The Merchant-Millers of the Humber Valley: A Study of the Early Economy of Canada

W.H. Heick is a professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University.

This monograph studies one of the earliest industrialist groups in Canada, a “source of capital, enterprise and people which radiated its influence not only to Toronto” (p.xii) but to the province and the nation as well. The merchant-millers combined grist and lumber milling with a distillery and even, later on, wool milling, to provide a powerful catalytic force for economic and social development in the Toronto area. The author attempts to set his work in the context of Canadian geography, British colonial policy, Upper Canadian politics and government administration, as well as religious history. He follows the several generations of merchant-millers who led the economic development of the Humber River Valley. Fisher’s interest in this topic came about because several generations of his forebears were Humber merchant-millers.

Fisher based his writing on a wide range of sources: newspapers, municipal records, archival holdings, and some published primary and secondary works. To these he has provided extensive documentation. He also includes a generous number of black-and-white illustrations, photographs of his subjects and of the mills they constructed.

The book generates frustration. Basically a narrative, it also attempts analysis. Here it falls short of a sound effort. Fisher needed to read far more extensively in the literature to have the base upon which to write at the level of analysis that this subject demands. Even as elementary a bibliography as D.A. Muise (ed), Reader’s Guide to Canadian History 1. Beginnings to Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) offers Fisher the sources I am suggesting he use. But this very genealogically oriented work also misses in its narrative effort. Fisher gets so concerned with even the correct day when a property purchase was made (as well as the exact location of each piece of land) that he kills interest in his history.