Canada and the British immigrant

There is a generally good though rather intermittent demand for charwomen and occasional helpers in towns, cities, and the settled rural districts; and the wife of a man who has obtained employment on a farm may often add considerably to the family resources by washing and doing other work for the farmer’s wife or neighbours. The wages in the East range from about $1 (4s.) a day in the country, to $1·25 (5s.), always with meals, in the cities. Some little time ago an enterprising party of young Scotch women, who had come to Toronto to be ordinary servants, clubbed together, took a room or two, and went out working by the day, with the result that they earned more money and had their evenings and Sundays to themselves. They had no difficulty in obtaining as much work as they desired; and their experiment points towards one probable solution of the domestic help problem; but, of course, there are great risks for unprotected girls in every city; and in most Canadian cities the rent of rooms and the cost of living is very high.

Apart from housework, in any form, immense numbers of immigrant girls find employment in shops and factories, and not a few as typists. In Toronto, a typist coming out through the colonization department gets an initial wage of $10 (£2) a week, and one who is also a stenographer gets from $11 (£2 4s.) to $15 (£3) the week. In Winnipeg (where there are said to be “ten thousand lady stenographers and book-keepers”) “the wages run from $35 (£7) to $75 (£15), or even $100 (£20) per month.” The saleswomen in shops do not receive nearly so much, and good wages are very necessary in the towns if a girl is to live under proper and healthful conditions. Women’s work is not as yet much organized in Canada, though in Montreal and other cities there are a few women’s labour unions.

There is perhaps nearly as much demand for competent dressmakers as for domestic servants, either to make dresses at home or to go out by the day. This demand comes not only from the cities, such as Toronto, where, for example, good dressmakers can earn, in addition to their meals, from $1·50 to $2 (6s. to 8s.) the day, or Winnipeg, where their charge is $2 or $2·50 (8s. to 10s.) the day; but from country towns and rural districts. In the latter they can earn $1 or $1·25 (4s. to 5s.), with board and lodging, for the time of their engagement; and I think it would be well worth while for girls who understand dressmaking to try their fortune in some village in a good farming country. I know that there is a large demand for their services in such places, and though they would not receive city prices for their work, neither would they have to pay city prices for the rooms which they would need as headquarters. In a good village two sisters or friends might very well make the experiment together; or a girl understanding dressmaking, whose parents were coming to the country, might easily work up a good business connection. I should not forget to say that the farmers’ wives are quite willing to send a “buggy” or carriage a considerable distance for the dressmaker.

There is a great demand in Canada for teachers, and a father who comes out with a family of young people might well endeavour to get some of them (if they show any aptitude for the work) trained for teachers. It is desirable that the students should finish their preparation and pass the necessary examinations in the province where they intend to teach, as professional teachers’ certificates only hold good in the province where they are granted, though temporary “permits” to teach may be given in other provinces.

The rate of salaries varies somewhat in different parts of the Dominion, the salaries given in the West being generally higher than those in the East. There are not many openings for private governesses, though a few find employment in ladies’ schools, and there is a small demand in the households of the rich for nursery governesses for very little children.

Girls coming out with the intention of entering any occupation (except that of domestic servants) should have a little money in hand to support them whilst looking for employment; but for women, as for men, there are numerous opportunities in Canada for the alert, intelligent girl—“on the spot”—who knows how to work.

With regard to the acquirement of land, opportunities in Canada are by no means as favourable for women as for men. In a general way women can only obtain land by purchase, and are shut out from the advantage of homesteading; but, as already mentioned, they are permitted in British Columbia to take up pre-emptions on practically the same terms as men. The laws, by the way, concerning the civil rights of women vary in different provinces; but from the women’s point of view Canada lags behind some of the States of the Union, in the fact that not one of the nine provinces of the Dominion has, as yet, accorded parliamentary representation to women. Even the people most strongly averse from the change are, however, beginning to prophesy dolefully that “it has got to come.”

In educational facilities, the women of Canada are treated liberally. In the public and high schools co-education is general, and usually the universities admit women on the same terms as men. The medical profession is open to women; and in some provinces that of the law also. There are many women journalists and writers who are banded together into an organization for the Dominion—“The Canadian Women’s Press Club.”

A very active and comprehensive organization in Canada is the “National Council of Women,” with which many other women’s associations are affiliated. Among these may be named the Women’s Institutes (which, in Ontario alone, have over twenty thousand members), the Women’s Art Association, the Girls’ Friendly Society, the Victorian Order of Nurses, the Canadian Suffrage Association, the National Historical Society, the Peace and Arbitrations Society, etc., etc. There are many other extremely important women’s organizations, such as the Missionary Societies (called by different names) of the several churches, which, besides supporting foreign missions, make an especial effort to aid religious work in the newer sections of the Dominion. There is also the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which has for long been engaged in effective work against the liquor traffic.

