History of Ontario

The history of Ontario covers the period from the arrival of Paleo-Indians thousands of years ago to the present day. The lands that make up present-day Ontario, currently the most populous province of Canada, have been inhabited for millennia by distinctive groups of Aboriginal peoples, with French and British exploration and colonization commencing in the 17th century.

Pre-1867

Plaque commemorating the explorations of Étienne Brûlé

First Nations

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the region was inhabited both by Algonquian (Ojibwa, Cree and Algonquin) and Iroquoian (Iroquois, Petun and Huron) tribes. The French explorer Étienne Brûlé explored part of the area in 1610-12. The English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson Bay in 1611 and claimed the area for England, but Samuel de Champlain reached Lake Huron in 1615 and French missionaries began to establish posts along the Great Lakes. French settlement was hampered by their hostilities with the Iroquois, who would ally themselves with the British. Around this period some Iroquois tribes of the five leagues (based in New York State) were actively engaged in territorial expansion both over related Iroquoians and others, boosted by their alliances with the British.

British

The British established trading posts on Hudson Bay in the late 17th century and began a struggle for domination of Ontario. The 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War by awarding nearly all of France's North American possessions (New France) to Britain.

Upper Canada

The region was annexed to Quebec in 1774. From 1783 to 1796, Britain granted United Empire Loyalists leaving the United States following the American Revolution 200 acres (0.8 km²) of land and other items with which to rebuild their lives.. This measure substantially increased the population of Canada west of the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River confluence during this period, a fact recognized by the Constitutional Act of 1791, which split Quebec into The Canadas: Upper Canada southwest of the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River confluence, and Lower Canada east of it. John Graves Simcoe was appointed Upper Canada's first Lieutenant-Governor in 1793.

Slavery

Slavery was legal, and was strengthened by the arrival of Loyalist exiles from the American Revolution who brought along their slaves. Lt. Governor Simcoe detested slavery and tried to abolish it, but was forced to compromise. The 1793 "Simcoe Act," forbade the importation of any additional slaves and freed children. It did not grant freedom to adult slaves--they were finally freed by the British Parliament in 1833. As a consequence many Canadian slaves fled south to New England and New York, where slavery was no longer legal. Many American slaves who had escaped from the South via the Underground Railroad came north to Ontario where they were safe.

War of 1812

American troops in the War of 1812 invaded Upper Canada across the Niagara River and the Detroit River but were successfully defeated and pushed back by British forces, local militia and Native American forces. The Americans gained control of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, during the Battle of York they occupied the Town of York (later named Toronto) in 1813. After losing their general Zebulon Pike and having a difficult time holding the town, the departing American soldiers burned it to the ground. The British retaliated the following year, by burning down the White House in Washington.

Settlement and transportation

After the War of 1812, relative stability allowed for increasing numbers of immigrants to arrive from Britain and Ireland rather than from the United States. As was the case in the previous decades, this deliberate immigration shift was encouraged by the colonial leaders. Despite affordable and often free land, many arriving newcomers from Europe (mostly from Britain and Ireland) found frontier life with the harsh climate difficult, and some of those with the means eventually returned home or went south. However, population growth far exceeded emigration in the decades that would follow. Still, a mostly agrarian-based society, canal projects and a new network of plank roads spurred greater trade within the colony and with the United States, thereby improving relations over time. Land tracts in the south previously unoccupied quickly filled with those willing to farm, by this time much of the native forest in the south had been cut down to make way for agriculture.

Toronto in 1854

Meanwhile, Ontario's numerous waterways aided travel and transportation into the interior and supplied water power for development. As the population increased, so did the industries and transportation networks, which in turn led to further development. By the end of the century, Ontario vied with Quebec as the nation's leader in terms of growth in population, industry, arts and communications.

Legal reform

Road and canal construction brought in rowdy workers whose wages often went to liquor, gambling and women, with much fighting involved. Community leaders realized the traditional method of dealing with troublemakers one by one was inadequate and they moved to less personal modernized procedures that followed imperial models of policing, trial, and punishment through the courts.

