No description available.

Egerton Ryerson is remembered today mainly as an educational reformer and religious leader. His work in connection with the public library movement in Ontario has received little attention. Yet Ryerson himself attached great importance to the provision of free libraries for the general public, as an extension and completion of the school system. His object was to ensure that all citizens, both young and old, would be able to enjoy the fruits of education. A study of the library system introduced by Ryerson is needed to shed light on a neglected aspect of his career. At the same time, it fills a gap by furnishing a connected account of public library history in Ontario from 1844 to 1876. For source material, the chief documentary items are found in various works edited by J.G. Hodgins. Ryerson's own Annual Reports provide an abundance of valuable information. A search of newspapers and periodicals of the period has revealed some pertinent articles, which have been particularly useful in gauging the reaction in Ryerson's contemporaries to his library scheme. The scheme was first formulated by Ryerson in his 1846 Report, two years after he became Superintendent of Education for Upper Canada. It was given government approval in 1850. School trustees and municipal councils were authorized to start libraries in their communities, and money could be raised for the purpose by an assessment on property. Many of the libraries were placed in school buildings, though they were intended to be used by the adult population of the surrounding district as well as by the students. Local initiative was emphasized. Once a library became established, a government grant was available for the purchase of books, on a matching basis with funds raised locally. All the books had to be selected from a list of authorized publications compiled and annotated by Ryerson, known as the General Catalogue. They were supplied at cost price from a central Depository in Toronto. Most of them came from British and American publishing firms. For about twenty years, the libraries grew and flourished. In I850 free public library service was unknown in Upper Canada. By 1870 there were over a thousand libraries circulating a quarter of a million volumes. The success of the scheme was partly due to the energetic backing Ryerson gave it. After his retirement in 1876, the libraries declined rapidly. Government support was withdrawn, and given instead to the libraries of the Mechanics' Institutes. Of all Ryerson's enterprises, this was one of the few that did not survive. Its collapse was due partly to dissatisfaction with the material available in the General Catalogue, and partly to public apathy. There was also strong opposition from Canadian publishers, who resented the Department of Education buying books in bulk from foreign sources. Even though the libraries disappeared, Ryerson's efforts had not been wasted. During his lifetime, the project filled an important need, and much praise was accorded to it at all levels of society. It was the first real attempt in Canada to extend free library service to the whole population. Though changed in direction during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the movement started by Ryerson continued to advance at a steady pace through the work of the Mechanics' Institutes. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-205). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2013

For 141 years, The Ryerson Press was both a cultural engine for and a reflection of Canadian society. Founded in 1829 as the Methodist Book Room, it was Canada’s first English-language book publisher and became the largest textbook publisher in Canada. Its contributions to Canadian literature, particularly under long-time editor Lorne Pierce, were considerable. In 1970, however, the press was sold to American branch plant McGraw-Hill, causing a cultural and nationalist crisis in the publishing community. The purpose of this thesis is to explanation many of the factors causing the United Church to sell the House. The purchase of an expensive and outdated printing press in 1962 has been blamed for the sale, as has the general state of Canadian publishing at the time. However, the whole story is much more complex and includes publication choices, personnel shifts, management failures, financial ruin, organizational politics, inflation, and the massive cultural shift of the late 1960s. Specifically, the thesis looks at the succession crisis that followed Lorne Pierce’s retirement, the Woods, Gordon Management Report, the New Curriculum, The United Church Observer, the practice of hiring ministers as managers, the formation of the Division of Communication, the proposed merger of the United Church of Canada with the Anglican Church of Canada, and falling church membership.

For 141 years, The Ryerson Press was both a cultural engine for and a reflection of Canadian society. Founded in 1829 as the Methodist Book Room, it was Canada’s first English-language book publisher and became the largest textbook publisher in Canada. Its contributions to Canadian literature, particularly under long-time editor Lorne Pierce, were considerable. In 1970, however, the press was sold to American branch plant McGraw-Hill, causing a cultural and nationalist crisis in the publishing community. The purpose of this thesis is to explanation many of the factors causing the United Church to sell the House. The purchase of an expensive and outdated printing press in 1962 has been blamed for the sale, as has the general state of Canadian publishing at the time. However, the whole story is much more complex and includes publication choices, personnel shifts, management failures, financial ruin, organizational politics, inflation, and the massive cultural shift of the late 1960s. Specifically, the thesis looks at the succession crisis that followed Lorne Pierce’s retirement, the Woods, Gordon Management Report, the New Curriculum, The United Church Observer, the practice of hiring ministers as managers, the formation of the Division of Communication, the proposed merger of the United Church of Canada with the Anglican Church of Canada, and falling church membership.

