Editing Upper Canada (section)

==Trade, monetary policy, and financial institutions==

===Corporations===
{{main|Corporations (Upper Canada)}}
There were two types of corporate actors at work in the Upper Canadian economy: the legislatively [[chartered companies]] and the unregulated [[Joint-stock company|joint-stock companies]]. The joint stock company was popular in building public works, since it should be for general public benefit, as the benefit would otherwise be sacrificed to legislated monopolies with exclusive privileges, or lie dormant. An example of the legislated monopoly is found in the [[Bank of Upper Canada]]. However, the benefit of the joint-stock shareholders, as the risk takers, was whole and entire; and the general public benefitted only indirectly. As late as 1849, even the moderate reform politician [[Robert Baldwin]] was to complain that "unless a stop were made to it, there would be nothing but corporations from one end of the country to the other." Radical reformers, like [[William Lyon Mackenzie]], who opposed all "legislated monopolies," saw joint stock associations as the only protection against "the whole property of the country... being tied up as an irredeemable appendage to incorporated institutions, and put beyond the reach of individual possession."<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2009|page=21}}</ref> As a result, most of the joint-stock companies formed in this period were created by [[The Reform Movement (Upper Canada)|political reformers]] who objected to the legislated monopolies granted to members of the [[Family Compact]].

===Currency and banking===

====Currency====
{{see also|Coinage of Upper Canada}}

The government of Upper Canada never issued a provincial currency. A variety of coins, mainly of French, Spanish, English and American origin circulated. The government used the Halifax standard, where one pound Halifax equalled four Spanish dollars. One [[pound sterling]] equalled £1 2s 2¾d (until 1820), and £1 2s 6½d Halifax pounds after 1820.

Paper currency was issued primarily by the Bank of Upper Canada, although with the diversification of the banking system, each bank would issue its own distinctive notes.<ref>{{harvp|McCalla|1993|pp=245247}}</ref>

====Bank of Upper Canada====
{{main|Bank of Upper Canada}}
[[File:Bank of Upper Canada.JPG|thumbnail|left|The Bank of Upper Canada, Toronto]]
The Bank of Upper Canada was "captured" from Kingston merchants by the York elite at the instigation of [[John Strachan]] in 1821, with the assistance of [[William Allan (banker)|William Allan]], a Toronto merchant and Executive Councillor. York was too small to warrant such an institution as indicated by the inability of its promoters to raise even the minimal 10% of the £200,000 authorized capital required for start-up. It succeeded where the Bank of Kingston had failed only because it had the political influence to have this minimum reduced by half, and because the provincial government subscribed for two thousand of its eight thousand shares. The administration appointed four of the bank's fifteen directors that, as with the [[Clergy Corporation]], made for a tight bond between the nominally private company and the state. Forty-four men served as bank directors during the 1830s; eleven of them were executive councillors, fifteen of them were legislative councillors, and thirteen were magistrates in Toronto. More importantly, all 11 men who had ever sat on the Executive Council also sat on the board of the Bank at one time or another. 10 of these men also sat on the Legislative Council. The overlapping membership on the boards of the Bank of Upper Canada and on the Executive and Legislative Councils served to integrate the economic and political activities of church, state, and the "financial sector." These overlapping memberships reinforced the oligarchic nature of power in the colony and allowed the administration to operate without any effective elective check. The Bank of Upper Canada was a political sore point for the [[The Reform Movement (Upper Canada)|Reformers]] throughout the 1830s.<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2010|pages=22–26}}</ref>

====Bank wars: the Scottish joint-stock banks====
{{main|Bank of the People}}
The difference between the chartered banks and the joint-stock banks lay almost entirely on the issue of liability and its implications for the issuance of bank notes. The joint-stock banks lacked limited liability, hence every partner in the bank was responsible for the bank's debts to the full extent of their personal property. The formation of new joint-stock banks blossomed in 1835 in the aftermath of a parliamentary report by Dr [[Charles Duncombe (Upper Canada Rebellion)|Charles Duncombe]], which established their legality here. Duncombe's report drew in large part on an increasingly dominant banking orthodoxy in the United Kingdom which challenged the English system of chartered banks. Duncombe's Select Committee on Currency offered a template for the creation of joint-stock banks based on several successful British banks. Within weeks two Devonshire businessmen, Capt. George Truscott and John Cleveland Green, established the "Farmer's Bank" in Toronto. The only other successful bank established under this law was "[[Bank of the People|The Bank of the People]]" which was set up by Toronto's Reformers. The Bank of the People provided the loan that allowed [[William Lyon Mackenzie]] to establish the newspaper The Constitution in 1836 in the lead up to the Rebellion of 1837. Mackenzie wrote at the time: "Archdeacon Strachan's bank (the old one)&nbsp;... serve the double purpose of keeping the merchants in chains of debt and bonds to the bank manager, and the Farmer's acres under the harrow of the storekeeper. You will be shewn how to break this degraded yoke of mortgages, ejectments, judgments and bonds. Money bound you – money shall loose you".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Schrauwers|first=Albert|title='Money bound you – money shall loose you': Micro-credit, Social Capital and the Meaning of Money in Upper Canada|journal=Comparative Studies in Society and History|year=2011|volume=52|issue=2|pages=314–343|doi=10.1017/s0010417511000077|s2cid=154484234}}</ref> During the financial panic of 1836, the Family Compact sought to protect its interests in the nearly bankrupt Bank of Upper Canada by making joint-stock banks illegal.<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2009|pages=151–174}}</ref>

