Intentional communities in Canada:
Community Farm of the Brethren, Ontario
Hutterite Christian Communities, existing in Australia, Canada, and the United States, but founded in Frenchman Butte, Saskatchewan
New Oasis for Life Commune (new home in BC, at Escott Bay Resort, situated by Anahim Lake.) "In April, 2009, Lifechanyuan created an intentional community – the Second Home – in China, which is now called the New Oasis for Life....In November 2016, we were forced to disband because of the pressure from government; in September 2017, the community was rebuilt in Canada."
Orthodox Mennonites, existing throughout Canada and the United States but founded in Ontario
(from Wiki: "Intentional communities")
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Utopian colonies in Canada
there is no one Wiki article on this, but these Wiki articles touch on separate Canadian utopian colonies back in history:
Brights Grove, Ontario 1829-[short-lived]
(a neighbourhood of Sarnia, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada.
Brights Grove is located on the shore of Lake Huron.)
Brights Grove was the site of Canada's first commune.[2] In 1829, Brights Grove was established along the model of Robert Owen's New Lanark, Scotland project by Henry Jones (1776–1852). The colony was named 'Maxwell' and was a short-lived project. However, it has been argued by Canadian socialist historian Ian McKay that "[t]he builders of the short-lived colony named Maxwell that Jones planted near Sarnia may well have been the first people in North America to call themselves 'socialists'."
The Children of Peace [Ontario] (1812–1889)
The Children of Peace (1812–1889) was an Upper Canadian Quaker sect under the leadership of David Willson, known also as 'Davidites', who separated during the War of 1812 from the Yonge Street Monthly Meeting in what is now Newmarket, Ontario, and moved to the Willsons' farm. Their last service was held in the Sharon Temple in 1889.
Between 1825 and 1832, a series of buildings was constructed on the farm, the most notable of which is the Sharon Temple, an architectural symbol of their vision of a society based on the values of peace, equality and social justice, which is now part of an open-air museum that was in 1990 designated as National Historic Site of Canada.
They were a "plain folk", former Quakers with no musical tradition, who went on to create the first silver band in Canada and build the first organ in Ontario.[1] They built an ornate temple to raise money for the poor, and built the province's first shelter for the homeless.[2] By 1851, Sharon Temple was the most prosperous agricultural settlement in the province. They took a lead role in the organization of the province's first co-operative, the Farmers' Storehouse, and opened the province's first credit union.[3] Through their support of William Lyon Mackenzie, and by ensuring the elections of both "fathers of responsible government", Robert Baldwin and Louis LaFontaine, they played a critical role in the development of democracy in Canada
Holberg, British Columbia 1907-1914?
said to be named after Ludvig Holberg, Baron of Holberg (3 December 1684 – 28 January 1754) -- a writer, essayist, philosopher, historian and playwright born in Bergen, Norway. Author of the
Niels Klim's Underground Travels, originally published in Latin as Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741),
-- a satirical science-fiction/fantasy novel written by the Norwegian-Danish author Ludvig Holberg. His only novel,
It describes a utopian society from an outsider's point of view, and often pokes fun at diverse cultural and social topics such as morality, science, sexual equality, religion, governments and philosophy.
[both Utopian and Hollow Earth - it is said to be the "first science fiction novels to use the Hollow Earth concept"]
The book is significant in the history of science fiction, being one of the first science-fiction novels in history along with Lucian's (125–180 AD) A True Story, Johannes Kepler's Somnium (The Dream, 1634), Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1656), Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), and Voltaire's Micromégas (1752). Along with a number of those stories, an excerpt was included in the anthology The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to Wells.
(from Wiki "Niels Klim's Underground Travels")
"There is a town named after Holberg on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded by Danish immigrants in 1907"
perhaps it was founded in 1909, not 1907
perhaps it was formerly known as West Arm.
(search in Peel's PP website found no mention of Holberg, BC in prairie newspapers from 1907 to 1914)
[a medievalists' examination of old utopian visions can be found at:
Ruskin, BC 1895-1898
Ruskin is a rural, naturally-treed community, about 55 km east of Vancouver on the north shore of the Fraser River. It was named around 1900 after the English art critic, essayist, and social thinker John Ruskin.
Ruskin is one of the historical communities of the municipality of Maple Ridge.
Ruskin Mills: The Canadian Co-operative Society 1895-1898
Members of the Canadian Co-operative Society, formed in Mission, BC, in 1895, gave the name Ruskin Mills to a sawmill and to the settlement they established at the mouth of the Stave River in present-day Ruskin.
Although nothing in the constitution and bylaws of the Society alludes to the formation of an utopian Ruskin socialist colony, some leading members sympathized with and discussed Ruskin's social ideas.
At first the Canadian Co-operative Society was a success. In 1897 the co-operative counted 54 members, most living close to the mill. There they had built homes, barns and a boarding house. Aside from the sawmill and logging operation, the members set up a general store, a smithy (blacksmith), a shoemaker's shop, a dairy and a vegetable farm.