It may be asked what has all this to do with “the woman Canada needs,” and with opportunities for women? My answer is that such a list (which might be much lengthened) shows what the women of Canada are thinking about and working for; that what has been done, may be done again; what is being done now, may be multiplied enormously with the advent of more workers. That these organizations are flourishing suggests the need and the opportunity there is for the work of public-spirited, true-hearted women in Canada—in helping to refine the rough, to smooth down the rugged, to hold up the higher ideals of life in this new land; to fill its towns with pleasant, beautiful homes, and to make its solitary places blossom like the rose.

Canada has scope for the employment of the energies of all of the best types of women, and we have got beyond the notion that there is only one noble type of woman; but if one goes back to that severely practical document, the Census Report, it really looks as if the woman which Canada needs above all is the wife and mother, who is awaiting in the Old Land the chance to rejoin her immigrant husband; and the “marriageable girl.” “The Imperial Home Reunion Associations” already mentioned are doing good work in bringing out the former, with her children; but it is a more delicate matter to settle the latter in regions where her best opportunity lies. In the early French times, the authorities managed this matter with business-like frankness, shipping out consignments of girls and marrying them in haste on their arrival in the colony. Such a method is distinctly out-of-date, but more might be done to encourage the immigration of families and of young women (under proper conditions and safeguards), for in the West especially, behind the opportunities for girls as workers in household service and shops and factories and offices, many of them find the opportunity of taking up the rôle of the wife, the mother and the “home-maker.”

Unfortunately it is a common assertion, that a considerable proportion of girls “in business” are so occupied with the probabilities of “having homes” of their own, that they regard their work at the typewriter or in the office as a mere stop-gap, to be performed perfunctorily. Let us hope this is a slander; and at any rate some business men testify that the girl clerk is, as a rule, quite as conscientious, steady-going and dependable as the boy clerk, if not more so. However that may be, the fact remains that there is a need for the coming out to Canada of a good type of girls, more in proportion than at present to the numbers of the male immigrants, if the Dominion is to be, in accord with the best Anglo-Saxon ideals, a nation of homes.

XVIII

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

IN the foregoing pages, I have tried not to be led by my real belief in the country into over-statement of the advantages of Canada and to under-statement of difficulties and disadvantages. I know that when all possible care is taken, it is difficult to convey to anyone exact impressions of an unknown country, for the reader or listener naturally translates what is said in terms of his own experience. Now I should like here, before bidding farewell to any reader who has some notion of making a home in Canada, to add one or two suggestions which may save him (or her) some discomfort.

The first is an awkward matter to mention, but I will venture to speak plainly, only reminding the reader that if my remarks are offensive, Canada cannot be held responsible for them, for I am myself an Englishwoman.

I have said, and I firmly believe, that the immigration of people from the British Isles is much desired in Canada; but an individual may not always get that impression, and I should like to ask him to consider whether it may not sometimes be his own fault? It is, unfortunately, a fact that many new arrivals from England (by no means all, of course) have a way of stroking the Canadians the wrong way, if one may use the phrase. Sometimes I wonder whether the phrase in our old school books—the “British Possessions”—has anything to do with the condescending frame of mind in which many a British immigrant lands in the Dominion, and begins cheerfully setting affairs right on his first walk through the seaport town which receives him. Again and again it has been a fine thing in British history that the English people have a way of identifying themselves with their national institutions, but if a Briton will persist on feeling, and making it known, that he is a kind of pocket edition of all that the great British Empire stands for, while the Dominion is “one of our colonies,” and the Canadians are just “colonists,” he will probably get into trouble in a week with the men whom he undertakes to work for or amongst. He ought to try to realize that, in the main, Canadians are Britons like himself, and that, being “chips of the old block,” colonists have many characteristics in common with the stay-at-home Britons—amongst them, a rooted objection to a treatment which seems to imply that they are a nation of inferiors.

Perhaps there is something in the invigorating air of this young country which gets into the heads of newcomers, and makes them “apt to teach” if they never were so in their lives before; but many an immigrant would find his first few months here much smoother, if he could resist the temptation to put into words his wonder “at the way they do things here. Why, in England–” etc., etc. Of course, if he is an intelligent man, he has his contribution to make to the common stock of knowledge and wisdom, and the time may come when it will be welcome in Canada. In many instances, however, the newcomer does not wait to ascertain whether or not there may be a sound reason, in some peculiarity of climate or circumstances, to account for the practice he condemns, but at once jumps to the conclusion that it is un-English and therefore wrong, and proclaims aloud his discovery at the top of his voice. The “canny Scot” is much less prone to hasty, outspoken criticism, and consequently settles down a little more easily than do Englishmen of a certain type.

