Metropolis and Region: The Interplay between City and Region in Canadian History before 1914

• Published in: Urban History Review
• Main Author: Careless, J. M. S.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 1979
• Subjects: Urban Studies; History; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/1019408ar; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.7202/1019408ar

From the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, from the opening of the Newfoundland fishery to the settlement of the western plains and Pacific slopes, Canada took shape primarily through the spreading of frontiers across the continent. Frontier areas, the forward zones of an expansive, acquisitive society, offered new supplies of natural resources to be put to commercial production. Generally, and increasingly, these raw areas of resource supply developed into populous, well structured regions with collective identities of their own. Yet the whole development of freshly opened frontier into firmly rooted region was linked throughout with the growth of the city, and especially with that of the largest, most powerful kind of city, the metropolis. In effect, frontiers themselves were the furthest hinterlands of cities, the trading territories dominated by urban centres. They were far-spread supply fields for urban places, emerging investment, market and service outlets; and, above all, enlarging spheres of influence for those most dominant urban places, the metropolitan cities. Behind the rise of frontier, hinterland or region in Canada lay the power of the metropolis, which ultimately disposed of their resource harvest, strongly fostered their expansion, and widely controlled their very existence.