Not less than thirty students—mostly the members' children—attended the school in Ruskin in the spring of 1897.
The year 1898 was the last year of the co-operative in Ruskin. Using a traditional method, logs had been pulled by horses or oxen to Stave River and then floated down to the mill, in 1898 due to a rainless summer, the Stave River dried up and logs could not be moved to the mill.
Lacking money and facing potential bankruptcy, the Society surrendered its assets to E.H. Heaps & Co. who had supplied the machinery for the mill on credit.
Most members moved away. Only a few members stayed and worked at the mill for a year or so.
Heaps & Co.
Heaps & Co. turned the small Ruskin mill into a progressive operation. They expanded and upgradedthe mill, and steam and railway logging replaced the previous methods, horse or oxen transport. Heaps built a logging rail line that grew northwest until it reached Dewdney Trunk Road and then was built a short distance along the east side of Kanaka Creek.
Across the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) rail track, on the shore of the Fraser River, was the Heaps office building, the nerve centre of the operation. As well it accommodated the general store and post office, and living quarters for senior staff and their families.[5]
The Heaps mill at Ruskin burned down in the winter of 1904/1905 and was rebuilt, only to burn down again in 1910.
Plans to rebuild the mill failed when the company could not raise further funds. There were plans and promises for a new and even larger mill, but the building boom in Vancouver crashed in 1913. Heaps's Ruskin logging and lumber operation went into receivership.
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Sointula, Malcolm Island, BC Finnish
The name Sointula means "Place of Harmony" (literally 'the place of chord') in the Finnish language. A group of Finnish settlers founded the village in 1901 after rowing north from Nanaimo. They planned to set up a utopian socialist society known as the Kalevan Kansa, based on cooperative principles.[2] and wrote to visionary Matti Kurikka in Finland to lead the new community. They were looking for a way out of the mines operated by the Dunsmuir family on Vancouver Island.
It was a physically hard life, and a devastating fire in the Sointula community hall in 1903 killed three adults and eight children[3] almost bringing the fledgling community to its knees. Kalervo Oberg, a Finnish-Canadian anthropologist born in 1901, came with his family to Sointula in 1902, and they were caught in the fire of 1903. Two of his sisters died in the fire.
Financial difficulties continued to plague the group. They worked for two years on the unprofitable Capilano Bridge project, and after that the Kalevan Kansa was disbanded as a utopian colony in 1905,[5][6]
But many of the community members remained on the island. Their descendants live there now.
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Harmony Island ("the imperfect realization of utopianism in the radical Finnish social experiment at Sointula (Harmony) on Malcolm Island") described by George Woodcock in BC A Centennial History. p. 206-213
Sointula (Kalevan Kansan Colonization Association)
founders invited Mati Kurikka to come from Australia, he had founded a utopian colony in Queensland
Kurrika held unusual views of marriage and free love
bad fire in 1903,
Kurikka left in 1903
disastrous bridge-building contract put them farther in hole
Kurikka accused of mismanagement of colony's funds
left-wing of society were dissident to Kurikka's leadership
(from Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914")
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Rasporich has essay in the Prairie West Historic Readings edited by R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer on "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914", reprinted from Settlement in Western Canada edited by Howard Palmer
"... group settlement ideology combined with a moral projection of a new order was a continuing theme in western Canada"
Robert Stead's novel Dennison Grant featured a carefully-planned co-operative agricultural venture (joint-stock business) that substituted group settlement in villages for the rectangular survey. a joint -stock corporation is not same as co-op. For one thing in joint-stock corporation a person has as many votes as stocks they own, while in co-op according to Rochdale principles "one person, one vote" rule revails.
E.A. Partridge's War on Poverty mentioned "co-operative commonwealth " (a militaristic social commonwealth) (p. 373) described by Carl Berger in Visions 2020 (1970) (editor Stephen Carlson)
see also W.A. Mackintosh's Agricultural Co-operation in Western Canada (1924), p. 18-21)
Outline look at Canadian utopian settlements
as described or at least mentioned in Rasporich, "Utopian Ideals and Community Settlements in Western Canada 1880-1914"
BC
fruitlands of BC encouraged pastoral experiments
Wallachin between kamloops and Lytton in 1910 (p. 362)
BC temperance
Bella Coolla Norwegians
Quatsino Narrows Norwegians (p. 367)
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Prairies
Qu'Appelle Valley, SK:
Scottish crofter colony at Benbecula
East London's Colony at Moosomin
ethnic colonies such as Esterhazy, New Sweden and Thingvalla.
New Finland and Thingvalla(Icelandic) were temperance and co-operative settlements.
aristocratic society at Canningon Manor, south of Moosomin
"Harmony Industrial Association" (Hamona)
democratic social experiment at Harmony, near Tantallon, "Harmony Industrial Association" (Hamona) 1895- closed up in 1900 after only two years of full operation
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Parry Sound colonists a colony at Ft. Sask.
