Patterns of the Past

Interpreting Ontario's History

Roger Hall, William Westfall, Laurel Sefton MacDowell, Roger Hall, William Westfall, Laurel Sefton MacDowell

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN:
  9781550020342
• eBook ISBN:
  9781459713574
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History Reference
• Index: History

Patterns of the Past has been published to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Ontario Historical Society. Organized on 4 Sept 1888 as the Pioneer Association of Ontario, the Society adopted its current name in 1898. Its objectives, for a century, have been to promote and develop the study of Ontario's past. The purpose of this book is both to commemorate and to carry on that worthy tradition. Introduced by Ian Wilson, Archivist of Ontario, and edited by Roger Hall, William Westfall and Laurel Sefton MacDowell, this distinctive volume is a landmark not only in the Society's history but in the prince's historiography. Eighteen scholars have pooled their talents to fashion a volume of fresh interpretive essays that chronicle and analyze the whole scope of Ontario's rich and varied past. New light is thrown on our understanding of early native peoples, rural life in Upper Canada, the opening of the North, the impact of railways, and the growth of businesses and institutions. And there is much social study here too, especially of the new roles for women in industrial society, of working class experience, of ethnic groups, and of children in our society's past. As well, there are innovative treatments of the conservation movement, of science's role in provincial society, and of the relationship between society and culture in small towns. Anyone with an interest in the history of Canada's most populous province will find much in this comprehensive collection.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• The Mystery of the Neutral Indians
• Rural Credit and Rural Development in Upper Canada, 1790 to 1850
• Population Change on an Agricultural Frontier: Upper Canada 1796 to 1841
• Re-inventing Upper Canada: American Immigrants, Upper Canadian History, English Law, and the Alien Question
• The Meaning of Misadventure: The Baptiste Creek Railway Disaster of 1854 and its aftermath
• Beyond Superior: Ontario’s New-Found Land
• Finding the Right Size: Markets and Competition in Mid- and Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario
• Streetscape and Society: The Changing Built Environment of King Street, Toronto
• “A Terror to Evil-Doers”: The Central Prison and the “Criminal Class” in Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario
• Science and the State in Ontario: The British Connection or North American Patterns?
• From Modern Babylon to a City upon a Hill: The Toronto Social Survey Commission of 1915 and the Search for Sexual Order in the City
• Ontario Workers and the Decline of Labourism
• The Jewish Experience in Ontario to 1960
• The Battle for Wilderness in Ontario: Saving Quetico-Superior, 1927 to 1960
• The Children’s War: The Mobilization of Ontario Youth During the Second World War
• Society and Culture in Rural and Small-Town Ontario: Alice Munro’s Testimony on the Last Forty Years
• The Editors and Contributors