How did the Timber Industry Influence the Society of the Ottawa Valley - Report Example

How did the timber industry influence the society of the Ottawa Valley? This paper will examine how lumber dominated the Ottawa Valley economy over its first century and a quarter - from 1800 to 1925 - and left such powerful imprint on its people and its society making life herein different from elsewhere in the country. Specifically, the timber industry’s influence on the Ottawa Valley society will be explored in terms of socio-economic and the political aspects. The Ottawa Valley covers a region that is embraced by Ottawa River above the old Long Sault rapids (now submerged by the Carillon hydroelectric dam). This means that the area spans parts of the Ontario and Quebec provinces and includes a watershed that encompasses thousands of square miles, an area as large as England and Wales combined. Within this immensity spread a forest land that is spread across a total of 40,000 square miles. (Pring 1908, p. 43) These facts underscore why lumber and timber production became a main engine of the Ottawa Valley economy particularly during the nineteenth century. Gaffield Chad (1987) provided us an account how this part of history developed: In the first years of the century, the British demand for square timber and the availability of pine trees made Ottawa River the axis of new economic zone connected to the vital centres of Montreal and Quebec City. This zone was based on two forms of land exploitation: the use and sale of timber and lumber, and the establishment of agriculture. (p. 62) The natural resources in the Ottawa Valley along with its strategic location were mainly responsible for the rapid development of the forest industry. This was encouraged by a number of policy decisions by the colonial governments which are pivotal for the further expansion of the industry. One of these is the Act of the Union in 1841 which joined together Upper and Lower Canada establishing Ottawa’s position as geographic mid-point between Canada’s two founding European nationalities. As a result, the region attracted a wave of new settlers and immigrants as well as merchants which infused new vitality to the land and stimulated commerce. Between 1851 and 1871, the region’s population mushroomed from 7,760 to 21,545 as it added the needed civil servants to the mix of lumber barons, merchants, carters and laborers. (Keshen 2001, p. 2) Along with thousands of forest industry laborers there arrived those who became Ottawa Valley’s first leading citizens – namely those who came to dominate the local scene from then on. The increased demographic diversity of Ottawa Valley produced new groups which soon established the institutions that would make up its local political, business and socio-cultural institutions. Economic The forest gradually replaced the Ottawa Valley’s commercial economy that is based on the export of furs and the import of European goods into one that is based on the production of timber and lumber and its exports. Entrepreneurs established factories in the river towns so that in time an urban proletariat emerged. (Hoerder 1999, p. 50) The spectacular growth in sawmilling in the Ottawa Valley after the 1850 could not have been accomplished without bank loans. In the early years, timbermen needing money to pay for wages and supplies required for the next season’s bush operations depended largely on advances from the Quebec merchants to whom they sold their products. And so, the Canadian banking system grew as lumbermen operated on a large scale. Lee (2006) chronicled that “in 1850, Bytown (population 7,000) had only three banks, but by 1878 the City of Ottawa (population 25,000), had nine.” (p. 200) Social Impact During the nineteenth century especially in its earlier part, towns flourished as provisioning centers for inhabitants whose fortunes came from the forest industry. These towns are understandably raucous place where shanty men arrived each year to let off steam after spending several months in the bush. According to Jeff Keshen, by 1840s, the French, the Irish and the British dominated the area where they congregated according to nationalities in districts – the French and the Irish in working class districts while the British, in the well-healed areas. (p. 2) But these were signs of people taking root. According to him, another sign of this phenomenon was the increasing number of churches which offered more than a setting for collective worship because they intended to embody the Christian principles of their builders and stand as witness of a denomination’s commitment to the emerging community. Indeed, by 1848 the Catholic Church had established an institution of higher learning, the College of Bytown, which would evolve into the University of Ottawa later on. Today, the timber heritage in the region is still preserved in summertime raft festivals and log drives on the Gatineau and Ottawa rivers. Streets bearing the names of personages that dominated the period are found on the Valley’s towns and cities. And, of course, there are still traces today of the values that was shaped by the pioneer life and the unique lifestyle of the settlers in the lumbering days such those which concerns family and work. The forest industry fueled unprecedented economic growth creating two important cities, one of which – Ottawa – would henceforth become Canada’s capital city. The City of Ottawa would become one of the premier urban centers in Canada. This fact would further lead to the development of the Valley up to the end of the nineteenth century onwards. As reports of travel to Canada, the opportunities in the Ottawa Valley and other literature about the progress of the colony, immigrants from France and Britain as well as lumber investors and laborers from the United States started pouring in contributing to the diversity of the population. Political Impact As the Ottawa Valley’s society developed into one which has strong intellectual and economic institutions, political maturity began to emerge. And because Canada remained largely autonomous and self-regulating and that as Ottawa became increasingly urban or at least its towns and cities, it started to develop a liberal bourgeoisie the same with the cases of other cities. This group started to take inspiration from their European and American counterpart and that they sought to modernize and expand their land to form a powerful tool for imposing their values on society. (Fyson 2006, p. 9) Therefore, with the forest industry launching a progressive domino effect across all sectors of Ottawa Village society, the political system became more extensive and intrusive. In this regard, Donald Fyson (2006) remarked: Much attention has been paid to the multiplication and expansion of the various organs of the state, such as the bureaucracy or the police, and, more generally, to the way in which matters previously considered private or at least not public, such as charity, public schooling, or morality, became the purview of the political system. (p. 9) Also the society become increasingly established, conflict arose mainly in the context of political tensions, notably the classic struggles found in all white settler colonies between colonial elites and imperial interests over control of the instruments of political power. Furthermore, as timber barons became wealthy and increasingly powerful, they were able to influence national politics especially in the area that concerns the forest industry. Lee David (2006) cited an example: Ottawa was the only river in Canada that was exempt from legislation banning sawdust dumping… For decades the lumber kings of Ottawa succeeded in getting their message across: the public should know that a polluted Ottawa River was a small price to pay for a viable lumber industry. (p. 236) The value of the lumbering industry not just to the Ottawa Valley but to Canada as a whole cannot be underestimated since surely it is obvious that the benefits that lumbering brought to the Valley far outweighed any harm done to the waterway. It brought wealth to Canada, it provided jobs, it stimulated commerce and poured revenues to government coffers. To summarize the arguments made in this paper, we borrow W.T. Easterbrook and M.H. Watkins (1967) words: The timber trade, transitory though it was, spanned a critical gap between an economy based on trapping and fishing and an economy based on farming and manufacturing, and revealed the wealth of forest resources that sustains the Canadian economy down to the present day. While its consequences were sometimes adverse – as in the excessive specialization which engendered in Ottawa Valley – it nevertheless played an important role in encouraging settlement… strengthened imperial ties…[and] hold a St. Lawrence polity distinct from the United States. (p. xii) All in all, the point is that the lumber and timber industries have an undeniable distinctive contribution to not just to Ottawa Valley society but also to Canada’s political and economic development as a country. References Easterbrook, W.T. and Watkins, M.H. (1967). Approaches to Canadian Economic History. McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP. Gaffield, Chad. (1987). Language, Schooling, and Cultural Conflict. McGill-Queens Press – MQUP. Hoerder, D. (1999). Creating Societies: Immigrant Lives in Canada. McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP. Lee, D. (2006). Lumber Kings and Shantymen: Logging, Lumber and Timber in the Ottawa Valley. James Lorimer and Company. Pring, John Norman. (1908). Some Electro-chemical Centres. Harvadr University Press. Keshen, Jeff. (2001). Ottawa. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Read More