LONDON, ONTARIO: A CASE STUDY IN METROPOLITAN EVOLUTION
Frederick H. Armstrong and Daniel J. Brock
Introduction: The Metropolitan Picture
For over a century London, Ontario has held the place of ninth or tenth city of the nation, yet it is a centre that is relatively little known beyond the confines of its immediate hinterland, the prosperous southwestern peninsula of Ontario, or "Western Ontario", as it is usually called locally though such a term has been incorrect for a century. London's obscurity stems, in part, from the fact that it has never been a Mecca for tourists and travelers. The city's rich agricultural hinterland gives wealth, but it does not provide the natural, recreational attractions of the reasonably remote Great Lakes and hilly areas of the province. Also, the great events and, fortunately, the great battles of history have passed London by. Possibly the most important factor, however, is that London has been overshadowed by Toronto which is the overall economic focus, as well as the political capital of Ontario. But the city is at least in part responsible for its own isolation, for it has a reputation, which it seems almost to have worked hard to develop, of being stuffy, unfriendly and generally conservative in nature.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that it is not well known, London is on the main lines of communication, by rail, highway and air, not only across southern Ontario, but also to the American Mid-West. Strategically, the city is well situated at the centre of the continent, a point which the division created by the international boundary tends to obscure. This very centrality of the location, the fact that so many roads lead to London, is again confirmation of the prosperity that the city has enjoyed in the past and continues to hold today.
Also, London is a quiet, pleasant place to live. That designation so enjoyed by the city fathers, "The Forest City", is still apt. While other cities, such as Toronto, are succumbing to high rise development and urban sprawl, London is conveniently large, safe, possessed of residential areas that are extensive and pleasing, and is developing a fine parks system along the branches of the Thames River which come together at the Forks in the centre of the city.
What London really demonstrates today, and has evidenced through the course of its development, is the familiar pattern of growth of the urbanization process in a secondary metropolitan centre on the North American continent. London's story provides a case study of how a major city will arise as settlement takes place in a new region, or sub-region, given the right geographical conditions. At the same time, since the city had its beginnings relatively early in the last century, it demonstrates another universal pattern; that is, the manner in which the successive waves of technology, with their changes in communications and services, affected the general quality of life during the last century and a half. This point is as applicable to the growth of the great metropolises of Europe as to the frontier towns of the New World. Hence, with settlement, a good location and the rise of technology, what we see in the growth of London is the rise of a pioneer community which becomes the core city of a settled region.
Understanding London's place as a secondary Canadian metropolis is complicated by the fact that the city is not a provincial capital, as are Winnipeg and Edmonton. Thus its size has been partly limited by the lack of the vast bureaucracy that seems to go with the modern administrative structure. Places providing parallels to London in Ontario are Kingston, though its smaller hinterland has reduced its size and economic importance, and Thunder Bay, which also has its own region. But possibly the most comparable city in Canada is Sherbrooke which dominates the Eastern Townships of Quebec just as London dominates the territory of southwestern Ontario. Sherbrooke, like London, has a natural region, is limited in area by both natural features and the American boundary, and is dominated by the other Canadian metropolis of first rank, Montreal. Also, since both had a natural hinterland that was limited in extent and did not stretch on endlessly, they were not reduced in importance by new metropolises which arose in their own backyards, as did Edmonton and Calgary in the territories once dominated by Winnipeg, or Toronto in that of Kingston. London differs from Sherbrooke in that it has not had ethnic changes, but both grew up in the same way as their adjacent hinterlands filled up, during much the same time span, and with somewhat similar results.
The Land, the Governor and the People
The southwestern peninsula of Ontario forms a natural region, or sub-region, bounded as it is by Lake Huron and Georgian Bay to the west and north, Lake Erie to the south and the line of the Niagara Escarpment to the east. Further, it is natural that such a geographic area would develop an important central city or cities as its population increased, a metropolis to organize its communications, direct its commerce and provide its industry and finance.
