Canada and the Victorian Era

1
Canada and the Victorian Era

• Immigrants, First Nations and the Victorians

2
Queen Victoria
3
Immigrants, Rich and Poor
4
The Reign of Queen VictoriaImmigrants, Rich and
Poor

• Much like our society today Canada in the 1850s
  could be luxurious or burdensome. The upper
  class which possessed money, education, and
  social standing lived a splendid life.
• While thousands others worked long hours with
  little reward.There was no employment insurance,
  no universal health care, and no government
  assistance, as we know it today.
• Many new immigrants to Canada came from Ireland
  and Scotland. These desperately poor people
  worked as manual labourers, or soiled over the
  cheapest and hardest land they could get their
  hands on.

5
Native Peoples/First Nations
6
The Native Peoples

• Native peoples were pushed to the outskirts of
  society.
• They were forgotten and ignored unless the
  Europeans wanted to buy Indian lands to employ
  Indian labourers.
• The Indian way of life was changed due to this
  displacement. For example Algonquians, had
  traditionally relied on hunting and fishing for
  food. However, they had to turn to small-scale
  fruit and vegetable gardening and even started to
  shop at the local food stores due to the growth
  of immigrant settlements throughout the Eastern
  woodlands.

7
The Native Peoples(contd)

• Land claims and territorial disputes were common.
  
• The Ojibwa were embroiled in a land dispute as
  several mining companies got the go-ahead by the
  Canadian government to investigate mineral wealth
  in the Shield. Mining operations continued even
  though the government accepted the fact that the
  development was encroaching the Ojibwa territory.
  

8
The Native Peoples

• Many Native bands had to rent out their prime
  reserve land due to dire living conditions.
• Despite many measures to assimilate Native
  peoples into White society, Native cultures
  stayed alive by oral histories and traditions
  passed down by the elders.

9
Victorian Attitudes and Values

• Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, while
  still in her teens. Her tastes, values, and
  behaviours set the standards for many British
  subjects, including Canadians and Americans.
• The Victorians had what we call attitude, being
  sure of themselves and having few doubts about
  their values and beliefs. Victorian society was
  distinctly Christian and placed a great value on
  morality.
• The British Empire grew military and expanded the
  British Empire around the world. New discoveries
  in medicine, science, and technology were almost
  reported daily.

10
Religion

• Religion was very important to Victorians
  (someone who lived during the era of Queen
  Victoria, from 1837-1901). Most towns had at
  least one Anglican (mostly for British people),
  Presbyterian (mostly for Scottish people),
  Methodist, and Catholic (mostly for Irish people)
  church.
• The leaders of the church made decisions about
  education, schools, and community matters, and
  church congregations served as agencies that
  aided the destitute.

11
Victorian Attitudes and Values

• Most English Victorians viewed themselves as
  superior and claimed that to be born British was
  to win the lottery of life.
• Victorian values included a strict moral code and
  an obsession with social status. Middle-class
  Victorians were prudish and extremely
  materialisticthey liked nice things, and spent
  freely on clothes, homes, and furnishings.
• The church was the most important building
  because it was where most social activities took
  place.

12
Fashion and Décor
Clothing indicated social status and Victorian
values, so even labourers tended to dress
formally. Women wore long dresses and aprons
men wore hats and ties, even to sporting events.
Victorian houses were a sign of prestige, as
they were decorated with the fanciest
furnishings. Poorer sections of town were
emblematic by the size of the homes which was
most often small.
13
Fashion (Women)
14
Fashion (Men)
15
Victorian Homes/Architecture
16
(No Transcript)
17
Science and Medicine
18
Science and Medicine

•  Science and technology dominated and shaped the
  Western world after 1860, as discoveries came so
  fast that understanding them was often
  incomplete.
• Ideas and discoveries were transplanted across
  the globe through newspapers and journals that
  linked the continents.
• Exciting medical discoveries were regularly
  featured in the news, such as aspirin
  antibiotics x-rays vitamins and hormones were
  discovered in the latter half of the century.
  Vaccinations also became readily available to
  ordinary people during the Victorian era.

