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Chapter
2 (continued)
The Arrival of the Europeans
 British
immigration
Although
there were relatively few good agriculturalists left to court in the "mother
country," the Canadian government continued to promote immigration from
the United Kingdom--often called Great Britain or simply Britain--during
the Sifton years, principally because English Canadians took it for granted
that their federal government would do everything possible to retain the
British character of the country. Prior to 1903, Canada's immigration
service in Britain had been under the control of the Canadian High Commission,
but in January of that year immigration was removed from its jurisdiction.
To handle immigration, Sifton established an emigration office in London
that would be effectively independent of the high commissioner's office.
The new office was
housed in Trafalgar House, an imposing building that commanded a central
location overlooking the historic open space of Trafalgar Square. As one
enthusiastic observer remarked:
No one
passing to and from the Houses of Parliament and official Westminster
can fail to notice "Trafalgar House." The eye is caught at once by
the familiar Canadian "Arch" of Coronation days, a representation
of which is emblazoned on one of the windows, whilst elsewhere the
intending emigrant is invited to enter by the mottoes, "Improved Farms
at Reasonable Prices," "Healthy Climate, Light Taxes, Free Schools,"
"160-acre Free Farms."
The establishment
of an independent emigration office in a central location in London paved
the way for a dramatic increase in British immigration. In the first six
months of 1900, just over 5,000 Britons came to Canada. Five years later
the annual number soared to above 65,000, exceeding the numbers of new
settlers arriving from the United States.
Most British newcomers
in this pre-war period emigrated to Canada in hopes of finding a higher
standard of living and freedom from the rigidities of the hallowed British
class system. Included in the ranks of these unsponsored immigrants were
not only people of modest means but also individuals with substantial
funds who would often invest in large-scale ranching or farming ventures
in Western Canada.
Many of these well-heeled
middle- and upper-class Britons had set off for Canada because it was
difficult to find suitable employment in Britain's amply supplied and
highly competitive professions. Others had left large estates burdened
by heavy debts and tithes. For these prosperous Britons, emigration seemed
to offer the only way that they could maintain their own and their children's
lifestyle in a rapidly changing world. They chose Canada largely because
of the efforts of the emigration and booking agents, the aggressive campaigns
mounted by Canadian colonization companies, and the seductive promotional
material that extolled the attractions of the various provinces for "gentlemen
emigrants."
Not all of these
well-off British newcomers were warmly welcomed in their adopted country.
In fact, there was widespread resentment against those of them who seemed
to expect special treatment in the "colony." Not infrequently, employment
ads in western newspapers included the words "No English need apply."
And when the London reporter H.R. Whates was researching the immigration
boom for an article for the London Standard in 1905, Canadians
bluntly informed him: "The Englishman is too cocksure; he is too conceited,
and he thinks he knows everything and he won't try to learn our ways."
The great influx
from Britain in these years also included poor immigrants who had been
assisted by charitable organizations wanting to rid the United Kingdom
of paupers and help them make a fresh start in the colonies. One of the
many philanthropic agencies involved in this endeavour was the Salvation
Army, which was established in Canada in 1882. From 1884, when a branch
of the Church Army--the Self-Help Emigration Society--began its work,
until 1914, the "Army next to God" assisted 150,000 of Great Britain's
deserving poor to emigrate to Canada. The Salvation Army's immigration
program did not escape controversy, however. Organized labour was especially
hostile, charging the dominion government with paying the agency bonuses
for recruiting individuals who posed as "agriculturalists" but soon became
industrial workers.
The
home children
Most of the British
poor who emigrated to Canada in this first European wave came in families,
but an impressive number did not. Conspicuous in the latter's ranks were
thousands of young boys and girls who arrived in this country unaccompanied
by an adult family member. These children, once here, were apprenticed
as agricultural labourers or, in the case of girls, sent to smaller towns
or rural homes to work as domestic servants.
These were the "home
children," slum youngsters plucked from philanthropic rescue homes and
parish workhouse schools and dispatched to Canada (and to other British
colonies) to meet the soaring demand for cheap labour on Canadian farms
and household labour in family homes. Many of these youngsters, most of
whom ranged in age between eight and ten, came from families of the urban
poor who could not care for them properly. Other children, perhaps one-third
their number, were orphans, while the balance were runaways or abandoned
youngsters. At a time when few British emigrants were indentured in their
overseas destinations, nearly all these child immigrants were apprenticed
shortly after their arrival in Canada.
Although Canadian
farms had received orphaned and destitute British children as early as
the 1830s, it was not until 1868 that the home-children movement began
in an organized way. In that year, Maria Susan Rye, the feminist daughter
of a distinguished London solicitor, purchased an old jail on the outskirts
of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, had it refurbished, and then made preparations
to bring her first party of children to Canada. They arrived in October
1869 with the well-publicized blessings of both the Archbishop of Canterbury
and The Times of London.
