. Brown and Ramsay Cook, Canada, 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1974)
2. and Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond, and John English, Canada, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987)
3. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso 1991)
4. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990)
5. Derek Sayers and Philip Corrigan, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985)
6. Raphael Samuel, Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, vol.1: History and Politics (London: Verso 1989)
7. In the Canadian case, note Marianna Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1991)
8. and Barbara Roberts, '"A Work of Empire": Canadian Reformers and British Female Immigration,' in Linda Kealey, ed., A Not Unreasonable Claim: Women and Reform in Canada, 1880s-1920s (Toronto: Women's Press 1979), 185-201
9. On these insights see the pioneering work by Alan Sears, 'Immigration Controls as Social Policy: The Case of Canadian Medical Inspection 1900-1920,' Studies in Political Economy 33 (autumn 1990): 91-2
10. and George Steinmetz, 'Workers and the Welfare State in Imperial Germany,' International Labour and Working Class History 40 (fall 1991): 18-23
11. This article is specifically concerned with English-Canadian nationalism in the housing reform movement. In French Canada, the discourse of nation building intersects at points with the larger project of the federal government, but also includes a distinct set of ideas concerning the French-Canadian nation. There was a surprising lack of discussion of French Canada in the English-Canadian reform project. For preliminary discussion of this point, see Sears, 'Immigration Controls,' 94
12. and William Coleman, 'The Political Economy of Quebec,' in Wallace Clement and Glen Williams, eds., The New Canadian Political Economy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1989), 162-163
13. Robert Miles, 'Recent Marxist Theories of Nationalism and the Issue of Racism,' British Journal of Sociology 38 (1987): 38. In England, he argues that nationalism was 'dependent on and constructed by an "idea" of "race," with the result that English nationalism encapsulates racism.'
14. Note also Alex Callinicos, Race and Class (London: Bookmarks 1993)
15. This essay will focus on reformers' notions of women's role; but it is worthwhile noting that attitudes about gender ideals in the reform movement also presupposed a notion of men's proper role. See Suzanne Morton's impressive study, Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class Suburb in the 1920s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995), chaps. 2-4
16. For a similar usage see the fine article by Ian McKay, 'The 1910s: The Stillborn Triumph of Progressive Reform,' in Del Muise and Ernest Forbes, eds., The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto and Fredericton: University of Toronto and Acadiensis Press 1993), 192-232
17. Antonio Gramsci, 'Some Aspects of the Sexual Question,' in David Forgacs, ed., The Gramsci Reader (London: Lawrence and Wishart 1988), 281, 296
18. See also David Harvey, 'Labor, Capital, and Class Struggle around the Built Environment in Advanced Capitalist Societies,' in Kevin Cox, ed., Urbanization and Conflict in Market Societies (Chicago: Maaroufa Press 1978), 23
19. On the complexity of the reform movement's response to urban problems, see Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1988), 5, 44
20. On Taylorism, consult Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison: University of Wisconsin 1980)
21. and Bryan Palmer, 'Class Conception and Conflict: The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labor and the Working Class Rebellion, 1903-1922,' Review of Radical Political Economics 7 (1975): 31-49
22. Toronto Daily News, 5 Nov. 1906. This popular daily was marked by its interest in exposing the 'racy' underside of Toronto
23. Greg Kealey, 'The Structure of Canadian Working-Class History,' in Greg Kealey and W.J.C. Cherwinski, eds., Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History (St John's: Canadian Committee on Labour History 1985), 29
24. On the development of the professions in the early twentieth century, see Thomas Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1987)
