Title Making Ontario : agricultural colonization and landscape re-creation before the railway / J. David Wood

Published Montreal [Que.] : McGill-Queen's University Press, ©2000

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Description 1 online resource (xxi, 205 pages) : illustrations Contents Contents -- Tables and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Illustrations -- 1 Progress and the Confrontation with Nature -- A colony for farm settlers -- The language of landscape change -- 2 Changing the Face of the Earth -- The mechanics of transformation -- Superimposed geometry -- 3 Agents of Transformation: An Expanding Population -- Loyalists, refugees, pioneers -- Characteristics of a pioneer population -- The 1840s: the modern census arrives -- A New World mosaic -- 4 Building a Social Structure -- From refuge to colony Landscape as society's re-creationIntensity of social structuring -- Dimensions of a social geography -- 5 Making a Living -- Agriculture as the way of life -- The other economy: timber -- Small seeds of industry -- Variation in affluence and socio-economic status -- 6 Circulation of Goods, People, and Information -- Getting around in early Ontario -- Beyond road construction: making connections -- Waiting for the train -- 7 The Urban Role in an Agricultural Colony -- The functions of urban places -- Circumscribed roles -- A gradually emerging urban system 8 Conclusion: A New Land, HandmadeThe extent of transformation -- The ethics of making a new land -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y Summary Annotation The colony that became Ontario arose almost spontaneously out of the confusion and uncertainty following the American Revolution, as a quickly chosen refuge for some 10,000 Loyalists who had to leave their former homes. After the War of 1812 settlers began to spread throughout the inter-lake peninsula that was to become southern Ontario and by the middle of the nineteenth century expansion had led to a diversifying agriculture and an increasingly open farming landscape that replaced a mature forest ecosystem. The scale of the change from forest to cropland profoundly affected what had been for many decades a rich environment for life forms, from large herbivores down to microscopic creatures. In Making Ontario David Wood shows that the most effective agent of change in the first century of Ontario's development was not the locomotive but settlers' attempts to change the forest into agricultural land. Wood traces the various threads that went into creating a successful farming colony while documenting the sacrifice of the forest ecosystem to the demands of progress, progress that prepared the ground for the railway. Ontario was a going concern before the railway came -- the railway simply streamlined the increasing trade with an international market that drew on Ontario for a multitude of farm products and a continuing output from the woods Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject Land settlement -- Ontario -- History -- 19th century Agriculture -- Ontario -- History -- 19th century Landscape changes -- Ontario -- History -- 19th century Land use -- Ontario -- History -- 19th century JUVENILE NONFICTION -- Social Issues -- Emigration & Immigration. BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Industries -- Agribusiness. Agriculture Land settlement Land use Landscape changes Land settlement -- Ontario -- History. Agriculture -- Ontario -- History. Siedlung Landwirtschaft Landschaftsentwicklung SUBJECT Ontario -- History -- 19th century Ontario, Southern -- Economic conditions Ontario, Southern -- History Subject Ontario Canada, Ontario -- Colonization. Canada, Ontario -- History. Canada, Ontario -- Land and property. Ontario Genre/Form Electronic books History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780773568044 0773568042 1282858262 9781282858268 9786612858260 6612858265

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