Infrastructure in Pre-1867 Canad
Rylan Anderson
T00569945
Hist-1120
Dr.Tracy Penny Light
December 19th, 2018
The following paper will dive into the history and evolution of infrastructure in Canada prior to confederation in 1867. The infrastructure built in this era is very important due to the fact that it meant life or death to the incoming settlers. Without this infrastructure people would not have adequate shelter from the elements, safe transportation to and from that shelter, and service buildings. For this paper the term “infrastructure” will be defined as any structures built upon this earth by any human, and used by humans to benefit them in anyway or form. Infrastructure can be used every day, all day or can be used for a short time and then forgotten to wither away into nothing. Infrastructure is important because it shapes the human life, it can make it easier or it can make it difficult. People form attachments to infrastructure because infrastructure can be a home, a safe place, a place of beauty or even a place of solitude. Infrastructure is huge part of an economy, a government, any service sector and even just a person’s life.
For the history of infrastructure, we will break up infrastructure into three types including housing, service buildings and roadways or thoroughfares. We will look into how they were made, what they are made of and what happens around them. In terms of housing we will look at the type of homes, who constructed them and where they were constructed. Then for service buildings, how they were used, what groups created them and then how they changed people’s lives. For roadways we will look at who used them, how they changed and where they are headed.
The Quebec Act of 1774 provides a great starting place for this research since it gives a basis of where infrastructure is headed in the 100 or so years prior to Canada’s confederation[1]. The Quebec Act lays the ground work for our three branch topics, housing, service buildings and roads. This document declares where the three topics should be headed and gives hidden meanings why. After 1774, housing in Canada begins with a single floor box like house with a roof that’s trusses and beams form an ‘A’, which lead to the name of the “A” frame house[2]. Then closer to Confederation houses grew a floor or two and started to use more brick when available. Roadways prior to confederation were simple dirt paths that just had removed overburden vegetation and then grew to stone (a more durable agent) in the more successful places. Service buildings followed the same trends as housing at the beginning but begin to branch off to more brick and mortar-like structures as people needed better access to services.
Housing probably goes through the greatest evolution which I would attest to because people spend the majority of their lives (eating, sleeping daily activities) in their homes. “New settlers brought building types and techniques with which they were familiar,”[3] shows that each home would have small twists depending on where the resident came from. With this I am assuming that new settlers would want a sense of home and would bring their own sense of home. But these changes were usually minor since in the resources were very minor and were produced independently, usually at construction of the home. It is easy to forget that most people coming to this land were not overly familiar with their surroundings and built most structures on their own with mainly with the help of their family and sometimes their close neighbors. The Quebec Act states, “That all His Majesty’s Canadian Subjects …may also hold and enjoy their Property and Possessions,”[4] which translates to all residents may hold land and use the land to their benefit. This may be a basic right but it means that all residents can build upon their property. To survive on one’s property they must build some kind of shelter and that is where housing comes in. Most housing started out with use of wood as the only component and would be a main stay in this land for a very long time. “Well into the 19th century, most of the people of Upper Canada occupied log houses, and, less frequently, frame houses or masonry houses,”[5]. Then it took, “until the 1840’s that brick structures began to appear in numbers,”[6] and took over as the mainstay in the construction of the pre-confederate house. This helped by the creation of brickyards in towns and cities[7]. There are some examples of special construction materials being used in certain areas due to an abundance of that given resource. An example of this is in Norfolk County in Ontario where some of the land contains fieldstone, residents would incorporate it into their homes[8].
