The urbanization of the French Canadian parish, which took root in rural Quebec, can best be understood by realizing what the parish was like at the time when it became the social unit of French Canada and then tracing it through the various phases which it has taken in response to its environment There are many different types of parishes—ranging from the inclusive primary group in remote rural surroundings to the highly urbanized parish in a city like Montreal. What was the nature of the early social life in French Canada, where the dominant form of social grouping was to be the parish? Much has been written of the early French seigneurs-- the noblemen who came to the wilderness that was Canada, and who established their large estates, or seigneuries. But it is significant that this so-called superior class contributed little to the actual colonization of Canada, and left no lasting institution.[...]

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The purpose of this thesis is to explore certain of the dynamics associated with the physical transformation of cities, using Montreal between 1846 and 1918 as a case study. Beyond the typical description or classification of urban forms, this study deals with the essential problem of how changes in form occurred as the city underwent a rapid growth and industrialization. Drawing insights from three different bodies of research---neoclassical theories of land rent, Marxian theories of capital accumulation, and space syntax theories of urban form---a theoretical and methodological approach is formulated which considers the city as a dynamic system, and acknowledges circulation as the driving force behind urban morphological change. It is argued that the built form of Montreal was continuously shaped and reshaped by the evolving strategies of a local "growth machine" which sought to reduce the turnover time of capital by "redimensioning" the urban "vascular system": that is, the streets, sidewalks, tracks, bridges, elevators, and canals, within which circulation takes place. This claim is interrogated and developed in each chapter through a series of empirical analyses utilizing evidence from several high-quality sources (e.g. atlases, municipal tax rolls, city surveyor reports, building inspector reports, photographs, and newspapers) to investigate the critical processes of building and rebuilding associated with phenomena such as destructive fires, the modernization of the port, street widenings, and the reconfiguration of the street grid. Each investigation explores the relationship between circulation and urban morphology. The series of investigations revealed certain regularities with respect to the spatial and temporal properties of morphological change. Consistent with expectations based on existing theories and research, the findings confirm the importance of centrality and accessibility to urban form, for the distribution of rents, and for patterns of land