Why were all grain elevators painted red at one time?
Map from Library and Archives Canada / e010745325
build these competencies
feeding an urban population
Leading up to the time of Confederation, Canada was mainly a rural country. By the middle of the 20th century, much of Canada’s population was urban. How did that happen? And how was urbanization shaped by farms and farmers?
A simple answer is that more work and jobs became available in towns and cities and more people moved to cities to find this work. Over time, farmers were able to increase the amount of food they produced. This increased production provided the food that a growing urban population required.
The image at the top of this slide shows a map of Edmonton and includes lot numbers and names of lot owners, including a large lot owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. As is typical of Métis settlements, the land was originally divided into long and narrow river lots.
Photo: C.W. Mathers / Library and Archives Canada / Ernest Brown fonds / e011303100-049_s2
This Statistics Canada video, produced for Canada’s 150th birthday, explores some of the factors that affect change and growth in Canada.
changing rural and urban populations
In 1861, the government conducted a census of the population.
This early census asked questions about the acres of land attached to a dwelling, the number and type of animals owned as well as the horsepower of the equipment used on the property.
At that time, 3.2 million people lived in Canada. Of that total population, 2.7 million (84 percent) lived in a rural area. Canada’s economy was based mainly on agriculture, but also on natural resources such as wood and coal.
By 2011, fewer than one in five (about 19 percent) people lived in a rural area. This change in the ratio between rural and urban populations meant that there are substantially fewer people living in rural areas today than there were in the 1800s. It also meant that there were changes in the ways people worked and lived in Canadian communities over time.
What impact do you think this trend toward urbanization had on farms and farmers over time?
Source: Statistics Canada online. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015004-eng.htm
tracking the population
The first census in Canada was initiated by Intendant Jean Talon in 1666. The census counted the colony’s 3215 inhabitants and recorded their age, gender, marital status and occupation. In light of the need for information to help plan and develop the Colony of New France, Talon did much of the data collection personally, visiting settlers throughout the colony.
Between 1710 and 1760, the census was used to collect information on housing and armaments, such as muskets and swords.
Later, questions were added on livestock, crops, buildings, churches, grist mills and firearms. A grist mill grinds cereal grains into flour.
The first “official” census of Canada was taken in 1871. This was four years after Confederation. The British North America (BNA) Act of 1867 indicated that a census was to be taken in 1871 and every tenth year after that. In 1982, the BNA Act became the Constitution Act of 1867.
The first census counted the population of the four original provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. It also asked 211 questions on area, land holdings, religion, education, administration, the military, justice, agriculture, commerce, industry and finance.
What can the types of questions on the 1871 Census tell you about the importance of agriculture?
Beginning in 1906, the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan began to take a separate census of population and agriculture every five years to monitor the growth of the west.
Source: Statistics Canada online. www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/ref/about-apropos/history-histoire-eng.cfm
Go back in time with this video and find out how the census can teach us about the history of our country and our heritage.
Find out more about how the census continued to track Canada’s growing population on the Census of Canada website and view the entire timeline here.
from towns to cities
At the same time that hundreds of thousands of settler farmers were flooding into western Canada, cities were growing quickly.
People living in urban areas made up 25 percent of the population in the prairie provinces and territories in 1901. They made up 35 percent in 1911.
Like the growth of prairie towns, cities were able to grow quickly because of agriculture. Farmers needed towns and towns needed cities. These cities were important for agriculture because they were main centres of transportation.
Like the railway companies, rapidly growing western cities used advertising to attract newcomers. This advertising was focused on jobs available in the cities, but also on what agriculture could offer. In some ads, towns boasted that their soil would produce 50 to 100 bushels of wheat per acre each year.
- Calgary described itself as ” the most prosperous and fastest growing city in the world”
- Winnipeg called itself “the Chicago of Canada”
- Lethbridge advertised itself as “the great manufacturing centre”
- Alix called itself” the rail transportation capital of the West”
Cities held agricultural fairs to promote the agricultural land available, encouraging farmers to buy land anywhere in a hundred-mile radius of their city. The photo shows one of these fairs, held in Alix Alberta in 1910. Alix is a village that is located northeast of Red Deer, Alberta.
Why do you think Edmonton and Calgary became large cities while Alix remained a small village?
Photo: (CU1219058) Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary
connecting farms and cities today
Growing food is extremely important – food is an essential part of life and connects us all. Urbanization still affects food production and the work that farmers do.
Watch this original project AGRICULTURE video interview to consider some ways that urbanization affects agriculture.
