I recently found my notes from Catharine Wilson’s talk to the 1891 Census Series, long ago on 24 July, 2007, and was reminded what an excellent precis it was to her upcoming book on tenancy in Upper Canada. Given the audience, she focussed on the challenges of finding tenants in the 1842 Census of what later became Ontario. Her larger project reexamines that aspect of the liberal ideal that considered Upper Canada’s free holding society the preferred system. Tenancy was associated with feudalism, insecurity, transiency, and even immorality. Yet (without giving too much away before the publication) Prof. Wilson discovered that thousands of Upper Canadian farmers rented and that tenancy was far more common than most historians recognize.

The book reminds us that tenancy was only considered acceptable in the early stages of a farmer’s ascent of the ‘agricultural ladder.’ Most tenants were the young and newly arrived and used tenancy as a starting up strategy. However, older tenants also used it as a way of ‘winding down.’ The renters usually lived closer to towns, but they were also drawn to the clergy reserve land in the back township. Prof. Wilson used a variety of records to link tenants in one township through generations and found that a third eventually became land owners, another third – usually younger tenants – left the township, and the final third remained tenants for life. These ‘lifers’ had the option of selling or renewing their 21 year leases, or transferring them to their children.

The tenant’s voice was particularly elusive and required a fastidious study of census evidence and municipal records – a process which she gave us a glimpse of at the talk. The book will be out shortly and will challenge how we have thought of renting.