Utopian books and literature in Canadian history [work in progress]
- Tom Monto
- Apr 24, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 2
[work in progress]
As mentioned in passing in the Montopedia "Intentional settlement" blog, books have been used to express aspirations towards gentler, better way of living, towards utopia.
Utopian books written by Canadians or those with connection to Canada
1850
Edward Gibbon Wakefield's utopian theorizing on systematic colonial settlement policy in the early-19th century also centred on economic considerations, but with a view to preserving class distinctions; Wakefield was for a short time an elected politician in Canada and also influenced several colonies founded in New Zealand and Australia in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.
Annie Dent Cridge Man's Rights and how to get them. Comprising Dreams. 1870
Annie Denton Cridge was author of this groundbreaking feminist utopian story.
It was published in Woodhull's and Claflin's Weekly, a magazine co-founded by Victoria Woodhull.
said to be the first, or at least one of the first, works of science fiction written by a woman.
see Montopedia blog on Annie, and husband Alfred, and son Alfred
see Wiki "Annie Denton Cridge"
Alfred Cridge (son of Annie Cridge and Alfred (Sr.) Cridge)
Utopia; Or, the History of an Extinct Planet, Psychometrically Explained (1884).
One of the earliest science fiction novels written in the U.S.
John Galbraith In the New Capital, or the City of Ottawa in 1999 (1896)
1999 has come and gone but unfortunately, Galbraith's vision did not come true --
He wrote that by 1999, in Ottawa -- and by extension in other Canadian cities --
unemployment and resulting poverty would be addressed by the benefits of technology being shared among workers as well as captured by capitalist and businessman.
Poverty would also be addressed by government assistance programs financed by new and imaginative forms of revenue for the government.
Increased value of land would be captured through the Henry George Single Tax.
Holding land idle hoping for speculation profits would be penalized by the Single Tax.
[While currently in Canada capital gains (mostly coming to the wealthy) are taxed at only half the rate of wages (mostly coming to the working poor).]
see Montopedia blog
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1913
E.A. Partridge ("Partridge of Sintaluta")
authored the Manifesto of the No-Party League of Western Canada
it is perhaps the first use of the phrase "Poverty in the Midst of Plenty", expressed as "Paradox of Poverty in the Midst of Plenty". (p. 2)
That phrase became a Social Credit meme in the 1930s.
on page 20 he quotes from Frank Parsons' Story of New Zealand (p. 534) the large extent to which the NZ government owns land, the means of production, banks, etc. and says the book should be available in each local
Partridge wrote that if Parson's book "were generally read by the wage workers, little traders and small farmers, would almost certainly cause these to unite their voting strength to elect those who would use the public credit, the common resources and the machinery of government to rescue the people from their present poverty and slavish dependence upon the will of those who possess the natural and artificial means of wealth production, distribution and exchange. Those who own these things — the ‘forests, the mines, the arable lands, the manufactories, the machines, the patents, the railways, the terminals, the warehouses, the docks, the steamships, the bank charters, and through these latter enjoy the control of the money supply and of credits, also own majorities in the legislatures.
But some day the people will come to recognize that the rich man only has one vote "till the poor man sells him more." (p. 16)
The Manifesto noted that Partridge has copies of Parsons' book for sale for the special price of $2.25. (This was crazy good price for the 800-page hardcover tome.)
Doubtless the Manifesto has utopian elements, same as Partridge's later work, War on Poverty.
(available online at https://archive.org/details/P003932)
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1925
War on Poverty by E.A. Partridge
mentioned "co-operative commonwealth", which he portrayed as a militaristic social commonwealth. (p. 373)
Partridge's idea was 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.
The term "co-operative commonwealth" was publicized in Laurence Gronlund's 1884 book Co-operative Commonwealth, An Exposition of Socialism.
He died in 1931 just one year before the CCF was founded.
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1933
some phrases in the CCF's Regina Manifesto are utopian in sentiment. So says The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan.
(Several of the aspirations mentioned there have still not been achieved,
most of all, its final sentence that says the CCF will not rest content "until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-operative Commonwealth.")
2020
Canadian theorist S.D. Chrostowska's 2020 novel ''The Eyelid'' evoked adulation from critics, one of whom said it belonged ''at the top of any list of utopian-dystopian fiction masterworks.'' (url=https://www.full-stop.net/2020/08/13/reviews/german-sierra/the-eyelid-s-d-chrostowska/|title = The Eyelid – S. D. Chrostowska).
Its unique blend of narrative and social critique stages a dialectical confrontation between dystopian and utopian currents in contemporary capitalist societies, Such dialectics are typical of the novel of ideas.
The Eyelid is a dystopia set in near-future Paris, the capital of the world state of Greater America, and tells the story of two travelers through other people's dreams on a quest to save humanity from total insomniac dreamlessness.
S.D. Chrostowska is professor at York University.
An earlier novel Permission received accolades as well.
see Wiki "S.D. Chrostowska".
2022
Heidi Sopinka, author of 1970s-era novel Utopia, shines a light on gender, agency and empowerment.
resident of Toronto. author of The Dictionary of Animal Languages...
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see also
Montopedia: "Intentional settlements..."
Wiki "List of utopian literature"
Wiki: "Utopian and Dystopian fiction"
see also online:
Lyman Tower Sargent "Themes in Utopian Fiction in English Before Wells"
He is also author of Utopianism, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2010).
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Intentional communities were established in Canada as early as the first part of the nineteenth century, and some are in operation in Canada at the present time. An Ontario Quaker sect, The Children of Peace, formed a utopian farm settlement at the community of Hope (now Sharon) in East Gwillimbury, York Region, which operated from 1812 to 1889. Other utopian communities were established at Maxwell near Sarnia, and in BC at Holberg (a Owenite settlement founded in 1829), Ruskin, and Sointula on Malcolm Island (a well-known historical Canadian utopian settlement).[40]
Other settlements were established on temperance, Henry George, Tolstoyan, Doukhobor, Orthodox Mennonite and Hutterite principles.[41][42][43]
Canadian utopias also made an appearance on the written page. In the 1897 novel In the New Capital by Edmontonian/Torontonian John Galbraith, the main character time-travels from 1897 to 1999 when a new Ottawa is operating under utopian socialist/single tax/temperance laws.[44][45] Prairie activist E.A. Partridge discussed the possibilities of a western Canadian utopian co-operative commonwealth called "Coalsamao" in his 1925 book A war on poverty: the one war that can end war.[46] One historian described the 1933 Regina Manifesto as at least partly a utopian document.("The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan | Details". Esask.uregina.ca. Retrieved June 16, 2026)
Teuvo Peltoniemi (1984). "Finnish Utopian Settlements in North America" (PDF). sosiomedia.fi. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-10-26.
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