Peopling The North American City

Benefiting from Montreal's remarkable archival records, Sherry Olson and Patricia Thornton use an ingenious sampling of twelve surnames to track the comings and goings, births, deaths, and marriages of the city's inhabitants. The book demonstrates the importance of individual decisions by outlining the circumstances in which people decided where to move, when to marry, and what work to do. Integrating social and spatial analysis, the authors provide insights into the relationships among the city's three cultural communities, show how inequalities of voice, purchasing power, and access to real property were maintained, and provide first-hand evidence of the impact of city living and poverty on families, health, and futures. The findings challenge presumptions about the cultural "assimilation" of migrants as well as our understanding of urban life in nineteenth-century North America. The culmination of twenty-five years of work, Peopling the North American City is an illuminating look at the humanity of cities and the elements that determine whether their citizens will thrive or merely survive.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier famously claimed that the twentieth century would be Canada's century and, indeed, its opening decade witnessed remarkable territorial, demographic, and social transformations. Yet the lives of those who lived and laboured to fashion these changes remain largely hidden from historical view. The Dawn of Canada's Century presents close and systematic interpretations of everyday lives based on the first national sample of the 1911 census. Written by many of Canada's leading historical researchers, The Dawn of Canada's Century demonstrates the wide-ranging and revealing social histories made possible by the new Canadian Century Research Infrastructure, an innovative database of national samples of decennial census microdata, from 1911 through 1951. This revealing collection sheds new light on topics including identity and language, the socio-demography of aboriginal populations, national labour market dynamics, earnings distributions, social mobility, gender and immigration experiences, and the technologies of census taking. Situating early twentieth-century Canada within international historical population studies, these essays provide new ways to understand individuals' lives and connect them to larger structural changes. Contributors include Peter Baskerville (Alberta), Claude Bellevance (Université du Quebéc à Trois Rivière), Sean T. Cadigan (Memorial), Gordon Darroch (York), Lisa Dillon (UdeM), Chad Gaffield (SSHRC), Danielle Gauvreau (Concordia), Gustave Goldmann (Ottawa), Adam J. Green (Ottawa), Kris Inwood (Guelph), Charles Jones (Toronto), Richard Marcoux (Laval), Mary MacKinnon (McGill), Chris Minns (London School of Economics), Byron Moldofsky (Toronto), France Normand (Université du Quebéc à Trois Rivière), Stella Park (Toronto), Terry Quinlan (Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency), Laurent Richard (Laval), Katharine Rollwagen (Ottawa), Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths, University of London), Eric W. Sager (Victoria), Marc St-Hilaire (Laval), and Patricia Thornton (Concordia).

This book examines the overlapping spaces in modern Western cities to explore the small-scale processes that shaped these cities between c.1750 and 1900. It highlights the ways in which time and space matter, framing individual actions and practices and their impact on larger urban processes. It draws on the original and detailed studies of cities in Europe and North America through a micro-geographical approach to unravel urban practices, experiences and representations at three different scales: the dwelling, the street and the neighbourhood. Part I explores the changing spatiality of housing, examining the complex and contingent relationship between public and private, and commercial and domestic, as well as the relationship between representations and lived experiences. Part II delves into the street as a thoroughfare, connecting the city, but also as a site of contestation over the control and character of urban spaces. Part III draws attention to the neighbourhood as a residential grouping and as a series of spaces connecting flows of people integrating the urban space. Drawing on a range of methodologies, from space syntax and axial analysis to detailed descriptions of individual buildings, this book blends spatial theory and ideas of place with micro-history. With its fresh perspectives on the Western city created through the built environment and the everyday actions of city dwellers, the book will interest historical geographers, urban historians and architects involved in planning of cities across Europe and North America.

Perhaps the contributions of South American archaeology to the larger field of world archaeology have been inadequately recognized. If so, this is probably because there have been relatively few archaeologists working in South America outside of Peru and recent advances in knowledge in other parts of the continent are only beginning to enter larger archaeological discourse. Many ideas of and about South American archaeology held by scholars from outside the area are going to change irrevocably with the appearance of the present volume. Not only does the Handbook of South American Archaeology (HSAA) provide immense and broad information about ancient South America, the volume also showcases the contributions made by South Americans to social theory. Moreover, one of the merits of this volume is that about half the authors (30) are South Americans, and the bibliographies in their chapters will be especially useful guides to Spanish and Portuguese literature as well as to the latest research. It is inevitable that the HSAA will be compared with the multi-volume Handbook of South American Indians (HSAI), with its detailed descriptions of indigenous peoples of South America, that was organized and edited by Julian Steward. Although there are heroic archaeological essays in the HSAI, by the likes of Junius Bird, Gordon Willey, John Rowe, and John Murra, Steward states frankly in his introduction to Volume Two that “arch- ology is included by way of background” to the ethnographic chapters.

