The Origins and Early Development of Statute Labor in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, 1796-1861

ABSTRACT

This research note examines the early development of the statute labor system in Quebec. The focus is on the Eastern Townships region where—for cultural as well as geographic reasons—the road building and maintenance system was more community-based than in the rest of the province. That region welcomed the introduction of municipal governance and the property assessment system in the 1840s, but rural ratepayers remained determined to pay their road taxes with their own labor. As a result, despite the inefficiencies of the labor tax and the criticisms of road improvers, provincial legislation recognized it as a permissible option, thereby allowing it to survive until after the turn of the 20th century.

KEYWORDS:

• Labor tax
• road work
• corvée
• property assessment
• grand voyer

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The increasingly popular practice, however, was to have farmsteads on opposing sides of the front road face each other in what was known as the double-rang pattern. The result was to halve the length of road for which each farmer was responsible (Deffontaines 1971 [1965], 10–11).

2. A somewhat simplified version of the same by-law was passed the following year (see Stanstead Journal 1852).

3. The Stanstead by-law passed in 1851 had stated simply that overseers were to “order all persons liable thereto, to open and beat the roads a sufficient width, immediately after every fall and drift of snow shall obstruct the road” (Stanstead Journal 1851). On winter roads in the Eastern Townships, see J. Little (2024).

4. It would be the duty of the county superintendent to ensure that the local roads were made and maintained by the municipality in the manner required by law (Statutes of the Province of Canada 1854, c. 100, sect. 50–51). Caron is wrong in stating that statute labor had been abolished by this act (Caron 1933, 473).

5. Also, every male between the age of 18 and 60 who was not otherwise liable to statute labor would owe one day (Statutes of the Province of Canada 1854, c. 100, sect. 71).

6. As early as 1824, the government of Upper Canada had attempted to encourage payment of road taxes in money by reducing the statutory value of a day’s labor to 2s 6d (McNairn 2020, 22).

7. The 1855 Act specified the rate at four shillings per day (Statutes of the Province of Canada 1854, c. 100, sect. 71, sub-sect. 5). The Barnston by-law also stated that anyone owing two days’ labor was to bring a team of horses or oxen, for which he would be credited one day’s work. And anyone furnishing a plow would be allowed five shillings per ten-hour day, or half that amount for a scraper (Stanstead Journal 1856b).

8. The township municipalities in Megantic County as well as Drummond County’s l’Avenir, Durham, and South Durham, did so in 1888 (Province of Quebec Statutes 1888-89).

9. On the campaign to end statute labor in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, see J. Little (2024).

10. On the construction of the provincial roads in the Eastern Townships, see Caron (1933, 465–468).

11. On the French-Canadian resistance to school taxes in the 1840s, see Nelson (2000) and J. Little (1997, 212–218).

12. My translation. “des protestations se font entendre un peu partout contre cette menace de la part de la législature d’enlever aux cultivateurs le dernier lambeau de leur liberté.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

J. I. Little

J. I. Little is Professor Emeritus in the History Department of Simon Fraser University. Much of his research has been on 19^th-century rural Quebec history, with a particular focus on the Eastern Townships, but recent publications have also dealt with cultural, social, and political history on British Columbia’s west coast. His most recent book, Reading the Diaries of Henry Trent (McGill-Queen’s, 2021), focuses on both regions.