Rebellion

Many men chafed against the anti-democratic Family Compact that governed through personal connections among the elite, which controlled the best lands. This resentment spurred republican ideals and sowed the seeds for early Canadian nationalism. Accordingly, rebellion in favour of responsible government rose in both regions; Louis-Joseph Papineau led the Lower Canada Rebellion and William Lyon Mackenzie led the Upper Canada Rebellion. The rebellions failed but there were long-term changes that resolved the issue. The changes in the next generation in the town of Woodstock in southwestern Ontario exemplified the shift of power from the Tory elite to middle class merchants and professionals. The once-unquestioned leadership of the magistracy and the Anglican Church, with their closed interlocking networks of patron-client relations, faded year by year as modern ideas of respectability based on merit and economic development grew apace. The new middle class was solidly in control by the 1870s and the old elite had all but vanished.

Canada West

Although both rebellions were put down in short order, the British government sent Lord Durham to investigate the causes of the unrest. He recommended that self-government be granted and that Lower and Upper Canada be re-joined in an attempt to assimilate the French Canadians. Accordingly, the two colonies were merged into the Province of Canada by the Act of Union (1840), with the capital at Kingston, and Upper Canada becoming known as Canada West. Parliamentary self-government was granted in 1848.

Due to heavy waves of immigration in the 1840s, the population of Canada West more than doubled by 1851 over the previous decade, and as a result for the first time the English-speaking population of Canada West surpassed the French-speaking population of Canada East, tilting the representative balance of power.

An economic boom in the 1850s coincided with railway expansion across the province further increasing the economic strength of Central Canada.

Sport and recreation

Travelers commented on the class differentials in recreation, contrasting the gentrified masculinity of the British middle class and the rough-and-ready bush masculinity of the workers. Working class recreations featured cockfights, boxing matches, wrestling, and animal baiting. That was too bloody for gentlemen and army officers, who favoured games that promoted honor and built character. Middle-class sports, especially lacrosse and snowshoeing, evolved from military training. The ideals promulgated by English author and reformer Thomas Hughes, especially as expressed in Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) gave the middle class a model for sports that provided moral education and training for citizenship. Late in the 19h century the Social Gospel themes of muscular Christianity had an impact, as in the invention of basketball in 1891 by James Naismith, an Ontarian employed at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School in Massachusetts. Outside of sports the social and moral agendas behind muscular Christianity influenced numerous reform movements, thus linking it to the political left in Canada.

Confederation

A political stalemate between the French- and English-speaking legislators, as well as fear of aggression from the United States during the American Civil War, led the political elite to hold a series of conferences in the 1860s to effect a broader federal union of all British North American colonies. The British North America Act took effect on July 1, 1867, establishing the Dominion of Canada, initially with four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The Province of Canada was divided at this point into Ontario and Quebec so that each linguistic group would have its own province. Both Quebec and Ontario were required by section 93 of the BNA Act to safeguard existing educational rights and privileges of the Protestant and Catholic minorities. Thus, separate Catholic schools and school boards were permitted in Ontario. However, neither province had a constitutional requirement to protect its French- or English-speaking minority. Toronto was formally established as Ontario's provincial capital at this time.

From 1867 to 1896

A poster from 1878 encouraging immigration to Ontario

Once constituted as a province, Ontario proceeded to assert its economic and legislative power. In 1872, the Liberal Party leader Oliver Mowat became premier, and remained as premier until 1896, despite Conservative control in Ottawa. Mowat fought for provincial rights, weakening the power of the federal government in provincial matters, usually through well-argued appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. His battles with the federal government greatly decentralized Canada, giving the provinces far more power than Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had intended. Mowat consolidated and expanded Ontario's educational and provincial institutions, created districts in Northern Ontario, and fought tenaciously to ensure that those parts of Northwestern Ontario not historically part of Upper Canada (the vast areas north and west of the Lake Superior-Hudson Bay watershed, known as the District of Keewatin) would become part of Ontario, a victory embodied in the Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889. He also presided over the emergence of the province into the economic powerhouse of Canada. Mowat was the creator of what is often called Empire Ontario. Meanwhile Ontario's Conservative Party leader William Ralph Meredith had difficulty balancing the province's particular interests with his national party's centralism. Meredith was further undercut by lack of support from the national Conservative party and his own elitist aversion to popular politics at the provincial level.

