Overview

Agricultural societies founded in the colony of Upper Canada were the institutional embodiment of the ideology of improvement, modelled on contemporary societies in Britain and the United States. In Improving Upper Canada, Ross Fair explores how the agricultural improvers who established and led these organizations were important agents of state formation. The book investigates the initial failed attempts to create a single agricultural society for Upper Canada. It examines the 1830 legislation that publicly funded the creation of agricultural societies across the colony to be semi-public agents of agricultural improvement, and analyses societies established in the Niagara, Home, and Midland Districts to understand how each attempted to introduce specific improvements to local farming practices. The book reveals how Upper Canada's agricultural improvers formed a provincial association in the 1840s to ensure that the colonial government assumed a greater leadership role in agricultural improvement, resulting in the Bureau of Agriculture, forerunner of federal and provincial departments of agriculture in the post-Confederation era. In analysing an early example of state formation, Improving Upper Canada provides a comprehensive history of the foundations of Ontario's agricultural societies today, which continue to promote agricultural improvement across the province.

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9781487553531

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Reviews

""Improving Upper Canada breaks new ground for our understanding of agricultural associations. With an impressive amount of research and an extensive bibliography, Ross Fair offers a pioneering and useful work on Upper Canadian agricultural associations.""--George Emery, Professor Emeritus of History, Western University ""Drawing on scholarship regarding agricultural improvement, Improving Upper Canada presents a nuanced understanding of state formation and the significance of agricultural reform in the Upper Canadian context. Ross Fair enhances our understanding of Ontario's agricultural societies by consulting a wide variety of sources, including newspapers and periodicals, archival collections, government reports, and other contemporary publications. Well-written and engaging, this book makes a valuable contribution to the field.""--Jodey Nurse, Faculty Lecturer at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, McGill University ""There hasn't been much new scholarship on the political history of Upper Canada for well over a generation. Improving Upper Canada makes a useful contribution to the literature and is quite original in its argument about the role of agricultural societies in the development of the state. Ross Fair explores an original topic - the creation of agricultural societies and their role in state formation, as well as the idea of improvement in the first half of the nineteenth century. This book will stimulate new research and provoke a renewed debate about the political culture of Old Ontario.""--David Mills, Professor of Canadian History, University of Alberta

Author Information

Ross Fair is a lecturer in the Department of History at Toronto Metropolitan University.

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