A few months later,
Annie Macpherson, a Quaker working independently of Rye, brought another
party of young children to Ontario. Soon, Louisa Birt of Liverpool (Macpherson's
sister), Thomas Barnardo of London, Leonard Shaw of Manchester, and William
Quarrier of Glasgow--to name but a few of the best-known child-savers--were
launching their own child-emigration programs. Before long there was a
proliferation of similar programs, some of the more notable being implemented
by the National Children's Homes, Mr. Fegan's Homes of Southwark and Westminster,
the Middlemore Homes in Birmingham, the Church of England Waifs and Strays
Society, and Miss Stirling of Edinburgh. Because Canada was closer to
Britain than was Australia or New Zealand, it became the favoured destination
for these charges, especially during the Sifton years.
Underlying all these
schemes was the activists' belief that emigration was an effective way
to rescue impoverished British children from the poorest and most crowded
districts of Britain's teeming cities. On Canadian farms, far from the
temptations and polluted air of city life, their slum protégés
would grow into healthy, industrious adults. Or so the thinking went.
Among the many names
closely associated with this unique immigration program, the one most
familiar to Canadians was undoubtedly that of Irish-born Thomas John Barnardo.
Barnardo's vanity and thirst for prestige led him to use the title "Doctor,"
although he had never completed his medical studies.
Born into a Dublin
family of modest means in 1845, Barnardo headed to London in 1866 to train
as a medical missionary for China. Shortly after his arrival in London,
the young medical student came across the city's homeless waifs sleeping
in its alleys and on its rooftops. The plight of London's homeless children
so affected Barnardo that when he was rejected for missionary work in
China, he abandoned all plans to be a physician and vowed to make helping
these street children his life's work. To this end, the authoritarian
trailblazer established a home for boys in 1870, the first of his numerous
homes for destitute children.
Initially Barnardo
was able to find work for his protégés in Britain, but when
employment opportunities started to dry up in both the trades and domestic
service, he decided to explore emigration possibilities. In the autumn
of 1882, he launched a comprehensive emigration program that would see
some 30,000 children sent to Canada before it petered out in 1939.
A group of
boys from Barnardo homes in England shown after their arrival in Belleville,
Ontario, circa 1922.
National Archives
of Canada (C 34840)
|
Most of the Barnardo
children led anonymous lives. One exception was George Everitt Green,
a young agricultural labourer from England, although it would not be until
after his death that Canadians would learn more about him than about any
of the other home children dispatched to Canada. Only seven months after
his arrival on an Ontario farm in 1895 Green was dead, his limbs gangrenous
and his body emaciated and covered with sores, the visible marks of the
cruel treatment dealt him by his spinster employer.
The inquest and
trial that followed caused such a sensation that the federal and Ontario
governments introduced legislation to prevent a similar tragedy from ever
happening again. Even more far-reaching action was taken after three home
children committed suicide in the winter of 192324. In the wake
of these suicides, a British parliamentary delegation travelled to Canada
to interview immigration officials, social workers, representatives of
women's, labour, and farm organizations, and child immigrants themselves.
Its findings led the delegation to declare that future child emigrants
should be of working--that is, school-leaving--age. Taking its cue from
the delegation's report, Canada's Immigration Branch introduced a regulation
in 1925 that prohibited voluntary immigration societies from bringing
children under 14 years of age to this country. Intended to last three
years, the ban was made permanent in 1928.
The long-lived program
eventually came to a halt in 1939, its end hastened not only by the Great
Depression and the opposition of the Canadian labour movement but also
by a change of thinking on the part of Canadians and Britons. Both, it
seems, could no longer tolerate the idea of philanthropic organizations
separating young children from their parents and sending them to work
in distant lands, no matter how salubrious the setting.
The
Barr Colony
The Barr Colony
does not appear on contemporary maps of Canada. Nevertheless, early in
this century this British settlement on the plains of what became Saskatchewan
attracted countless curious visitors and inspired many column inches of
print in daily newspapers in Canada and Britain.
This poster
was reproduced in the magazine Canada West, circa 19001920.
National Archives
of Canada (C 126302)
|
The colony was noteworthy
because it defied the belief held by many officials and journalists that
a group of British immigrants without farming experience could survive
on the bald prairie, 300 kilometres from the nearest city, without even
a road or a rail line to link them to civilization. Within five years
of the settlement's founding, these same sceptics were lauding the achievements
of the Barr colonists. Their achievements were certainly remarkable but
no more so than the journey that took them to the Canadian wilderness
in the vicinity of present-day Lloydminster. This unforgettable migration
was inspired by the lofty vision of two clerics, Isaac Barr (18471937),
after whom the colony was named, and George Lloyd (18611940), who
worked with the Colonial and Continental Church Society.
