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The Religious Factor in Canadian Economic Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

S. D. Clark
S. D. Clark
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Canada has suffered throughout her history by the comparison of her rate of progress with that of the United States. Almost every traveler to this continent during the past two or more centuries has found occasion to comment on the apparent difference in the degree of economic prosperity on the two sides of the border. Lord Durham was compelled to recognize this difference as one of the underlying causes of political disaffection in the country. Local observers joined in deploring the failure of Canada to keep pace economically with the United States. Haliburton, expressing his views through his fictitious Yankee clockmaker, was scathing in his denunciation of the lack of industry and business imagination among his fellow Nova Scotians. Canadians today, with a similarly critical insight into the economic state of their country, are but little less inclined to point out the unfavorable comparison it makes with the neighbor to the south. The belief persists that the really enterprising Canadian must cross the border if he is to realize his fullest ambitions.

Type
Religion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 7 , Supplement S1 , 1947 , pp. 89 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1947

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References

* This paper is an attempt to follow up some ideas which have grown out of my study, “Church and Sect in Canada,” to be published shortly by the University of Toronto Press. It is not easy to provide documentation for much of what is said here; the paper is intended to raise questions rather than answer them. Certain related ideas are developed in two other papers: “The Religious Sect in Canadian Politics,” American Journal of Sociology, November 1945; and “The Religious Sect in Canadian Economic Development,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, November 1946.