Canadian producers and manufacturers thrived on these “Imperial Trade Preferences,” exporting and importing items within this protective British framework for international trade. The terminology shifted to “Commonwealth Trading Preferences” but the economic advantage remained: access to world markets on good terms.
Bird’s Woollen Mill, Muskoka’s biggest economic engine at the time, imported the latest machinery from Britain and sold Bird’s Blankets and other products, made with wool bought from district sheep farmers, throughout the Empire. The Anglo-Canadian tanneries at Huntsville and Bracebridge, combined with Bracebridge’s Beardmore tannery, propelled Muskoka into the British Empire’s largest leather producer. Wood from the mills at Gravenhurst and Huntsville, particularly hardwoods like maple and oak, were in constant profitable demand in Britain for everything from bowling alleys and fine furniture to butchers’ blocks and airplane propellers.
After the Second World War, advent of synthetic fabrics chased wool off the clothing racks and Bird’s Mill closed; rubber replaced leather for shoes and industrial belting and sent our tanneries packing; and aluminum and plastics displaced wood for manufactured items and reduced Muskoka forestry and milling. But Canada’s trade with Britain still flourished, above 40 percent of total exports, and Muskoka retailers offered a variety of tweeds and tartans, brogues and oxfords, medicines, books, machinery, automobiles, tools, and marmalades, teas and tobaccos all processed in the UK after import from other British colonies.
But all the while the 13 American colonies that broke from the British Empire to form the “United States of America,” were geographically and economically expanding their own empire. The “pull” was magnetic. By 1911 Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier campaigned on a Canada-U.S. “reciprocity” treaty for open trade, which Conservatives under Robert Borden opposed in favour of maintaining British Empire trade preferences. Borden won the election.
In the 1950s British PM Harold MacMillan declared that “winds of change” were sweeping Africa and Asia and began freeing any colonies costing Britain too much to maintain because they could no longer be exploited economically. By 1973 British PM Edward Heath changed Britain’s destiny and identity even more radically: Britain would continue to turn its back on its former colonies by finding new prosperity for itself in the European Community.
Getting dressed for the wedding, Britain jettisoned Commonwealth trade preferences. Countries who’d tied their economies to Britain’s were abandoned. New Zealand’s lamb, sheep, and wool economy collapsed. Given our easy access to the world’s richest marketplace, Canada turned to the USA. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney embraced Laurier’s policy and presided over a free trade treaty with the United States because it was Canada’s only option.
The present plight of Britons is an imperial endgame of their own making. Being ever so British and superior, the U.K. stubbornly remained aloof from continental Europe. It defiantly refused even to join the Euro zone currency and fiscal administration. It was a pathetic non-marriage, fated to fail.
Muskokans need shed no tears.
