262 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [vol. ix 



Movement of Population in Typical Municipalities. 



The best way of measuring the movement of rural population is to 

 take the distinctively rural municipalities, the townships, with their 

 populations at respective enumerations. It is, of course, essential that 

 our typical townships shall not have been changed by the creation of new 

 urban municipalities during the period under consideration. This is the 

 course which I propose to follow, and as a County of Peel "old boy" I 

 shall take my first examples of this decline from the county with which I 

 am best acquainted. 



The township of Chinguacousy, just outside the county town, 

 Brampton, has a generally excellent soil, is well watered, and close to the 

 Toronto market. It is well adapted to grain-growing and stock-raising, 

 and is a good example of the ordinary Ontario agricultural township. 

 This township had in 1861 a population of 6,897, which has since that 

 time been steadily declining. The figures for the five succeeding de- 

 cennial censuses, taken in order, are 6,129, 5.476, 4,794, 4,177, 3,913. 

 For every 100 people in the township in 1861, there were only 56 in 1911 

 — a loss of 44 per cent. In the same period of fifty years, the population 

 of the small adjoining township of Toronto Gore declined from 1830 to 

 1032— a loss of 43 per cent. 



Fruit-growing and market-gardening townships have of late had a 

 different story to tell. If we go back again to Peel County, we find that 

 the population of the lakeside township of Toronto, lying just south of 

 Chinguacousy, was in 1861, 6,592, and in 1901 only 5,208 — a loss of 21 

 per cent. During the past decade, however, the grovv^th of fruit farms 

 and market gardens has occasioned a substantial increase in the popu- 

 lation, which in 1911 stood at 6,208 — only 384 less than the maximum.. 

 The continued growth of the Toronto market for its products and the 

 growing practice of "commuting" will probably make the 1921 popu- 

 lation the greatest that has been. 



The same phenomenon which we have already noticed in the case 

 of Chinguacousy and Toronto townships is also perceptible in other 

 pairs of adjoining townships so situated that one is naturally a fruit- 

 growing, the other a grain-growing and stock-raising district. When 

 we consider the lakeside township of Saltfleet and the inland township 

 of Binbrook, in the County of Wentworth, we notice that Saltfleet's 

 population has increased from 2,740 to 4,458 between 1861 and 1911, 

 while that of Binbrook has decreasedfrom 2,100 to 1,254. I"^ other words, 

 Binbrook in 1861 had three-quarters of Saltfleet's population; in 191 1, 

 two-sevenths. Once more, considering North and South Grimsby, 

 the former a lakeside, fruit-growing township, the latter agricultural, we 

 find that in the last twenty years the population of the former has 