The question was where such a city would be located. With settlement spreading in from the east and Lake Ontario opened to European communications much before Lake Erie, a port city at the head of that lake would seem to be the obvious location for the metropolis of the peninsula. The potential contenders, Toronto and the growing urban nuclei at the head of Lake Ontario - Ancaster, Dundas and Hamilton - were, however, impeded by the Niagara Escarpment and bad roads, although the latter group of communities were to dominate much of western commerce in the early days. In the far west of the peninsula itself, the original "district town" for the governance of the region lay at the old French settlement on the straits - D'Etroit - but it was too remote from the centre, in the wrong direction for the lines of trade, and soon was to be separated by an international boundary. Detroit's successors, Amherstburg and Sandwich, were to be equally isolated and never to develop in the early period, at least in part because settlement eschewed the ill-drained lands which surrounded them.
The metropolitan centre in southwestern Ontario would, therefore, have to be a new city which would develop with the process of settlement. Since colonization would largely spread north from Lake Erie a place on its shore seemed logical. But what place? Here again nature had not provided a location for a great city. What was needed was obviously a route inland, but both the main rivers draining the southwestern peninsula avoided the central lakeshore. The Grand River winds far to the east and ends up well along the Niagara Peninsula; the Thames flows even further west into Lake St. Clair, not Lake Erie. Such creeks as led into that lake did not provide much of an inland route.
In this situation it is not surprising that the first Loyalist and post-Loyalist settlers chose the arable lands behind Long Point in Norfolk County. Their little centres, first Charlotteville. and then Vittoria, were the first local administrative capitals or district towns when the London District, covering the eastern half of western Upper Canada, was established in 1800. Neither of these places, however, had water communications inland. Nor did their rival, Port Talbot, which Colonel Thomas Talbot, the colonizing organizer of the region, later made the centre of his operations.
But before Talbot began his operations in 1803 another figure had made his impression on the fledgling colony of Upper Canada, the man who is always recognized as the father of Toronto and Ontario, but less often connected with London: Colonel John Graves Simcoe, first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, the southern Ontario of today. Simcoe was sent out to rule a wilderness, occupied by a few Indians, French Canadians and Loyalists, and threatened by the nascent United States. His task was to establish a government. He could have been excused had he done little else, yet his restless energy and his love for his adopted land made him look to the future and plan cities that were not to rise until he was long in his grave. Defence against the Americans, continued contact with the Indians, and a route to the West, were foremost in his mind. A capital was needed that was both inland for protection and on the fur trade route to the West; one that would attract settlers and push the focus of Upper Canada westwards, where imperial control was as yet shaky.
Simcoe noted the site of the Forks of the Thames on his map and visited it in 1793, a year after his arrival. He decided that this was the location that suited his requirements. Further, it was one that also provided a good water supply, power for mills, and communications to the westward along the Thames. His choice was premature. Nevertheless, he took steps which were later to play a key role in London's evolution as regional metropolis. The first of these was the establishment of a Crown Reserve of some 3,850 acres (1,560 hectares) for future government buildings at the Forks of the Thames. The second was his plan for a direct link from Dundas at the head of Lake Ontario to the "Forks", as London was often called. This was to become Dundas Street, which would link London up with the growing settlement on Lake Ontario, and later be continued through to Toronto.
In the years that followed Simcoe, settlement moved slowly. The Long Point settlers were only supplemented to any extent by Talbot's colonists after the War of 1812. Many of those settlers who came were from the United States - New Englanders and New Yorkers rather than emigrants from the Old Country, for western Upper Canada was on their migration route to the west. Many of Talbot's settlers were Scots, but in 1818 London Township was opened primarily by Protestant Irish immigrants. Of these early groups the Americans were far more suited to opening a frontier area, which they already knew intimately, than were the immigrants from Great Britain.
Just prior to and immediately following 1820 the situation changed rapidly, as the first major wave of settlement from Great Britain began. Soon, Talbot's farmers were spreading north from the lake. Fourteen and a half miles (23.3 kilometers) to the south of London, the city's long-time rival community, St. Thomas, began to develop. The Canada Land Company, an English corporation, was granted the Huron Tract to the north (now basically Huron and Perth Counties). With the population growth, Vittoria became even more remote and inaccessible from the expanding frontier. When its district court house burned in November, 1825, rebuilding at Vittoria was inadvisable, however much the local officialdom liked the clement, settled lake location. A more central and accessible district town would have to be found.
