Peter A. Russell, “Forest in Farmland: Upper Canadian Clearing Rates, 1822-1839”, Agricultural history, 57:3 (July 1983), 326-39.

Paquet, G. “Some Views on the Pattern of Economic Development.” in T.N. Brewis, ed., Growth and the Canadian Econommy, ( Toronto, 1968), pp. 34-64. Carleton Library no. 39.

for a discussion of the evolved staples thesis applied to Canada. ie fisheries were at the bottom of the developmental heap.

1936 A.R.M. Lower, The North American Assault on the Canadian Forest (Toronto, 1936).

1936 Lower, Settlement and the Forest Frontier in Eastern Canada (Toronto, 1936).

1956 R.L. Gentilcore, ‘The Agricultural Background of Settlement in Eastern Nova Scotia’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 46, 4 (1956), pp. 378-404.

1959 Andrew Hill Clark Three Centuries and the Island: A Historical Geography of Settlement and Agriculture in Prince Edward Island (Toronto, 1959), pp. 211-14 discusses the negative impact of the land tenure system.

1968 Andrew Hill Clark, Acadia: The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (London, 1968), p. 54 attributes occupational pluralism to poor soil.

1979 Graeme Wynn, 'Late Eighteenth Century Agriculture on the Bay of Fundy Marshlands', Acadiensis 8 (1979) and

1980 Graeme Wynn, Timber Colony: A Historical Geography of Early Nineteenth Century New Brunswick (Toronto, 1980) discuss the importance of occupational pluralism in the Maritime economy.

1981 Graeme Wynn, ‘Population Patterns in Pre-Confederation New Brunswick’, Acadiensis, 10 (1981), pp. 124-38 for a description of the pattern of settlement in New Brunswick.

1981 J. M. Bumsted, ‘The Origins of the Land Question on Prince Edward Island 1767-1805’, Acadiensis, XI, 1 (Autumn 1981), pp. 43-56.

1985 Anthony Winson, ‘The Uneven Development of Canadian Agriculture: Farming in the Maritimes and Ontario’, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 10, 4 (1985), pp. 411-38.

1986 Alan MacNeil, 'Cultural Stereotypes and Highland farming in Eastern Nova Scotia, 1827-1851', Histoire sociale/Social History, 19 (1986), pp. 39-56.

1986 Graeme Wynn, “This Dark Vale of Sorrow”, Nova Scotia Historical Review, 6, 2 (1986) pp. 55-62. on Pictou county.

1987 Graeme Wynn, ‘A Province Too Much Dependent on New England’, Canadian Geographer, 31, 2 (Summer 1987), pp. 98-113.

1987 Graeme Wynn, ‘A Region of Scattered Settlements and Bounded Possibilities: Northeastern America, 1775-1800’, Canadian Geographer,, 31, 2 (Winter 1987), pp. 319-38.

1988 Ian Ross Robertson The Prince Edward Island Land Commission of 1860 (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1988) discuss aspects of the land tenure problem.

1988 L.D. McCann, ‘“Living the Double Life”: Town and Country in the Industrialization of the Maritimes’, in Geographical Perspectives on the Maritimes, edited by Douglas Day (Halifax, 1988), pp. 93-113 and

1988 Robert MacKinnon and Graeme Wynn "Nova Scotian Agriculture in the “Golden Age" A New Look', in Douglas Day, ed. Geographical Perspectives on the Maritime Provinces (Halifax, 1988), pp. 47-60.

1988 Michael J. Troughton, ‘From Nodes to Nodes: The Rise and Fall of Agricultural Activity in the Maritime Provinces:, in Day, Geographical Perspectives on the Maritime Provinces, pp. 25-46, quotations at p. 29.

1988 Béatrice Craig, ‘Agriculture and the Lumberman’s Frontier in the Upper St. John Valley, 1800-1870’, Journal of Forest History, 32, 3 (July, 1988), pp. 125-37.

1988 Graeme Wynn, ‘Nova Scotian Agriculture in the ‘golden Age’: A New Look’ in Douglas Day, ed., Geographical Perspectives on the Maritime Provinces (Halifax, 1988), pp. 33-55.

1989 Stephen J. Hornsby, ‘Staple Trades, Subsistence Agriculture, and Nineteenth-Century Cape Breton Island’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 79 3 1989, pp. 433-434.

