"Fire Insurance, an index to prosperity", by T.L. Morrisey

 

Upper and lower photographs are of T.L. Morrisey's office at 260 St. James Street;
Notman photograph, McCord Museum, 1894

This essay by T.L. Morrisey is taken from:

Canada's Future, What She Offers After the War

A Symposium of Official Opinions

Edited By E. A. Victor

Copyright Canada, 1916

Published by:

The MacMillan Co. of Canada, Ltd

Toronto, MacMillan and Co., Limited

Thomas Louis Morrisey, around 1917

By T. L. Morrisey

Author's biography: Thomas Louis Morrisey: born I860; president, All Canada
Fire Insurance Federation: past-president, Montreal Insurance Institute; past-president, Canadian Fire Underwriters Association. One of the leaders in the insurance world. He is the father of T.S. Morrisey and the Beaver Hall artist, Darrell Morrisey.

                                            -o-

It would, indeed, be difficult to find a truer index to the material growth of Canada than the steady increase in the volume of fire insurance reported to the Department of Finance at Ottawa.

Insurance on property presupposes property; therefore, the amount at risk held by the fire insurance companies operating within the territory may be taken as a reasonably safe guide in estimating the wealth of the community.

The Dominion of Canada came into being in the year 1867, and although the Fathers of Confederation overlooked specifically mentioning insurance as coming within the pur¬ view of the legislative powers of Parliament, nevertheless, the legislators of that day, sitting at Ottawa, appear to have had little doubt on the subject, since one of their earliest acts— Act 31, Vic., Cap. 48—related to insurance.

The first return to Parliament, under this Act, was presented at the second session of the first Parliament, covering the year 1868.

A perusal of this report now, in the light of later developments, proves very interesting reading.

The total amount of fire insurance in force on December 31st, 1868, was $203,653,894, a sum, no doubt, considered by our sturdy forebears not to be despised. Possibly when we picture to ourselves what Canada was then—four provinces not yet connected up; the conditions of life, simple, as com¬ pared with the complex social existence of to-day, the then chief sources of wealth being the four basic industries, agriculture, fishing, mining, and lumbering, the latter including the cognate industry, wooden shipbuilding—the great indus¬ trial development that has since taken place being still hidden m the womb of the future—we, too, can perceive why the modest figures of 1868, taken as an earnest of what was to come, amply justified the satisfaction of our forefathers.

The gradual expansion, and industrial development, of the country is reflected in the returns for succeeding years.

For the purpose of comparison, the amount at risk as at 31st December, 1868, and the corresponding figures for 1874, and at each quinquennium thereafter, are here given. These figures speak more eloquently than words:—

1868.$203,653,894

1874.$321,132,413

1879. $407,357,985

1884.$605,507,789

1889.$694,538,378

1894. $836,067,202

1904. $1,215,013,931

1909.$1,863,276,504

l914.$3,456,019,009

The population of Canada in 1868 was probably around 3,250,000 (census, 1871, 3,485,761). To-day it is, roughly, 8,000,000 (census, 1911, 7,206,643). Thus, while the popula¬tion has increased less than two and a half times, the fire insurance on property, as reported to the department at Ottawa, increased seventeen times.

It must be borne in mind that the figures quoted, being merely for the purpose of comparison, are, of necessity, limited to the amount carried by companies licensed by the Dominion Government, since no others are available for the earlier period. The control of insurance, unlike banking, has never been assumed solely by the Dominion. The provinces have also granted charters and licensed companies to carry on the business of insurance within their respective borders, and the volume of business so written by such companies, as com¬ piled from latest available reports (Ontario, 1913) reaches the very respectable total of $753,078,617.

This is not all. Under the Insurance Act of Canada, paradosical as it may seem, insurance with unlicensed com¬ panies—having no legal status in the country—is permitted; persons placing insurance with such companies are merely required to make a return of same to the superintendent of insurance.

The insurance placed with unlicensed companies, as re¬ ported for 1914, amounted to $219,743,335, which, while a sensible reduction from that reported for the preceding year, is still considerably in excess of the amount at risk of all companies in 1868.

Taking the amounts for the three classes of companies, we find:—

Dominion companies. $3,456,019,009

Provincial companies .  $753,078,617

Unlicensed companies.  $219,843,335

Grand total .  $4,428,840,961

Here we have a rough-and-ready method of arriving at the value of all our buildings, and movable property; dwellings and their contents; churches, schools, colleges; warehouses and stocks of merchandise; factories and machinery; farm buildings, implements, and live stock; grain and lumber; steamboats plying on inland waters; railway property, other than right-of-way; in short, property in every conceivable form liable to destruction by fire.