From Administrative Village to Communication Hub
The three events which were crucial in the rise of London to metropolitan dominance - its choice as the district administrative centre, its selection as garrison town for the western peninsula, and the completion of its communications network with the arrival of the railway - all took place in the short span of twenty-seven years. In the first two cases London was favoured with more than its share of luck, but for the third development much of the credit must go to the enterprise of the town's merchants, who were reaching out to consolidate their control over the peninsula's economy.
In 1826, when a new administrative centre became necessary, St. Thomas was seen as not only politically radical, but also as too close to the lake and really no improvement over Vittoria for inland settlers. Delaware, now a hamlet west of London, demanded too high a price for land. The town plot of Dorchester, another of Simcoe's reserves a few miles upstream from the present village of Dorchester and the most centrally located of all the serious choices, lacked both the potential for expansion and the relatively heavy settlement to be found in the environs of the Forks. The government officials therefore turned to the free and extensive Crown Reserve for the town plot of London as a place where a Tory centre could arise. Soon a Court House, still the focal point at the centre of the city, was under construction beside the Forks and a community was springing up around it to supply the government and make London a nascent service centre: lawyers for the courts, uilders to construct the town, merchants to attend to its supplies, and hotel keepers to house them ll, as well as the farmers who came to the district town. Industry naturally followed, for all colonial centres needed their millers, tanners and brewers. One such industry still survives, the present day Labatt's Brewery, the origins of which date from 1827.
By the mid-1830s the hamlet had witnessed its first public executions (a leading form of entertainment until its abolition in 1869), weathered the cholera which was just beginning to sweep across North America, become the centre of the district agricultural society and seen the arrival of its initial ministers. Prominent amongst the clergy was the Reverend Benjamin Cronyn, who became the city's first Anglican bishop and founder of one of its earliest wealthy dynasties. In some ways, London was a town divided. Many of the settlers were of American extraction and outlook and the settlement itself was little more than a frontier outpost, with the rough and tumble outlook of such a community. Yet at the same time it had a loyal, British-derived, Tory administrative oligarchy, the local division of the Family Compact which ruled the colony. This group had pretensions of establishing a bastion of imperial civilization on the frontier and formed from the start an urban administrative elite.
Aided by the opening of the Welland Canal in the 1830s and a subsequent influx of new residents, the population of Middlesex County doubled to 20,000 and that of the Forks exceeded 1,000. Further services became necessary for both the town and its hinterland. Newspapers, a mechanics' institute (or public library), churches, a high school, a market and an agricultural fair made their appearance. London's status as the financial centre of southwestern Ontario began with the opening of a branch of the Bank of Upper Canada. In 1836 the town was granted the dignity of electing a member to the Upper Canadian Legislative Assembly; not surprisingly, it chose a Tory.
The Rebellion of 1837 burst on this scene with sudden violence, rocking the local oligarchy, but in the end removing any opposition to their rule and giving the town its second boom: the British Garrison. When, in 1838, the decision was made to locate a garrison in the peninsula a central location was needed for the troops to hasten to any threatened point, from Long Point to Windsor, Sarnia and Goderich. St. Thomas, which had had some troops, seemed little interested in housing unruly soldiers. So London won, partly by default. The social and economic results were quickly evident. The Garrison brought a touch of British and imperial culture and the Forks began to lose its pioneer aspect. The officers were leaders in such social events as sporting teams and balls, and frequently married into the local official class. Similarly, the troops often married local girls. As well, a garrison meant military spending; the merchants and manufacturers reaped immediate and long term profit, which greatly helped extend the base of London's commercial and financial hegemony over southwestern Ontario.