25. and Magali Sarfatti Larson, 'The Production of Expertise and the Constitution of Expert Power,' in Thomas Haskell, ed., The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1984), 34
26. John Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto 1993), 37-46
27. On scientific and administrative efficiency in the medical profession, see Peter Bryce, cited in Clifford Sifton, 'Inaugural Address,' Commission of Conservation (coc), Annual Report, 1910 (Ottawa 1911), 13
28. Also consult Colin Howell, 'Reform and the Monopolistic Impulse: The Professionalization of Medicine in the Maritimes,' Acadiensis 11 (autumn 1981): 3-22
29. Sifton, 'Inaugural Address,' 3
30. See as well C. Ray Smith and David R. Witty, 'Conservation, Resources and Environment: An Exposition and Critical Evaluation of the Commission of Conservation,' Plan Canada 11 (Dec. 1970): 62
31. A. Artibise and G. Stelter, 'Conservation Planning and Urban Planning: The Canadian Commission of Conservation in Historical Perspective,' in Roger Kain, ed., Planning for Conservation (New York: St Martin's Press 1982), 22
32. COC, 'Report of the Committee on Press and Co-Operating Organizations,' Annual Report, 1917 (Ottawa 1918), 277
33. D.J. Hall, Clifford Sifton, vol.2 (Vancouver: UBC Press 1985), 258
34. For Adams's international reputation, see Stelter and Artibise, 'Conservation Planning,' 25
35. See Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace, 37-38
36. and Sean Purdy, '"This Is Not a Company; It Is a Cause": Class, Gender and the Toronto Housing Company, 1912-1920,' Urban History Review 21/22 (1993): 75-91
37. Bacher, Keeping to the Markeplace, 55-7
38. See Ontario, Report of the Ontario Housing Commission (OHC Report), Legislature of Ontario, Sessional Papers, part 10, Report 65, 11-21, for a survey of over sixty Ontario municipalities that faced housing shortages
39. Bob Russell, Back to Work: Labour, State and Industrial Relations in Canada (Toronto: Nelson Canada 1990), 128
40. G.S. Kealey, '1919: The Canadian Labour Revolt,' Labour/Le Travail 13 (spring 1984): 11-44
41. As well, see Bryan Palmer, Working-Class Experience, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1992), 196-8, 211-13
42. Toronto Daily News, 2 June 1919 (my emphasis)
43. Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace, 57
44. Cited in John Bacher, 'Keeping to the Private Market: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy, 1900-1949,' (PhD dissertation, McMaster University 1985), 77
45. L.A. Thornton, 'The Housing Needs of Regina,' Social Welfare, Oct. 1920, 27
46. Jill Wade, Houses for All: The Struggle for Social Housing in Vancouver, 1919-1950 (Vancouver: UBC Press 1994), 29-30
47. For a comprehensive treatment of Canadian war veterans, see Glen Wright and Desmond Morton, Winning the Second Battle: Canadian Veterans and the Return to Civilian Life, 1915-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987). As Greg Kealey has also shown, returned soldiers played an important role in the class battles of the period, such as the Winnipeg General Strike
48. See Kealey, '1919,' 11-44
49. Government of Canada, National Industrial Conference, 1919: Official Report of Proceedings and Discussions (Ottawa: King's Printer 1919). This high-profile conference aimed at bringing together labour and employers to discuss ways to manage industrial unrest
50. Also consult Larry G. Gerber, 'The United States and Canadian National Industrial Conferences of 1919: A Comparative Analysis,' Labor History 31 (winter 1991): 42-65
51. Government of Canada, Royal Commission on Industrial Relations, Report (Ottawa: King's Printer 1919), 6. In this report, poor housing was the seventh entry in a list of the chief causes of the labour unrest of 1919. The first six causes noted were unemployment, high cost of living, desire for shorter hours, trade union recognition, denial of collective bargaining rights, and lack of confidence in government
52. Ontario Archives (OA), Sir William Hearst Papers (HP), MU 1307, Housing Question, Correspondence, Hearst to J. Ellis, 31 Jan. 1919
53. Also see the comments on class cooperation in Hearst's address to the Ontario Municipal Association in the Contract Record and Engineering Review 4 Sept. 1918, 725
54. For the results of the different programs, see A.G. Dalzell, The Housing of the Working Classes, vol.2, Housing in Canada Series (Toronto: Social Service Council 1928)
