The Past Speaks

This blog post is a bleg. “To bleg” is to write a blog entry for the sole purpose of asking for something, usually information.

I am currently co-editing a collection on entrepreneurship in Canada from 1500 to 1929. (More details of this book will appear here later, so watch this space). Anyway, it is now time for us to select images that speak to the major themes of the book. Our book aims to capture the historical experience of Canadian entrepreneurship in all of its diversity and considers French-speaking entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, Aboriginal business, and commerce in all regions of what is now Canada.

The overarching theme of the book is the challenge of doing business in an ethnically, linguistically, and geographically diverse country. There is general agreement that economic actors have a preference for doing business with members of their own cultural group. Economic historians have documented a widespread tendency to buy from members of one’s own imagined community rather than from individuals who are part of an imagined “Other”.  Doing business in a homogenous society (e.g., present-day Japan or Sweden a few decades ago) is relatively easy because homogeneity tends to promote trust.  (Perkins, 1999; Evans et. al., 2011; Akerlof and Kranton , 2010; Magee and Thompson, 2010). Canada is one of the world’s most diverse countries and diversity has been a fact of life in Canadian business for centuries. Despite the challenges  of tremendous cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity, Canada has developed a prosperous economy. So how were they able to overcome cr0ss-cultural barriers? Or, more to the point, were they able to overcome cultural barriers? Did clannishness impede economic exchange between different groups? These are the sorts of issues the book will, hopefully, raise in the minds of readers.

In any event, we need high-quality images that speak to these themes. A picture can be worth a thousand words. The pictures can be colour paintings or high resolution black-and-white photographs.

The challenge for us is that there are so many digitized images available. To do a thorough search of the National Archives, the  McCord Museum, the BC Archives, Glenbow, the City of Toronto archives, plus hundreds of smaller archives, would take a long time.  We wouldn`t want to miss a really superb picture that had been digitized by one of the more minor archives. That’s why we are asking for your help!

We’ve identified a number of images (see below), but there might be more suitable images out there. If you know of any such pictures, please let us know in the comments section of this blog post. I will post any images you suggest to us, along with your name, below. If we use your suggestion in the book, you will be acknowledged there.

Anyway, here are the images we have already. They are arranged in rough chronological order, i.e., the order they will appear in the book.

So far, we have a shortage of images showing Aboriginals and women engaged in commerce. There are also precious few images of commerce in New France: the surviving paintings and drawings from New France are biased towards military subjects (e.g., sketches of fortresses or portraits of army officers). We also need more images from west of the Lakehead.

``Indian trading fur for a gun.`` An obviously staged photo from the 1920s. We need a better image of First Nations people engaged in the fur trade.

Scene showing a large Hudson's Bay Company freight canoe passing a waterfall, presumably on the French River. The passengers in the canoe may be the artist and her husband, Edward Hopkins, secretary to the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Gaspé, Québec

Painting shows both sailing ships and a steamship in the harbour of Gaspé, Québec, with the buildings of the Robin and Le Boutilier trading companies in the background. Painting dates from 1871.Painting shows both sailing ships and a steamship in the harbour of Gaspé, Québec, with the buildings of the Robin and Le Boutilier trading companies in the background: ‘A typical Robin establishment would have consisted of a general store, a house where the manager lived, a warehouse for dry fish, and a stage (or landing platform) where the fish were brought ashore. There would also have been a large area on or near the beach where flakes for drying the fish had been erected. These were waist-high frames on which the split cod would be spread out to dry. Paspébiac was the headquarters. The Robin and Le Boutillier installations on the barachois resembled a small town. Each company had a warehouse four or five storeys high, a general store, a wharf, a carpenter shop, a sail loft, a blacksmith shop and forge, a cooper shop for making barrels, offices, a cook-house, a boarding house for the apprentices, and numerous other buildings besides the large area given over to the flakes and the drying fish.

Port of Halifax, 1830s, Unknown Artist. Note the mixture of RN and commercial ships in the picture.

Toronto Rolling Mills, 1864

A great painting of Canada`s Industrial Revolution. Painting of the Toronto Rolling Mills, an iron rails factory founded in 1857 by a group of businessmen led by railway magnate Sir Casimir Gzowski. At that time, it was the largest iron mill in Canada and the largest manufacturer in Toronto. The introduction of steel rails led to its closure in 1873.

This image is available from the Toronto Public Library under reference identifier JRR 1059

Great Western Railway Station, Toronto 1867

This image is available from the Archives of Ontario under the item reference codeF 4436-0-0-0-19

Montreal Harbour, 1872

This image is available from the McCord Museum under the access number MP-0000.1452.53

Eaton's Dinner, 1919

Complimentary dinner tendered by Sir John Eaton, King Edward Hotel. (Related to the golden jubilee of the Eaton’s department store chain?) John Craig Eaton is seated at the table to the left, closest to the photographer.1919

Source: City of Toronto Archive

Board at the Toronto Stock Exchange, February 1910.

Board at the Toronto Stock Exchange, 1910

This image is available from the City of Toronto Archives, listed under the archival citation Fonds 1244, Item 144.

A butcher shop sign in "the Ward", the original centre of Toronto's Jewish community. The sign, in Yiddish, identifies the butcher as a "Shechat", or ritual slaughterer. The sign also indicates that the Shechat is a Russian Jew.

A butcher shop sign in “the Ward”, the original centre of Toronto’s Jewish community. The sign, in Yiddish, identifies the butcher as a “Shechat”, or ritual slaughterer. The sign also indicates that the Shechat is a Russian Jew.

Toronto's Financial District, 1930

Source: City of Toronto Archive

Picture description: His Majesty’s Airship R-100, over the Canadian Bank of Commerce, the tallest building in the British Empire (Toronto, Canada), 11 August 1930

Our caption: This photo shows Toronto’s financial district at the start of the Great Depression. The large building underneath the airship is the Canadian Bank of Commerce, then the tallest building in the British Empire The 1929 Stock Market Crash marked the beginning of a new era in Canadian capitalism, one characterized by much more state intervention in the economy. It also saw Toronto eclipse Montreal as Canada’s undisputed financial capital.

This superb photo will be the final image of the book.