In 1840, with the increased population, London received its first incorporation, covering the area bounded roughly by the north and south branches of the Thames, and Huron and Adelaide Streets. The London District magistrates could no longer handle the increased work load and the Board of Police, as the council was called, was given extended regulatory powers. The councilmen elected George J. Goodhue, one of the town's leading merchants and mortgage holders, as London's first president, as the mayor was then called. The population was now 1,718 and the area within the original London District had 221,000 acres (89,505 hectares) under cultivation; more than three times the acreage of fourteen years earlier, with a consequent increase of profit to the merchants supplying the farmers. New industries were springing up - the Leonard iron foundry and the Carling breweries had their origins at this time - and the London wholesalers began to expand their network over the countryside. The city was thus becoming a service centre for an expanding hinterland. At the same time, workers were beginning to show signs of uneasiness and a consequent desire to unite in defense of their common interest. In December, 1845, more than one hundred master and journeyman carpenters met to oppose "every attempt to establish machinery, to take away or destroy manual labour."
The entrepreneurs were greatly assisted by Hamilton Hartley Killaly, commissioner of Public Works for the newly-formed Province of Canada, which combined what is now southern Ontario, formerly Upper Canada, and southern Quebec, formerly Lower Canada. Fortune had again smiled on London, giving her a member in the new legislative assembly who held an exalted place and commanded much patronage. In typical nineteenth-century fashion Killaly proceeded to expand the primitive road networks around his own riding and improve them with either planks or gravel. Soon London had improved roads to Dundas-Hamilton in the east, Windsor and Sarnia to the west, and St. Thomas and Port Stanley to the south, as well as better harbour facilities at Port Stanley. The town's control of its hinterland was consolidated except to the north. The boom which resulted was manifested in the establishment of larger and more permanent market places and the rapid recoveryfrom the conflagrations of 1844 and 1845. The reincorporation of the town with wider powers followed in 1847. The new government consisted of a popularly elected mayor and aldermen representing wards.
The change came none too soon, for London received an influx of Catholic Irish emigrants fleeing the potato famine. They substantially modified the largely Protestant orientation of the town. Between 1842 and 1848 London's Irish population rose by 128.6 percent and the Roman Catholic element by 204.4 percent. This Irish element created new demands on services, welfare and law enforcement.
The removal of the British garrison to fight in the Crimean War seemed to have little effect on the city's prosperity, for North America was booming. The merchants and manufacturers, who dominated the council, were able to point proudly to such achievements as local school boards. Above all there were new lines and forms of communication. In 1847 London was connected to eastern North America by the telegraph which had spread rapidly out from the eastern United States after 1844. In 1849 the businessmen constructed the Proof Line Road (Richmond Street-Highway No.4) to the north, thus gradually linking London's hinterland in that direction by better routes to Stratford, Goderich and, eventually, the Queen's Bush across the northern part of southwestern Ontario.
Then, on December 15, 1853, Londoners and in particular the commercial community, saw the triumph of a twenty-year dream: the first train of the Great Western Railway (now the Canadian National) steamed into town. With its arrival London's hegemony over southwestern Ontario was consolidated. When Highway 401 was laid across southwestern Ontario in the 1950s it confirmed the centrality of the city. The urban pattern of the western peninsula had been set.
Railway Growth and Metropolitan Consolidation
Yet the arrival of the iron horse from Hamilton marked merely the first stage in the development of London's railway network in southwestern Ontario. A period of communication expansion followed which lasted until what is now the Canadian Pacific pushed its line west from Woodstock in 1887. In 1853 London was merely the temporary Great Western terminus; but by 1854 the line was running through to Windsor and another branch was completed to Sarnia in 1858. In 1856, after three years construction, the London and Port Stanley Railway was completed, making St. Thomas a by-station along the route. The line failed financially and in 1872 was leased to the Great Western Railway. Meanwhile, expansion had begun to the north, with the London, Huron & Bruce, which went through to Wingham by 1876.
After the railway era the smaller cities might have developed as county seats, but St. Thomas, Sarnia, Goderich, Stratford, Woodstock, Simcoe, and even probably Chatham to the far west, were clearly subordinate to London. To the north no new towns of any size were to arise, except later Owen Sound as a recreation and lumber centre, for all lines of communication clearly flowed to London.
This phenomenon of course, was occurring all across eastern North America as the pre-railway centres either confirmed their hegemony over their hinterlands, or lost out to better placed rivals. Kingston saw itself bypassed on the Montreal-Toronto route. To the north, Bytown's (renamed Ottawa in 1855) communication network, which was to help make that city the capital, was opened at the same time. In southern Quebec, Sherbrooke, like London, consolidated its position at the centre of the Eastern Townships' network. London was also fortunate in that new railway metropolises did not appear in its vicinity; Windsor was the one exception, but it was no rival for London's direct hinterland.