It may be said that this blunder on the part of English people is so rare and so limited to the wholly uneducated as to be unworthy of serious attention. But I believe it is common. I know I have heard Englishmen criticizing the shortcomings of “the Canadians” in Canadian houses, where they were guests, with a freedom that accounts for a good deal of prejudice against the new arrivals. Others perpetually grumble during their first months in the country.

Happily this kind of thing soon wears off in all but the very worst subjects, and those usually end by returning home, and continuing their criticism of matters Canadian where they cannot be easily answered. Happily, also, some English immigrants, blessed with a little imagination and the sympathetic power of seeing how things will affect other minds, are free from the disease. It has been suggested that a good and practical rule for an Englishman would be to make up his mind to refrain, for at least a year after his landing, from criticism of the things in Canada that displease him, whether these happen to be manners or methods, municipal regulations or country roads.

Later, when he has got his bearings, if he chooses to attempt to lead a reformation, he will find plenty of native-born Canadians to back him; for, however it may appear in the heat of argument, in nine cases out of ten, they are just as convinced as the newcomer that neither the country nor themselves are anywhere within sight of perfection. In twelve months he may be beginning to feel that he has some part and lot in the Dominion, and the honest criticism of one who is anxious to improve conditions which he has tested and believes to be capable of improvement is a very different matter from the superior and comprehensive grumblings either of “a fish out of water,” or a mere “bird of passage.” For convenience I have used the masculine pronoun, but the woman-immigrant is not free from this sin of rash and ill-mannered criticism.

Now, in all this I would by no means be understood to be reflecting on the newcomer, who, having suffered from failure on the part of some official or private person to carry out his engagements, or having other real cause of complaint concerning the way in which he has been treated, demands an investigation into his grievance. Of course, the new arrival has his rights as much as the native-born, and if he is at any time ill-used or treated with serious neglect, he will be doing a public service in calling attention to the wrong-doing. This is very different from the mere purposeless grumbling and captious criticism to which I referred above; and while the Dominion and Provincial governments do their utmost to protect the newcomer against misrepresentation and fraud and extortion, there are persons in Canada, as elsewhere, on the watch to take advantage of the inexperienced.

It is best for the immigrant who is without friends in the country to go in the first place for information and advice to the accredited immigration officials. (See Appendix, Note A, pg. 295.) There are different methods in vogue in the different provinces, but all endeavour to look to some extent after the immigrants, who, indeed, are regarded as of great potential value to the nation; and far-sighted people recognize that every measure which aids the immigrant to succeed is of advantage to the public generally, and is a necessary corollary of the fact that the Canadian government maintains fifteen hundred agents in the towns and villages of Great Britain and Ireland, and pays a bonus on each of the immigrants obtained, of certain classes.

In Nova Scotia, in order to prevent newcomers being drawn into the purchase of “farm properties unsuitable to their requirements,” a farm inspector has been appointed to the staff of the Bureau of Industries and Immigration, which has been in existence since 1907, and any bonâ fide settler can avail himself of his services free of cost. An agricultural settler is met on his arrival, and a list of available farms likely to suit him is prepared for him, and, after he has seen them, but before he buys, the farm inspector visits the property and gives him “a disinterested opinion on the intrinsic value of the place.” This plan has been found to work well, insuring for the newcomer good value for his money, and saving him much time and expense in the search for a suitable farm. Moreover, if the new arrival desires it, the inspector will continue his visits at intervals to give expert advice respecting the best local markets and the methods of agriculture best adapted to the land purchased.

In a great many central places, the Dominion government has built Immigration Halls, where free accommodation is provided during two or three days, while the head of the family makes arrangements to go to work or to a homestead, as the case may be; but the immigrants are required to provide their own food. In Toronto, the “British Welcome League” also provides beds for British immigrants on their arrival, and in addition gives a free meal, besides trying in other ways to make the strangers feel at home. (See Appendix, Note F, pg. 301.)

Young women and girls coming to Canada need especially to be on their guard against persons of both sexes, masquerading as benevolent and disinterested, who are seeking to entrap the unwary into the terrible life of the “white slave.” If ever at a loss where to go, they should accept advice only from uniformed officers of the Immigration Department, from one of the deaconesses or ladies wearing the “Travellers’ Aid” badge, or from an officer of the Salvation Army, which also looks after immigrants. A safe place to make inquiry for lodgings and employment is, of course, any branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, of which there are many in the Dominion. (See Appendix, Note F, pg. 301, for list.) In summer, a secretary of the Y.W.C.A. meets the steamers at Quebec, and will do her best to help girls on their way.

