No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2024
This article contributes to scholarship on business history and gender in twentieth-century energy transitions. It examines Canadian electric power utility marketing plans and materials, newspaper and magazine accounts, and oral history interview records. Utilities initially sought to sell power as capital and labor rationality, mirroring industrial ideals of producing more with fewer resources. As those labor savings were realized, they increasingly sold power as a means to perform new organizational and emotional jobs of creating a more intimate, happier, and child-centered family life. In doing so, they redefined social life, from family-as-labor unit to family-as-leisure unit, while also redefining leisure-as-labor for women. Women in utility marketing materials, as observed in subsequent time-use studies, eventually saw fewer hours of housework and family care, although offset by increasing leisure jobs. Mobilizing social groups to advance an electrification agenda, utilities sold this new labor as an extension of energy service work in homes, public spaces, and leisure facilities.
I am thankful for the helpful comments, questions, and suggestions for changes on drafts of the manuscript from colleagues at the University of New Brunswick, anonymous reviewers, and Walter Friedman, David Shorten, and Lila Stromer from Business History Review. Ms. Alex Dandridge assisted in preparing the tables and copy editing the paper. I benefited from comments and questions on this research from presentation of drafts of this paper at the 3rd International Conference on Energy Research and Social Science 2022 (Science Talks); the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management; the Atlantic Schools of Business Conference 2023; and the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association’s Biennial Conference 2023. I am appreciative of the assistance from staff at Libraries and Archives Canada; provincial archives in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec, Saskatchewan; and civic archives in Edmonton, Ottawa, and Toronto; and the Hydro-Québec Archives.
1 Thomas Parker Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, 1993). Exceptions include historiography that studies the roles of users, such as David Nye and national governments. David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge, MA, 1999). On the latter topic, Matthew Evenden examined the World War II expansion of Canadian federal government control over development of large hydroelectric systems. Matthew Evenden, Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-Electricity During Canada’s Second World War (Toronto, 2015).
2 Leonard DeGraaf, “Corporate Liberalism and Electric Power System Planning in the 1920s,” Business History Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 1–31.
3 Nelles noted in his introduction to the second edition that women are not evident in its pages. Henry Vivian Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines, and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849–1941 (Montreal, 2005), xix.
4 Alexander Netherton, “The Political Economy of Canadian Hydro-Electricity: Between Old ‘Provincial Hydros’ and Neoliberal Regional Energy Regimes,” Canadian Political Science Review 1, no. 1 (2007): 107–124; Clinton O. White, Power for a Province: A History of Saskatchewan Power (Regina, Saskatchewan, 1976).
5 Christopher S. Beach, “Electrification and Underdevelopment in New Brunswick: The Grand Falls Project, 1896–1930,” Acadiensis 23, no. 1 (1993): 60–85; Peter J. Wylie, “When Markets Fail: Electrification and Maritime Industrial Decline in the 1920s,” Acadiensis 17, no. 1 (1987): 74–96; R. A. Young, “Planning for Power: The New Brunswick Electric Power Commission in the 1950s,” Acadiensis 12, no. 1 (1982): 73–99; James L. Kenny and Andrew Secord, “Public Power for Industry: A Re-Examination of the New Brunswick Case, 1940–1960,” Acadiensis 30, no. 2 (2001): 84-–108; Andrew G. Secord, “NB Power 1967–72: Constructing the Export Dream,” Journal of New Brunswick Studies/Revue d’études sur le Nouveau-Brunswick 10 (2018): 3–20.
6 James L. Kenny and Andrew G. Secord, “Engineering Modernity: Hydroelectric Development in New Brunswick, 1945–1970,” Acadiensis 39, no. 1 (2010): 3–26.
7 John H. Dales, Hydroelectricity and Industrial Development: Québec 1898–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1957); Neil, B. Freeman, The Politics of Power: Ontario Hydro and Its Government, 1906–1995 (Toronto, 1996); Keith R. Fleming, Power at Cost: Ontario Hydro and Rural Electrification, 1911–1958 (Montreal, 1991).
8 Patricia E. Roy, “Direct Management from Abroad: The Formative Years of the British Columbia Electric Railway,” Business History Review 47, no. 2 (Summer 1973): 239–259.
9 Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York, 1983). See also Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “The “Industrial Revolution” in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century,” Technology and Culture 17, No. 1 (1976): 1–23; Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth Wells Sandwell, “Introduction,” in In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy, ed. Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth Wells Sandwell (Montreal, 2021), 3–15.
10 Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913–1963 (Chapel Hill, 1993), 170.
11 Ruth Wells Sandwell, “Changing the Plot: Including Women in Energy History (and Explaining Why They Were Missing),” in In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy, ed. Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth Wells Sandwell, 16-45.
12 Vanessa Taylor, “Anthropocene Women: Energy, Agency, and the Home in Twentieth-Century Britain,” in In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy, ed. Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth Wells Sandwell, 174–191.