===Trade===
{{main|Metropolitan thesis}}

After the Napoleonic Wars, as industrial production in Britain took off, English manufacturers began dumping cheap goods in Montreal; this allowed an increasing number of shopkeepers in York to obtain their goods competitively from Montreal wholesalers. It was during this period that the three largest pre-war merchants who imported directly from Britain retired from business as a result; Quetton St. George in 1815, [[Alexander Wood (merchant)|Alexander Wood]] in 1821, and [[William Allan (banker)|William Allan]] in 1822. Toronto and Kingston then underwent a boom in the number of increasingly specialized shops and wholesalers.<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2009|page=107}}</ref> The Toronto wholesale firm of [[Isaac Buchanan]] and Company were one of the largest of the new wholesalers. Isaac Buchanan was a Scots merchant in Toronto, in partnership with his brother Peter, who remained in Glasgow to manage the British end of the firm. They established their business in Toronto in 1835, having bought out Isaac's previous partners, William Guild and Co., who had established themselves in Toronto in 1832. As a wholesale firm, the Buchanan's had invested more than £10,000 in their business.<ref>{{harvp|McCalla|1979|p=28}}</ref>

Another of those new wholesale businesses was the [[Farmers' Storehouse Company]]. The Farmers Storehouse Company was formed in the Home District and is probably Canada's first [[Farmers' cooperatives|Farmers' Cooperative]]. The Storehouse expedited the sale of farmer's wheat to Montreal, and provided them with cheaper consumer goods.<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2009|pages=102–106}}</ref>

====Wheat and grains====
{{main|Agriculture in Upper Canada|Corn Laws}}
Upper Canada was in the unenviable position of having few exports with which to pay for all its imported manufactured needs. For the vast majority of those who settled in rural areas, debt could be paid off only through the sale of wheat and flour; yet, throughout much of the 1820s, the price of wheat went through periodic cycles of boom and bust depending upon the British markets that ultimately provided the credit upon which the farmer lived.
In the decade 1830–39, exports of wheat averaged less than £1 per person a year (less than £6 per household), and in the 1820s just half that.<ref>{{harvp|McCalla|1993|p=75}}</ref>

Given the small amounts of saleable wheat and flour, and the rarity of cash, some have questioned how market oriented these early farmers were. Instead of depending on the market to meet their needs, many of these farmers depended on networks of shared resources and cooperative marketing. For example, rather than hire labour, they met their labour needs through "work bees." such farmers are said to be 'subsistence oriented' and not to respond to market cues; rather, they engage in a [[moral economy]] seeking 'subsistence insurance' and a '[[just price]]'. [[The Children of Peace]] in the village of Hope (now [[Sharon, Ontario|Sharon]]) are a well documented example. They were the most prosperous agricultural community in [[Canada West]] by 1851.<ref>{{harvp|Schrauwers|2009|pages=41–50}}</ref>

====Timber====
{{main|Ottawa River timber trade}}

The Ottawa River timber trade resulted from Napoleon's 1806 [[Continental Blockade]] in Europe. The United Kingdom required a new source of timber for its navy and shipbuilding. Later the UK's application of gradually increasing preferential tariffs increased Canadian imports. The trade in squared timber lasted until the 1850s. The transportation of raw timber by means of [[Timber rafting|floating]] down the Ottawa River was proved possible in 1806 by [[Philemon Wright]].<ref>{{harvp|Woods|1980|p=89}}</ref> Squared timber would be assembled into [[timber rafting|large rafts]] which held living quarters for men on their six-week journey to [[Quebec City]], which had large exporting facilities and easy access to the Atlantic Ocean.

The timber trade was Upper and [[Lower Canada]]'s major industry in terms of employment and value of the product.<ref>{{harvp|Greening|1961|pp=111}}</ref> The largest supplier of square red and white pine to the British market was the [[Ottawa River]]<ref>{{harvp|Greening|1961|p=111}}</ref> and the [[Ottawa Valley]]. They had "rich [[red pine|red]] and [[eastern white pine|white pine]] forests."<ref>{{harvp|Bond|1984|p=43}}</ref> [[Bytown]] (later called [[Ottawa]]), was a major lumber and sawmill centre of Canada.<ref>{{harv|Mika|1982|p=121}}</ref>