The Presbyterians, the Methodists and the Church of England in Canada have chaplains who meet the immigrant ships at the ports of Halifax and St. John in winter, and at Quebec in summer. There are also agents of the Y.M.C.A. at these ports to assist newcomers in every way possible. If the immigrant can find time on landing to speak either to a chaplain or to an agent of one of the societies named above, it may prove very helpful in finding friends in the place to which he or she is going, for these secretaries will give addresses of clergymen or others anxious to befriend the newcomer; and it is a great advantage to have someone to refer to in a strange place, even if it is only for the sake of being able to obtain disinterested and reliable information. For instance, suppose a girl comes out intending to try dressmaking in a country place (as suggested previously), if she has a card of introduction to a Y.W.C.A. secretary or to a minister, though they might not be able to tell her offhand of a district where she could hope to be successful, either would certainly be able to put her into communication with another secretary, or clergyman’s wife, or secretary of a Woman’s Institute, who would give the information needed.

It is a good thing for the immigrant who has at home belonged to a church, or Sunday school, or social organization, to bring from the clergyman or minister or teacher a letter of introduction to a minister in the place to which he or she is bound, or to someone living in the district. To give an actual, though perhaps unnecessary, instance of the usefulness of letters of introduction—my father, who, though quite inexperienced in agriculture, had decided to farm in Canada, came out armed with letters of introduction, kindly given by friends (some of whom had hazy ideas of the size of the Dominion) to persons living anywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Many of these were, of course, useless, but one led to another introduction to two excellent Scotch farmers, who, when the time came to make choice of a farm, kindly did for us the work which the Government expert now does for immigrants going to Nova Scotia. They looked over the farm and gave a careful opinion as to its value. No newcomer, however anxious to be independent, however unwilling to “impose upon good nature,” need be afraid or ashamed to ask advice in matters where he cannot be supposed to be on a par with those who have had experience of the country.

Years ago it was sometimes suggested that Canada was a good country for persons of small fixed incomes. I doubt whether many of this class ever did come; and now, at any rate, the cost of living and the wages of servants are so high that it is not a good country for such people. Moreover, unless they should come out with their families, elderly men or women would rarely be wise to risk the change of climate and environment.

In this connection, it is very satisfactory that such a large proportion of the children sent out by the various orphanages and “homes” of the British Isles grow up good citizens of the Dominion. Only a very small proportion of these children turn out criminals or ne’er-do-wells, but the rare cases when any of them are convicted of crime are usually followed by a great outcry against bringing them. There is, however, a very practical evidence that they are most welcome, for five to ten applications are received for every child to be placed. There is an advantage in sending them out in early life, for “the sooner they get into the Canadian atmosphere the better it is for Canada and for them.” Many of the children fill useful positions, as they grow old enough, as “hired” boys and girls; and not a few are adopted, and well provided for, by childless people. The annual report of the “Chief Inspector of British Immigrant Children and Receiving and Distributing Homes” is a most interesting document. During the eleven years from 1900 to 1911, nearly twenty-four thousand child-immigrants were brought to Canada by various societies and agents, of whom almost half were from Dr. Barnardo’s homes.

The immigration of families consisting of parents and children is still more satisfactory from the Canadian point of view, for this, in ordinary cases, means that the children, brought up under normal conditions, will be assimilating in their early years Canadian customs, methods of work, and habits of thought. This is a process that all immigrants, young or old, must go through to a certain extent, if they are really to “settle” in the country. Speaking broadly, adaptation to new conditions is much more difficult for the young man than for the child, and for the old person than the young, unless in the case of those exceptional people who seem to have discovered the secret of perpetual youth, and are alert, ready to learn, adaptable, and intensely interested in life and their surroundings to old age.

In many instances the process is not only difficult but painful; and I should like to speak a word of encouragement to the immigrant in his first year or two, when the exciting novelty of the change has worn off, and he has not yet become thoroughly acclimatized either to the physical or mental atmosphere of the new country. In some cases he passes through a period of miserable homesickness, when everything seems disappointing. Then, even such minor ills as unfamiliar kinds of implements to work with (for instance, in the case of a woman, stoves in place of the accustomed open fires) seem to add sorely to the hardships of life. I can remember very well the general depression of spirits in our family when we were trying in vain to keep ourselves warm and to cook in bitter wintry weather with green basswood, foisted upon us by our next-door neighbour, who in some other little ways showed himself very ready to “turn an honest (?) penny” out of our inexperience.

But discouragement passes; soon the newcomer learns how to take care of himself, and, looking back, wonders how his “mole-hills” ever came to be such mountains. A good stock of patience and some small sense of humour ought to make part of the equipment of every immigrant, for there is nothing like the power of seeing the funny side of things to help one over the minor trials of life, and it is good not to take oneself too seriously.