City Life and Working Conditions

Let's start with a question

How many hours a week do you spend at school? About 30. Now imagine you are 13 in 1905, working 10 hours a day, six days a week, in a noisy factory, for a few dollars. No sick days. No safety goggles. No school.

For many young people in Canada's growing cities, that was real. This lesson explores city life and work, and how people fought to change them.

Cities grow

In 1901, 37% of Canadians lived in urban areas. By 1911, it was 45%. Today, it is about 80%.

Why did cities grow?

• Factories and railways created jobs.
• Immigrants arrived, and many stayed in cities.
• Farm machines meant fewer workers were needed on farms, so young people moved to town.
• Electric streetcars let cities spread out.

Montreal was Canada's biggest city. Toronto grew fast. Winnipeg boomed as the "Gateway to the West", and Vancouver grew as a port and railway city.

Two sides of the city

Wealthy families built large houses in neighbourhoods with trees, running water and electric light, often with servants.

Working families often lived in crowded tenements or small houses near factories, with:

• several people sharing a room, and outdoor toilets in some areas;
• unsafe water and poor sewers, which spread diseases like typhoid;
• smoke and noise from factories.

In 1897, Montreal businessman Herbert Ames published a study, The City Below the Hill, showing the poor conditions in working-class Montreal. In Toronto, St. John's Ward ("the Ward"), where Toronto's City Hall stands today, was home to newcomers including Jewish, Italian, Chinese and Black families. They built businesses, places of worship and community groups there, even though officials often saw the area only as a "slum".

Over time, cities improved public health: cleaner water, sewers, milk inspection and public health nurses.

Work in factories, mines and shops

• Long hours: often 10 hours a day or more, six days a week.
• Low pay: women were usually paid much less than men for similar work, and children less still.
• Danger: machines had few guards; mines and railways were deadly. An injured worker usually got no pay and might lose the job.
• No safety net: no unemployment insurance, no public health care, no pensions.

Child labour: many children worked in factories, mills, mines, shops and on city streets selling newspapers. Ontario had factory laws setting minimum ages, but they were often ignored, and many kinds of work were not covered at all. An earlier federal inquiry (in the late 1880s) had heard of children being beaten and fined at work. Reformers pushed for children to be in school instead. In 1891, J.J. Kelso helped found Toronto's Children's Aid Society to protect children.

Workers organize

Workers joined labour unions to bargain together.

• In 1894, Labour Day (the first Monday in September) became a national holiday, honouring workers.
• In 1900, Ottawa created a Department of Labour; William Lyon Mackenzie King was its first deputy minister.
• In 1907, hundreds of women telephone operators at Bell in Toronto went on strike after the company tried to lengthen their hours. A government inquiry later criticized their working conditions.
• The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1907 required some industries, like mines and railways, to go through an investigation before a strike or lockout could start.
• Coal miners on Vancouver Island went on a long, bitter strike from 1912 to 1914.
• In 1914, Ontario passed the Workmen's Compensation Act, so injured workers could get payments without suing their employer.

Unions faced obstacles: employers often fired union members, and many unions excluded women, Black, Asian and some immigrant workers. (Remember the whites-only railway union of 1908 from Black Canadians, 1890–1914.)