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During the first three decades of the twentieth
century Canada received more than four and a half million immigrants.
Many of them went to the farming areas of the West and to the growing
cities and industrial towns; but many also went to the lumber, mining
and railway camps strung across northern Canada.
In
the camps they were more accessible than on homesteads, or perhaps
even in urban ethnic enclaves, to agents of Canadianization. These
included not only the camp walking-bosses, foremen, clerks, accountants
and inspectors, but also and most notably a distinctive institution,
Frontier College.
Founded
in 1899 by a young Presbyterian minister from Nova Scotia, Rev.
Alfred Fitzpatrick, the College sent hundreds of university students
into the camps during their summer vacations to labour by day alongside
frontiersmen and to teach them by night in bunkhouses, tents, railway
cars and specially constructed log cabins.
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The
principles upon which Frontier College was based were outlined by
Fitzpatrick in The University in Overalls, published in 1920.
The
first was that the gap between the universities on the one hand,
and the workplaces of Canadians on the other, should be bridged.
"Education," according to Fitzpatrick, "means the related activity
of all the members of the body, by the direction and command of
the mind."
The
education possessed by manual workers was under valued; those workers
should be given the opportunity to add to their skills the intellectual
learning given by the universities, while the education of university
students should be complemented by manual training.
In
accordance with this principle, all the instructors of Frontier
College from 1901 on were required to combine manual labour with
teaching, in order that they might earn the respect of the workers
and themselves hold the workers in due regard.
A
second principle was that it was unhealthy for cities to grow at
the expense of rural areas. Universities, because they were located
in cities, promoted urbanism; they should be decentralized, and
their curricula should be reformed to include experience in clearing
and working the land as well as theory, and indeed to begin with
such experience.
It
is often assumed that English Canada welcomed industrialism while
French Canada rejected it; Fitzpatrick's advocacy of ruralism, however,
was equal to that of his Quebec contemporaries.
Third,
one of Canada's problems was the assimilation of immigrants, and
this problem could best be solved by having university students
as instructors in the frontier camps to educate the bunkhouse men
in language and citizenship.
Assimilation
would not only increase the country's production, but would also
redound to the advantage of the individual. Because of the importance
of assimilation, teachers should be, like the bosses and the clerks
in camps, Canadian-born or - what Fitzpatrick evidently considered
to be the same thing - British subjects by birth.
While
the camps' deficiencies in sanitation and comfort were acknowledged
and reform urgently called for, Canadianization of immigrants was
the sovereign solution to unrest and discontent in the camps.
Handbook
for New Canadians, also by Fitzpatrick and published in 1920, was
one of the chief teaching aids of Frontier College in its work with
those it called foreigners - that is, immigrants from countries
other than the United Kingdom and the United States.
It
contained a reader or primer, which in a separate format went through
a number of editions; a description of the geography of Canada;
discussions of government and civics; an outline of Canadian history,
and a vocabulary of words in common use - stock words - in English,
Italian, French, Swedish, Ruthenian, Russian and Yiddish.
The
Handbook was amply illustrated with photographs and maps. The introduction
makes clear that the book's aim was to promote assimilation. Indeed,
it proposed that the proportion of members of particular ethnic
groups admitted as immigrants should be related to their rate of
assimilation.
The
index of assimilation proposed was the taking out of naturalization
papers after five years' residence, an index that ignored such motives
for naturalization as the obtaining of a patent of ownership for
one's land.
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Curiously,
the Handbook did not mention that during the First World War, which
ended two years before its publication, aliens could not be naturalized,
and under the Act of 1919 those from former enemy countries could
not look forward to naturalization for ten years.
The
Act was rescinded in 1923 but was a source of bitterness, especially
among Ukrainians.In exhorting aliens to become citizens, the Handbook
described a Ukrainian immigrant, Michael Simkovitch, born in Kiev
in 1876.
He
came to Canada in 1910, brought his family over in 1912, changed
his name to John Barley, and applied for naturalization either in
1916 or 1918 (the text is ambiguous).
No
warning was given of his ineligibility. The values extolled in the
Handbook are those of Poor Richard's Almanack and other expressions
of the Protestant ethic: industry, frugality, cleanliness, temperance,
good nutrition, love of God and love of country. Conspicuously early
in the primer, perhaps to ensure that readers would not overlook
it, the following advice is given:
The
good citizen
Loves
God.
Loves
the Empire.
Loves
Canada.
Loves his own family.
Protects women and children.
Works hard.
Does his work well.
Helps his neighbor.
Is truthful.
Is just.
Is honest.
Is brave.
Keeps his promise.
His body is clean.
Is every inch a Man.
While
the implication is clear that the values advocated were peculiarly
Canadian, or at least British rather than foreign, the Handbook
betrayed little other ethnic prejudice.
Descriptions
of the various kinds of non-English-speaking immigrants were invariably
favourable. Even the Asians - "Orientals" - whose immigration was
severely restricted at the time were praised: the Japanese as "bright,
keen, energetic, desirous of making good, hard-working, self-reliant,
capable, studious and ambitious"; the Sikhs as "fine specimens of
manhood; big, well set up, and with the air of confidence born of
centuries as free men. . . not a quarrelsome lot . . . likeable,
and many of them [with] an air of refinement"; and the Chinese as
"industrious, inoffensive, and well behaved," though having the
"besetting vice" of gambling. The epithets "Jap" and "Chinaman"
were used but apparently without offensive intent.
The
restrictions on Asian immigration were attributed to racial instincts,
upon which no judgment was passed.
In
short, the worst that the book conveyed was Canadian and British
condescension; this it conveyed strongly. Historians of ethnic groups
leave little doubt that the camps failed to generate the love of
Canada that Fitzpatrick hoped for.
The
isolation, hard work and lack of sanitation and comfort in the camps,
and the fact that foreigners did the rough labour while easier jobs
went to the Canadian-born and to immigrants from the British Isles
and the United States, fed the belief that Canadian society practised
harsh discrimination.
It
is interesting that few historians comment on the work of Frontier
College, although by its own account it gave thousands the opportunity
to achieve literacy in English and to some, during the 1 920s, the
opportunity to earn university credits and degrees.
It
also employed hundreds of instructor-labourers. Given the small
proportion of Canadians who attended university during the period,
and the later prominence of some of those named in The University
in Overalls, it may be assumed that Frontier College affected the
views of considerable numbers of the country's elite concerning
various ethnic groups.
It
is tempting to speculate whether the anodyne teaching aids they
employed or their experiences, which were undoubtedly ruder, did
more to shape their attitudes.
Frontier
College, still active, is now concerned with education and recreation
in isolated and depressed communities rather than with the Canadianization
of immigrants.
It
can claim to have been a pioneer in adult education, and to have
achieved notable success. Its records provide indications of the
attitudes of men of undoubted goodwill towards non-English-speaking
immigrants in a period from which surveys of attitudes are unavailable.
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