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Although there were abundant hardships, early life in Upper Canada was romantic and colourful in many ways. However, despite important contributions to the social and economic history of Canada, few good, comprehensive accounts have been generally available. Early Life in Upper Canada, originally published in 1933, is by far the finest history yet compiled, and it is now being reprinted in order to make available to a new generation an important and engrossing description of this area of Canadian history. The author, a distinguished Canadian historian, has drawn on contemporary letters, diaries, newspapers, and periodicals, as well as consulting all the existing histories, and he has supplem...
We tend to think of contemporary concern for reform in education as unprecedented in its intensity and scope. But as this book about mid-nineteenth century educational ideology shows, the urge to improve society through its schools has been with us a long time. The author examines the attitudes that shaped the Ontario public school system during its formative years, when Upper Canadians first explored and the provincial government finally adopted the principle of compulsory mass schooling under the auspices and control of the state.
Black Creek Pioneer Village: Toronto’s Living History Village is a recreation of a typical crossroads community found in Southern Ontario during the 1800s. Nestled on 56 acres of tranquility, the village is a step-back-in-time, a respite from the towering buildings and bustling traffic of the 21st century. Here, visitors discover the joys and daily realities of living in early Ontario. Here at the village, the sights, sounds and smells are tangible reminders of our past. Meet the blacksmith, the tinsmith, the weaver, the miller, the printer .... Meet the people who "live" at Black Creek and bring our yesteryears to life.
This is the remarkable story of the trail that became the longest street in the world, as officially recognized by The Guinness Book of Records. Begun in 1794, Yonge Street was planned by the ambitious Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe as a military route between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Anxious to bolster Upper Canada's defences against the new republic to the south, which he heartily loathed, Simcoe had his Queen's Rangers survey and develop the route from Toronto to present-day Holland Landing, and laid out lots for settlement. Even the trusty Rangers, as one surveyor complained in 1799, needed little excuse to lay down tools and vanish "to carouse upon St. George's day." Handsomely illustrated with the author's drawings, and painstakingly researched, this book captures the not-so-distant days when muddy Yonge Street was the backbone of pioneer Ontario.
In 1839 fifty-eight men left Montreal for the penal colony of New South Wales. They were ordinary people who had been caught up in the political whirlwind of the 1838 rebellion. Even though they were all civilians, they had been tried by court martial. Convicted of treason, their properties forfeited to the crown, they paid a heavy price for rebellion. And as convicts in Australia, they were considered the lowest of a bad lot. During their years there, however, they earned the respect of Sydney’s citizens.
In Mixed Company explores taverns as colonial public space and how men and women of diverse backgrounds � Native and newcomer, privileged and labouring, white and non-white � negotiated a place for themselves within them. The stories that emerge unsettle comfortable certainties about who belonged where in colonial society. Colonial taverns were places where labourers enjoyed libations with wealthy Aboriginal traders like Captain Thomas, who also treated a Scotsman to a small bowl of punch; where white soldiers rubbed shoulders with black colonists out to celebrate Emancipation Day; where English ladies and their small children sought refuge for a night. The records of the past tell stories of time spent in mixed company but also of the myriad, unequal ways that colonists found room in taverns and a place in Upper Canadian culture and society. Reconstructed from tavern-keepers' accounts, court records, diaries, travelogues, and letters, In Mixed Company is essential reading for tavern aficionados and anyone interested in the history of gender, race, and culture in Canadian or colonial society.
This five-volume documentary collection--culled from an international archival search that turned up over 14,000 letters, speeches, pamphlets, essays, and newspaper editorials--reveals how black abolitionists represented the core of the antislavery movement. While the first two volumes consider black abolitionists in the British Isles and Canada (the home of some 60,000 black Americans on the eve of the Civil War), the remaining volumes examine the activities and opinions of black abolitionists in the United States from 1830 until the end of the Civil War. In particular, these volumes focus on their reactions to African colonization and the idea of gradual emancipation, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the promise brought by emancipation during the war.
A description of the once communal and now individual activity of textile production in eastern Newfoundland including dyeing techniques, fancywork, and the creation of mittens, socks, sweaters, mats, and quilts. The author identifies an emphasis on the quality of the product rather than strict adherence to stylistic norms and suggests that higher household incomes and the increased availability of commercial textiles have led to fewer individuals practising this art.
In her third and final book in the English in Canada series, Lucille Campey provides an overview of the great exodus from England to Canada which peaked in the early twentieth century. Drawing on wide-ranging documentary and statistical sources, Campey traces this major population movement on a region-by-region basis.