Economic development

Thanks to the federal government's high-tariff National Policy (1879-) and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1875-1885) through Northern Ontario to the Prairies and British Columbia, Ontario manufacturing and industry flourished. However, population increase slowed after a large recession hit the province in 1893, thus slowing growth drastically but only for a few short years. Many newly arrived immigrants and others moved west along the railroad, while shipping their wheat east and buying from merchants who placed orders with Ontario wholesalers.

Farmers increasingly demanded more information on the best farming techniques. Their demands led to farm magazine and agricultural fairs. In 1868 the assembly created an agricultural museum, which morphed into the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph in 1874.

From 1896 to the present

Economic growth

Mineral exploitation accelerated in the late 19th century, leading to the rise of important mining centres in the northeast like Sudbury, Cobalt and Timmins.

Energy policy focused on hydro-electric power, leading to the formation in 1906 of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario (HEPC), renamed Ontario Hydro in 1974. HEPC was a unique hybrid of a government department, a crown corporation, and a municipal cooperative that coexisted with the existing private companies. It was a "politically rational" rather than a "technically efficient" solution that depended on the watershed election of 1905 when the main issue became "Niagara Power", with the Conservative slogan of "water power of Niagara should be free". The Conservatives replaced the Liberals and set up HEPC. In 1908 HEPC began purchasing electricity from Niagara Falls. In the next decade it purchased most of the privately owned distribution systems and built an integrated network. The availability of cheap electric power further facilitated the development of industry. The Ford Motor Company of Canada was established in 1904. General Motors of Canada Ltd. was formed in 1918. The motor vehicle industry became by 1920 the most productive industry in Ontario and a customer for smaller suppliers.

Language war

In July 1912, the Conservative government of Sir James P. Whitney issued Regulation 17 which severely limited the availability of French-language schooling to the province's French-speaking minority. French could only be used in the first two years of schooling, and then only English was allowed. French-Canadians--growing rapidly in number in eastern Ontario because of migration, reacted with outrage, journalist Henri Bourassa denouncing the "Prussians of Ontario". It was one of the key reasons the Francophones turned away from the war effort in 1915 and refused to enlist. Ontario's Catholics were led by the Irish, who united with the Protestants in opposing French schools. Regulation 17 was eventually repealed in 1927.

Conservation and heritage museums

The preservation of natural resources began with the passage of the Public Parks Act in 1883, which called for public parks in every town and city. Algonquin Provincial Park, the first provincial park, was established in 1893. The creation of the provincial Department of Planning and Development in 1944 brought conservation offices throughout the province and made for an integrated approach. The conservation authorities started to create heritage museums, but that ended in the 1970s when responsibility was shifted to the new ministry of Culture and Recreation. Repeated budget cuts in the 1980s and 1990s reduced the operation of many museums and historical sites.

World War

The British element strongly supported the war with men, money and enthusiasm. So too did the Francophone element until it reversed position in 1915. The government doubted the loyalty of residents of German descent, as anti-German sentiment escalated. The City of Berlin was renamed Kitchener after Britain's top commander. Left wing antiwar activists also came under attack. In 1917-18 Isaac Bainbridge of Toronto, the dominion secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Canada and editor of its newspaper, Canadian Forward, was charged three times with seditious libel and once with possession of seditious material, and he was imprisoned twice.

Prohibition

Starting in the late 1870s the Ontario Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) wanted the schools to teach "scientific temperance," which reinforced moralistic temperance messages with the study of anatomy and hygiene, taught as a compulsory subject in schools. Although initially successful in convincing the Ontario Department of Education to adopt scientific temperance as part of the curriculum, teachers opposed the plan and refused to implement it. The WCTU then moved to dry up the province through government action. They started with "local option" laws, which allowed local governments to prohibit the sale of liquor. Many towns and rural areas went dry in the years before 1914, but not the larger cities.

