Politics, Power, and the First Age of Globalisation: Ontario's Hydroelectric Policy, Canada and the City of London, 1905-10

In the spring of 1910, the premier of Ontario, J.P. Whitney, was celebrating. Canadas attorney general, A.B. Aylesworth, had recently announced the rejection of a petition by the Canadian Privy Council to disallow an act staying court cases challenging contracts recently signed between municipalities and Ontario’s publically owned Hydro-Electric Power Commission.1 Whitneys government had established the commission in 1906, and, under the leadership of Adam Beck, it sought to distribute electrical power generated at Niagara Falls cheaply throughout Southern and Western Ontario.2 This had brought the government of Ontario into conflict with financial interests in Canada and in the City of London. As Whitney told the Toronto Mail and Empire: