INEQUALITY IN LANDED WEALTH IN 19TH-CENTURY ONTARIO - STRUCTURE AND ACCESS

We know very little about access to land in 19th-century Canada, despite the question's importance to interpretations of Ontario's past. A provincial sample of census manuscript data allows analysis of landholding patterns in Ontario in 1871. In cross-section there appears to be a deep class division. But age patterns reveal very considerable access to land. By age 50, over 85 per cent of adult farmers were owners. Many non-farmers owned or rented land. Among the few women heads of households, surprising numbers were owners. Similar patterns characterize the size inequality of landholding. In general, fluid processes of life-cycle land acquisition reproduced stable structures of inequality. The combination implies no true 'crisis' of the landed social formation as others have argued.