1989 Alan MacNeil, ‘Early American Communities on the Fundy: A Case Study of Annapolis and Amherst Townships, 1767-1827’, Agricultural History, 62, 3 (1989), pp. 101-19.

uses land quality surveys

1989 Rosemary Ommer, “The Truck System in Gaspe, 1822-77”, Acadiensis 19 1 (1989) pp. 91-224.

1991 Rusty Bitterman, ‘Escheat! Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island, 1832-1842’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of New Brunswick, 1991);

1991 Graeme Wynn, "Exciting a Spirit of Reform Among the 'Plodholes'" Agricultural Reform in pre-Confederation Nova Scotia", Acadiensis, 20 (1991), pp. 5-51.

1991 Rosemary Ommer in From Outpost to Outport: A Structural Analysis of the Jersey-Gaspé Cod Fishery, 1767-1886 (Montreal and Kingston, 1991) ch. 5 discusses the underdevelopment of Bonaventure and North Eastern New Brunswick in terms of the organisation of the fishery.

1990 Alan R. MacNeil 'Society and Economy in Rural Nova Scotia, 1761-1861', Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, 1990.

1991 Robert MacKinnon, ‘ Farming the Rock: The Evolution of Commercial Agriculture around St. John’s, Newfoundland to1945”, Acadiensis, XX, 2 (1991), pp. 32-61.

1992 Stephen J. Hornsby, Nineteenth Century Cape Breton: A Historical Geography (Montreal and Kingston, 1992), chs. 3 and 6 describes the sharp contrast between the well being of families who acquired good frontland farms and those who struggled to live on the backland farms.

1992 Richard Apostle and Gene Barrett, Emptying Their Nets: Small Capital and Rural Industrialization in the Nova Scotia Fishing Industry (Toronto, 1992).

1993 Rusty Bittermann, 'Farm Households and Wage Labour in the Northeastern Maritimes in the Early 19th Century', Labour/le Travail, 31 (1993), 13-45 reprinted in Contested Countryside, pp. 34-69 discusses the hardships facing settlers in Cape Breton and the unequal access to agricultural resources.

1993 Sean Cadigan, ‘The Staple Model Reconsidered: The Case of Agricultural Policy in Northeast Newfoundland, 1785-1855’, Acadiensis, XXI, 2 (Spring 1993), pp. 48-71.

1993 Béatrice Craig, 'Agriculture in a Pioneer Region: The Upper St. John River Valley in the first half of the 19th Century', Farm, Factory and Fortune: New Studies in the Economic History of the Maritime Provinces, edited by Kris Inwood (Fredericton, 1993), pp. 17-37 and in the same volume,

1994 Hugh Millward, ‘Changing Patterns of Agricultural Settlement in the Canadian Maritimes’ Rural Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Selected Papers, edited by Kenneth B. Beesley and Pamela J. Macintosh, Proceedings of the Inaugural Colloquium of the Rural Research Centre, Nova Scotia Agricultural College, 1994, pp. 93-111,

1994 Steven Maynard in ‘Between Farm and Factory: The Productive Household and the Capitalist Transformation of the Maritime Countryside, Hopewell, Nova Scotia, 1869-1910’, Contested Countryside, pp. 70-104 describes a community in which household production and local exchange resulted in little dependence on outside markets. Other notable works on the subject are

1994 A. R. MacNeil, “Mobility and Rural Society in Annapolis Township, Nova Scotia, 1760-1861” in Donald Akenson, ed., Canadian papers in Rural history 9 (Gananoque, Ontario: Langdale press, 1994): 251-252.

1994 Daniel Samson, ‘Introduction: Situating the Rural in Atlantic Canada’, Contested Countryside: Rural Workers and Modern Society in Atlantic Canada, 1800-1950, edited by Daniel Samson (Fredericton, 1994), pp. 1-33 provides an excellent discussion of the literature on agriculture in the Maritimes.

1994 Bill Parenteau, “Settlement and the Forest Frontier Revisited: Class Politics and the Administration of the new Brunswick Labor Act, 1919-1920”, Contested Countryside: Rural Workers and Modern Society in Atlantic Canada, 1800-1950, edited by Daniel Samson (Fredericton, 1994), pp. 180-224.