13 Ruth Wells Sandwell, “An Introduction to Canada’s Energy History,” in Powering Up Canada: The History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600, Vol. 6, ed. Ruth Wells Sandwell (Montreal, 2016), 3–36, 14.
14 Nelles, Politics of Development.
15 Harold L. Platt, The Electric City: Energy and the Growth of the Chicago Area, 1880–1930 (Chicago, 1991).
16 Sandwell, “Changing the Plot,” 16–45.
17 Stevi Jackson, “Towards a Historical Sociology of Housework: A Materialist Feminist Analysis,” Women’s Studies International Forum 15, no. 2 (1992): 153–172.
18 Martina Hessler, “Educating Men How to Develop Technology: The Role of Professional Housewives on the Diffusion of Electrical Domestic Appliances in the Interwar-Period in Germany,” Icon (2001): 95–105.
19 Stephanie Smith-Divita, Electrical Men: The Electrical League of Cleveland, 1909–1949 and Selling Power (Cleveland, 2000).
20 Graeme Gooday, “Rethinking the Agency of Women in Energy Management: Early British Debates on Electrification,” in RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, ed. Abigail Harrison Moore and Ruth Wells Sandwell (Munich, 2020): 17–22.
21 Dorotea Gucciardo, “The Powered Generation: Canadians, Electricity, and Everyday Life,” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Western Ontario, 2011), 140.
22 Jane Whittle, “A Critique of Approaches to ‘Domestic Work’: Women, Work and the Pre-Industrial Economy,” Past & Present 243, no. 1 (2019): 35–70, 70. Sandwell seconded the idea in “Changing the Plot.”
23 Christine Zmroczek, “Dirty Linen: Women, Class, and Washing Machines, 1920s–1960s,” Women’s Studies International Forum 15, no. 2 (1992): 173–185, 182.
24 Ruth Wells Sandwell, “Reflections, Questions, And Tentative Conclusions,” in Powering Up Canada: The History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600, Vol. 6, ed. Ruth Wells Sandwell (Montreal, 2016), 353–356.
25 Whittle, “A Critique of Approaches.”
26 Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, “Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, no. 3 (2007): 969–1006. Other Canadian data confirms this figure for men (decreasing from 39.5 hours in 1981), but with a lower figure for women, from about 35.5 hours in 1981 to just over 31 hours in 1992. See Jiri Zuzanek, Theo Beckers, and Pascale Peters, “The ‘Harried Leisure Class’ Revisited: Dutch and Canadian Trends in the Use of Time From the 1970s to the 1990s,” Leisure Studies 17, no. 1 (1998): 1–19. According to Zuzanek and Smale, leisure time increased to about 37 hours per week in 1993 for both men and women. Of these hours, social leisure made up for most of the time, at 97–114 minutes per day, followed by watching television at about 90 minutes. Jiri Zuzanek and Bryan J. A. Smale, “More Work-Less Leisure? Changing Allocations of time in Canada, 1981–1992,” Loisir et societe/Society and Leisure 20, no. 1 (1997): 73–105, 84. Leisure in this literature includes playing with children, visiting, and talking with family, but not childcare, cooking, or housework. Valerie A. Ramey and Neville Francis, “A Century of Work and Leisure,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 1, no. 2 (2009): 189–224, 193. See also on this point, Suzanne M. Bianchi, Liana C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milkie, and John P. Robinson, “Housework: Who Did, Does or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?” Social Forces 91, no. 1 (2012): 55–63. In the US, which has more comprehensive studies than Canada on the topic, time devoted to housework (not including family care and shopping) by American married women on farms and in small towns fell from a mean of 31.5 hours per week in the 1920s to 19.5 hours per week in 1975 and to 12.5 hours per week by the 2000s. Jonathan Gershuny and Teresa Harms, “Housework Now Takes Much Less Time: 85 Years of US Rural Women’s Time Use,” Social Forces (2016): 1–22. Housework, family care, and shopping decreased for US wives from 53 hours in 1924–28 to 41 hours in 1975–76. Glen Cain, “Women and Work: Trends in Time Spend in Housework,” in Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper 747-84, University of Wisconsin-Madison (April 1984), accessed 6 June. 2024, https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp74784.pdf. Cain also draws on data from Joann Vanek, “Household Technology and Social Status: Rising Living Standards and Status and Residence Differences in Housework,” Technology and Culture 19, no. 3 (1978): 361–375. Ramey and Francis claim an even larger decrease in housework, family care, and shopping by women of all ages (from 50 hours per week in 1900 to 31 in 2005 for women between the ages of 25 and 54). See Ramey and Francis, “A Century of Work and Leisure,” 204. See also Paul Gomme and Emanuela Cardia, “Household Technology; Childcare; Women Labor Force Participation; Home Production,” in Meeting Papers, no. 1000, Society for Economic Dynamics, 2010, accessed 6. Jun. 2024, https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed010/1000.html.
27 Timo Anttila, Tomi Oinas, and Jouko Nätti, “Predictors of Time Famine among Finnish Employees–Work, Family or Leisure?” International Journal of Time Use Research 6, no. 1 (2009): 73–91; Joy Parr, Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral and the Economic in the Postwar Years (Toronto, 1999), 262–265; Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women between the Wars, 1918–1939 (Thunder Bay, 1989).