Having regard to the uninsured property, and property, though insured, under-insured, a fair estimate would be to place the insurance carried at 50 per cent, of the actual value, which would yield a sum of $8,857,681,922, or well over $1,000, for every man, woman, and child in the country.

The people of Canada are, likewise, forehanded; they have money in the bank, the amount standing to their credit in savings account as at 31st July, 1915, being no less than $683,761,432. They carry life insurance to the extent of $1,216,955,432, upon which they paid premiums (1914) of $41,129,724.

Our wealth does not stop here. We have thirty thousand miles of railway; highways and bridges; municipal improvements, such as pavements, water, sewerage, and lighting systems, all contributing to the comforts of modern life. Our interest in these may be only an equity, as the bondholders, and m the position of mortagagees, but the benefits accrue to us.

 Our wealth does not stop here. We have thirty thousand miles of railway; highways and bridges; municipal improvements, such as pavements, water, sewerage, and lighting systems, all contributing to the comforts of modern life. Our interest in these may be only an equity, as the bondholders stand in the position of mortagagees, but the benefits accrue to us.

 Then, to cap all, we have a very nice little parcel of real estate, its "metes and bounds" being as follows: on the north, the Arctic ; on the east, the Atlantic ; on the south, the 49th parallel of latitude ; and on the west, the Pacific, comprising, in all, three and three-quarter million square miles, more or less, some of which has sold as high as $128 per square foot.

 Upon this estate is to be found a great diversity of natural resources: coal in abundance, east and west; minerals, base and precious ; orchard and argicultural lands suitable for all kinds of farming and producing the finest wheat in the world; the largest forest reserves; fur-bearing animals; shores teeming with fish; rivers and lakes navigable to the heart of the continent ; rivers not navigable, but possessing value as water-power, or hydro-electric, estimated at 20,000,000 horsepower, of which not 10 per cent, has been developed.

 Climate is sometimes urged against us, but even this has its compensations; for, if it is cold in winter, may we not reckon amongst our most valued assets the longest hours of sunshine in summer? Old Sol, with an utter disregard of labour union maxims, does not hesitate to work overtime in the ripening of our crops.

 To the climate may we not also attribute, in no small degree, the most valued asset of all the strong, hardy, self-reliant, virile race engaged in the world task of building a nation on this northern half of the North American continent ?

The sons of Canada have proved their mettle upon every occasion that has arisen. The same spirit that prevailed in 1885, when the Rebellion in the North-West threatened their country, and again in 1899-1900, when they answered the call of Empire half way around the world to South Africa, is the spirit that asserted itself immediately the long-talked of German peril crystallized itself into German attack upon their national life. The response of Canada was quick, and befitting the proud position she occupies amongst the free and self-governing communities forming that glorious Empire which stands for everything that makes for the uplift of mankind.

In the never-to-be-forgotten April days of the eventful year, 1915, when the torture of suspense spread like a pall over the country to its remotest corner, to be followed by the thrill of pride and exultation, as the story of the glorious deeds of the Canadians at Ypres and St. Julien gradually unfolded, a nation was born! There, upon the classic battle-ground of Europe, that witnessed the military operations of the mighty Caesar and his legions, and, down through the centuries, the struggles of various peoples for mastery ! There, against the onslaughts of the greatest military organization the world has ever known, employing methods entirely novel in warfare, and, be it said to the everlasting disgrace of Germany, as despicable as novel, these new-found warriors of the twentieth century held fast, and, in the words of their illustrious commander-in-chief, "saved the situation".

 May it not well be asked, where is there another eight million people as highly favoured as this eight million, another community possessed of the same per capita wealth, potential as well as in being? Should we not justly be proud of our heritage our "place in the sun" and forever be prepared to defend it to our last dollar, and our last man ? 

The Influence of Art and Literature

Bernard Keble Sandwell 

By Bernard K, Sandwell, B.A.

Bernard Keble Sandwell was born in 1876; he was educated at the University of Toronto and earned a B.A. (first-class honours in classics) in 1897. He is the author of The Musical Red Book of Montreal (1907) and The Molson Family (1933), and other books. This essay was first published in Canada’s Future, what she offers after the war (1916).

