https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1568-8843
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Abstract
Between 1850 and 1926 Ontario’s capital city, Toronto, grew from a small colonial port to one of the largest cities on the Great Lakes. In this article we introduce a rich time series dataset of ships entering the city’s port and the commodities they carried, explore its potential for urban metabolism research, and consider some of its limitations. We argue that the detail recorded in the ledgers of the Toronto Harbour Master affords multiple temporal and geospatial scales of analysis to study the city’s urban metabolism (e.g. seasonality and consignees of specific commodities), which means historians can use these quantitative sources to move beyond simplistic input-output evaluations and consider the nuance and complexity that characterized the role of the port in the city’s social, economic, and environmental history. We demonstrate that the port was vital to the process of assembling the city even as the railways became dominant in Ontario during the second half of the nineteenth century. As the city grew, the data reveal that the port remained an important node within a broader Great Lakes socioecological system at the same time as it served the city’s downtown and discrete subsystems of its urban metabolism.
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the executive coeditor, Lisa Dillon, and to the three anonymous peer reviewers for their suggestions. For all of his help, we would also like to thank Mark Rumas, the Records and Corporate Services Coordinator at PortsToronto Archives. Joshua MacFadyen is a Canada Research Chair and would like to thank the Canada Research Chairs Program.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Canada, “Annual Report of the Toronto Harbour Commissioners,” Report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Volume 15 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1913): 315.
2 Manifest books, account of harbour dues collected at the Port of Toronto, 1849–1937," RG 2/5, Office of the Harbour Master fonds, PortsToronto Archives.
3 Vessel arrivals and tonnage, 1863–1977," RG 2/6, Office of the Harbour Master fonds, PortsToronto Archives.
4 We define the boundaries of downtown Toronto as the area west of the Don River, east of Dufferin Street, and south of Bloor Street. The ward sub-divisions were redrawn periodically, so these estimates include some people that lived outside of the boundaries we have defined for our analysis. The total population of the city recorded in the list of cities and towns with more than 5,000 inhabitants is larger than the combined population of the census subdivisions that correlate with the portions of the city’s wards included in the boundaries we define as downtown. Canada, Fourth Census of Canada, Volume 1: Population (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1902): 22; Canada, “Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada as divided for the tenth general election held in the year 1904,” Department of Public Printing and Stationary (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1906): 109–113; https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/record?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=196055.
5 The port ledgers recorded stone deliveries in toise, a unit of volume. This required estimating the dimensions of one toise and the average cubic weight of stone. Canada, “Inland Revenue: Reports, Returns and Statistics of the Inland Revenues of the Dominion of Canada, Supplement No.2: Weights and Measures, 1879,” Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Volume 3 (Ottawa: MacLean, Roger & Co., 1880): 181; William A. Parks, Report on the Building and Ornamental Stones of Canada, Volume 1,” Department of Mines, Mines Branch (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, Citation1912): 150.
6 The weight per volume of fuelwood (1.8 tons per cord) was calculated based on the reported weight (tons) and volume (cords) for select railways in the Sessional Papers of Canada. Canada, Parliament, Sessional Papers 1876, paper no. 51, pp. 24–25.
7 Brown’s Toronto General Directory (Toronto: Maclear and Co., Citation1856): xli, 271.
8 For details about the weight per length of rail profile, see William G. Raymond, The Elements of Railroad Engineering (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Citation1911): 27.
9 Standardizing these several categories of fruit shipments required estimating the weight of baskets, boxes, barrels, and bushels of fresh fruit. In some cases, these conversion factors were very straightforward, but in others, one unit needed to be converted into another unit for which a weight estimate exists in the historical records. Canada, “Weights and Measures,” (1879): 181; Canada, “Report of the Minister of Agriculture,” Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, Volume 5 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1895): xxiv; Paul N. Hasluck, Basket Work of All Kinds (Philadelphia: David McKay, Citation1903): 64.
10 When the port ledger distinguished between bricks it listed either common or fire varieties. We added together the numbers of both varieties and converted them into estimated weights. Canada, “Weights and Measures,” (1879): 181.
11 See for example Canada, Parliament, Sessional Papers., 7th Parl., 4th sess., vol.8 (1894), Paper no. 10., pp. 458–463; Statistics Canada, Canada Year Book 1903, p.453, Statement of the Principal Articles of Freight Carried in 1903 by the Railways Mentioned, 1904.
12 Canada, “Annual Report of the Toronto Harbour Commissioners,” Annual Report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, Sessional Papers of the Dominion of Canada, 1875–1916.
13 “Preserving Fruit for Sick Soldiers,” The Globe (August 4, 1915): 6; “Liberal Rooms Canning Centre,” The Globe (September 10, 1917): 4; “Canning Peaches for the Soldiers,” The Globe (September 28, 1917): 4.