28 Steven M. Gelber, Hobbies: Leisure and the Culture of Work in America (New York, 1999), 20.
29 Gelber, Hobbies, 19.
30 Alicia A. Grandey, “Emotional Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional Labor,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 5, no. 1 (2000): 95–110; Blake E. Ashforth and Ronald H. Humphrey, “Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity” Academy of Management Review 18, no. 1 (1993): 88–115.
31 Andrew M. Shanken, “Better Living: Toward a Cultural History of a Business Slogan,” Enterprise & Society 7, no. 3 (2006): 485–519.
32 M. Bower and R. A. Garda, “The Role of Marketing in Management,” in Handbook of Modern Marketing, ed. Victor P. Buell (New York, 1986), 1–3; Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall, “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure,” Harvard Business Review 83, no. 12 (2005): 4–13; Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann, “Reinventing Your Business Model,” Harvard Business Review 86, no. 12 (2008): 57–68; Adrian Payne, Pennie Frow, and Andreas Eggert, “The Customer Value Proposition: Evolution, Development, and Application in Marketing,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 45, no. 4 (2017): 467–489.
33 Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising (Boston, 2011), 16.
34 R. Ashley Lyman, “Advertising and Sales Promotion in Electricity,” Journal of Regulatory Economics 6, no. 1 (1994): 41–58; Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Oakland, 1985), 164–205; Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes, xiii.
35 Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,” Social Studies of Science 14, no. 3 (1984): 399–441; Daniel Robinson, “Marketing Gum, Making Meanings: Wrigley in North America, 1890–1930,” Enterprise & Society 5, no. 1 (2004): 4–44.
36 Marina Emmanouil, “Naturalising Electricity in Greek Advertising: Transitions between Past and Present in Identity Crafting, 1954–62,” Blucher Design Proceedings 1, no. 5 (2014): 359–364; Simon Partner, “Brightening Country Lives: Selling Electrical Goods in the Japanese Countryside, 1950–1970” Enterprise & Society 1, no. 4 (2000): 762–784; A. Paula, “Marketing the Hearth: Ornamental Embroidery and the Building of the Multinational Singer Sewing Machine Company,” Enterprise & Society 15, no. 3 (2014): 442–471.
37 Robert B. Woodruff, “Customer Value: The Next Source for Competitive Advantage,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 25, no. 2 (1997): 139–153.
38 Lee Adler, “Relating the Product Line to Market Needs and Wants,” in Handbook of Modern Marketing, ed. Victor P. Buell and Carl Heyel (New York, 1970), 3–16; Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, Vol. 1 (Hoboken, 2010); Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, and Alan Smith, Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want, Vol. 2 (Hoboken, 2015).
39 Christensen, Cook, and Hall, “Marketing Malpractice,” 5.
40 Leonard L. Berry, Lewis P. Carbone, and Stephan H. Haeckel, “Managing the Total Customer Experience,” MIT Sloan Management Review 43, no. 3 (2002): 85–89; Jon Kolko, “Design Thinking Comes of Age,” Harvard Business Review (Sep. 2015): 66–71; Timo Rintamäki, Hannu Kuusela, and Lasse Mitronen, “Identifying Competitive Customer Value Propositions in Retailing,” Managing Service Quality: An International Journal (2007): 621–634. Value propositions can embody much more than these values, including symbolic, psychological, situational, and so on. See Adler “Relating the Product Line to Market Needs and Wants,” 3-5, for discussion of the question, what is the customer really buying?
41 “Cook by Wire with a Canadian Beauty Electric Grill,” Marketing and Business Management 8, no. 1 (1919): 24.
42 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 165.
43 Elspeth H. Brown, “Rationalizing Consumption: Lejaren á Hiller and the Origins of American Advertising Photography, 1913–1924,” Enterprise & Society 1, no. 4 (2000): 715–738; Edward Timke, “Key Concepts in Advertising: Social Tableaux,” Advertising & Society Quarterly 21, no. 4 (2020).
44 David Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meaning of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), 278.
45 John Stratton, Of Women and Advertising (Toronto, 1984), 10. The commonly held thesis among Canadian advertisers was that women dominated the consumer economy. For the US, see Daniel Delis Hill, Advertising to the American Woman, 1900–1999 (Columbus, 2002).
46 Brian Bowers, “Advertising Electric Light,” Proceedings of the IEEE 89, no. 1 (2001): 116-118; Stephen R. Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (Champaign, 1984); Pamela W. Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing (Baltimore, 1998); Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1995); Mark Tadajewski and D. G. Brian Jones, “Historical Research in Marketing Theory and Practice: A Review Essay,” Journal of Marketing Management 30, no. 11-12 (2014): 1239–1291; Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York, 1983). For an alternative view of utility advertising as political ideology see Quentin J. Schultze, “Advertising and Public Utilities 1900–1917,” Journal of Advertising 10, no. 4 (1981): 41–48.
