TORONTO--THE CITY OF PUBLIC OWNERSHIP
Said an American whom I met in Toronto the other day:
“I don’t care for this place; it’s too much like home. When I travel I
want to see something different.”
I don’t know just what this man hoped to find here in the second
largest city in Canada. I fear that he expected to find Toronto so
inferior that he would be able to indulge in some boasting at the
expense of the Canadians. If so, he came to the wrong place, for,
judged by American standards, Toronto is thoroughly alive, first class,
and up-to-date.
Located on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and the political and
commercial capital of Ontario province, Toronto is the “Chicago of
Canada.” It is larger than Buffalo or San Francisco, and nearly as big
as Los Angeles. It is the greatest live-stock market of all Canada,
and the chief butcher shop of the Dominion. Like Chicago, it is on
the route of the transcontinental railroad lines. It is the centre of
tourist travel to Niagara Falls, the Thousand Islands, and the vacation
lands of the North. It supplies the mines, the mills, and the farms
of a region rich in natural resources, and fast becoming as highly
industrialized as New England. Ontario does more than half of the
manufacturing of Canada, and one third of the factories of the province
are located in Toronto. Seven of the great chartered banks of the
Dominion have their home offices here, and the city is second only to
Montreal in its financial strength.
In Toronto, I find myself again in a city of twenty-story skyscrapers,
big department stores, and American “hustle.” It is, I suppose, because
it does not seem “foreign” that visitors from the States find this city
disappointing. The people are mostly of British extraction, and, unlike
Montreal, there are but few French, and comparatively few Catholics.
The city was founded by Tories from New York just after our
Revolutionary War, and it soon became the capital of Upper Canada. Our
soldiers burned it once and captured it twice during the War of 1812.
Its name Toronto, an Indian word meaning “place of meeting,” was chosen
about a century ago. Since then the city has doubled in population and
wealth every fifteen years.
In the residential districts, I saw scores of magnificent homes that
compare favourably with those of any of our large cities. The town is
built entirely of brick, and sixty-seven per cent. of the homes are
occupied by their owners. The residents, all of whom seem to belong to
a boosters’ club, tell me that they have the lowest death rate but one
of any city of five hundred thousand population in North America, and
that they have fewer deaths from tuberculosis than anywhere else on the
hemisphere.
I have been out to Queen’s Park to see the provincial government
buildings. Here also is Toronto University, the largest in the British
Empire, with several thousand students of both sexes. The park is
approached by University Avenue, a broad street with rows of elm
and chestnut trees on each side. There are many other schools and
colleges, making Toronto the educational centre of Ontario.
It was at the University of Toronto that Dr. F. G. Banting discovered
insulin, the new treatment for diabetes obtained from the pancreas of
cattle. Doctor Banting and his associates have since received many
honours. The Dominion government gave him seventy-five hundred dollars
a year for life, so that he might continue his investigations, while
the provincial government has established him in a chair of medical
research at Toronto University paying ten thousand dollars a year.
Instead of commercializing his discovery, the doctor had it patented in
the name of the university, and the royalties are devoted to research.
Toronto is about equidistant from New York and Chicago, and nearly
midway between Winnipeg and Halifax. It is only three hundred and
thirty-four miles from Montreal, but between the two cities are the
rapids of the upper St. Lawrence, which so far have prevented the lake
port from becoming accessible to large ocean-going vessels. The present
canals along the St. Lawrence can accommodate ships up to twenty-five
hundred tons, but Toronto has a plan for bringing ten-thousand-ton
steamers to her front door. She proposes to overcome the rapids and
shallows with lakes and canals, and at the same time utilize the fall
of water, which exceeds two hundred feet, to generate electricity.
The locks of the new and larger Welland Canal around Niagara Falls
have been built thirty feet deep and eight hundred feet long. When
this work is completed, the improvement of the St. Lawrence will be
the only thing needed to make possible the passage of deep-water ships
from the Atlantic to Lake Superior. The St. Lawrence project has the
enthusiastic support of the people of middle Canada, who see their
grain of the future going direct to Liverpool in steamers loaded at the
lake ports. This will cut down the freight charges on every bushel and
add millions to the farmers’ profits.
