Work “Only a Woman Can DO”: The Women's Division of the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization, 1920–1937

Abstract

For many of Canada's women the year 1920 was a tremendous break from the past. With the federal franchise finally conferred upon them after a long crusade, they stood on the threshold of a new decade wishing to do nothing less than change the world as participants in public life. That year, upper-class English Canadian women saw a major goal fulfilled: the creation of a new Women's Division within the Canadian Department of Immigration and Colonization. The division, staffed entirely by women, was a product of the women's wing of the social reform movement, and drew much of its support from imperial sentiment and a fear of unfit immigrants that had resurfaced during World War I. A division supervisor, Mary V. Burnham, provided further insight on why such an agency was necessary when she stated that this was that only a woman can do. (1) The Women's Division was made up of a relatively small group of predominantly elite women who worked with one type of immigrant. As federal officers, these women were determined that moral values should influence their work as much as, if not more so, than market interests. Their responsibilities were to recruit physically and morally suitable female immigrants for Canada, supervise them through every step of the journey, and finally place them as domestic servants in Canadian homes. In addition to populating the nation with white, Christian women British by birth and spirit, (2) the program aimed to provide immigrants with employment and a greater chance for marriage, while easing the enduring servant shortage. This study seeks to provide insight on why elite women wanted such a role in the Canadian immigration bureaucracy, how this was gained, and how this realm of women's work was subject to definite constraints. It attempts to weave threads together from numerous historical works on the immigration of servants, social reform and imperialism, as well as the professionalization of women's work between the two world wars, but is certainly not the first to bring the complex relationships among these phenomena to light. It highlights an area that has received relatively little attention; that is, the conflicts that arose surrounding the professionalization of women's immigration work in the post-suffrage era. As Canada's white collar sector expanded dramatically in the 1920s, women were permitted to join the civil service in significant numbers, though not on the same basis as men. This article builds upon the argument advanced by historian Veronica Strong-Boag that the achievement of suffrage led to nowhere near the extent of social change that women sought; this is certainly the case in the realm of immigration. (3) The Women's Division assisted over 25,000 women throughout the 1920s. When examined as part of the larger picture of immigration to Canada during that decade, one which included hundreds of thousands of American and Continental Europeans, the division's work might not appear particularly significant. However, this study reveals real and imagined connections among gender, imperialism, and the socioeconomic changes in interwar Canada. Immigration has always been perceived as an area of problem and promise, as has the behavior of women, and these phenomena were embodied in the Women's Division. Tremendous importance was placed on female immigrants and the Canadian women who guided them. English Canada, by focusing on women as objects of public policy and nation building, was expressing fear of its impending decay while at the same time hope for its cultural survival. (4) The division's activities came to an end during the Great Depression. Annual reports of Immigration and Colonization suggested financial retrenchment as the cause; however, there were numerous factors involved. By the mid twenties this endeavor in managed migration was losing support of Canadian householders because it neither strengthened Canada's Christian, character in any obvious ways, nor did it mitigate the servant shortage. …