47 Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York, 1976).
48 Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness (New York, 1984).
49 Michael Schudson, Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society (New York, 1984), xiii.
50 James C. Williams, “Getting Housewives the Electric Message: Gender and Energy Marketing in the Early Twentieth Century,” in His and Hers: Gender, Consumption, and Technology, ed. Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun (Charlottesville, 1998), 109.
51 Hill, Advertising to the American Woman, 7–12; Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 72–87, 115–116; Nye, Electrifying America, 278.
52 Silvulka, Cultural History of American Advertising, 213–235.
53 Cynthia B. Meyers, “Advertisers and American Broadcasting: From Institutional Sponsorship to the Creative Revolution,” Business History Review 95, no. 3 (Autumn 2021): 447–481.
54 Christopher Jones, “The Carbon-Consuming Home: Residential Markets and Energy Transitions,” Enterprise & Society 12, no. 4 (2011): 790–823; Nye, Electrifying America; Ronald C. Tobey, Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home (Oakland, 1997). Michael Kay and Graeme Gooday use similar stages for early electrification in Britain, from experimental (late 1870s to late 1880s) to fashionable (1890s) to normalized phases (1900 to 1930s). Michael Kay and Graeme Gooday, “From Hydroelectricity to the National Grid: Harewood House and the History of Electrification in Britain, 1900–1940,” History of Retailing and Consumption 4, no. 1 (2018): 43–63.
55 Mark H. Rose, Cities of Light and Heat: Domesticating Gas and Electricity in Urban America (University Park, 1995), 65. This change was illustrated in 1920s utility personifications of power. To educate the public on the need for electric power system financing and expansion, the National Electric Light Association published six booklets in 1920 and 1921 under the titles “The Genie of the Button” or “Kilo Watt.” The transition from electricity-as-mystery to electricity-as-servant was illustrated six years later with the creation of Reddy Kilowatt. See Sandy Isenstadt, “At the Flip of a Switch,” Places Journal (2018), accessed 6 Jun, 2024, https://doi.org/10.22269/18091; Kirsten Moana Thompson, “Live Electrically with Reddy Kilowatt, Your Electrical Servant,” in Animation and Advertising, ed. M. Cook and K. Thomson (Cham, 2019), 124–144.
56 Graeme Gooday has called for further research into this promotional work to domesticate electricity, including alternatives to domestication that examine the reconceptualization of domestic life. See Graeme Gooday, Domesticating Electricity: Technology, Uncertainty and Gender, 1880–1914 (London, 2008), 37, 221.
57 Nye, Consuming Power, 166–171. In the US, there was also friction between electric utilities and retailers over marketing and sales of appliances, in particular low utility pricing of products to build load, eventually resolved as utilities largely left appliance sales to retailers and focused instead on the marketing of electricity. See Morris H. Toppila, “Trends in Promotion and Advertising Techniques of Household Electrical Appliances by the Electric Utility Industry” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Dakota, 1964).
58 Rose, Cities of Light and Heat, 151–161; Platt, The Electric City, 254.
59 Christopher F. Jones, Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 221–222; Christina Hardyment, From Mangle to Microwave: The Mechanisation of Household Work (Cambridge, UK, 1988).
60 Dolores Greenberg, “Energy, Power, and Perceptions of Social Change in the Early Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 95, no. 3 (1990): 693–714.
61 Zmroczek, “Dirty Linen,” 178–179. See also Malcolm F. Heslip, “A Study of Management’s Procedure in Marketing Electric Service 1882–1939,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1940); M. S. Seelman, “Organizing the Sale of Electricity,” The Electrical Review 59, no. 1 (1906): 411–414. The selling of electricity was largely neglected by US utilities until the twentieth century, given their focus on selling electric lights and motors in the nineteenth century.
62 Marilyn Barber, “Help for Farm Homes: The Campaign to End Housework Drudgery in Rural Saskatchewan in the 1920s,” Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine/Scientia Canadensis: revue canadienne d’histoire des sciences, des techniques et de la médecine 9, no. 1 (1985): 3–26; Joy Parr, “Introduction: Modern Kitchen, Good Home, Strong Nation,” Technology and Culture 43, no. 4 (2002): 657–667; Ruth W. Sandwell, “The Coal-Oil Lamp,” Agricultural History 92, no. 2 (2018): 190–209, 196–197; Ruth W. Sandwell, “Heating and Cooking in Rural Canada: Home Energy in Transition, 1850–1940,” History of Retailing and Consumption 4, no. 1 (2018): 64–80; Ruth W. Sandwell, “The Emergence of Modern Lighting in Canada: A Preliminary Reconnaissance,” The Extractive Industries and Society: An International Journal 3, no. 3 (2016): 850–863.
63 Bruce Stadfeld, Electric Space: Social and Natural Transformations in British Columbia’s Hydro-Electricity Industry to World War II (Ph.D. diss., University of Manitoba, 2002), 14.
64 Peter Sinclair, Energy in Canada (Oxford, 2010).
65 Russell Johnston, Russell Todd Johnston, and Russell E. Johnston Jr., Selling Themselves: The Emergence of Canadian Advertising (Toronto, 2001), 14.
66 Emily Gann, “Ironing Out the Wrinkles: Technological and Aesthetic Change in Domestic Irons, 1880–1920,” Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine/Scientia Canadensis: revue canadienne d’histoire des sciences, des techniques et de la médecine 36, no. 1 (2013): 63–78.
67 Ruth W. Sandwell, “Pedagogies of the Unimpressed: Re-Educating Ontario Women for the Modern Energy Regime, 1900–1940,” Ontario History 107, no. 1 (2015): 36–59.
68 Marta Danylewycz, Nadia Fahmy-Eid, and Nicole Thiverge, “L’enseignement ménager et les ‘Home Economics,’ au Québec et en Ontario au début du 20e siècle. Une analyse compare,” in An Imperfect Past: Education and Society in Canadian History, ed. Donald J. Wilson (British Columbia, 1985), 67–119; Barbara Riley, “Six Saucepans to One: Domestic Science vs. the Home in British Columbia 1900–1930,” in British Columbia Reconsidered: Essays on Women, ed. Gillian Laura Creese and Veronica Jane Strong-Boag (Vancouver, 1992), 119–142.
69 Dianne E. Dodd, “Delivering Electrical Technology to the Ontario Housewife, 1920–1939: An Alliance of Professional Women, Advertisers and the Electrical Industry” (Ph.D. diss., Carleton University, 1989); Matthew Evenden, Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-Electricity during Canada’s Second World War (Toronto, 2015); Sandwell, “Pedagogies of the Unimpressed,” 44; Parr, Domestic Goods, 258.
70 Christopher F. Jones, “The Materiality of Energy,” Canadian Journal of History 53, no. 3 (2018): 378–394, 392.
71 Sandwell, “Heating and Cooking”.
72 Martha Bensley Bruère, “What Is Giant Power For?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 118, no. 1 (1925): 120–123.
73 Lionel Bradley King, “The Electrification of Nova Scotia, 1884–1973, Technological Modernization as a Response to Regional Disparity” (Ph.D. diss., Dalhousie University, 1999), 41–42.
74 Mark Sholdice, “The Ontario Experiment: Hydroelectricity, Public Ownership, and Transnational Progressivism, 1906–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Guelph, 2019), 94–95. On the Ontario Commission’s unique efforts to promote rural electricity use, such as the creation of the “Hydro Circus” travelling display, see Julie Andres, “Power to the Remotest Hamlet: The Promotion of Rural Hydro in Ontario, 1910–1929” (MA thesis, University of Guelph, 2007).
75 Natural Resources Canada, Energy Efficiency Trends in Canada, 1990 to 2013 (Ottawa, 2016), 17.
76 Richard, W. Unger and John Thistle, Energy Consumption in Canada in the 19th and 20th Centuries: A Statistical Outline (Naples, 2013), 67–74.
77 Bradley Snider, “Home Heating and the Environment,” Canadian Social Trends (Spring, 2006). Statistics Canada—Catalogue No. 11-008, accessed 6 Jun. 2024, www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/11-008-XIE.pdf.
78 Statistics Canada, “Natural Gas, Monthly Sales,” Table: 25-10-0033-01 (formerly CANSIM 129–0003), accessed 6 Jun. 2024, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=2510003301.
79 Utilities using this domestic service revenue model included BC Electric; BC Electric Railway; Edmonton Power; London Hydro; Manitoba Hydro; Montreal Light, Heat & Power; NB Power; NS Power SaskPower; Shawinigan Water & Power; and Toronto Hydro-Electric.
80 A. Lennox Stanton, “The Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 4013, no. 77 (1929): 1115–1130.
81 Letter from the manager, Light & Power Department, to A. T. Goward, vice president, BC Electric Railway, 20 Sep. 1924, MSS 4, v. 220, 8800580634, British Columbia Electric Railway Co. (BCER Co.), Victoria Records, 1861–1944, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (BC Archives); Letter from the manager, Light & Power Department, to A. T. Goward, vice president, BC Electric Railway, 6 Sep. 1929, MSS 4, v. 228, 8800580642, BCER Co., Victoria Records, 1861–1944, BC Archives; Stanton, “The Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.”
82 Tanis Day, “Capital-Labor Substitution in the Home,” Technology and Culture 33, no. 2 (1992): 302–327; Blair Elliot Tothill, “Living Electrically: The British Columbia Electric Railway Company and the Development of the Domestic Electric Appliance Market in Victoria, 1919–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Ottawa, 1997).
83 George F. Oxley, “Publicity—the Solution of the Biggest Problem of Electric Light and Power Industry,” The Electrical News, 1 Oct. 1920, 41.
84 J. E. Bullard, “The Dealer and the Contractor,” The Electrical News, 1 June 1917, 33; “The Contractor–Dealer,” Marketing and Business Management, 1 Apr. 1920, 14 (no. 7): 42.
