Uniting in measures of common good: the construction of liberal identities in central Canada 1830-1900

Ferry examines a wide selection of voluntary societies - mechanics' institutes, mutual benefit organizations, agricultural associations, temperance societies, and literary and scientific associations.

He reinterprets the history of these organizations in terms of their own internal tensions over liberal doctrines and the effect of social, cultural, and economic change and compares the effects of liberalism on rural and urban associations and on societies in both English and French Canada.