Railways and the telegraph were not the only media, however, in which London consolidated its communications with the hinterland. What is now the London Free Press, the regional journal of southwestern Ontario, made its appearance in 1849. In 1863 the Free Press was joined by London's other long-lived newspaper, the Advertiser, which survived until 1936. Appropriate for the metropolis of an agricultural region, the Farmer's Advocate was founded in 1866 and lasted almost to the present decade. London thus became a newspaper centre, as well as a railway metropolis. In 1879 came the final link with the world, with the inauguration of London's first telephone exchange. Again, this technological advance demonstrated how much the development of London paralleled that of other urban centres and how the advance of science was progressively creating a uniformity around the world. London, Ontario received its first exchange in the same year as London, England, a year after Toronto and within four years of Alexander Graham Bell's first experiments at Brantford and Boston. By 1881 the ugly telephone poles of the period were beginning to line London's streets, much to the disgust of some of the merchants.
Nevertheless, the years between 1853 and 1885 were far from an uninterrupted tale of progress, for the era was one of booms, busts and recessions. From 1849 on there was rapid expansion accompanying the railway building boom. This prosperity was augmented from 1854 to 1856 by the sale of wheat for the troops fighting in the Crimean War. The effects of these events on London turned the city into a boom town. The population increased rapidly and on January 1, 1855, London became a city. New services made their appearance with this increased prosperity and population. The first waterworks and gas lights appeared in 1854, the next year the first hospital and regular police force came into being. The provincial government too expanded its services in the city, building a customs house in 1855 to handle the increased shipments on the railway. That project further pointed out London's central place in the region. The main physical symbols of the new prosperity were a new City Hall, opened in time for incorporation, and the start of construction of the largest hotel in the British North American colonies, the Tecumseh House. With the boom new organizations were formed; in 1857 the merchants set up the Board of Trade in order to promote their interests in both city and hinterland.
The confirmation of London's position as regional focus can also be found in other fields. Ecclesiastically, the city was clearly dominant. It had long been a major Methodist centre and in 1856 the Roman Catholic Church established the London Diocese and the Kirk of Scotland Presbyterians set up a London Synod. The next year the Anglicans followed, with the establishment of the Diocese of Huron. In all cases the city's ecclesiastical territories covered roughly its economic hinterland.
Prosperity, however, did not last. The Crimean War ended in 1856; the next year the railway boom burst and North America was thrown into one of the greatest panics and depressions of the century. In a nascent centre such as London, where boom had been accompanied by runaway land speculation, the depression hit particularly hard. The same thing happened in Winnipeg two decades later. Population diminished, prosperous industries closed and buildings stood vacant. Nonetheless, even in the depths of depression, there were signs of underlying stability. McCormick Biscuits was established in 1858, the Tecumseh House was finally opened that year and the province built a post office in 1860.
Soon there was a reversal of conditions and the city's expansion continued. In 1861, when the census showed the population at a slightly reduced 11,555, the American Civil War broke out. London businessmen supervised the passage of western Ontario's grain through London to the Northern armies. Also, the British Garrison returned in that year, in order to be ready to defend the peninsula should war with the United States break out.
During the late 1850s a new industry developed with the extraction of oil in Enniskille Township to the west. As the nearest major financial and transportation centre London came rapidly to dominate the oil industry. By 1868 at least nine refineries were established in the London area; an oil boom replaced the land one and a new industrial suburb, London East, was growing rapidly. Conveniently located along the railways and downwind from the city itself, London East soon possessed a wide variety of industries and a growing working class.
The prosperity manifested itself further in new institutions, both financial and cultural. Here, in fact, were the beginnings of London's real financial power. In 1864 the merchants' profits from the Civil War served as the basis for the formation of the Huron & Erie Savings and Loan Society, now the Canada Trust. The City Gas Company (now Union Gas) appeared the same year and three years later the recently established Bank of Commerce opened one of its first branches in the city. The educational picture in the city was enhanced when Isaac Hellmuth, the Anglican bishop, founded Hellmuth College for boys in 1864 and followed it with Huron College in 1868. A decade later he founded what is now the University of Western Ontario, again demonstrating the city's centrality to its hinterland.