Ce mémoire s'intéresse à l'analyse de la pensée et des positions intellectuelles de l'historien Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson (1911-1998) sur la question nationale au Québec, et cela dès l'amorce de son engagement communiste au début des années 1930 jusqu'en 1991. L'étude de la pensée de Ryerson s'avère profitable pour explorer la façon dont ce dernier a appliqué le matérialisme historique et la perspective marxiste pour rendre compte et analyser le fait national au Québec ou dit autrement, la « question nationale ». De plus, l'itinéraire professionnel et intellectuel de Ryerson est un cas d'étude d'un grand intérêt pour cerner la manière dont un intellectuel de gauche répond à l'évolution et aux multiples transformations du nationalisme québécois tout au long du XXe siècle. Ryerson est né en 1911 à Toronto. C'est lors d'un séjour en France en 1931-1932 que Ryerson adhère au communisme. Il amorce décisivement son militantisme au sein du Parti communiste du Canada (PCC) en 1934 à Montréal. Tout au long d'un engagement de plus de trente-cinq ans dans ce Parti, Ryerson occupera des postes de direction et de responsabilité, étant dès la fin des années 1930 considéré comme l' « intellectuel du Parti » et ayant le statut de « révolutionnaire professionnel ». Il deviendra rapidement le spécialiste du Canada français et de la question nationale au Québec dans les rangs du Parti. Sur ces derniers sujets, ses analyses et ses réflexions contribuent grandement à définir et à orienter les positions et les politiques du PCC. Vers le milieu des années 1960, une transformation majeure de la pensée de Ryerson s'effectue. D'ailleurs, à partir de la fin de la décennie 1960, les positions de Ryerson sur la question nationale au Québec s'éloignent de celles du PCC. Les premiers signes de distanciation deviennent perceptibles. L'intervention armée des troupes du Pacte de Varsovie en Tchécoslovaquie en 1968 en vue de mâter le « Printemps de Prague » constitue le point de rupture définitif entre Ryerson et la direction du PCC. En 1971, Ryerson quitte officiellement le Parti. Après cette date et jusqu'en 1991, il occupe le poste de professeur au département d'histoire de l'UQAM où il poursuit ses analyses sur la question nationale au Québec et sur les rapports Canada/Québec. Il décède en 1998 à Montréal à l'âge de quatre-vingt-sept ans. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Stanley Bréhaut Ryerson, Parti communiste du Canada (PCC), Communisme, Marxisme, Question nationale, Nationalisme, Historien, Québec, Canada.

Recent historians who have written about the development of Methodist religious identity in Upper Canada have based their narratives primarily on readings of documents concerned with ecclesiastical polity and colonial politics. This study attempts to complicate these narratives by examining the way religious identity in the province was affected by the cultural production and distribution of books as denominational status objects in a wider North American market before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first chapter examines the rhetorical strategies the Methodist Book Concern developed to protect its domestic market in the United States from the products of competitors by equating patronage with denominational identity. The remaining chapters unfold the influence a protracted consumption of such cultural commodities had on the religious identity of Methodists living in Upper Canada. For more than a decade after the War of 1812, the Methodist Book Concern relied on a corps of Methodist preachers to distribute its commodities north of the border. This denominational infrastructure conferred the accidental but strategic advantage of concealing the extent of the Concern’s market and its rhetoric from the colony’s increasingly anti-American elite. The Concern’s access to its Upper Canadian market became compromised, however, when Egerton Ryerson initiated a debate over religious equality in the province’s emergent public sphere in the mid-1820s. This inadvertently drew attention to Methodist textual practices in the province that led to later efforts on the part of Upper Canadians to sever the Concern’s access to its market north of the border. When these attempts failed, Canadian Methodists found ways to decouple the material and cultural dimensions of the Concern’s products in order to continue patronizing the Concern without compromising recent gains achieved by strategically refashioning themselves as loyal Wesleyans within the colony’s conservative political environment. The result was the emergence of a stable and enduring transnational market for Methodist printed commodities that both blunted the cultural influence of British Wesleyans and prepared the ground for a later secularization of Methodist publishing into and beyond the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Recent historians who have written about the development of Methodist religious identity in Upper Canada have based their narratives primarily on readings of documents concerned with ecclesiastical polity and colonial politics. This study attempts to complicate these narratives by examining the way religious identity in the province was affected by the cultural production and distribution of books as denominational status objects in a wider North American market before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first chapter examines the rhetorical strategies the Methodist Book Concern developed to protect its domestic market in the United States from the products of competitors by equating patronage with denominational identity. The remaining chapters unfold the influence a protracted consumption of such cultural commodities had on the religious identity of Methodists living in Upper Canada. For more than a decade after the War of 1812, the Methodist Book Concern relied on a corps of Methodist preachers to distribute its commodities north of the border. This denominational infrastructure conferred the accidental but strategic advantage of concealing the extent of the Concern’s market and its rhetoric from the colony’s increasingly anti-American elite. The Concern’s access to its Upper Canadian market became compromised, however, when Egerton Ryerson initiated a debate over religious equality in the province’s emergent public sphere in the mid-1820s. This inadvertently drew attention to Methodist textual practices in the province that led to later efforts on the part of Upper Canadians to sever the Concern’s access to its market north of the border. When these attempts failed, Canadian Methodists found ways to decouple the material and cultural dimensions of the Concern’s products in order to continue patronizing the Concern without compromising recent gains achieved by strategically refashioning themselves as loyal Wesleyans within the colony’s conservative political environment. The result was the emergence of a stable and enduring transnational market for Methodist printed commodities that both blunted the cultural influence of British Wesleyans and prepared the ground for a later secularization of Methodist publishing into and beyond the middle decades of the nineteenth century.