1998 Julian Gwyn, Excessive Expectations: Maritime Commerce and the Economic Development of Nova Scotia, 1740-1870 (Montreal & Kingston, 1998), pp. 67-73, 109-116 describes the dependence of the province on food imports and the limitations of agricultural development.

John Clarke, “Geographical Aspects of Land Speculation in Essex County to 1825: The Strategy of Particular Individuals”, Historical Essays on Upper Canada, edited by J. K. Johnson and Bruce G. Wilson (Ottawa, 1989), pp. 81-130.

Emphasized the importance of drainage of the soil.

Kenneth Kelly, “The Artificial Drainage of Land in Nineteenth-Century Southern Ontario”, The Canadian Geographer, 19 (1975), pp. 279-98.

Notes the Ontario Drainage acts of 1869 and 1873 and the Municipal Drainage Aid act of 1873. These were needed for draining swamps, because problem extended beyond the individual’s property.

Provides much more detail on the types of soils and the types of drainage systems.

Charles Herniman, “Development of Artificial Drainage Systems in Kent and Essex Counties, Ontario”, Ontario Geography, 2 (1968), pp. 13-24.

Development of artificial drainage was essential to improving lands. The Drainage acts of 1989 amd 1993 were essential to the process. 1851 on 10% was improved in Essex and Kent. In 1911 75% was improved.

V.C. Fowke, The Myth of the Self-sufficient Canadian Pioneer’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada Series III, LIV (1962), PP. 28-37.

V.C. Fowke, An Introduction to Canadian Agricultural History’, Agricultural History, 16 2, (1942), pp. 79-90.

John McCallum, Unequal Beginnings: Agriculture and Economic Development in Ontario until 1870, (Toronto, 1980).

Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: the Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784-1870, (Toronto, 1993).

Douglas McCalla, “The ‘Loyalist’ Economy of Upper Canada, 1784-1806”, Histoire sociale --- Social History 16 no 32 (1983), pp. 279-304.

Earlier work: emergence of a wheat economy stressed. But he also indicates the diversity of the economy. Particular emphasis on credit, not a barter economy and internal processes of exchange. Not a subsistence economy.

Douglas McCalla, ‘The Internal Economy of Upper Canada: New Evidence on Agricultural Marketing before 1870’, Agricultural History, 59 3 (1985), pp. 397-416.

Wheat is one of many commodities.

Douglas McCalla, “What Were Country Stores For? Some Selected Evidence” Paper prepared for Fouth Canadian Business history Conference, Peterborough, Ontario, 14-16 Oct. 1994

Most important commodities purchased were: Cloth, shoes, boots, tea sugar, salt, tobacco, apples, candles butter eggs oats, nails, syrup. These are selected, but presumably are representative.

Argues that the records of stores shows that they were important for buying and selling local produce, not just for supplying imported goods.

Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Kingston and Montreal, 1987).

Michael S. Cross, ed. The Frontier Thesis and the Canadas: The Debate on the Impact of the Canadian Environment (Toronto, 1970)

Marvin McInnis, ‘Women, Work and Childbearing: Ontario in the Second Half of the 19th Century’, Histoire sociale/Social History, XXIV, 48 (1991), pp. 237-62.

Leo Johnson, ‘Land Policy, Population Growth and Social Structure in the Home District, 1793-1851’, Ontario History, 48 (1971), pp. 41-60.

Leo A. Johnson, “The Settlement of the Western District 1749-1850”, Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Ontario: Essays Presented to James J. Talman, edited by F.H. Armstrong, H.A. Stevenson, J.D. Wilson, pp. 19-35.

Traces development from the first French settlements: Slow after giving up Detroit to US. Up to 1835 three main problems retarded settlement: distance from markets, difficult transport to them. Lack of high value crops and proper agr technology to grow them (tobacco??) New land policies which tended to concentrate new settlement in more central areas paraphrase p. 32.Only after 1835 with opening of transportation did settlement flourish. Does not emphasise drainage problems.

Fernand Ouellet, ‘Ruralization, Regional Development, and Industrial Growth before 1850’, in Economy, Class, and Nation in Quebec: Interpretive Essays (Mississauga, 1991), pp. 124-60.