Our own middle western states also want this Lakes-to-the-Atlantic
waterway, but New York and Buffalo, which have grown fat on handling
freight from the Great Lakes, oppose it. So does Montreal, for fear
that her port might suffer, just as Quebec did when the St. Lawrence
was dredged out from that city to Montreal.
Since the St. Lawrence, for part of its course, borders the state of
New York, the project requires the coöperation of the United States.
The International Joint Commission, representing both Canada and
the United States, after investigation, unanimously approved it.
It recommended the construction of nine locks, thirty-three miles
of canals, forty miles of lake channel, and one hundred miles of
river channel improvements. It also recommended the construction
of a hydro-electric power plant near Ogdensburg, New York, which,
it is estimated, would produce sixteen hundred and forty thousand
horse-power, to be divided between the United States and Canada. To
do all this is comparable to the building of the Panama Canal. It is
estimated that the job will take about eight years and will cost more
than a quarter of a billion dollars.
Meanwhile, Toronto is so sure that the project will be carried out
that she has already spent more than twenty million dollars in getting
her harbour ready for the business she expects in the future. Her port
to-day is like a newly built palace, awaiting the birth of an heir to
the throne, with the king still a bachelor.
An island lying about a mile offshore from the city gives Toronto
a natural harbour. The Harbour Commission has built breakwaters,
channels, and anchorages, and erected piers and berthing spaces to
accommodate fleets of large tonnage vessels. So far, however, these
improvements are used mostly by passenger steamers handling the summer
tourist travel to points on the lakes and along the St. Lawrence. In
part the work of the Harbour Commission has already paid for itself. It
has reclaimed a large tract of marshland along the eastern shore of the
harbour and converted it into industrial sites, equipped with docks,
railroad tracks, and other facilities. There are now more than eight
million dollars’ worth of buildings and machinery in operation on this
area.
The Harbour Commission has developed the lakeside not only for
commercial purposes, but also for the use of the people. West of
the city it has built Sunnyside beach, a half mile long, with
accommodations of all kinds for seventy-five hundred bathers. Across
the harbour is Island Park, another great playground.
Toronto was the first city in the world to establish a municipal
athletic commission to promote sports and outdoor games. Though
baseball is not native to Canada, six thousand Toronto boys played in
regularly organized leagues last summer, and eight thousand soccer or
association football players were listed with the commission. The city
maintains two public golf courses, and there are country clubs, canoe
clubs, and yacht clubs.
Another publicly owned institution in Toronto is an _abattoir_, built
and operated by the city. Here any cattle dealer or local marketman
may have his animals killed under the most sanitary conditions. The
city owns also its waterworks and has a Hydro-Electric Commission
which furnishes power to its factories and homes at low rates. It has
invested more than two million dollars in grounds and buildings for
the Canadian National Exhibition, held here every September with an
attendance of over a million.
Its street railway system is Toronto’s latest and largest venture in
public ownership. Both the cars and the service are by far the best I
have seen anywhere in Canada, and few of our cities can show better.
The city paid forty-five million dollars for the property, and within
two years it had doubled the single fare area, increased the mileage
twenty-five per cent., built extensions out to the suburbs, replaced
antiquated cars with the newest and best, and speeded up service. On
the main lines, the cars are very large and during rush hours they
are run in twos, coupled together. In the newer cars the conductor
sits perched in a cage in the middle. Passengers enter by the front
door, and if they pass down the aisle to sit in the rear they pay the
conductor as they go by. If they take seats in the front half, they
do not pay their fares until they get up to leave by the door in the
middle. It is interesting to know that the first electric street car in
America was operated in Toronto.
Conservative Montreal looks upon Toronto’s plunges into public works
as the height of folly, and sometimes gives her sister city a lecture.
Replying to such criticism, a local paper said the other day it
supposed Montreal would have every Torontoan go to bed at night saying
these verses:
Oh, let us love our occupations,
Bless the squire and his relations,
Live upon our daily rations,
And always know our proper stations.
