In the Power of the Government

"In the Power of the Government is a significant revisionist contribution to our understanding of business-government relations in Canada. Kuhlberg offers a clear and provocative argument that the Ontario government actually contributed to the troubles of the newsprint industry in Canada." -- Ken Cruikshank, Department of History, McMaster University

Mark Kuhlberg challenges the orthodox interpretation of the relationship between the corporations which ran the Ontario’s pulp and paper mills and the politicians at Queen’s Park in the early twentieth century.

For forty years, historians have argued that early twentieth-century provincial governments in Canada were easily manipulated by the industrialists who developed Canada’s natural resources, such as pulpwood, water power, and minerals. With In the Power of the Government, Mark Kuhlberg uses the case of the Ontario pulp and paper industry to challenge that interpretation of Canadian provincial politics.

Examining the relationship between the corporations which ran the province’s pulp and paper mills and the politicians at Queen’s Park, Kuhlberg concludes that the Ontario government frequently rebuffed the demands of the industrialists who wanted to tap Ontario’s spruce timber and hydro-electric potential. A sophisticated empirical challenge to the orthodox literature on this issue, In the Power of the Government will be essential reading for historians and political scientists interested in the history of Canadian industrial development.