Westward ho? The shifting geography of corporate power in Canada

This paper maps the changing network of large Canadian corporations in the half-century following the Second World War, using location of corporate head offices as a window on the geography of corporate power. In this era. the network of interlocking directorates was reshaped by several developments: consolidation of corporate headquarters in major metropolitan zones, the decline of Montreal and the increased importance of Toronto as the principal metropolis, the movement of industrial capital westward and concomitant rise of Calgary and Vancouver as corporate command centres, the nationalist politics of Quebec, which led some major corporations to defect from Montreal while nurturing a French-Canadian segment of the corporate elite, and the continuing hegemony of Toronto and Montreal in the world of corporate finance. By the close of the twentieth century, the Canadian corporate elite appeared to be well integrated across the main urban centres of economic power, across the financial and industrial forms of capital, and across the Anglo-French ethnic difference. Viewed in light of related research on the elite's reach into civil society, this pattern of spatial, sectoral and ethnic integration presented a structural basis for strong business leadership in both economic and extra-economic fields. Whether such corporate hegemony is ultimately compatible with a democratic way of life is altogether another matter.