85 E. V. Buchanan, “Electrical Merchandizing from the Viewpoint of a Municipal Hydro Department,” The Electrical News, 15 Jan. 1920, 44–45.
86 Parr, Domestic Goods, 228. See Note 32 for reference to the Ontario Hydro ads from 1859 to 1960.
87 Toronto Hydro-Electric, “A Little Electronic Motor Would Do This Work for Less Than 2¢ an Hour,” The Bulletin 6, no. 1 (July 1927), Series 1749, File 35, Fonds 408, City of Toronto Archives, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Toronto Archives). Toronto Hydro-Electric, “Any Woman Who Still Washes Clothes and Turns the Wringer by Hand Is Working for Less Than 2¢ An Hour,” The Bulletin 6, no. 8 (Feb. 1928), Series 1749, File 35, Fonds 408, Toronto Archives.
88 “Yesterday a Dream—Today a Reality in 750,000 Homes,” The Province, 2 March 1929, 2.
89 Montreal Light, Heat & Power presented these in 1925 ads titled “Rates Consistently Reduced” and “The Decreasing Rates for Electricity,” 13404, F09-3422, Hydro-Québec Archives, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (Hydro-Québec Archives).
90 It was a longstanding firm and customer concern, beginning in the 1880s. See Graeme Gooday, The Morals of Measurement: Accuracy, Irony, and Trust in Late Victorian Electrical Practice (Cambridge, 2004), 219–262.
91 “Where the charges are based on maximum demand and power delivered, meter the circuits with Westinghouse Type RO Watthour Demand Meters,” The Electrical News, 1 July 1916, 58.
92 Montreal Light, Heat & Power, “Accurate as the Finest Watch,” Dual Service Double (Jan. 1933), FI/1208, loc: 4188, Hydro-Québec Archives.
93 Letter from A. Thompson, The James Fisher Company, to Major J. G. Palmer, deputy minister, Department of Trade & Commerce, 4 Jul. 1939; letter from Jas. G. Parmelee, deputy minister, to Allan R. Thompson, The James Fisher Company, 5 July 1939. Both sources from RG20, Vol. 239, no. 32546, Libraries and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (LAC).
94 Letter from B. M. Bill, Canadian Utilities Limited, to J. C. Parmelee, deputy minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 18 July 1939; letter from J. McQuaker, Owen Sound Public Utilities Commission, to Hon. W. D. Euler, minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 20 July 1939; letter from W. H. Munro, The Ottawa Electric Company and The Ottawa Gas Company, to Major J. C. Parmelee, deputy minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, dated 21 July 1938; letter from E. A. Cummings, Moncton Electricity and Gas, to Hon. W. D. Euler, minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 22 July 1939; letter from Eastern Light & Power to Hon. W. D. Euler, minister, Department of Trade, 24 July 1939; letter from Cyril J. Webb, Pembroke Electric Light Company, to the Publicity Bureau, Department of Trade and Commerce, 17 Sep. 1940; letter from M. C. Gilman to the Hon. W. D. Euler, minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 21 July 1939; letter from A. M. St. Marie, Montreal Light, Heat & Power, to Hon. W. D. Euler, minister, Department of Trade & Commerce, 28 July 1939. All sources from RG20, Vol. 239, no. 32546, LAC.
95 Letter from B. M. Bill, Canadian Utilities Limited, to J. C. Parmelee, deputy minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 18 July 1939; letter from P. B. Yates, City of St. Catherines, to Hon. W. D. Euler, minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 20 July 1939; letter from C. C. Folger, Electric, Gas and Water Departments, Kingston, to W. D. Euler, minister, Trade and Commerce, 21 July 1939; letter from F. W. Peasnell, Toronto Hydro, to J. G. Parmelee, deputy minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, 10 Aug. 1939. All sources from RG20, Vol. 239, no. 32546, LAC.
96 W. M. Findlay, “Electrical Interests Find a Way to Enlarge Their Market,” Marketing and Business Management 16, no. 4 (15 Feb. 1922): 1–2.
97 Letter from the manager, Light & Power Department, BC Electricity Railway, to A.T. Howard, vice president, BC Electric Railway, 15 Sep. 1925, MSS 4, v. 228, 8800580642, BCER Co., Victoria Records, 1861-1944, BC Archives.
98 Riley, “Six Saucepans to One,” 136.
99 Dorothy Lorenz, interview, Item T4088:0012; Phyllis Eltringham, interview, Item T4088:0009; Lillian Marshall, interview, Item T4088:0015, all interviews from Behind the Kitchen Door project, PR-2248, BC Archives. Behind the Kitchen Door project is an oral history collection of 64 interviews with Victoria and Vancouver area women conducted by Kathryn Thomson, Lynn Bueckert, Kathy Chopik, and Catherine Hagen.
100 Lillias Milne interview; Item T4088:0015; Phyllis Eltringham interview, both from PR-2248, BC Archives.
101 “The breakfast you all enjoy is electrically prepared,” The Globe & Mail, 30 Jan. 1920.
