During Canada’s massive population growth in the early twentieth century, the country experiences an agricultural boom, especially in the tobacco industry in Ontario, as a result of an influx of immigration.
Technology:
The above picture shows an Ontario Tobacco farm in 1910, before immigration began to expand the industry. Notice the use of hand tools and the need for manual labour, explaining why immigrants would soon be required to man the fields. With the almost primitive tools the farmers were forced to use in the beginning, and the obvious slow pace it provided, it’s easy to see how bringing in a greater labour force would benefit the farms; churning out more product, creating a larger profit, and allowing more advanced, alternative farming techniques to prevail.
The invention of the cigarette rolling machine went hand in hand with improved tobacco farming techniques in order to fulfill the growing demand. In 1888 the first machine was purchased in Ontario by Mortimer Davis’ family[9]. Cigarettes were not a popular commodity before the rolling machines, but a supply created demand. In 1896 cigarette consumption in Canada totalled 87, just over 20 years later 2.4 billion cigarettes were being sold per annum [9]. The result of innovations and inventions in tobacco production created more opportunity for immigrant workers on tobacco farms.
Consumerism:
As a result of the American Civil War, the prices of tobacco increased in the United States, prompting the expansion of the commercial production of tobacco in Canada, specifically the province of Ontario, in the early 1860s. In addition, the federal government imposed high tariffs on imported tobacco, further encouraging the domestic expansion of the industry. Although there are records of tobacco being farmed along parts of the St. Lawrence River prior to the Civil War, “the vast majority of tobacco was grown by farmers for their own use,”[1] due to a French colonial ordinance prohibiting the retail sale of tobacco [2]. “Home-grown and characterized by small-scale distribution methods, [French Canadian tobacco][3] remained untaxed by the Canadian government until well into the twentieth century, an anomaly in the western world.”
Initially only being consumed by French Canadian citizens, le tabac canadien already had a rich cultural heritage by the turn of the century, eventually adapting to the change in consumer groups to suit a broader range of tastes.
This change, brought along by urbanisation and immigration that led to the rise in population, was needed in order for the product to appeal to the new multinational Canadian society. Therefore, certain products needed to be modified to suit cross-cultural tastes.
In this context, French Canadian tobacco had to be changed into a more mild product a broader group of consumers, especially in the urban centres of Ontario, would accept.
In connection to this stand ideas of freedom to consume tobacco in connection to preconceived notions of gender roles and the traditional consumer group.
While “[the] liberal construction of smoking appears to be an Anglophone one, and while elements of the Francophone population subscribed to these notions”[4], rural French Canadian tobacco did not lose its appeal even after the shift from consumers leaving the traditional rural backgrounds due to the producer’s ability to adapt.
Industrialisation:
Beginning in the 1920s, tobacco farming in Ontario transformed sandy, low-grade agricultural land along the north coast of lake Erie into a dynamic agricultural zone that remains strong today [5]. Tobacco was one of the most valuable crops of the time, vastly exceeding in profits what the land cost; the only downside was that intensive manual labour was required to harvest the “back breaking leaf”[6].
Seeing the benefits tobacco farming had on the economy, the Department of Immigration and Colonization placed restrictions on immigrants who did not want to be farmers in the early twentieth century, allowing for a wave of eager immigrants, mostly Dutch, to flood into Ontario and the tobacco industry [7].
The result was a transformation of small dirt poor towns, like Aylmer Ontario, into powerful rural communities with strong economies; as well as the solidification of the tobacco industry throughout the twentieth century [8].
[1] “National Farmers Union Presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on the need for immediate action in support of Ontario tobacco farmers,” National Farmers Union, accessed January 26, 2017, http://www.nfu.ca/sites/www.nfu.ca/files/Action%20needed%20to%20support%20Ontario%20tobacco%20farmers.pdf. 4
[2]ibid
[3] Elliot, Rosemary, “Book Review: The freedom to smoke: tobacco consumption and identity,” Medical History, 51, 3 (Summer, 2007), 413-14.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Reid-Musson, E. 2014. “Historicizing precarity: A labour geography of ‘transient’ migrant workers in Ontario tobacco.” Geoforum 56, 161-171. ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost (accessed January 26, 2017).
[6] ibid
[7] ARMSTRONG, A; LEWIS, FD. International migration with capital constraints: interpreting migration from the Netherlands to Canada in the 1920s. : Migration internationale en présence de contraintes sur l’accès au capital : une interprétation de la migration des Pays-Bas vers le Canada dans les années 1920. Canadian Journal of Economics. 45, 2, 732-754, May 2012. ISSN: 00084085.
[8] Reid-Musson, E. 2014. “Historicizing precarity: A labour geography of ‘transient’ migrant workers in Ontario tobacco.” Geoforum 56, 161-171. ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost (accessed January 26, 2017).
[9]Cunningham R. Smoke and Mirrors: The Canadian Tobacco War. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre; 1996, p. 39 (accessed January 26, 2017).