55. For the objectives and nature of the Ontario Housing Committee, see OHC Report, 1-5
56. John T. Saywell, Housing Canadians: Essays on the History of Residential Construction in Canada, Economic Council of Canada Discussion Paper 24 (Ottawa 1975), 46-50
57. National Archives of Canada (NA), Toronto District Labour Council Records, MG 28, I 44, Minutes, 14 Feb. 1919
58. Toronto District Labour Council Records, 6 Jan. 1921; 13 Feb. 1922. There were some initiatives towards establishing rent controls and fair rental courts, but the main emphasis was on home ownership schemes
59. Contract Record and Engineering Review, 22 Jan. 1919, 60, the journal of the building trades industry
60. See Shirley Spragge, 'The Provision of Workingmen's Housing: Attempts in Toronto, 1904-1921' (MA thesis, Queen's University 1974), 216-18
61. Alfred Buckley, 'Building Guilds,' Town Planning and Conservation of Life, Jan.BMarch 1921, 23
62. Industrial Banner, 26 March 1920, editorial
63. Toronto Daily News, Ibid., 26 Nov. 1918
64. HP, MU 1307, Correspondence, Ontario Woman Citizens' Association to Hearst, 16 Dec. 1918
65. On Vancouver, note Wade, Houses for All, 25
66. Palmer, Working-Class Experience, 208-213
67. James Naylor, The New Democracy: Challenging the Social Order in Industrial Ontario, 1914-1925 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1991), 251
68. Christian Topalov, 'Social Policy from Below: A Call for Comparative Historical Studies,' International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 9 (1985): 259
69. Peter Bryce, 'Measures for the Improvement and Maintenance of the Public Health,' COC, Annual Report 1910, 114ff
70. W. Struthers, 'The Point of View in Medical Inspection of Schools,' Public Health Journal 4, 2 (1913): 67
71. Consult Carol Lee Bacchi, 'Race Regeneration and Social Purity: A Study of the Social Attitudes of Canada's English-speaking Suffragists,' in J.M. Bumsted, ed., Interpreting Canada's Past, vol.11: After Confederation (Toronto: Oxford University Press 1986), 192-207
72. In response to the testimony of a labour journalist who informed the Royal Commission on the Relations of Capital and Labour in 1889 that many landlords in Montreal were reluctant to let houses to families with children, Commissioner Walsh asked with a note of telling surprise, 'This is a strange part of the country, they want the world to go on, and to have no children?' See 'Evidence of Arthur Short,' in Greg Kealey, ed., Canada Investigates Industrialism: The Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital, 1889 (Toronto: Macmillan 1973), 254
73. Toronto Globe, 28 Sept. 1920
74. See also Toronto Globe, ibid., 21 Dec. 1921
75. and Peter Bryce, 'Wanted: A Home to Rent,' Toronto Daily Star, 22 Nov. 1918
76. Frances Abele and Daiva Stasiulis, 'Canada as a 'White Settler Colony': What about Natives and Immigrants?' in Clement and Williams, eds., The New Canadian Political Economy, 241
77. Most reformers combined elements of both eugenics (hereditarian) and euthenics (environmentalism). See Angus McClaren, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1990)
78. Charles Hodgetts, 'Unsanitary Housing,' COC, Annual Report, 1911, 56
79. C.K. Clarke, 'The Defective Immigrant,' COL (April 1919): 37
80. On immigrants, see as well Charles Hastings, 'The Modern Conception of Public Health Administration,' COL (Oct. 1917): 90. Alan Sears explains why British immigrants were not spared the rancour of the social imperialists
81. Industrial Canada, Aug. 1911, 52
82. Industrial Canada, Ibid., May 1912, 3
83. HP, MU 1307, Ellis to Hearst, 12 Feb. 1919
84. See John Bacher, 'Keeping to the Private Market,' 79-82
85. See John Bacher and David Hulchanski, 'Keeping Warm and Dry: The Policy Response to the Struggle for Shelter among Canada's Homeless, 1900-1960,' Urban History Review 16 (Oct. 1987): 151
86. Michael Doucet and John Weaver, Housing the North American City (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1991), 99,123
87. Kay Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1991), 127, 269, n63. In a question and answer section in a Toronto home builder's promotional advertisement, the question 'Would you sell to foreigners?' was answered 'No, Absolutely NOT.'
