A Sense of Their Duty: Middle-Class Formation in Victorian Ontario Towns - Hardcover

Andrew C. Holman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773518991 ISBN 13: 9780773518995

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Industrial change, the expansion of government at all levels, and population growth all contributed to profound alterations in Ontario's social structure between the 1850s and the 1890s. The changing environment created new opportunities, new wealth, and new authority. In urbanizing Ontario, an identifiable and self-identified middle class emerged between the idle rich and the perennial working class. Using the towns of Galt and Goderich as case studies, Andrew Holman shows how middle-class identities were formed at work. He shows how businessmen, professionals, and white-collar workers developed a new sense of authority that extended beyond the workplace. As local electors, members of voluntary associations and reform societies, and breadwinners, middle-class men set standards of proper and expected behavior for themselves and others, standards for respectable behavior that continued to enjoy currency and relevance throughout the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew C. Holman teaches in the Department of History and in the Canadian Studies Program at Bridgewater State College, in Massachusetts.

Review

"An outstanding work and a path-breaking treatment of a long neglected aspect of small town community life ... the writing is superb, the historiographical contextualization first class, and the research exhaustive." Gerald Tulchinsky, Department of History, Queen's University.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0773518991
• ISBN 13: 9780773518995
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 258