[Illustration: Unlike Montreal and Quebec, Toronto is a city of
sky-scrapers, and the Yonge Street canyon makes the American visitor
feel much at home. Toronto has hustle, enterprise, and the courage to
do whatever it pleases.]
[Illustration: Flax raising has become important in southwestern
Ontario. The crop competes with the best Russian product. The Canadians
use labour-saving devices to keep costs down to European levels.]
But Toronto comes honestly by its independent spirit and bold
experiments for the public welfare. The entire province of Ontario is
imbued with the same tendency. With an area eight times that of New
York, it is, next to Quebec, the largest province of Canada, and with
three million people, mostly of British extraction, excels them all in
population. It is richer in mineral wealth, agricultural resources,
and industrial development than any other province. The people believe
in their future and they show the courage of their convictions when it
comes to going in debt to back public enterprises.
The province owns a railroad that taps the Cobalt silver mining
district and the northern agricultural lands. The main line of the road
extends from the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National lines at North
Bay two hundred and fifty-three miles northward to Cochrane, where it
meets the northernmost of the three transcontinental routes.
A few years ago Ontario increased its expenditure for good roads from
two million dollars a year to nine millions. It created the Ontario
Hydro-Electric Commission, which generates and distributes more
electric power at lower rates than any other similar body in the world.
The province pensions needy mothers, and its public health service
furnishes serums and toxins free to the public.
The Ontario parliament has no upper house, but only a single chamber
to which members are elected by the votes of both men and women. Not
long ago the farmers’ organizations captured enough seats to give them
control of the government.
In Toronto I have seen so many familiar names on the factory buildings
that I have had to ask myself whether I was in a British Dominion or
back in the United States. These are the “branch plants” of American
firms, established here to be inside Canada’s tariff wall and to get
the benefit of the preferential tariffs conceded by Great Britain and
her dominions to Canadian products. From automobiles to silverware, and
from bridge steel to fountain pens, many of our best known American
goods are not only used but made in Canada. Some of the branch plants
bear the same names as at home, but many adopt for Canadian use
designations that give no trace of their American origin. For example,
world-famous corporations that use “United States” or “American” as
part of their names, are the “Dominion” this or the “Imperial” that in
Canada. This policy caters to the growing movement among the people
to buy only goods “made in Canada.” The American branch-plant system
accounts in part for the resemblance of Toronto to American cities.
On every hand I see electric signs, window displays, and bill-boards
bearing the same appeals to buy the goods that are so extensively
advertised at home.
No one knows just how many American branch factories Canada has,
but their number is well over one thousand. There are more than two
hundred in Toronto alone, and as many more elsewhere in southern
Ontario. Montreal has many American branch plants and American owned
enterprises. Its largest hotel belongs to an American syndicate, and so
does my hotel in Toronto.
Americans control nine tenths of the automobile accessory business
of Canada, and in their branch plants they make three fifths of the
Dominion’s automobiles. Practically all of our well known firms devoted
to low and moderate priced cars have big factories in Canada, and they
do practically all their exporting to Australia, New Zealand, Great
Britain, and South Africa through their Canadian branch plants. This
export business amounts to more than twenty-five million dollars a
year, while the cars made here for the Canadian market represent a
value three times as great.
In other lines American capital is conspicuous. Half of the Canadian
rubber factories are owned by Americans, and nearly half of the meat
packing, paint, brass, condensed milk, car construction, and electrical
apparatus industries represent American money. American controlled
concerns do more than half of all the oil refining, while two hundred
and fifty million dollars of our money is invested in the pulp and
paper industry.
Altogether, it is estimated that American investments in government
loans, corporation bonds, land mortgages, and industrial enterprises
amount to two thousand five hundred million dollars. Our stake in
Canada has been increasing rapidly ever since 1914, and now it nearly
equals that of the British. Within a few years it will probably be much
greater. Nearly one sixth of all the money we have invested in foreign
countries is in Canada, and in return for the capital Canada is now
buying from us more than three fifths of her annual thousand million
dollar purchases abroad. In fact, her people are our best customers;
their purchases of us amount to eighty-three dollars per capita a year
as compared with five dollars for all Europe and fifty cents for China.