Paradise: Class, Commuters, and Ethnicity in Rural Ontario (Heritage) - Softcover

Barrett, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802072321 ISBN 13: 9780802072320

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 1994

Synopsis

What was life like in the 1950s in small communities in Ontario? Lower-class and upper-class residents might have different memories of those days, but on one thing they would agree: it is a much different world in rural Ontario today. The old guard has lost most of its power, displaced partly by ‘big brother’ in the form of bureaucracy, and new comers from the city in search of affordable housing—even if it means commuting daily to work. Unlike their British-origin predecessors, the newcomers who have begun to appear in the countryside represent a wide range of ethnic and economic backgrounds.

Paradise concentrates on the transformed class system of one community in rural Ontario. In a comparison of the decade following the First World War and the 1980s, Stanley R. Barrett analyses the changing face and structure of a town as it has had to adapt to modern social and economic realities. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of the commuter in search of affordable housing and the influx of immigrants of varied ethnic backgrounds, and the interaction between these newcomers and long-term residents. What is striking is just how massive the changes in small-town Ontario have been since the Second World War—to the extent of almost obliterating long-assumed distinctions between rural and urban society.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley R. Barrett is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph.

From the Back Cover

'Popular misconceptions are knocked down and scattered like so many bowling pins.'

From the Inside Flap

'Popular misconceptions are knocked down and scattered like so many bowling pins.'

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802072321
• ISBN 13: 9780802072320
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330