 

    The economic and social life of the English-speaking people of Canada has much in common with that of the Americans. Their political institutions, up to the point where autonomy begins to be limited by the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament, have almost everything in common with those of Great Britain. Their ethnic character is much more purely English, Scottish, and Irish than that of the Americans, because they were subjected much later than the latter to the influences of the vast stream of continental European immigration, and the Canadian national mind is scarcely beginning to feel the various non-British impulses which have been a strong factor in American art and literature for a generation. Yet in their tastes, their ideas, their manner of living, they are governed much more largely by American tastes, manners, and ideas than by those of Great Britain ; much more largely than one would expect from their lack of racial and political community with the Americans. A nation of six millions (omitting for a moment the French-speaking portion of the population), has dwelt elbow to elbow, along a frontier of thousands of miles, with a nation of ninety millions, and speaking the same language, from the beginning of its history. In the industrial world it has achieved independence by a policy of carefully adjusted customs duties. In the intellectual world no customs duties have much effect. The proximity of the United States has influenced the art and literature of Canada, not so much by colouring the methods, as by limiting the output. Canadians have not been as conscious as they might have been of the need for self-expression, because they have been abundantly supplied with art and literature expressive of the neighbouring Republic. At the same time Canadians who had the gift of expression, were far too frequently attracted to the United States, where greater wealth and larger population ensured the artist a better reward. Even among the men of high ability who did not actually remove to the United States (or to England, which also exercised its attractive power upon some), the necessity of writing with a view to American or British publication, if they were to secure *a large public and a decent financial reward, prevented them from seeking to express purely Canadian concepts for a purely Canadian public, and required them to adapt their work largely to non-Canadian standards of taste. Meanwhile, the Canadian public, long habituated to seeing non 'Canadian' standards observed even by its own Canadian writers, to having them deal with American subjects or adopt an American point of view, has largely come to the conclusion that there is no national Canadian art and no need for one ; that Canadian literature is sufficiently upheld by a body of Canadian-born writers living in New York, or writing in Canada for New York periodicals ; and that the country is too young, or too poor, or too busy, to be able to maintain a body of writers and artists devoted to the business expressing Canada for Canadians.

Much of the most successful work of Canadian writers of the last fifty years is as little expressive of Canada of the true mind of the Canadian people as the work of the Irish dramatists of the Victorian era was expressive of the mind of Ireland. Some of the external aspects of Canadian life have been portrayed with skill ; the deeper issues have scarcely been touched. Matters upon which the heart of the English-speaking Canadian can be touched to a fire of impassioned feeling, a fire capable of attaining the white heat of tragedy, are not numerous, and do not change much from generation to generation. Even so, our writers pay small attention to them. From the earliest days, the intense conviction of the typical English-speaking Canadian (and here he was at one with his French-speaking brethren) was that his heritage of Canadian soil must be preserved from becoming a part of the great experiment in new governmental methods and new ideals to the south of him. This is the first of the great 'Canadian passions.

Up to 1812, time and again, he maintained that conviction by force of arms. Later, the conflict was transferred to other and more peaceful fields, and became a calm and finally a very friendly struggle ; but the conviction still stands, and the Canadian still maintains with dogged pertinacity and not infrequently with much self-sacrifice, his determination that his country shall develop upon its own lines and within its own limits. It can is curious, by the way, and significant of the concentration of attention upon political and economic matters, that the vast importance of a characteristic native art and literature to full national development has never been taken to heart, when so much energy has been spent upon safe-guarding the Canadianism of political institutions, transportation routes, industries, educational systems, and financial; powers.

When the danger of forcible Americanization had been finally disposed of by the War of 1812, there came for a time another struggle. Canadians began to perceive that too much Downing Street might be as fatal to the ideals which they were unconsciously forming for the new nation, as too much Washington; and there ensued that struggle for responsible government, and for a proper distribution of the powers of government among local and central bodies, which was finally ended by the British North America Act. The constitution provided by that Act has worked very satisfactorily indeed, until the present world-convulsion; but if the need for further readjustment should now be felt, there may be a renewal of (the clash of contending ideals which (however painful at the time) is so invaluable for the development of a rounded national consciousness.

To these two matters of passionate feeling among Canadians may be added a third, perhaps the deepest and most abiding of all. In the political life of the United 'States religious controversy has scarcely any part; in the political and social life of Canada it is all-pervasive. The United States was founded, and its constitution drawn up, by men who wereall of very similar religious attitude ; Canada consists of different races, with widely differing conceptions of the relationship of church and state, church and family, church and individual. The efforts of these different races and different conceptions to advance themselves, the attrition of such different nation-materials, their conflicts and compromises for the development of a united Canada, form the most promising material that any deep-probing novelist could demand for the exercise of his art ; but efforts to treat them seriously have been almost nil. As for drama, there exists no machinery for the presentation of Canadian plays to a Canadian public.

In the fine arts, national development has gone a good deal further in painting than in fiction and poetry, although the emigration to the United States and to Europe of good artists in both metiers has been deplorably large. Poetry is less of a business than novel- writing, requires less of a public for its support, and can be carried on by persons engaged for a livelihood in other more productive occupations, such as the Civil Service and various professions. In the case of Robert "W. Service, we seem to have evidence that in this decade a Canadian poet, writing primarily for a Canadian public, can even make a profitable living out of verse, providing he possesses a certain knack of capturing the popular ear. In painting, which is supported directly by the munificence of the wealthy classes, there has of late been an evident disposition on the part of patrons to encourage Canadian subjects and methods of treatment, and a corresponding development of self-reliance and self-respect among Canadian artists. The external influences at work upon Canadian painting are much more European than American. This may be accounted for by the fact that, in order to experience the influence of American art, a student must go to the United States, and those Canadians who have done so have, as a rule, remained there and enlisted in the American artistic army.         