Anti-German sentiment after 1914 and the accession of Conservative William Hearst to the premiership made prohibition a major political issues. The Methodists and Baptists (but not the Anglicans or Catholics) demanded the province be made dry. The government introduced prohibition of alcoholic sales in 1916 with the Ontario Temperance Act. However, drinking itself was never illegal and residents could distill and retain their own personal supply. Major liquor producers could continue distillation and export for sale, which allowed Ontario to become a center for the illegal smuggling of liquor into the United States, which after 1920 was under complete prohibition. The drys won a referendum in 1919. Prohibition came to an end in 1927 with the establishment of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario by the Conservative government.

The sale and consumption of liquor, wine, and beer are still controlled to ensure that strict community standards and revenue generation from the alcohol retail monopoly are upheld. In April 2007, Ontario Minister of Provincial Parliament Kim Craitor suggested that local brewers should be able to sell their beer in local corner stores, however, the motion was quickly rejected by Premier Dalton McGuinty.

1920s

Premier Hearst had a number of progressive ideas planned for his next term, but his Conservatives were swept from power in 1919 by an avalanche led by a totally new farmer's party. The United Farmers of Ontario with 45 seats formed a bare majority coalition with the trades union party, known as the "Ontario Independent Labour Party", with 11 seats. They made farm leader Ernest Drury premier, enforced prohibition, passed a mother's pension and minimum wage that Hearst had proposed, and promoted good roads in the rural areas. The farmers and unionists did not get along well and the 1923 election saw a sharp move to the right, with the Conservatives winning 50% of the vote and 75 seats of the 111 seats, making George Howard Ferguson premier.

Great Depression

Agriculture and industry alike suffered in the Great Depression in Canada; hardest hit were the lumbering regions, the auto plants and the steel mills. The milk industry suffered from price wars that hurt both dairy farmers and dairies. The government set up the Ontario Milk Control Board (MCB), which raised and stabilized prices through licensing, bonding, and fixed price agreements. The MCB resolved the crisis for the industry but consumers complained loudly. The government favoured producers over consumers as the industry rallied behind the MCB.

Following a massive defeat in 1934 by the Liberals, the Conservatives reorganized themselves over the next decade. Led by pragmatic leaders Cecil Frost, George Drew, Alex McKenzie, and Fred Gardiner, they minimized internal conflicts, quietly dropped laissez-faire positions and opted in favor of state intervention to deal with the Great Depression and encourage economic growth. The revised party declared loyalty to the Empire, called for comprehensive health care and pension programs, and sought more provincial autonomy. The reforms set the stage for a long run of election wins from 1943 onward.

Postwar

Celebrating V-E Day in Ottawa in 1945

The post-World War II period was one of exceptional prosperity and growth. Ontario, and the Greater Toronto Area in particular, have been the recipients of most immigration to Canada, largely immigrants from post war Europe in the 1950s and 1960s and after changes in federal immigration law, a massive influx of non-Europeans since the 1970s. From a largely ethnically British province, Ontario has rapidly become very culturally diverse.

Politics

The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party held power in the province from 1943 until 1985 by occupying the political center and isolating both the Left and Right, at a time when Liberals most often controlled Ottawa.

By contrast the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), which rebranded itself as the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961, was in the doldrums after the war. Its best showing was in 1948 when it elected 21 MPPs, and formed the official opposition. Purists said its decline resulted from a loss of Socialist purity and abandonment of the founding left-wing principles of the movement and party. They said democratic socialist activity in terms of activism, youth training, and volunteerism was lost in favor of authoritarian political bureaucracy. Moderates said the decline demonstrated the need for cooperation with Liberals. Political scientists said the party lacked a more coherent organizational base if it was to survive. The NDP routinely captured 20-some percent of the vote, save for its surprise win in 1990 when it surged briefly to 38%, won 75 of the 120 seats, and formed a government under Bob Rae. He served as premier but Ontario's labour unions, the backbone of the NDP, were outraged when Rae imposed pay cuts on unionized public workers. The NDP was defeated in 1995, falling back to 21% of the vote. Rae quit the NDP in 1998 as too leftist and joined the Liberals.

