The Portrayal of Ontario as Imperialist and Insensitive Has Become a Common Feature in Studies of the Development of the Canadian West

In the mid-nineteenth century, the pioneer province of Upper Canada was being transformed “by technology, by the railway, by the telegraph and the stationary engine, by decimal currency and the Toronto Stock Exchange.” A vibrant and self-confident community, soon to be renamed Ontario, was reaching out to the north and west into regions about which it knew little and assumed much. Lack of knowledge is apt to produce over-generalizations and simplistic judgments, and the portrayal of Ontario as imperialist and insensitive has become a common feature in studies of the development of the Canadian west. But a sense of alienation can be all the more poignant among those who believe themselves forgotten by the province in which they live. Caught within the political framework of Ontario, the region north and west of Lake Superior was to feel the full weight of southern numbers and southern assumptions.

--Elizabeth Arthur, "Beyond Superior: Ontario's New-Found Land," in Patterns of the Past: Interpreting Ontario's History, ed. Roger Hall, William Westfall, and Laurel Sefton MacDowell (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1988), e-book.