Pierre Filion and Trudi E. Bunting
pp. 4–16
Record
Abstract
This article which covers thirty years of central-area change in the City of Kitchener, Ontario focuses on the initial impetus that led to the preparation of large-scale plans, on the down-scaling and partial implementation of those plans, and on the current decision-making environment that allows for more public participation than existed in the past. The local political scene was dominated by a well-organized coalition of interest groups promoting urban renewal in the central business district, yet this coalition was unable to achieve its objectives. The situation is attributed to suburbanization and related shifts in political and economic power at the municipal level; the vulnerability of municipal administrations to senior governments' priority changes; tensions within the coalition itself; and the growing empowerment of other local groups unsympathetic to the coalition's goals. Generally, the emphasis is on limitations to the capacity of locally-powerful actors to implement large-scale and long-term policies in a consistent fashion.
Michael Ernest McCulloch
pp. 17–29
Record
Abstract
In 1840, the City of Québec regained formal corporate status under an ordinance of the Special Council of Lower Canada. This article argues that the ordinance expressed a particular concept or urbanism. Based on concept of the role of cities developed in Great Britain during the Age of Reform, it sought to create non-partisan municipal structures that would encourage local development and 'improvement' while at the same time ensuring the dominance of the anglophone commercial elites. In this, the ordinance expressed in local terms the grand objectives of Governor Charles Poulett Thomson (Lord Sydenham) for the entire colony.Ultimately, this imperial urbanism was a failure. While the essential structure of municipal governance remained intact until 1855, local issues became immediately entangled in provincial party politics. Major business leaders were replaced by professional and small retailers as the dominant group on the City Council. The very ethos of improvement ensured that the under-financed city government became dwarfed by other agencies, such as the banks, the Gas Company and of course railroads. The case of Québec City in the first years of the Union illustrates the failure of attempts to transplant Utilitarian approaches to state formation into a colonial context.
M. P. Sendbuehler
pp. 30–48
Record
Abstract
In the nineteenth century, the tavern was an important institution in urban working-class life. Because of the social ills associated with alcohol abuse and public drinking, there were frequent attempts to lessen the tavern's importance or to eliminate it entirely. This paper examines several tavern-related issues that emerged in Toronto in the 1870s and 1880s. The Crooks Act, passed in 1876, employed powerful measures to deal with political and temperance questions simultaneously. The intersection of class, politics, temperance, and urban life led to a territorial solution to the liquor question. These issues were dealt with by the people of Toronto in 1877, when they declined to prohibit public drinking in the city via the Dunkin Act, a local option prohibition statute of the Province of Canada.