This vibrant biography of Griffintown, an inner-city Montreal neighbourhood, brings to life the history of Irish identity in the legendary enclave. As Irish immigration dwindled by the late nineteenth century, Irish culture in the city became diasporic, reflecting an imagined homeland. Focusing on the power of memory to shape community, Matthew Barlow finds that, despite sociopolitical pressures and a declining population, the spirit of this ethnic quarter was nurtured by the men and women who grew up there. Today, as Griffintown attracts renewed interest from developers, this textured analysis reveals how public memory defines our urban centres.

In this introduction to his large-scale work The Peopling of British North America, Bernard Bailyn identifies central themes in a formative passage of our history: the transatlantic transfer of people from the Old World to the North American continent that formed the basis of American society. Voyagers to the West, which covers the British migration in the years just before the American Revolution and is the first major volume in the Peopling project, is also available from Vintage Books.

In this second edition, America’s Urban History now includes contemporary analysis of race, immigration, and cities under the Trump administration and has been fully updated with new scholarship on early urbanization, mass incarceration and cities, the Great Society, the diversification of the suburbs, and environmental justice. The United States is one of the most heavily urbanized places in the world, and its urban history is essential to understanding the fundamental narrative of American history. This book is an accessible overview of the history of American cities, including Indigenous settlements, colonial America, the American West, the postwar metropolis, and the present-day landscape of suburban sprawl and an urbanized population. It examines the ways in which urbanization is connected to divisions of society along the lines of race, class, and gender, but it also studies how cities have been sources of opportunity, hope, and success for individuals and the nation. Images, maps, tables, and a guide to further reading provide engaging accompaniment to illustrate key concepts and themes. Spanning centuries of America’s urban past, this book’s depth and insight make it an ideal text for students and scholars in urban studies and American history.

Surrounded by water and located at the heart of a fertile plain, the Island of Montreal has been a crossroads for Indigenous peoples, European settlers, and today's citizens, and an inland port city for the movement of people and goods into and out of North America. Commemorating the city's 375th anniversary, Montreal: The History of a North American City is the definitive, two-volume account of this fascinating metropolis and its storied hinterland. This comprehensive collection of essays, filled with hundreds of illustrations, photographs, and maps, draws on human geography and environmental history to show that while certain distinctive features remain unchanged – Mount Royal, the Lachine Rapids of the Saint Lawrence River – human intervention and urban evolution mean that over time Montrealers have had drastically different experiences and historical understandings. Significant issues such as religion, government, social conditions, the economy, labour, transportation, culture and entertainment, and scientific and technological innovation are treated thematically in innovative and diverse chapters to illuminate how people's lives changed along with the transformation of Montreal. This history of a city in motion presents an entire picture of the changes that have marked the region as it spread from the old city of Ville-Marie into parishes, autonomous towns, boroughs, and suburbs on and off the island. The first volume encompasses the city up to 1930, vividly depicting the lives of First Nations prior to the arrival of Europeans, colonization by the French, and the beginning of British Rule. The crucial roles of waterways, portaging, paths, and trails as the primary means of travelling and trade are first examined before delving into the construction of canals, railways, and the first major roads. Nineteenth-century industrialization created a period of near-total change in Montreal as it became Canada's leading city and witnessed staggering population growth from less than 20,000 people in 1800 to over one million by 1930. The second volume treats the history of Montreal since 1930, the year that the Jacques Cartier Bridge was opened and allowed for the outward expansion of a region, which before had been confined to the island. From the Great Depression and Montreal's role as a munitions manufacturing centre during the Second World War to major cultural events like Expo 67, the twentieth century saw Montreal grow into one of the continent's largest cities, requiring stringent management of infrastructure, public utilities, and transportation. This volume also extensively studies the kinds of political debate with which the region and country still grapple regarding language, nationalism, federalism, and self-determination. Contributors include Philippe Apparicio (INRS), Guy Bellavance (INRS), Laurence Bherer (University of Montreal), Stéphane Castonguay (UQTR), the late Jean-Pierre Collin (INRS), Magda Fahrni (UQAM), the late Jean-Marie Fecteau (UQAM), Dany Fougères (UQAM), Robert Gagnon (UQAM), Danielle Gauvreau (Concordia), Annick Germain (INRS), Janice Harvey (Dawson College), Annie-Claude Labrecque (independent scholar), Yvan Lamonde (McGill), Daniel Latouche (INRS), Roderick MacLeod (independent scholar), Paula Negron-Poblete (University of Montreal), Normand Perron (INRS), Martin Petitclerc (UQAM), Christian Poirier (INRS), Claire Poitras (INRS), Mario Polèse (INRS), Myriam Richard (unaffiliated), Damaris Rose (INRS), Anne-Marie Séguin (INRS), Gilles Sénécal (INRS), Valérie Shaffer (independent scholar), Richard Shearmur (McGill), Sylvie Taschereau (UQTR), Michel Trépanier (INRS), Laurent Turcot (UQTR), Nathalie Vachon (INRS), and Roland Viau (University of Montreal).