Rural Depopulation and Urban Overpopulation 59 



1901 1911 Increase PeT Cent 



increase 



Total population 



of Canada ....5,371,315 7,204,838 1,833,523 34.13 

 Total rural 



population 3,349,516 3,924,394 518,878 17.16 



Total urban 



population 2,021,799 3,280,444 1,258,645 62.25 



These figures were only emphasized by others giving yet more 

 details. Thus in Canada in 1901 there were sixty-two cities and 

 towns having a population each over 5,000, and only two with 

 a population over 100,000; while in 1911 there were in all 200 

 urban municipalities with populations over 2,500. The cen- 

 tralizing, however, of this population was marked by Mr. Keeler 

 since he found that of this enormous urban increase, over half 

 had been in eight cities alone, which had grown from 554,506 

 in 1901 to 1,194,275. Such figures were an ample explanation 

 to him of the continued boom in Toronto, as in these other towns, 

 and were eloquent in the information they gave, which explained 

 so many of his problems. His own city, indeed, had grown 

 from 208,040 to 376,538 or 81 per cent in ten years. But this 

 was but half the story, for coming back to his own problem Mr. 

 Keeler found that rural Ontario had lost absolutely 52,184 of her 

 population in ten years, or such had decreased from 1,246,969 to 

 1,194,785. What, indeed, he had previously discovered re- 

 garding his old home of Northumberland was now seen to be 

 simply a local symptom of a general disease. What, when 

 analyzed, made this all the more remarkable was that out of a 

 total of 1,639,654 immigrants who had entered Canada during 

 these ten years, of whom 619,955 had given their vocation as 

 farmers or farm laborers and of whom 120,000 gave their des- 

 tination as Ontario, all seemed to have gone to cities or if to 

 rural districts, to have displaced a native population, whose 

 natural increase since 1901 had wholly disappeared. With the 

 enormous yearly urban increase during the decade confronting 

 him, these figures seemed absurd and impossible, while the 

 industrial expansion of his own city alone confirmed the seeming 

 universal prosperity. Assuming, however, the truth of these 