Canadian-born Isaac
Barr was an Anglican clergyman who was fascinated by the career of Cecil
Rhodes, the British diamond magnate and imperialist. He even attempted
to join the famous Briton in a colonizing venture, leaving his Washington
D.C. parish to travel to London in January 1902. But Rhodes died in March
of that year, frustrating Barr's dream to serve the Empire by founding
an overseas colony. Barr revived his plans, however, on learning of the
Reverend George Lloyd's interest in organizing a settlement in Canada
of unemployed British workers and soldiers demobilized from the Boer War.
"Let us take possession of Canada," he wrote in a letter to The Times
of London in 1902. "Let our cry be 'CANADA FOR THE BRITISH.'"
The two clerics
joined forces to organize a Canadian settlement of almost 2,000 Britons,
few of whom were of the sturdy farming stock traditionally considered
necessary for successful homesteading. Barr handled nearly all the administrative
arrangements. He persuaded the Canadian government to reserve a block
of land for the settlers, collected settlers' fees, purchased supplies,
and arranged for transportation. But he refused to act as a chaplain for
the colonists, claiming that the colony was not to be an Anglican enclave
in the prairie wilderness. As a result of this decision, the Reverend
George Lloyd and his family were persuaded to join the group at the last
minute.
Unfortunately for
the colonists, Barr was no altruist. Determined to reap financial gain
from this venture, he received a commission from the Canadian government
for each immigrant and worked in league with local merchants. He was also
no organizing genius. Things began to go wrong the day that the SS
Lake Manitoba sailed from the Old Country in 1903. After a rough ocean
voyage in a ship equipped to handle only about 550 passengers instead
of 1,900, the exhausted immigrants arrived in Saint John, New Brunswick,
where they faced countless delays and numerous baggage inspections. Eventually
they boarded three filthy immigrant trains, none of them with overnight
accommodation, for the five-day trip to Saskatoon.
In the 1880s,
immigrants travelled by train to Western Canada.
Provincial
Archives of Manitoba (N 7934)
|
The settlers experienced
further disillusionment when they arrived at Saskatoon. Army-surplus bell
tents had been erected to house them, and since there was no station house,
their luggage was dumped onto the prairie. Local merchants charged inflated
prices for basic necessities, and Barr's promises of wagons, oxen, and
other supplies were not kept. In addition to these hardships, the settlers
then had to endure a long and arduous wagon journey along a primitive
trail that for part of the way wound through sloughs and down steep cliffs
before reaching North Battleford. For many of the colonists who had no
experience driving oxen and wagons this challenge was too much and they
turned back. The majority, however, persevered, stopping overnight in
large marquee tents set up by immigration officials.
This poster
was reproduced in the magazine Canada West, circa 19001914.
National Archives
of Canada (C 85854)
|
The remaining colonists'
frustration with Barr finally boiled over in an explosive meeting in one
of the trailside camps. Barr was accused of being in league with the Saskatoon
merchants, of failing to deliver on his promise of a transportation company
and a co-operative store, and, worst of all, of misleading the colonists
about conditions on the Prairies. Most of the people at the meeting voted
to depose Barr as their leader, but they did not want to break up the
colony. Instead, they renamed the venture "Britannia Colony" and voted
in a new leadership, George Lloyd and an elected committee of twelve,
soon dubbed the "Twelve Apostles."
After finally reaching
the reserve in May 1903, the settlers and Lloyd began homesteading. Soon
a village, named Lloydminster to honour the man who had gained the settlers'
confidence, grew up along the fourth meridian. In their first year, many
of the colonists came close to starving. They battled mosquitoes, blizzards,
and prairie fires, but thanks to their hard work and perseverance the
settlement survived and began to prosper. As early as 1905, three large
hotels were under construction. The town's success was finally assured
when the railway arrived in July of that year.
Barr, meanwhile,
had returned to the United States, but not before being publicly pelted
with rotten eggs by the people of Regina. After working in various secular
jobs south of the border, he joined the Closer Settlement near Melbourne,
Australia. The settlement failed, but Barr stayed on after the other settlers
departed, never to move again.
Immigration
to British Columbia
Not only the Prairies
attracted a strong flow of immigrants in the early years of this century.
British Columbia, which had entered Confederation in 1871, was also a
magnet for newcomers. Admittedly, the volume of immigration to this province
did not begin to approach that to the Prairies, but it was nevertheless
impressive.
The
British
Retired businessmen,
farmers, and the younger sons in aristocratic families were among the
British newcomers who flocked to Canada's most westerly province. Their
attention was first drawn by advertising material describing the joys
of farming in lush interior valleys dotted with beautiful lakes filled
with trout. Inspired further by the enthusiastic reports of Lord Aberdeen,
Canada's Governor General from 1893 to 1898, well-to-do British immigrants
purchased ranches and fruit farms in the Okanagan Valley, where the Scottish
aristocrat had extensive properties.
   
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