We thus find that the artistic impulse in Canada has been overshadowed in varying degrees, according to the nature of the field, by the greater, more developed, and more self-conscious nation to the south. That Canadian art is, by degrees, emerging from the shadow, is equally evident. Forces are now commencing to work which must immensely hasten the task of emancipation. The war is affecting Canadian art and literature, for their great and abiding good, in at least two ways. It has diverted the attention of serious Canadians from the purely economic tasks and problems on which the nation has been concentrated for the last twenty-five years, and has stimulated interest in very much higher things matters of 'the mind and soul. On the other hand, it has given Canadians a vastly enhanced consciousness of the value and meaning of their nationhood, not in the realm of dollars and cents, and tons of steel, and bushels of wheat, but as a factor in the eternal world-wide struggle between right and wrong. Alone among the peoples of this hemisphere, Canada has borne her share, in sacrifice of blood and treasure, in the conflict which has racked the world. Alone among the peoples of this hemisphere, Canada has joined hands with the -great nations of the East and West in the fight for national liberties and the dethronement of autocracy and tyranny. A nation with this experience behind it will never again consent to accept its artistic ideals, wholesale and unmodified, from another nation however great and prosperous which has lifted no hand in the fight. Canada has new national experiences, understandings and aspirations, which will more than ever call for expression in a purely Canadian <art and literature. Canada has a place among the nations, a right to a seat in council, which all her wealth and prosperity of the last quarter century could never have given her, but which became hers on the day when her sons stemmed the German rush at Ypres and at St. Julien. If a finer culture and a prouder national consciousness are the first results of Canadian participation in the war, there need be no doubt that a stronger and purer national art and literature will follow closely after.

March 1st, 2009

My mother driving her car, 1965

It’s March 1^st today, my mother’s 93^rd birthday. I expect more people of my generation have parents living into their nineties; I suspect it was an exception until now. When my mother turned 80, I thought she was old; when she was 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, I thought she was really old. But 90, 91, 92, 93 seems beyond old, beyond age. Others born on March 1^st who have been important to me, in different ways, are the big band leader Glenn Miller whose music was a favourite of my father, and I both like the music and feel a closeness to my father when listening to this music, and the poet Robert Lowell. Both are Pisces, as my mother is a Pisces.

My great grandmother, Mary Callaghan, was also born on this day, on March 1^st,1845; she died in 1906, on April 27, my birthday. Mary Callaghan’s father also died on April 27, but in 1905. We are bound to our ancestors in many ways; one way is by synchronistic dates, by meaningful coincidence, by cosmic coincidence. Some dates seem fated and deprived, others are blessed and joyous; some dates have astrological importance and others, still, are historical. Some dates, births and deaths, repeat themselves over many generations of family members—to me, this coincidence of dates has always suggested a greater design to existence.

We are a lineage of generations, a line of people who played, variously, leading roles, or bit parts, in each others’ lives. We exchange roles with each other in our many incarnations—in this life you be the mother and I’ll be your son; you be the daughter and I’ll be your father; you be the grandson and I’ll be your grandmother. Our lives are an enactment of archetypal relationships, each demanding a compassionate awareness of life’s transience and finitude, if we are ever to be free of the turning wheel of endings and beginnings.

The lives we have lived, previous lives, like lives to come in the future, seem inestimable, and inexhaustible; indeed, they are a metaphor for the life we are presently living. This present incarnation, this latest dramatic depiction of existence, seems in itself like a series of incarnations, as we move from childhood to middle life to old age. In this life we experience archetypal roles and relationships—they give a grandeur to existence—in them we find a depth and meaningfulness to life’s journey, the movement from birth to death to birth to death, again and again. I know that we must eventually die to each life, including the events of this life, to complete the cycle, to be done with existence.

In this existence of ours, Fate plays as much a part as free will. I was a soldier in World War One wearing a green khaki uniform, and going over the lip of a muddy trench, bayonet drawn, willing to kill or be killed, for the greater glory, for poetry and God and King, for family and death. That was in 1916, the year Mother was born in Montreal’s St. Henry neighbourhood. A few years ago, when I was driving her one Saturday morning along Notre Dame Street to Central Station downtown, on her way to Toronto to spend Christmas or Easter with my brother and his family, we passed Irene Street and Mother suddenly announced, “I was born on that street!” She always had a mind for remembering the past.