19
Science and Medicine

• People hoped that science would find cures for
  many serious diseases such as cholera, smallpox,
  typhoid fever, influenza, tuberculosis, and
  rheumatic and scarlet fevers which killed many
  children. Yet very little was known about
  disease and hygiene, until research on germs and
  antiseptics was furthered.

20
Science and Medicine
21
Science and Medicine (cont)

• Many surgeons ended up infecting their patients
  due to poor sanitary conditions. For example,
  few would wash their instruments or even their
  hands before an operation.
• In 1857, a French scientist, Louis Pasteur
  discovered the tiny organismsthe bacillithat
  cause many diseases. He also discovered the
  cause of anthrax (a deadly disease that kills
  animals and could infect humans, cholera, and
  rabies. He used carbolic acid as an antiseptic,
  and vaccinated people and animals against disease.

22
Leisure and Travel
23
Leisure and Travel

• Victorian Canadians liked to be entertained. The
  city festivities included parties, concerts,
  fairs, circuses, and shows.
• In the country barn raisings, quilting bees,
  weddings ceilidhs (parties with Scottish or Irish
  music, dancing and stories), and barn dances were
  quite popular.

24
Leisure and Travel

• Books and magazines were popular, often in serial
  format so that people could enjoy next weeks
  issue. Victorians also had a taste for many
  amusements that are still enjoyed by modern
  Canadiansbut some amusements today would be
  considered brutal or bizarre.

25
Leisure and Travel
26
Leisure and Travel

• For example, bare-knuckle boxing matches drew
  plenty of spectators, with bouts lasting as many
  as a hundred hours. Boxing remained a brutal
  sport until Britains Marquis of Queensbury
  issued his famous rules for boxing in the 1860s
  rules that are the basis for todays boxing
  etiquette.

27
Medicine Shows

• The Victorians loved medicine shows where cures
  for anything and everything were sold
• Many of these medicines were actually made with
  alcohol, pepper, or turpentine (a fluid obtained
  by distillation from resin obtained from trees,
  mainly various species of pine (Pinus) causing
  many to get intoxicated by the medicine.

28
Parlour Games
29
Parlour Games

• Card games, such as whist, were very popular, as
  were checkers and chess these games were often
  ways of socializing in ofter large gatherings .
• Those of Native, Black, French, and English
  ancestry had distinct cultural traditions and
  develped their own games. Some popular games
  were pulling the stump, pulling the leg, kissing
  his thumb.

30
Getting Around/Transportation
31
The Royal William, 1833
32
Getting Around

• People with money to spare travelled to Europe or
  America and enjoyed the entertainment within
  popular cities such as Paris, France.
• Transatlantic travel became much easier after the
  invention of the steamboat, which reduced the
  time for an ocean crossing to a few weeks. The
  Royal William, built in Quebec in 1833 corssed
  the Atlantic in seventeen days.

33
Changing Technology
34
Changing Technology

• Steam power improved the travel time both on land
  and sea. Railways and steamships also helped to
  build the infrastructure of Canada after 1830.
• Canadas first railway was the Champlain Saint
  Lawrence Railroad, which ran from La Prairie, a
  suburb of Montreal, to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelle,
  40 km southease of Montreal. It was completed by
  1836. The railway system in British North
  America linked towns and created transportation
  networks.

35
The Rise of Newspaper/Communication
36
The Rise of Newspapers

• Newspapers became important sources of daily
  information to people who lived in cities. The
  Halifax Gazette was the countrys first newspaper
  founded in 1752.
• By 1873 there were forty-seven dailies a daily
  was a newspaper published every day of the week.
  Newspapers of the Victorian era did not contain
  comics, profession sports (except horse racing
  and boxing), horoscopes and few non-news or
  special-interest features.

37
The Rise of Newspaper/Communication

• What made them so attractive to the readers?
• They offered news from the outside world and were
  instrumental in going into other peoples
  business. Court reports and the names, sentences
  and fines of offenders were usually published,
  and made for interesting reading.
• Also, helpful recipes, self-help articles, and
  fad science type articles, like phrenology (the
  science of personality study based on the bumps
  on a persons head), were quite popular.