Serge Gagnon, Quebec and its Historians: The Twentieth Century, (Toronto, 1985), pp. 81-163.

Normand Séguin, a Conquete du dol au 19e siècle (Sillery, 1977)

_____ed., Agriculture et colonisation au Québec (Montréal, 1980)

René Hardy and Normand Séguin, forêt et société en Mauricie (Montréal, 1984), pp. 152-70. èéê ç

Serge Courville and Normand Séguin, “Rural Life in 19th Century Quebec”, The Canadian hisotiral Association Historical Booklet no. 47, Ottawa, 1989. Translation by Sinclair Robinson.

General survey for students. Good to see overview. I need a clearer definition of the eastern townships and the seigneuries.

Serge Courville, Jean-Claude Robert and Normand Séguin, ‘The spread of Rural Industry in Lower Canada, 1831-1851’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, (1991), pp. 41-70

Serge Courville, ‘Un monde rural en mutation: le Bas-Canada dan la première moité du XIXe siècle’, Histoire sociale/Social history, 40 (1987), pp. 237-58.

Serge Courville, ‘Croissance villageoise et industries rurales dans les seigneuries du Québec (1815-1851)’, in François Le-Brun and Normand Séguin, eds., Societes villageoises et rapports villes-campagnes au Québec et dans la France de l’Ouest, XVIIe-Xxe siècles (Trois Rivières, 1987).

J.I. Little, Crofters and Habitants: Settler Society, Economy, and Culture in a Quebec Township, 1848-1881 (Kingston and Montreal, 1991), pp. 134-55.

J.I. Little, ‘ethnicity, Family Structure an dSeasonal labor Strategies on Quebec’s Appalachian Frontier, 1852-1881’, Journal of family History, 17, 3 (1992), pp.289-302.

Shannon Ryan, ‘Fishery to Colony: A Newfoundland Watershed 1793-1815’ Acadiensis, XIII, 1 (Autumn 1983), pp. 47-67.

W. Gordon Handcock, Soe longe as there comes noe women: Origins of English Settlement in Newfoundland (St. John’s, 1989).

D. F. Putnam, “The Climate of the Maritime Provinces”, Canadian Geographical Journal, 21 1 (11940), pp. 135-47.


Douglas McCalla, ‘Above the Falls: The Economic Development of Western Upper Canada, 1784-1851’ a paper prepared for the Conference on the Rural Economy and the Beginnings of Industrialization, Université de Montréal, Feb. 1992 for a description of the difficulty accessing markets faces by settlers west of Niagara Falls.

Nice to contrast with early discussions of slow settlement in Essex and Kent which ignore the quality of land and concentrate on the isolation from markets.

He gives a nice description of the iron foundry and the relationship to Hiram Capron. Its demise with faling pig iron prices etc. is also outlined. But need to read more of Inwood before commenting too much on this.

Most of his discussion reflects the diversity of the economy, rather than the special situation of the area above the falls. Most of the data post dates the Erie Canal.

Issues of land quality are not addressed. Much of the discussion focuses on Haldimand and Norfolk counties.

George Patterson, A History of the County of Pictou, Nova Scotia (Montreal, 1877: reprinted Belleville Ont. 1972), ch. 4 describes settlement beginning in that county c. 1770. See also

Marvin McInnis, ‘Immigration, Emigration, and the Canadian Economy of the Late Nineteenth Century’, paper presented to the 19th Conference on the Use of Quantitative Methods in Canadian Economic History, Montreal, April 8-9, 1994.

Marvin McInnis, ‘Marketable Surpluses in Ontario Farming, 1860’, Social Science History, 8 (1984), pp. 395-424, reprinted in Perspectives on Canadian Economic History, edited by Douglas McCalla (Toronto, 1987), pp. 37-57.

Marvin McInnis, ‘Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, 1815-1930’ Canadian Papers in Rural History, edited by Donald H. Akenson, vol. 8, (Gananoque, 1992), pp. 17-128 discusses agriculture in that province.

Matthew G. Hatvany, ‘An Enduring Mythology: The Proprietary Burden in Prince Edward Island’, Cheminements: Mythic History and Symbolic Landscape, Actes du projet d’échange Laval-Queen’s, Octobre 1995-96, pp. 21-29;