102 BC Electric Railway, “Cook Right at the Table,” The Province, 3 Jan. 1920, 83, Box 8800582862, Item 7, BC Archives.
103 Montreal Light, Heat & Power, “To the King’s Taste,” Dual Service Double (March 1931): 12, FI/1208, loc: 4188, Hydro-Québec Archives. This ad contrasts new and old dining practices, with the former illustrated to show a female character preparing a meal over a wood stove in a separate room while the male character waits seated at a table.
104 For a history of how the American “kitchen became the most technologically saturated room in the early twentieth century,” see Michelle Mock, “The Modernization of the American Home Kitchen, 1900–1960” (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2011).
105 Shawinigan Water & Power, “Eyes Right,” Bulletin (Apr. 1942), 10, FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives.
106 Shawinigan Water & Power, “Kitchen Fatigue,” Bulletin of the Commercial & Distribution Department 3, no. 4 (May 1936): 33, FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives.
107 Shawinigan Water & Power, “Keep the ‘Leftovers’ Fresh and Wholesome,” Bulletin of the Commercial & Distribution Department 3, no. 8 (Aug. 1936), FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives.
108 C. L. Sibley, “The New Power Age,” Maclean’s Magazine 43, no. 24 (31 Dec. 1930): 2–53.
109 George Alger, “Can We Occupy Leisure Hours?” Maclean’s Magazine 38, no. 10 (1 May 1925): 38; “Use of Electricity Has Robbed Home of all Drudgery,” The Globe, 29 Aug. 1925, 7; “Time for Leisure Is Now Available,” The Globe, 28 Aug. 1926, 16; “Leisure Time to be the Problem of the Future,” The Globe, 29 Jan. 1935, 8.
110 Claude Bellavance, Shawinigan Water and Power, 1898–1963: formation et déclin d’un groupe industriel au Québec (Boréal, 1994); Shawinigan Water & Power, “Electricity: What Is a Kilowatt-Hour?” Bulletin of the Commercial and Distribution Department (May 1939): 34, FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives; Shawinigan Water & Power. “One Kilowatt-Hour Equals?” Bulletin of the Commercial and Distribution Department 4 no. 7 (July 1937): 60, FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives.
111 Shawinigan Water & Power, “What 5¢ Can Do for the Housewife!” Bulletin of the Commercial and Distribution Department 4, no. 4 (Apr. 1937), FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives; Statistics Canada, “Minimum Wage Rates for Female Workers in Canada Under Orders of Provincial Minimum Wage Boards, as on December 31, 1936,” accessed 4 Jan. 2024, https://www65.statcan.gc.ca/acyb02/1937/acyb02_19370784003a-eng.htm.
112 Shawinigan Water & Power, “The Cheapest Comfort You Can Buy,” Bulletin of the Commercial & Distribution Department 2, no. 6 (Nov. 1935): 45, FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives.
113 Dominion Electric Power Limited, “Advertising Campaign Proposal,” (1934), 1, Box F493, File PO. 1, 3-4, The Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, Regina, Saskatchewan Canada (Sask Archives).
114 Dominion, “Advertising Campaign Proposal,” 2.
115 Dominion, “Advertising Campaign Proposal,” 9.
116 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 171-179, 285-324.
117 Shawinigan Water & Power, “Perpetuate your Thoughtfulness with A Practical Gift,” Bulletin of the Commercial & Distribution Department 6, no. 12 (Dec. 1939), FI/1209, loc: 4187, Hydro-Québec Archives.
118 Shawinigan Water & Power, “The Feminine Realm…,” Bulletin of the Commercial & Distribution Department (Feb. 1939): 10, Hydro-Québec Archives.
119 Shawinigan Water & Power, “The Feminine Realm…,” Bulletin of the Commercial & Distribution Department (March 1939): 23, Hydro-Québec Archives.
120 Peter Ward, A History of Domestic Space: Privacy and the Canadian Home (British Columbia, 1999), 49. Even in summer evenings, families were together given the cost of flammable lighting and the danger they posed if left alone with children.
121 New Brunswick Electric Power Commission, “Let Us Analyse a Typical Home,” Current Events 12, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1964): 15–17. Access provided by NB Power.
122 Statistics Canada, “New Data on Assessment Value per Square Foot and Above-Grade Living Area,” 2019, accessed 4 Jan. 2024, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/190503/dq190503b-eng.htm.
123 Statistics Canada, “The Shift to Smaller Households Over the Past Century,” 2018, accessed 4 Jan. 2024, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015008-eng.htm.
124 The Ontario Hydro campaign from 1959 underscored this approach with ads titled “Reason Tells You…Electricity Is for You!” as featured in The Pickering News, 6 Feb. 1959, 6.
125 Compagnie Québec Power, Bienvenue dans cette maison médaillions, 1960, File F19/3319, #3a, Hydro-Québec Archives.
126 Saskatchewan Power, “Light for Living,” Power Talks no. 5 (1957), Box 1877, Sask Archives.
127 New Brunswick Electric Power Commission, “The Canadian General Electric Lighting Course,” Current Events 5, no. 5 (1957): 5.