Toronto as business center

Torontt replaced Montreal as the nation's premier business center because the nationalist movement in Quebec, particularly with the success of the Parti Québécois in 1976, systematically drove Anglophone business away. Depressed economic conditions in the Maritime Provinces have also resulted in de-population of those provinces in the 20th century, with heavy migration into Ontario.

Ontario has no official language, but English is considered the de facto language. Numerous French language services are available under the French Language Services Act of 1990 in designated areas where sizable francophone populations exist.

Roads and travel

The rapid spread of automobiles after 1910 and the building of roads, especially after 1920, opened up opportunities in remote rural areas to travel to the towns and cities for shopping and services. City people moved outward to suburbs. By the 1920s it was common for city folk to have a vacation cottage in remote lake areas. The trend accelerated after 1945 and brought new money into remote areas, while also bringing negative environmental impacts and occasional conflict between cottagers and the permanent residents.

See also

• Timeline of Ontario history

Bibliography

From Citizendium

General

• The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1966-2006), thousands of scholarly biographies of notables who died by 1930
• Canadian Encyclopedia (2008) reliable detailed encyclopedia, on-line free
• Celebrating One Thousand Years of Ontario's History: Proceedings of the Celebrating One Thousand Years of Ontario's History Symposium, April 14, 15, and 16, 2000. Ontario Historical Society, 2000. 343 pp.
• Baskerville, Peter A. Sites of Power: A Concise History of Ontario. Oxford U. Press., 2005. 296 pp. (first edition was Ontario: Image, Identity and Power, 2002). online review
• Hall, Roger; Westfall, William; and MacDowell, Laurel Sefton, eds. Patterns of the Past: Interpreting Ontario's History. Dundurn Pr., 1988. 406 pp.
• McGowan, Mark George and Clarke, Brian P., eds. Catholics at the "Gathering Place": Historical Essays on the Archdiocese of Toronto, 1841-1991. Canadian Catholic Historical Assoc.; Dundurn, 1993. 352 pp.
• McKillop, A. B. Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791-1951. U. of Toronto Press, 1994. 716 pp.
• Mays, John Bentley. Arrivals: Stories from the History of Ontario. Penguin Books Canada, 2002. 418 pp.
• Noel, S. J. R. Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791-1896. U. of Toronto Press, 1990.

Geography and environment

• Berton, Pierre. Niagara: A History of the Falls. (1992).
• Brown, Ron,Top 100 Unusual Things to See in Ontario (2007) excerpt and text search
• Cruickshank, Tom, and John de Visser. Old Ontario Houses : Traditions in Local Architecture (2000)
• MacPherson, Allen. Ontario Provincial Parks Trail Guide (2005)briefly describes the 325 interpretive and hiking trails found in 86 operating Ontario Provincial Parks excerpt and text search
• Rawlings-Way, Charles, and Natalie Karneef.Toronto (2007)

