Old Ontario: Essays in Honour of JMS Careless

Wesley B. Turner is an associate professor of History at Brock
University and author of TheWar of 1812: The War That Both Sides Won.

Here is a well-deserved tribute to James Maurice Stockford Careless, an
outstanding scholar of Canadian and Ontario history who is widely known
outside academic circles as well as within them. This festschrift begins
with a biographical chapter by F.H. Armstrong, followed by one on the
development of Careless’s historical scholarship by Kenneth McNaught.
The editors credit Careless with promoting “three distinct yet
compatible approaches to the study of Canadian history”—namely,
“metropolitan-hinterland relationship”; urbanization; and “limited
identities” (a term borrowed from Ramsay Cook). The 10 papers on
nineteenth-century Ontario that make up the bulk of this book reflect
Careless’s range of interests and pragmatic approaches.

Social and cultural topics predominate. Included are studies of
attitudes toward forested land; of Protestant revivalism; of church
architecture, particularly in its urban setting; of Native peoples’
responses to “Newcoming-imposed changes”; and of women and men
students at the Ontario Normal School in Toronto. Economic and political
emphases are found in chapters on the Canadian Emigration Association as
an instrument of landowners attempting to sell land; Toronto’s
clothing industry; the 1836 election in Toronto; and the John Sandfield
Macdonald ministries of 1862–64. Often, however, these chapters
include valuable social or biographical detail, a further indication
that current scholarly interest tends toward social and cultural issues
rather than toward traditional political or economic history.

These papers—many by former students of Maurice Careless—vary in
quality, but most offer provocative ideas and insights that ought to
stimulate further research, which would be assisted by the extensive
endnotes following each chapter.

While students of Ontario history will want to read this volume, it
should also be of interest to any reader who wishes to know more about
Canada’s past. Indeed, in these times when economic difficulties and
political dissensions threaten Canada’s future well-being, perhaps
more Canadians ought to be aware of what McNaught describes as
Careless’s “perception of compromise, adaptation and concilliation
as the most characteristic political forces both in Ontario and
Canada.”