Power at Cost: Ontario Hydro and Rural Electrification, 1911-1958

C. Stephen Gray is Director of Information Services, Institute of
Chartered Accountants of Ontario.

Most people today take electricity and the many modern conveniences it
provides for granted, assuming that when they turn on the light switch,
the power will be there. In Ontario, electrical power is supplied by the
publicly owned utility Ontario Hydro, whose long tradition of providing
low-cost, reliable electricity has played a major role in establishing
the province as Canada’s manufacturing heartland.

Keith R. Fleming has produced a painstakingly researched and
well-documented study of Ontario Hydro’s program of rural
electrification, which, although fraught with frequent setbacks along
with its successes, literally transformed life for farm families in the
province during the period from just before World War I to just after
the election of John Diefenbaker as Canada’s prime minister.

Fleming describes the hoopla and hyperbole that surrounded
electrification, and charts many instances in which the promise of
“living better electrically” was not really delivered. The book
makes it clear that bringing the benefits of electricity to rural
customers in Ontario was a large and complex task, in which provincial
and even world politics played important parts.

Although Fleming’s book alludes to some of the controversial issues
that today surround the giant, debt-ridden utility’s “real costs”
of providing electricity, this significant scholarly work is dedicated
to detailing how the Crown corporation persevered and ultimately
succeeded in bringing the modern miracle of instant power to the
demanding and austere life of the family farm.