History of Farming in Ontario — Key Ideas to Explore

A Province Measured in Miles and Rock

James’s opening paragraphs establish a distinctive voice: precise, enumerative, and grounded in physical geography. He gives distances (750 miles from south to north, 1000 miles east to west) and area (220,000 square miles, later expanded by 100,000). He notes that the occupied land lies south of a line through Montreal, Ottawa, and Sault Ste Marie. The language is that of a surveyor or a geologist, not a romantic. The Archæan rocks are described as forming a backbone that turns streams toward Hudson Bay or the St Lawrence, and from these old rocks, James writes, may be traced the origin of the rich soil. This causal chain—rock to soil to agriculture—is the book’s structural logic. He does not simply describe; he explains by tracing origins. The reader is asked to see farming as a consequence of ancient geology and recent settlement.

The Commissioner’s Reports as Evidence

James relies heavily on official documents, especially the reports of the commissioner of Agriculture. He quotes directly from the first report after Confederation (1867), noting that mowers and reapers had increased in older districts and found their way into new ones, largely because of the difficulty of getting labour at any price. This is not a nostalgic detail; it is evidence of a structural shift. James observes that the labour shortage complained of in his own day had been a live issue for over forty years. He also cites the second report (1869) to show early efforts at agricultural education, including a suggestion that the agricultural department and veterinary college might instruct normal school teachers. The following year, Dr. Ryerson had prepared a textbook on agriculture. James presents these facts without embellishment, letting the reports speak to the slow, bureaucratic growth of institutions.

Institutions Born from a Dual Department

A striking feature of James’s narrative is the intertwined origin of the School of Practical Science and the Agricultural College. Both emerged in 1870 from the same department—Public Works and Agriculture—under Commissioner John Carling. James notes that the commissioner held another portfolio, a detail that underscores the secondary status of agriculture in government. The two institutions were, in his words, twin institutions, the outcome of the correlation of city and country industries. James traces their lineage to visits to American colleges in Massachusetts and Michigan, and to the work of the Agriculture and Arts Association. He does not claim these institutions were unique or revolutionary; he simply records their formation as part of a broader pattern of institutional growth. The reader sees how policy, education, and practical farming were linked through administrative decisions.

The Shape of a Short History

At just over 14,000 words, James’s history is compact, yet it covers a vast period from pre-Confederation to 1888. The text is divided into two main sections: the first dealing with the land and the people, the second with the growth of scientific farming after 1867. The prose is dense with dates, names, and figures. James does not pause for reflection or moral commentary. His method is to present evidence—geological, statistical, and documentary—and let it accumulate. The effect is a history that feels authoritative but also limited: it is a record of institutions and policies, not of daily life or individual farmers. The reader is left with a clear sense of how Ontario’s agricultural infrastructure was built, but not of the soil’s feel or the farmer’s voice. This is a history from above, written by a commissioner and former deputy minister.

James’s history is best read as a primary document of early twentieth-century institutional thinking. Its value lies not in narrative sweep but in the precise details it preserves: the acreage figures, the names of commissioners, the text of old reports. Readers interested in the material conditions of Ontario agriculture will find a wealth of data, but those seeking the farmer’s perspective will need to look elsewhere. Approach this text as a record of how the province’s agricultural system was conceived and administered, and you will find it a remarkably clear window onto that world.

I kept thinking about how C. C. James maps Ontario’s soil and seasons without pretending farming was gentle—just honest ground. It stayed with me, that quiet patience. Then I stumbled on The First Book of Farming — Context and Discussion, and it felt like a neighbor picking up the same thread, slower, kinder, still unromantic. Sometimes a book lingers not because it’s loud, but because it simply understands the weight of a place.