88. J.S. Woodsworth, Strangers within Our Gates or Coming Canadians (1911; Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1972), 203. In the 1920s Woodsworth was elected to the federal parliament and a decade later was one of the founders of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of Canada's social democratic party, the New Democratic Party
89. Bacher, 'Keeping to the Private Market,' 48
90. Information on Winnipeg and British Columbia cited in John Weaver, '"Tomorrow's Metropolis" Revisited: A Critical Assessment of Urban Reform in Canada,' in G. Stelter and A. Artibise, eds., The Canadian City (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1977), 407
91. David Ward, 'The Progressives and the Urban Question: British and American Responses to the Inner City Slums, 1880-1920,' Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, ns 9 (1984): 304
92. CTA, Toronto Board of Health, Slum Conditions in Toronto (1911), 8, 10, 14, 20-4
93. Cited in John Weaver, 'The Modern City Realized: Toronto Civic Affairs, 1880-1915,' in G. Stelter and A. Artibise, eds., The Usable Urban Past (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1979), 43
94. For the 1934 study, see Government of Ontario, Report of the Lieutenant-Governor's Committee on Housing Conditions in Toronto (Toronto: City of Toronto 1934), 55
95. Anderson, Vancouver's Chinatown, 84
96. For a parallel experience among Toronto's small Chinese community, see Ken Paupst, 'A Note on Anti-Chinese Sentiment in Toronto,' Canadian Ethnic Studies (1977): 54-9
97. Contract Record and Engineering Review, 5 June 1918, 443
98. Helen MacMurchy, 'Defective Children,' Social Welfare, March 1919, 10
99. On MacMurchy, see McClaren, Our Own Master Race, chap. 2
100. Cited in John Weaver, 'Reconstruction of the Richmond District in Halifax: A Canadian Episode in Public Housing and Town Planning, 1918-1921,' Plan Canada 6 (March 1976): 40. The Halifax Reconstruction Program was a public housing and town planning venture initiated after a huge explosion in 1917 which destroyed a large section of residential housing in the city. Thomas Adams played a key role in designing plans for the program. The Halifax project witnessed for the first time on a large scale the practical implementation of some of the key ideas promulgated by the town planning profession. It also demonstrated the practical difficulties of multilevel government intervention in the housing sphere
101. For labour difficulties by the Reconstruction Program's workforce, see Suzanne Morton, 'The Halifax Relief Commission and Labour Relations during the Reconstruction of Halifax, 1917-1919,' in Michael Earle and Ian McKay, eds., Workers and the State in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press 1989), 24-46
102. See Dr Charles Hodgetts, 'Comments,' Report of the First Canadian Housing and Town Planning Congress, Winnipeg, 15-17 July 1912
103. NA, Papers of the Canadian Institute of Planners, MG 28 I 275, vol.16, Report of an Address to the Calgary City Planning Commission
104. Henry Vivian, 'Town Planning and Housing,' 9 April 1912, 15
105. See Sidney Jacobs, 'Race, Empire and the Welfare State: Council Housing and Racism,' Critical Social Policy, 1984, 11
106. For an excellent comparative history of housing policies in the postwar period in Europe, consult Susanna Magri and Christian Topalov, '"Reconstruire": l'habitat populaire au lendemain de la première guerre mondiale, étude comparative France, Grande-Bretagne, Italie, États-Unis,' Archives européanes de sociologie 29 (1988): 319-370
107. Valverde, The Age of Light, 26
108. Thomas Adams, 'Town Planning, Housing and Public Health,' COC, Annual Report, 1916, 123
109. G. Frank Beer, Social Welfare March 1919, 128 (emphasis in original)
110. Toronto Housing Company, 'Better Housing in Canada: The Ontario Plan,' in First Annual Report (Toronto 1913), 11
111. G. Frank Beer, 'Housing in Canada,' Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine, Nov. 1914, 262
112. John Belec, 'The Dominion Housing Act: A Study of the Origins of Canadian Federal Housing Policy' (PhD dissertation, Queen's University 1988), 57
113. David Clapham et al., Housing and Social Policy (London: Macmillan 1990), 25-28
114. 'The Housing Problem in Canada,' Canadian Municipal Journal, Dec. 1918, 394
115. For a detailed analysis of self-built housing, see the excellent work by Richard Harris, 'Self-Building and the Social Geography of Toronto, 1901-1913: A Challenge for Urban Theory,' Institute of British Geographers Transactions 15 (1990): 387-402
116. Mayor's Inaugural Address, Toronto City Council, City Council Minutes, 1920, appendix C, 53. On home ownership and good citizenship, see 'The Social Status of the Worker and Housing,' Canadian Municipal Journal, April 1919, 107
117. Kennedy Crane, 'Housing in Montreal,' Social Welfare, Nov. 1920, 41
118. See 'A Visit to Shackland in Toronto's Suburbs,' Toronto Globe, Supplement, 9 Nov. 1907
119. 'A Shack-Town Christmas,' Canadian Magazine, Dec. 1909, 129
120. For reformers' views of self-built housing, see Charles Hodgetts, 'Unsanitary Housing,' COC Annual Report, 1911, 56. J.E. Middleton wrote that self-builders showed 'resolution and diligence.'
