“At Breakfast We Heard Whistles Blowing”: Nationalist Sentiment in St. Catharines 1899-1902

Abstract

Scholarship on Canadian nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides a clear but broad examination of predominant types of nationalist thought in Canada at the outbreak of the Boer War (1899-1902). Nationalism was often influenced by regional considerations, religion, ethnic background, education, and gender. However, existing scholarship neglects the ways that nationalist thought manifested in and shaped everyday life of citizens and communities. This thesis explores the intensity and nature of nationalist sentiment in St. Catharines during a brief window in time—1899 to 1902—as seen through the lens of the local media and contemporary sources such as diaries, veterans’ association records, publications, and civic reports. This material reveals that nationalist sentiment, as articulated on a micro level, was nuanced in its promotion of the city as a small but significant node in a broader imperial nation. In St. Catharines, imperial nationalism manifested in ways that privileged an Anglo, white, Protestant, middle- to upper-class audience who enthusiastically participated in the perpetuation of an imperial view of Canada’s role in the world.