Temperance colony
Temperance colony at Saskatoon 1883- (p. 365-
see Bruce Peel Saskatoon Story)
Barr Colony (Lloydminster)
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Religious settlements
Mormon settlements in southern Alberta
Doukhobor settlements in eastern Saskatchewan, at Swan River
Dreamers at Medicine Hat in 1907-08 (p. 370)
But mostly kept out by immigration officials.
(see Howard Palmer, "Responses to Foreign Immigration, Nativism and Ethnic Toleration 1880-1920" UofA thesis (1971).
see C.A. Dawson Group Settlement - Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (1936)
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Alberta
French settlement at Whitewood, near Moose Mountain, Assiniboia in 1885
St. Ann Ranch Trading Company and Jeanne d'Arc Ranch
A resident of Whitewood moved on to establish a French ranching company at Trochu, Alberta. He was Comte Paul de Beaudrap
(p. 363)
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democratic socialist experiment attempted at Sylvan Lake, 1906.
Dr. Tanche (p. 265)
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Utopian colonies in the U.S.
Wiki "Utopian colonies in the U.S."
too numerous to name here
not listed there:
Fairhope Single Tax colony at Mobile Bay, Alabama supported by Joe Fels, of Fels-Naptha Soap company [no dates given, pre-WWI]
"The land was held on Single Tax principles, and as far as it was possible for a small community embraced by a larger one not governed by these principles, it was hoped that it might furnish an object lesson." (GGG, May 25, 1910, p. 23)
Joe Fels went on to buy 1300 acres in UK for a labour colony for the unemployed, at Hollesley Bay.
He also purchased 600 acres at Maylands, Essex, of which a large part is "devoted to French gardening and intensive cultivation by small holders."
[Grain Growers Guide article has much discourse on philosophy of utopian communities, human frailty and governmental rigidity.]
(GGG, May 25, 1910, p. 23)
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not exactly utopia but co-ops fit the theme
see GGG July 29, 1914, p. 24
Consumer co-ops; co-operative buying
Marion Francis Beynon, well-known Canadian proto-feminist writer, spoke of need for group buying
"Wolf Willow" in a letter to the editor supported that position (GGG, Sept. 3, 1913)
Co-op factories
USA
Gentilly prospered due to local co-op-owned cheese factory. 8 miles E of Crookston, Minnesota. factory established in 1896 due to efforts of Father Elie Theillon (GGG, June 23, 1915, p. 8)
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France had large factory and residential complex meant to become a worker-co-op.
"Jean-Baptiste André Godin (26 January 1817 – 15 January 1888) was a French industrialist, writer, political theorist and social innovator. Owner of a factory producing cast-iron stoves and influenced by Charles Fourier, he founded an industrial and residential community within Guise (city (commune) in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France).
The industrial and residential community was called Familistère de Guise (Social Palace).
He ultimately converted it to co-operative ownership and management by workers.
...
In 1880 Godin created the association documents for the Familistère, converting it as he had long intended into a co-operative society, eventually to be owned by the workers. It was called l'Association coopérative du Capital et du Travail.
When he died in 1888, it was expected that his widow would carry on leadership of the institution.[5]
The workers and residents did eventually come to own the buildings and the foundry. The foundry operated as a co-op or joint-stock company for decades."
(from Wikipedia: Jean-Baptiste André Godin)
Laurence Gronlund discussed the factory's equalitarian aspects in 1888/1889:
Laurence Gronlund, "Godin's 'Social Palace'", Arena 1888/1889. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858039622398&seq=731 accessed December 11, 2024
Laurence Gronlund was the author of the book Co-operative Commonwealth, An Exposition of Socialism (1884), which expressed the theory behind the name of Canada's CCF political party.
The CCF aimed to alleviate the suffering that workers and farmers, the ill and the old endured under capitalism, seen most starkly during the Great Depression, through the creation of a Co-operative Commonwealth, which would entail economic co-operation, public ownership of the economy, and political reform.
The object of the political party as reported at its founding meeting in Calgary in 1932 was "the federation [joining together] of organizations whose purpose is the establishment in Canada of a co-operative commonwealth, in which the basic principle of regulating production, distribution and exchange will be the supplying of human needs instead of the making of profit." (Calgary Herald, Aug. 1, 1932)
The goal of the CCF was defined as a "community freed from the domination of irresponsible financial and economic power in which all social means of production and distribution, including land, are socially owned and controlled either by voluntarily organized groups of producers and consumers or – in the case of major public services and utilities and such productive and distributive enterprises as can be conducted most efficiently when owned in common – by public corporations responsible to the people's elected representatives" (Laurence Gronlund, Co-operative Commonwealth, An Exposition of Socialism (1884), p. 36 as quoted in Monto, Tom, Protest and Progress, Three Labour Radicals in Early Edmonton, Crang Publishing/Alhambra Books, p. 156)
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