Ontario to 1869

• Akenson, Donald H. The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (2009)
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• Cohen, Marjorie Griffin. Women's Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. U. of Toronto Press, 1988. 258 pp.
• Craig, Gerald M Upper Canada: the formative years 1784-1841 McClelland and Stewart, 1963, the standard history online edition
• Craven, Paul, ed. Labouring Lives: Work and Workers in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (University of Toronto Press, 1995)
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• Johnson, J. K. and Wilson, Bruce G., eds. Historical Essays on Upper Canada: New Perspectives. Carleton U. Press, (1975). . 604 pp.
• Keane, David and Read, Colin, ed. Old Ontario: Essays in Honour of J. M. S. Careless. Toronto: Dundurn, 1990.
• Kilbourn, William.; The Firebrand: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada (1956) online edition
• Knowles, Norman. Inventing the Loyalists: The Ontario Loyalist Tradition and the Creation of Usable Pasts. U. of Toronto Press, 1997. 244 pp.
• Kristofferson, Robert. Craft Capitalism: Craftsworkers and Early Industrialization in Hamilton, Ontario (Canadian Social History Series) (2007)
• Landon, Fred, and J.E. Middleton. Province of Ontario: A History (1937) 4 vol. with 2 vol of biographies
• Lewis, Frank and Urquhart, M.C. Growth and standard of living in a pioneer economy: Upper Canada 1826-1851 Institute for Economic Research, Queen's University, 1997.
• McCalla, Douglas Planting the province: the economic history of Upper Canada 1784-1870 (U. of Toronto Press, 1993)
• McGowan, Mark G. Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier. (McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2005). 382 pp.
• McNairn, Jeffrey L The capacity to judge: public opinion and deliberative democracy in Upper Canada 1791-1854 (U of Toronto Press, 2000).
• Marks, Lynne. Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario (U. of Toronto Press, 1996)
• Moorman, David T. "Where are the English and the Americans in the Historiography of Upper Canada?" Ontario History 88 (1996): 65–9; claims they have been deliberately left out to present an imperial interpretation
• Oliver, Peter. "Terror to Evil-Doers": Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. U. of Toronto Press, 1998. 575 pp. post 1835
• Rea, J. Edgar. "Rebellion in Upper Canada, 1837" Manitoba Historical Society Transactions Series 3, Number 22, 1965-66, historiography online edition
• Reid, Richard M. The Upper Ottawa Valley to 1855. Champlain Soc., 1990. 354 pp.
• Rogers, Edward S. and Smith, Donald B., eds. Aboriginal Ontario: Historical Perspectives on the First Nations. Dundurn, 1994. 448 pp.
• Smart, Susan. A Better Place: Death and Burial in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (2011)
• Styran, Roberta M. and Taylor, Robert R., ed. The "Great Swivel Link": Canada's Welland Canal. Champlain Soc., 2001. 494 pp.
• Westfall, William. Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 1989. 265 pp.
• Wilton, Carol. Popular Politics and Political Culture in Upper Canada, 1800-1850. McGill-Queen's University Press, (2000). 311pp

