History of cities in Canada

[1] During the Wisconsin glaciation 50,000-17,000 years ago, falling sea levels allowed people to move across the Bering land bridge that joined Siberia to northwestern North America (Alaska).

They were few in number compared to the size of the North American continent and most lived a nomadic subsistence lifestyle, following the migration of animal herds that provided food.

For instance, the semi-nomadic peoples of the Maritimes, Quebec, and Northern Ontario, such as the Mi'kmaq, Cree, and Algonquin constructed temporary camps and villages with wigwams and long houses as the basic architecture of settlement.

Nomadic First Nations living on the Canadian Prairies developed tipis with thin wooden frames and an outer covering of animal hides for portability in erecting temporary camps, because the people often moved to a new location each day to follow the bison herds.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, created to realize the dream of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald for a transcontinental nation, was almost solely responsible for the emergence of the cities of western Canada during these years.

Most immigrants to Canada during these years spoke English and preferred to settle in large cities, including Montreal, where an English-speaking population already existed.

The downtown core began to lose its residential vocation and became a space increasingly devoted to commerce, industry and to a lesser extent, public life.

The huge CPR Angus Shops (1904) and Montreal Locomotive Works (1901) formed the heart of Canada's heavy industrial capability, building steam engines and rolling stock for the railways.

The British purchased 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) of land from the native peoples in 1787 and Governor John Graves Simcoe chose the site for the capital (which he named York) of the newly created Upper Canada.

Concerned with military transportation to protect the new colony from US attack, he built roads west to what is now Windsor, east towards Montreal, and north, the present day Yonge Street.

The first self-supporting steel-framed skyscraper in Canada was the Robert Simpson Department Store at the corner of Yonge and Queen with six floors and electric elevators, built in 1895.

[8] St. Catharines (1821), London (1826), Hamilton (1846), Oshawa (1850), Kitchener (1854) and Windsor (1854) founded in the mid-nineteenth century would eventually form the core of the most densely populated and heavily industrialized region of Canada.

For the most part, creations of the CPR, Winnipeg (1873), Calgary (1876), Regina (1882), Saskatoon (1883), Vancouver (1886) and Edmonton (1904) were strung like beads on a chain across Canada, linked by the new transcontinental railway.

The quality of Vancouver lumber quickly gained a worldwide reputation and was used to provide masts for the Royal Navy and in the construction of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in the Forbidden City, Beijing.

The presence of a large number of Chinese in Vancouver, located there as a result of immigration to work on the CPR, led to serious anti-Chinese rioting organized in part by the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1907.

In 1914, 376 prospective Punjabi immigrants arriving aboard the ship Komataga Maru were refused entry into Canada on a technicality, the enforcement of which was racially inspired.

Cultural institutions such at La Presse and Le Devoir newspapers and the beautiful Place des Arts (1963) performing arts theatre, symbolized the vigour of the French language in the city as did the development of a very vibrant popular music and theatre scene in the sixties and seventies with noted performers including Robert Charlebois, Louise Forestier, Diane Dufresne, Claude Dubois, Rene Claude and Denise Pelletier.

Industrial capacity gained further strength from the establishment in the fifties, by the Ford Motor Company of Canada of a production plant in Oakville, which would eventually become a suburb of Toronto.

Vancouver mayor L. D. Taylor practised an ¨open town¨ policy that sought to manage activities such as prostitution, bootlegging and gambling, by restricting them to racially oriented areas including Chinatown, Japantown, and Hogan's Alley.

Entrenched resistance to change, especially at the provincial level, that would see more taxing power transferred to the cities, has prevented effective action to remedy this problem.

Factors for the growth of Toronto over Montreal included strong immigration, increasingly by Asians and people of African descent, the increasing size of the auto industry in Southern Ontario, due to the signing of the Auto Pact with the US in 1965, a calmer political environment (Quebec experienced two referendums on separation during these years, one in 1980 and the other in 1995), and lower personal income taxes than in Quebec.

However, Toronto faces problems common to large North American cities, ranging from pollution, to urban sprawl, to the deterioration of infrastructure, racial tension and inequality, increasing levels of violent crime, heavy traffic congestion, poverty and lack of public housing.

However, this soon turned to disappointment, embarrassment and financial catastrophe as the new huge facility failed to attract traffic and became a sleepy industrial airport at the end of the century.

The Outlaws originally gained control of the illegal drug trade and prostitution but in the nineties a brutal turf war saw them replaced by the Hells Angels.

Immigrants from South-East Asia, particularly China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea, have congregated more in the City of Richmond and on the south side of Vancouver proper.

Tourism has increased noticeably because the city has become the starting point for major cruise ship lines operating trips north through the Inside Passage.

Extensive changes to the regional freeway system are underway, including most notably a new bridge over the Fraser River at Port Mann to replace a 1960s structure.

Although Vancouver is a profoundly wealthy city with some of the highest housing prices in North America and, indeed, the world, it is also home to significant poverty and social dislocation.

Demand for land in a city that is surrounded by mountains and water has increased pressure on the DTES and has generated conflict over the potential for displacement of long-term marginalized residents through 'gentrification.'

Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Thunder Bay, Greater Sudbury, and Halifax are major regional centres.