So I did a little digging into the citations, and the most authoritative paper on the subject is J.-W. Lee and H. Lee, Human capital in the long run [1]. While there isn't a time-series for Canada, Fig. 9A shows the U.S. had a significant advantage over Canada in 1870 (in terms of average years of schooling per capita) and both countries had been increasing this number at approximately the same rate. Fig. 10 shows that this advantage remained in 1910. One other note is that the U.S. had a significant slave population until the Civil War (and Black Americans faced significant educational barriers thereafter) which has a significant effect on the U.S. numbers.
Another thing that this analysis doesn't take into account is the base level of GDP per capita per job. One of the reasons the U.S. took a long time to catch up was that Europe was much more productive to begin with. I don't know enough about the Canadian economy of the early-mid 19th century to speculate there.
Another thing that this analysis doesn't take into account is the base level of GDP per capita per job. One of the reasons the U.S. took a long time to catch up was that Europe was much more productive to begin with. I don't know enough about the Canadian economy of the early-mid 19th century to speculate there.
[1] http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/LeeLee2016.pdf