128 General Electric, “See Your Home in a New Light: Enjoy Light for Living in Your Light-Conditioned Home,” third edition, File FC19/3319, #3c, Hydro-Québec Archives.
129 Quebec Power, “Lighting for Living Outdoors! How to Light Your Yard and Garden for After-Dark Beauty and Family Living,” circa 1960, File FC 19/3319 #3c, Hydro-Québec Archives.
130 B.C. Electric, “Beauty-Light Your Garden,” Service Digest 1, no. 2 (June/July 1960), File H2015.11.4, Museum of Vancouver, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
131 Emily Rees, “Television, Gas and Electricity: Consuming Comfort and Leisure in the British Home 1946–65,” Journal of Popular Television 7, no. 2 (2019): 127–143.
132 Manitoba Hydro and Edison Electric Institute, Electric Gardening, circa 1960, Box No. 1877, Sask Archives.
133 Quebec Power, “Lighting for Living Outdoors!” n.d., File F19/3319 #3c, Hydro-Québec Archives.
134 Saskatchewan Power, “Entertaining—Buffet Style,” Power Talks 12 (1961), Box 1877, Sask Archives.
135 Saskatchewan Power, “Square Dance Notebook,” Power Talks 4 (1958), Box 1877, Sask Archives.
136 Saskatchewan Power, “Artificial Ice Gains Popularity,” Power Talks 2 (1955), Box 1877, Sask Archives.
137 A 2005 Statistics Canada General Social Survey found nearly half of all Canadian parents watch amateur sporting events, often their children’s games. Warren Clark, “Kids’ Sports,” Canadian Social Trends 85 (2008): 54–61.
138 Lesley Bannatyne, “When Halloween Was All Tricks and No Treats,” Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Oct. 2017, accessed 4 Jan. 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-halloween-was-all-tricks-no-treats-180966996/.
139 Canadian General Electric Co. Limited, Electrical Supplies, Catalogue No. 15 (1915–16), 592; Jack Santino, “Flexible Halloween: Longevity, Appropriation, Multiplicity, and Contestation,” in Treat or Trick? Halloween in a Globalising World, ed. Malcolm Foley and Hugh O’Donnell, (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009), 9–17.
140 Claudette Lajoie, “Hallowe’en,” Current Events 6, no. 5 (Sep.-Oct. 1958): 26–27.
141 Saskatchewan Power, “Kitchen Papers,” Power Talks 10 (1954), Box 1877, Sask Archives; Claudette Lajoie, “Chatting in the Kitchen,” Current Events 10, no. 5 (Sep.–Oct. 1962): 38–39.
142 Saskatchewan Power, “This Christmas—Make It Electrical,” Power Talks 11 (Dec. 1956), Box No. 1877, Sask Archives.
143 J. W. Tomlinson, “Seasons’ Greetings,” Power Talks 12 (1953), Box 1877, Sask Archives.
144 Saskatchewan Power, “Peace on Earth,” Power Talks 12 (1955), Box 1877, Sask Archives.
145 Nye, Electrifying America, 239.
146 Nye, Consuming Power, 159–160.
147 Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (Baltimore, 2000), 275.
148 Peter Scott, “General Motors’ Other Franchise System: Creating an Effective Distribution Model for Frigidaire,” Business History 64, no. 1 (2022): 183–200; P. Scott and J. Walker, “Bringing Radio into America’s Homes: Marketing New Technology in the Great Depression,” Business History Review 90, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 251–276. For instance, a 1932 ad for Dominion Electric in Saskatchewan mentioned a General Electric refrigerator and a reduction of 10 percent in food costs due to prevention of food deterioration and waste. This document was made available by the Saskatchewan Archives Board, F493, Pol. 1, 3-4; Sherrie A. Inness, Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Iowa City, 2001), 163.
149 Erika L. Paulson and Mary E. Schramm, “Electric Appliance Advertising: The Role of the Good Housekeeping Institute,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 9, no. 1 (2017): 41–65.
150 Lisa Jacobson, “Revitalizing the American Home: Children’s Leisure and the Revaluation of Play, 1920–1940,” Journal of Social History 30, no. 3 (1997): 581–596, 581.
151 William A. V. Clark, Marinus C. Deurloo, and Frans M. Dieleman, “Housing Consumption and Residential Mobility,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74, no. 1 (1984): 29–43, 35.
152 Dales, Hydroelectricity and Industrial Development.
153 Line Kryger Aagaard, “When Smart Technologies Enter Household Practices: The Gendered Implications of Digital Housekeeping,” Housing, Theory and Society (2022): 1–18.
154 Geert Verbong and Frank Geels, “The Ongoing Energy Transition: Lessons from a Socio-Technical, Multi-Level Analysis of the Dutch Electricity System (1960–2004),” Energy Policy 35, no. 2 (2007): 1025–1037.