ABSTRACT
As in all large countries, Canadian economic development has not been identical in the various regions. The pattern of regional leadership has changed as the areas of early European settlement—the Atlantic provinces and Quebec—have fallen behind Ontario and the two far western provinces. To some extent, the declining relative economic importance of the eastern provinces has been a corollary of the westward movement of settlement since the late eighteenth century, but it also reflects the nature of economic activity in the different regions. Areas relying on staple exports have seen their economic fortunes fluctuate with the demand for their staples. The most stable regions are those in which manufacturing became firmly established, and the industrial areas have also been consistently among the most affluent parts of the nation. In order to explain the causes of regional inequality in post-industrial Canada, it is therefore necessary to analyze the determinants of industrial location. Finally, one aspect of the rapid urbanization of Canada since the mid-nineteenth century, the competition between Montreal and Toronto for metropolitan preeminence, is examined in the last section of this chapter.
