Principles and Gerrymanders: Parliamentary Redistribution of Ridings in Ontario, 1840–1954 by George Emery (review)

Taking in a swathe of Canadian history from the territory that would become Ontario right through to the mid-twentieth-century province, George Emery examines how federal and provincial parliamentary ridings have been shaped and the vested interests that might have influenced the redrawing of their boundaries. Working with a basic understanding that a gerrymander 'is a redistribution of two or more ridings that unfairly benefits the government party' (p. 26), the resulting work seeks to test how redistribution of representation has functioned and when it has helped those in power. To answer such claims, Emery introduces the history of representation by population in the Canadian political sphere, combing over evidence to establish if the arguments underpinning redistribution or lack thereof might constitute 'intentional gerrymandering' or 'passive gerrymandering' (the latter meaning refraining from intervention for political gain).

At the heart of Emery's study are the political perceptions and judgements that shape Ontario's and Canada's politics over time. The use of guiding principles which are put forward as time-worn cross-party precedents, such as Sir John A. Macdonald's 1882 statement on 'equalising the population' (p. 79) of Ontario's ridings, are shown as convenient and shifting concepts. However, the presumptions of voter intention, which might animate such redistribution, are also shown to be uncertain, and equally liable to produce contradictory outcomes. Re-aligning ridings cannot mitigate against the wealth of reasons which motivate voters to buck their past affinities.

Population change and natural shifts in urban and rural settlement serve as a backdrop to another potent puzzle, how to represent growing cities such as Toronto. Toronto's population doubles over a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, and alongside increasing urban territory via annexation, provokes elegant arguments in favour of inaction. Emery cites George Cockburn, a Conservative member of the Federal parliament who suggested that Toronto was already represented in kind by the power of university, industry, and members of parliament for other ridings who still lived in Toronto and thus the city lay outside principles of representation by population (p. 117).

Emery's book is illustrated to great effect. Carefully chosen electoral maps and statistical data support the case studies explored. Political cartoons, some from the pen of John Wilson Bengough, neatly underscore the attitudes Emery traces at the turn of the century. However, one of the stand-out images in the book comes in the inclusion of John Hague's 1899 newspaper account of analysing and redrawing a political map of the province for his political masters. Hague describes how the process left him reflecting on an 'Ontario [… which] looked like some fabulous animal, covered with loose scales, blue and pink, which fluttered like so many tiny wings' (p. 91). Emery therefore highlights both the art and the artifice involved in perpetually designing new maps of the province.

Overall, the book serves as a detailed, granular evaluation of the specific boundary changes made in line with ever changing political priorities. Emery's study transcends the local nature of these case studies to provide a powerful survey of a period of shifting dynamics in federal-provincial relations.