Although the British Garrison departed, this time permanently, in 1869, the prosperity continued unabated. The population reached 15,826 in 1871 and the city was surrounded by growing suburbs on all sides except the north; those on the west and east were incorporated as Petersville (later London West) and London East in 1874. More extended services became necessary. In 1870 the Insane Asylum was transferred from Amherstburg, a patronage gift from John Carling, London's Member of Parliament. The year 1873 saw the establishment of the first paid, permanent fire brigade and also the beginnings of the London Street Railway. The next year Victoria Park, the city's central park, opened on the site of the old garrison. All these developments paralleled what was happening in so many other cities at the same period.
The prosperity had its continued financial aspects as well. In 1870 the Ontario Loan and Debenture Company was established and Molson's Bank opened a branch in the city. Four years later the London Life Insurance Company was incorporated and the next year the merchants set up that most important accoutrement of a successful business community, the London Club, a private gentleman's club for local businessmen.
The decade after 1874, though mostly a period of recession, saw a continuation of this expansion. Victoria and St. Joseph's hospitals were firmly established, communications were improved by new iron bridges across the Thames, beginning with Blackfriars and Victoria Bridges in 1875, and a municipal water supply came with the Springbank Waterworks in 1879. Refineries increased to over twenty in number by 1877; many of these were combined to form the Imperial Oil Company in 1880. Also, in 1877 the large department store of Smallman & Ingram (now Simpson's) had its beginnings, an indication of the general move towards department stores that was spreading across North America.
Tragedy was present as well as prosperity. In 1881 inadequate inspections and the desire for profit led to the foundering of the Steamboat Victoria, on Victoria Day, with a loss of some 200 lives. In March, 1883, the Thames staged one of its periodic major floods and over 20 lives were lost. The inadequate auditing systems of the era also had their repercussions in London, for in 1882 John Brown, the first city treasurer, who had held office since 1855, committed suicide. He had embezzled $79,937.35 from the treasury.
The thirty years following the coming of the railways marked a consolidating and testing stage in London's growth. By extending its communications northward, the city solidified its hold on the northern part of southwestern Ontario. Community services were further developed, regional religious, educational and financial institutions were expanded and an industrial suburb was established. Surviving the booms and busts of the era, London emerged with a sound economic and cultural base that would ensure its continued growth.
From the Golden Jubilee to the First World War
The thirty years before the First World War were generally ones of prosperity, consolidation, expansion of services and complacency. The population grew from 19,746 in 1881 to 46,300 by 1911. City government changed with these growing pressures. London East was annexed in 1885, the section of Westminster Township south of the city, now old South London, in 1890 and London West followed in 1897. The order of the annexations typified the urban problems of the era in all cities: the desire for more assessment, and the disinclination to spend money on services for new areas. Toronto, for instance, was undergoing an identical problem at the same time. Annexing London East meant good industrial assessment, and more urban services for the factories of many wealthy residents of the city. "London South" was a prosperous residential community, but London West was a problem. Low lying, so that it was the focus of floods, generally inhabited by the working class and with no industry for tax gain, its annexation was, not surprisingly, delayed as long as possible.
Services followed concurrently. Electric lights made their first appearance in 1883; five years later Victoria Park was illuminated, and in 1895 the trams were electrified. Old institutions which had become too small were either rebuilt or expanded: the public library, St. Joseph's Hospital, Victoria Hospital and the YMCA. The McCormick Home for the Aged opened in 1892. The city itself was forced into new fields with the beginnings of a proper sewer system in 1890 and improved methods of paving streets with asphalt and wooden blocks five years later.
