Pour le Dominion et l'Empire : l'idéologie du Montreal Board of Trade, 1897-1921

The author explores the ideology of the Montreal Anglophone business elite from 1897 to 1921 through an analysis of editorial content in the archives of the Montreal Board of Trade. He devides his thesis into four chapters. In the first chapter, he found that the Anglophone business elite were living, during this period, a golden age of power, prosperity and national ambition, and that the Board was representatïve of their values and interests. The second chapter analyses the Board’s self-defined identity and examines its members’ key values as businessmen and as Canadians. The third chapter also analyses the Board’s identity but through the reflection of its discursive construction of “others”, mainly workers, French Canadians and Americans. Work, utility, honesty, generosity, stability, prudence, energy, lïberty, private property, adaptation to the northern climate and loyalty to the British Crown are found to be important values defining the city's business elites’ ideology. The last chapter studies the question of the Board’s favour of British lmperialism through discourse and action. A strong link is suggested between this ideological position and the Board’s interest in maintaining a West-East commercial connection with England as preferred market in order to preserve Montreal’s position as the Canadian economical metropolis.

Master's Thesis

Université de Montréal

Montréal

2007

ix-118-xviii p.

fr