Northern Ontario in Historical Statistics, 1871–2021: Expansion, Growth, and Decline in a Hinterland-Colonial Region

Based on original historical tables, Northern Ontario in Historical Statistics, 1871–2021 offers an overview of major long-term population, social composition, employment, and urban concentration trends over 150 years in the region now called “Northern Ontario” (or “Nord de l’Ontario”). David Leadbeater and his collaborators compare Northern Ontario relative to Southern Ontario, as well as detail changes at the district and local levels. They also examine the employment population rate, unemployment, economic dependency, and income distribution, particularly over recent decades of decline since the 1970s. Although deeply experienced by Indigenous peoples, the settler-colonial structure of Northern Ontario’s development plays little explicit analytical role in official government discussions and policy. Northern Ontario in Historical Statistics, 1871–2021, therefore, aims to provide context for the long-standing hinterland colonial question: How do ownership, control, and use of the land and its resources benefit the people who live there? Leadbeater and his collaborators pay special attention to foundational conditions in Northern Ontario’s hinterland-colonial development including Indigenous relative to settler populations, treaty and reserve areas, and provincially controlled “unorganized territories.” Colonial biases in Canadian censuses are discussed critically as a contribution towards decolonizing changes in official statistics.

Table of Contents:
Maps, Tables, and Appendix Maps Tables Appendix Tables 1. Introduction 2. The colonial North of Ontario and official statistics 3. General population increase and decline since 1871 4. Source populations and social composition in the settlement and evolution of Northern Ontario 5. The evolution of population and employment across districts in Northern Ontario 6. Urban concentration of population and employment conditions 7. Issues of disparity, distribution, and economic dependency in Northern Ontario 8. Conclusion Appendix: Supplemental Tables Table Notes and Data Sources Table 1: Treaty and Reserve areas in Northern Ontario, 2019 Table 2: Population, land, and census divisions of Ontario, Northern and Southern, census dates, 1871-2016 Table 4: Indigenous populations in Northern Ontario as enumerated by Census of Canada, census dates, 1871, 1881, 1901-1971, 2016 Table 8: Birthplaces of the population in Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario, decennial census dates, 1871-2011 Table 11: Population by marital status and sex in Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario, decennial census dates, 1871-2011 Table 12: Population by national origin in Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario, decennial census dates, 1871-2011 Table 13: Estimates of official languages spoken in Northern Ontario and Ontario, decennial census dates, 1871-1931 Table 14: Official languages spoken in Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario, decennial census dates, 1931-2011 Table 19: Employment by sex in Northern Ontario districts, census dates, 1951-2011 Table 21: Unemployment and unemployed rates by sex in Northern Ontario and districts, census dates, 1951-2016 Table 22: Full-time and part-time employment by sex in Northern Ontario and Ontario, census dates, 1981-2016 Table 24: Northern Ontario city populations and changes, census dates, 1971-2016