Ontario since 1869

• Abel, Kerry M.Changing Places: History, Community, and Identity in Northeastern Ontario (2007) excerpt and text search
• Azoulay, Dan. Keeping the Dream Alive: The Survival of the Ontario CCF/NDP, 1950-1963. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 1997. 307 pp.
• Baskerville, Peter A. A Silent Revolution?: Gender and Wealth in English Canada, 1860-1930 (2009)
• Cameron, David R. and White, Graham. Cycling into Saigon: The Conservative Transition in Ontario. U. of British Columbia Press, 2000. 224 pp. Analysis of the 1995 transition from New Democratic Party (NDP) to Progressive Conservative (PC) rule in Ontario
• Campbell, Lara. Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario's Great Depression (2009)
• Chenier, Elise Rose. Strangers in Our Midst: Sexual Deviancy in Post-war Ontario (2008)
• Comacchio, Cynthia R. Nations Are Built of Babies: Saving Ontario's Mothers and Children, 1900-1940. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 1993. 390 pp.
• Cook, Sharon Anne. "Through Sunshine and Shadow": The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 1995. 281 pp.
• Darroch, Gordon and Soltow, Lee. Property and Inequality in Victorian Ontario: Structural Patterns and Cultural Communities in the 1871 Census. U. of Toronto Press, 1994. 280 pp.
• Devlin, John F. "A Catalytic State? Agricultural Policy in Ontario, 1791-2001." PhD dissertation U. of Guelph 2004. 270 pp. DAI 2005 65(10): 3972-A. DANQ94970 Fulltext: in ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Evans, A. Margaret. Sir Oliver Mowat. U. of Toronto Press, 1992. 438 pp. Premier 1872-1896
• Fleming, Keith R. Power at Cost: Ontario Hydro and Rural Electrification, 1911-1958. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 1992. 326 pp.
• Gidney, R. D. From Hope to Harris: The Reshaping of Ontario's Schools. U. of Toronto Press, 1999. 362 pp. deals with debates and changes in education from 1950 to 2000
• Gidney, R. D. and Millar, W. P. J. Inventing Secondary Education: The Rise of the High School in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 1990. 440 pp.
• Halpern, Monda. And on that Farm He Had a Wife: Ontario Farm Women and Feminism, 1900-1970. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2001. 234 pp.
• Hines, Henry G. East of Adelaide: Photographs of Commercial, Industrial and Working-Class Urban Ontario, 1905-1930. London Regional Art and History Museum, 1989.
• Hodgetts, J. E. From Arm's Length to Hands-On: The Formative Years of Ontario's Public Service, 1867-1940. U. of Toronto Press, 1995. 296 pp.
• Houston, Susan E. and Prentice, Alison. Schooling and Scholars in Nineteenth-Century Ontario. U. of Toronto Press, 1988. 418 pp.
• Ibbitson, John. Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution. Prentice-Hall, 1997. 294 pp. praise for Conservatives
• Kechnie, Margaret C. Organizing Rural Women: the Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario, 1897-1910. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2003. 194 pp.
• Landon, Fred, and J.E. Middleton. Province of Ontario: A History (1937) 4 vol. with 2 vol of biographies
• Marks, Lynne. Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario. U. of Toronto Press, 1996. 330 pp.
• Montigny, Edgar-Andre, and Lori Chambers, eds. Ontario since Confederation: A Reader (University of Toronto Press, 2000).
• Moss, Mark. Manliness and Militarism: Educating Young Boys in Ontario for War. Oxford U. Press, 2001. 216 pp.
• Neatby, H. Blair and McEown, Don. Creating Carleton: The Shaping of a University. McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2002. 240 pp.
• Nelles, H.V. Politics of Development: Forests, Mines, and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849 1941 (2005)
• Ontario Bureau of Statistics and Research. A Conspectus of the Province of Ontario (1947) online edition
• Parr, Joy, ed. A Diversity of Women: Ontario, 1945-1980. U. of Toronto Press, 1996. 335 pp.
• Ralph, Diana; Régimbald, André; and St-Amand, Nérée, eds. Open for Business, Closed for People: Mike Harris's Ontario. Fernwood, 1997. 207 pp. leftwing attack on Conservative party of 1990s
• Roberts, David. In the Shadow of Detroit: Gordon M. McGregor, Ford of Canada, and Motoropolis. Wayne State U. Press, 2006. 320 pp.
• Santink, Joy L. Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store. U. of Toronto Press, 1990. 319 pp.
• Saywell, John T. "Just Call Me Mitch": The Life of Mitchell F. Hepburn. U. of Toronto Press, 1991. 637 pp. Biography of Liberal premier 1934-1942
• Schryer, Frans J. The Netherlandic Presence in Ontario: Pillars, Class and Dutch Ethnicity. Wilfrid Laurier U. Press, 1998. 458 pp. focus is post WW2
• Schull, Joseph. Ontario since 1867 (1978), narrative history
• Smith, Edward. "Working-Class Anglicans: Religion and Identity in Victorian and Edwardian Hamilton, Ontario," Social History/Histoire Sociale, 2003 online edition
• Stagni, Pellegrino. The View from Rome: Archbishop Stagni's 1915 Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question McGill-Queen's U. Press, 2002. 134 pp.
• Warecki, George M. Protecting Ontario's Wilderness: A History of Changing Ideas and Preservation Politics, 1927-1973.' Lang, 2000. 334 pp.
• White, Graham, ed. The Government and Politics of Ontario. 5th ed. U. of Toronto Press, 1997. 458 pp.
• White, Randall. Ontario since 1985. Eastendbooks, 1998. 320 pp.
• Wilson, Barbara M. ed. Ontario and the First World War, 1914-1918: A Collection of Documents (Champlain Society, 1977)

Primary sources

• Baskerville, Peter, ed. The Upper Ottawa Valley to 1855: A collection of documents (1990)

External links

• Ontario Visual Heritage Project
• A collection of historical documents and primary sources about Ontario.