Canadian Economic History: Classic and Contemporary Approaches

David Robinson is an economics professor and dean of the Faculty of
Social Sciences at Laurentian University.

Almost 30 years ago, Easterbrook and Watkins published number 31 in the
invaluable Carleton Library Series. It was a seminal collection of
essays on Canadian economic history that emphasized the staples approach
of W.A. Mackintosh and Harold Innis. Number 176 in the Carleton series
retains five of the original 14 essays and adds a dozen new ones. It is
the new standard.

Familiar articles by Innis, Watkins, and Mackintosh are reinforced by
fine pieces by R.E. Ommer and McClelland. The newer “cliometric”
style of historical analysis (offspring of Clio, goddess of history) and
econometrics (a minor god of economics) are also represented.
Aitkens’s “Myth and Measurement” provides a sympathetic overview
of the two styles. He explains the counterfactual approach of the newer
economists. Naylor, by contrast, in a delightful piece on business
history, threatens to abolish page numbers as a sign of his hostility to
the “what if the prairies were made of rock” school.

Invaluable pieces by Lewis and McInnis on the efficiency of the
French-Canadian farmer, and by Norrie on the rate of Prairie settlement,
represent the cliometric approach. They might stretch the
anti-mathematical reader, but are comprehensible to the careful reader.

There is more continuity between the old and new styles than it might
seem at first. Some articles fit less neatly into the old-vs.-new
pattern. Instead, they show some of the solid progress that has been
made over the last 30 years.