Service buildings are very interesting since many of the people of Canada lived in rural or remote spaces. So early on there was no high demand for them but when politics and governmental services became more important so did the buildings. People began to move closer to centralized areas to have easier access to these services hence service buildings grew from there. Since The Quebec Act adopts the Criminal Law of England for its residents[9], the government needed more spaces for these services. Spaces that will help people access these services easily and efficiently. The evolution of service buildings in Canada almost follows the same path as housing to a tee (i.e., wood to brick). The only difference is that these buildings needed to be far bigger then housing so the basic wooden “A” frame building needed some rethinking[10]. Since service buildings were controlled by the government, they would put every expense they could into the construction of these building. So brick and other non-renewable resources were used. An example of this is the main structure at the trading post in Lower Fort Garry, “a masonry structure with a steep hipped roof, and it is surrounded on three sides by a veranda, recalling by these features the domestic architecture of Québec.”[11]
Roadways and thoroughfares can be one of the most underappreciated yet most abused and destroyed type of infrastructure. Without this crucial infrastructure there would be no means of transportation except for water and water does not take the routes that most people need to take. Roads usually start as paths and then expand as more traffic flows through them and wagons/carts get bigger. Roads were crucial to the westward expansion because if were not for roadways it would be impossible to transport anything or anyone. The Quebec Act never directly references anything about roadways or thoroughfares but is safe to infer that with the furtherment of housing and service buildings, roads became very important. More solidly constructed roads would be needed to link both homes and service buildings to provide efficient and safe transport. Roads started with pure volunteer construction forces but then fell into decay because of sloppy up keep. Groups like the Royal Engineers were tasked to construct major roads and then monitor certain portions[12]. Roadways were usually simple walking paths that happened to be the quickest and most simple route to a location. These pathways were widened by stripping there overburden vegetation to widen them. Ditches were made on both sides of the roadway and material from this is transferred to close by low spots to level the road as much as possible. These roads would become compacted over time due to daily usage. The more the road was used in a normal pattern the more compact the road became which lead to less and less flowing of water or inundation which helped keep the road intact and not easily deteriorating. Dirt roads exposed to heavy traffic were the best forms of transport at this time. Roads made of stone or brick were few and far between because they were more expensive and labor intensive, so they were located either near rich individual’s homes or near governmental buildings. One special note for this time is that during this time period there was a small amount of railway built on pre-confederate land. “The only railway lines constructed before 1850 were short ‘portage railways’ designed to bypass some of the notorious stretches of rapids along the St Lawrence and its tributaries,”[13] This amounted to a bit less than 100 miles.
This paper delved into the evolution and make up of infrastructure in pre-1867 Canada. This paper looks at three different sections, housing, service buildings and roadways. Through the research I formed an opinion in that without this important infrastructure residents would struggles. As people became more centralized, and the population increased, service buildings had to be accessible to them. Housing evolved from simple log cabins into great stone or brick masterpieces. Service building’s followed a similar path but had a little more money in their construction since they were so important and large due to the demand of their usage from the population. Roadways had the least amount change and would mainly be built the same way unless there was extra money in the area. Through this research it just goes to show that infrastructure was very integral to the expansion and confederation in Canada because infrastructure shapes people’s lives by making them easier or harder.
Bibliography
Primary: “The Quebec Act.” Quebec Act, August 2017, 1. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21212529&site=eds-live.
Luella Creighton. “Rural Roots: Pre-Confederation Buildings of the York Region of Ontario by Mary Byers, et Al. (Review),” no. 2 (2016): 230. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edspmu&AN=edspmu.S1710109378200095&site=eds-live.
Gibson, Erin. “Movement, Power and Place: The Biography of a Wagon Road in a Contested First Nations Landscape.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25, no. 2 (May 2015): 417. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=102228894&site=eds-live.
MacKinnon, Robert. “Roads, Cart Tracks, and Bridle Paths: Land Transportation and the Domestic Economy of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Eastern British North America.” Canadian Historical Review 84, no. 2 (June 2003): 177. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=10148636&site=eds-live.
Whebell, C. F. J. “Pre-Confederation Houses in Norfolk County, Ontario.” Ontario History 58, no. 4 (December 1966): 225–35. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=45769775&site=eds-live.
Grignon, Marc, “Architectural History: 1759-1867”. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published September 15, 2006; last modified August 29, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/architectural-history-1759-1867
[1] Primary: “The Quebec Act.” Quebec Act, August 2017, 1. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21212529&site=eds-live.
[2] Marc Grignon, “Architectural History: 1759-1867”. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published September 15, 2006; last modified August 29, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/architectural-history-1759-1867.
[3] Ibid, NP.
[4] Primary: “The Quebec Act.” Quebec Act, August 2017, 1. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21212529&site=eds-live.
[5] Marc, Grignon, “Architectural History: 1759-1867”. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published September 15, 2006; last modified August 29, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/architectural-history-1759-1867
[6] C. F. J., Whebell, “Pre-Confederation Houses in Norfolk County, Ontario.” Ontario History 58, no. 4 (December 1966): 231. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=45769775&site=eds-live.
[7] Ibid, 233.
[8] Ibid, 233.
[9] Primary: “The Quebec Act.” Quebec Act, August 2017, 1. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21212529&site=eds-live.
[10] Marc, Grignon, “Architectural History: 1759-1867”. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published September 15, 2006; last modified August 29, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/architectural-history-1759-1867
[11] Marc, Grignon, “Architectural History: 1759-1867”. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published September 15, 2006; last modified August 29, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/architectural-history-1759-1867
[12] Erin, Gibson. “Movement, Power and Place: The Biography of a Wagon Road in a Contested First Nations Landscape.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 25, no. 2 (May 2015): 420. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=102228894&site=eds-live.
[13] MacKinnon, Robert. “Roads, Cart Tracks, and Bridle Paths: Land Transportation and the Domestic Economy of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Eastern British North America.” Canadian Historical Review 84, no. 2 (June 2003): 210. https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=10148636&site=eds-live.