121. The Municipality of Toronto: A History (Toronto: Gage Press 1923), 402
122. For an illuminating discussion of the development of home mortgages and how they increasingly became available for the working class in the period, see Doucet and Weaver, Housing the North American City, 265-280
123. Industrial Canada, Oct. 1921, 1
124. Veronica Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada, 1919-1939 (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman 1988), 117-121 (my emphasis)
125. Beer, 'Housing in Canada,' 261-262
126. G. Frank Beer, 'Working Men's Houses and Model Dwellings in Canada,' Garden Cities and Town Planning 4 (May 1914): 109
127. Marjorie MacMurchy, 'Women and Nation,' in J.O. Miller, ed., The New Era in Canada (Toronto: Dent Press 1917), 211-226
128. Vivian, 'Town Planning and Housing,' 15
129. CTA, City of Toronto, Minutes of the City Council, Report of the Board of Health 1918, appendix A, 711
130. Anna Davin, 'Imperialism and Motherhood,' History Workshop 5 (1978): 10
131. Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New Jersey: Pantheon Press 1981), 155
132. Suzanne Mackenzie, 'Women and the Reproduction of Labour Power in the Industrial City: A Case Study,' Working Paper 23 (Brighton: Centre for Urban and Regional Studies 1980), 85. As Martha Banta has shown in the case of the United States, the literature of home economics explicitly compared 'what women did inside the house to what men did in the outside world of work.'
133. Banta, Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen and Ford (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993), 233, 229-40
134. 'Unsanitary Housing,' COC, Annual Report, 1911, 66. Maternalist propaganda also aimed to persuade women to leave the paid labour force when the war ended
135. Marilyn Barber, 'Sunny Ontario for British Girls, 1900-1930,' in Jean Burnet, Looking Into My Sister's Eyes: An Exploration in Women's History (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario 1986), 63
136. See as well Hilary Russell, ' "Canadian Ways": An Introduction to Comparative Studies of Housework, Stoves, and Diet in Great Britain and Canada,' Material History Bulletin 19 (spring 1984): 1-12
137. Joseph Howes, 'Housing Needs in the Ward; and Their Relation to the General Housing Situation in Ontario,' Social Welfare, Oct. 1920, 15
138. Heather MacDougall, Activists and Advocates: Toronto's Health Department, 1883-1983 (Toronto: Dundurn Press 1990), 79
139. On a similar social policy thrust directed at the reproductive realm in the 1930s, see Margaret Hobbs and Ruth Roach Pierson, '"A kitchen that wastes no steps ...": Gender, Class and the Home Improvement Plan, 1936-1940,' Histoire Sociale/Social History 41 (May 1988): 9-38
140. For a comparable architectural viewpoint from the period, consult R.M. Fripp, 'Speculations on the Problem of Housing and the Working Classes in Vancouver, Contract Record and Engineering Review, 1914, 1276-1278
141. See also Wright, Social History of Housing, 169
142. For similar considerations in the Toronto Housing Company, see Purdy, 'This is Not a Company,' 82-88
143. See also Matt Sendbuehler, '"... to produce the highest type of manhood and womanhood": Domestic Architecture, Town Planning and Two Suburban Ideals in Ontario, 1919-1929,' paper presented at the House and Home in Canadian Cities conference, McMaster University, May 1993
144. Matt Sendbuehler, House and Home in Canadian Cities conference, McMaster University, May 1993.Ibid., 88
145. City of Toronto, Report of the Toronto Housing Commission, Dec. 1918, 4-5
146. On fears of race suicide arising from moral impurity, see Carol Bacchi, 'Race Regeneration,' 192-207
147. On this point, see Martin Daunton, House and Home in Victorian Britain (London: St Martin's Press 1983), 37. Nuclear family privacy is something Lizabeth Cohen has found American reformers sought to inculcate in workingclass homes
148. Consult 'Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885-1915,' Journal of American Culture 3 (1980): 759
149. See Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism
150. Anderson, Imagined Communities