Finance and industry marched ahead with the wealth of the completely organized hinterland to back the civic leaders. The Northern Life Assurance Company was established in 1894. Most confirmatory of the city's expanding economy was the rash of bank branches opened in the first decade of the twentieth century: two each for the Bank of British North America, the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank, and one each for the Home, Imperial and Royal Banks, and the Bank of Nova Scotia. Industry prospered, but there was another side to this boom. Poverty and labour unrest increased and culminated in the London Street Railway strikes of 1898 and 1899-1900; the latter dragged on for more than a year.
Communications were changing too and London had its own auto club for a decade before the war and an organized Ontario Motor League Branch from 1911. Also in 1911, the first London-built automobile appeared, the Harding Motor Car Company's "Harding Twenty." The first airplane made its appearance over the city in 1912. Beyond the city, experiments were made with the latest methods of transportation to the hinterland: the electrification of the London and Port Stanley Railway and the construction of a rival radial line to the same village.
New figures were making their appearance on the city's stage, although such senior statesmen as Senator Sir John Carling were still living. The two most prominent were probably Sir Adam Beck and Charles S. Hyman (1854-1926). The latter was the son of London's pioneer tanner, Ellis W. Hyman. One of London's most colourtul political figures, "Champagne Charlie" Hyman as his constituents lovingly called him, was not only mayor of London in 1884 and Liberal member of parliament 1900-1907, but also Minister of Public Works for a brief period. He helped found the London Hunt Club and played a leading part in the introduction of bridge and tennis into Canada. Beck (1857-1925), a manufacturer and Conservative, was mayor of London in 1902-1904 and member of the provincial legislature 1902-1919 and 1923-1925, where he was a firm foe of temperance. He was the father of the Ontario Hydro and served as its first Chairman from 1906 until his death.
On the eve of World War 1, with a population exceeding 50,000 and an assessment of $38,071,220, London was prosperous, yet suffering from all the usual troubles that go with urban expansion and the growing need for services, coupled with increasing costs and a general recession. These pre-war years saw constant changes which reflected such conditions. In 1911 the Old City Hall was considered too small and was sold; new, supposedly temporary, quarters were taken. New institutions such as the Isolation Hospital, the Byron Sanitarium and the Institute of Public Health made their appearance. A technical high school was built, garbage collection begun, Sunday street cars approved and the Public Utilities Commission set up to handle hydro and water. All of these improvements resulted in additional expenditure and, as the war approached, the city began to face a deficit. Yet the peace and prosperity of the era, and the complete failure to foresee the global conflagration, were well symbolized by the fact that when London purchased its first self-propelled fire engine in 1912 the vehicle was named the Kaiser Bill.
The Developed Regional Metropolis
As a new era approached with the imminence of World War 1, London had no fears regarding its role as the commanding city of its own peninsula. True, Toronto was obviously the metropolis of southern Ontario and was already engaging in its long battle to attain equality with, and wrest hegemony from, Montreal. Unlike Hamilton, London was safely removed from the immediate Toronto hinterland and could attain an identity and economic interest of its own. London's institutions tended to remain at home instead of moving to the larger centre and the hinterland, despite Toronto's administrative role, looked to London for economic and social leadership.
Also, London was developing a certain ambivalence of outlook common to other Canadian centres. The city cheered at the Golden and Diamond Jubilees of Queen Victoria in 1887 and 1897, loyally sent troops to put down Riel in 1885 and the Boers of South Africa in 1899, and rushed troops to the Homeland's defence in 1914. But, at the same time that it gloried in imperial ventures, it was developing a certain nationalism. The Canadian Club of London was established in 1906 and friendly relationships with the United States were nurtured by the commercial community. London was also evidencing nostalgia. In 1901 the London and Middlesex Historical Society was formed and, from 1897 on, the London Old Boys' Association held periodic reunions which remained immensely popular well into the 1920s.
Thus, as an era closed, a city which had been primeval forest less than a century earlier had reached maturity, evolved its own institutions and services, and indeed its own personality. It had captured a rich hinterland, which it held without potential local rivals. It was, however, under the domination of more remote but greater metropolises: Toronto and Montreal at home, New York and finally, above all, London, England, abroad. Its tale was far from a unique one, but rather typified a story that had taken place, and was taking place, as the continent evolved. London might almost be used as a case study for the evolution of such regional metropolitan centres, and by 1914 had already assumed the place it still holds today.
