Waifs: the Fairbridge Society in British Columbia, 1931-1951
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Waifs: The Fairbridge Society in British Columbia, 1931-1951 Patrick A. Dunae* The Fairbridge Farm School on Vancouver Island represents the last gasp of the trans-Atlantic child migration movement. Between 1934 and 1951, the farm school received nearly 350 underprivileged British children. The scheme, which combined philanthropy and empire-settlement, was supported by influential pol iticians who allowed the Fairbridge Society to contravene federal immigration regulations and jlounJ provincial child welfare laws. Child welfare groups, however, denounced the farm school as an anachronism and repeatedly tried to close it. The history of the farm school was characterized by conflict between an imperially-minded generation of child savers and a new breed ofprofessional child care workers. La demiere vague migratoire d' enfants en provenance d' outre-Atlantique etait reliee a Ia Fairbridge Farm School, siruee sur l'lie de Vancouver. Entre 1935 et 1951, cet etablissement a accueilli pres de 350 enfants britanniques defavorises. A Ia jois philantropes et desire we de bdtir I' Empire, ses dirigeants avaient /' appui d' hommes politiques injluents qui permettaient aIa Fairbridge Society de violer les reglements jederau.x en matiere d' immigration et de faire fides lois provinciales touchant Ia protection de /' enfance. lis souleverent cependant I' ire de groupes reuvrant a Ia protection des enfants, lesquels denoncerent /'ecole porce qu' ils Ia consideraient comme un anachronisme, et tenterent amaintes reprises de Ia faire jenner. L' histoire de cet etablissement illustre le conjlit entre deux generations de protecteurs de /' enfance, /' une d' abord preoccupee de I' Empire, I'autre jonnee de projessionnels, qui se souciaient principolement du bien des enfants. Canada received approximately 80,<XX:l destitute and disadvantaged child emigrants from Britain between the 1860s and the 1920s. The majority of these children migrated under the auspices of philanthropic organizations and most were directed to central Canada and the Maritimes. Their experiences and the controversy that attended their migration have been well documented by Joy Parr, Gillian Wagner, Neil Sutherland and others. 1 As these historians have shown, the child migration movement was motivated by economic considerations and was sustained by the evangelical zeal of contemporary social refonners. Recent studies have also shown how the movement, which peaked at the tum of the century, attenuated after the First World War. By the 1920s, Canada had disadvantaged children of its own to look after, while a growing number of Canadians felt that the Dominion had become a dumping ground for socially-undesirable urchins. At the same time, enthusiasm for child migration declined in Britain, following reports that "home children", as the young immigrants were called, were labouring in deplorable conditions on isolated Canadian farms. As a result of these criticisms and concerns, the federal government-acting in concert with British authorities-introduced regulations which prohibited dependent · * Patrick A. Dunae is an archivist with the Provincial Archives of British Columbia. I . Joy Parr, Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869-1924, London, 1981 ; Gillian Wagner, Children ofthe Empire, London, 1982; Neil Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, Toronto, 1978; Patricia T. Rooke and R.L. Schnell, Discarding the Asylum: From Child Rescue to the Welfare State in English Canada, 1800-1900, New York, 1983. Histoire sociale-Social History, Vol. XXI, n°42 (novembre-November 1988): 224-250 226 HISTOIRE SOCIALE-SOCIAL HISTORY children wtder the age of fourteen from entering Canada. The regulations were introduced in 1925 and soon after, the trans-Atlantic child migration movement came to a close. The movement did not die, though. It was revived in 1935 when the Fairbridge Society brought out the first of over 300 wtderprivileged British children to Canada. It was an extraordinary achievement, given the economic climate and the fact that many Canadians resented immigration of any kind. Despite opposition from child welfare groups and im migration officials, the Society was able to bring into the country dependent children who were as young a four and five years of age. No less remarkable was the fact that Faiibridge operated exclusively in British Columbia, a province that had virtually no experience with child immigration. But then, the Fairbridge Society- first known as the Child Emigration Society was a remarkable organization. Unlike earlier child migration schemes, it was imperially, rather than evangelically, charged. It was founded not only to rescue children from ''poverty, neglect, and antisocial influences'', but also as a means of making a ''mighty contribution to Empire settlement''. During the Depression, when it began operations in Canada, its aim was to create "exceptional men and women for an exceptional time of difficulty in an exceptional Empire. " 2 Moreover, Fairbridge commanded friends andre sources unavailable to most other emigration societies. It enjoyed the active patronage of royalty as well as the support of influential politicians in Westminster, Ottawa and Victoria. Members of the academic community on both sides of the Atlantic also showed an unusual degree of interest in its work, thus giving Fairbridge an eminence and lustre which set it apart from its predecessors. Its association with academe, its social and political connections, and its patriotic character enabled Fairbridge to revive a system of immigration that had been discredited and ostensibly abandoned in Canada; they allowed it to circumvent federal immigration regulations and, for many years, shielded it from British Columbia's child welfare laws. The Society's imperial character and prestigious connections also helped it to weather a series of scandals which would have rendered any other group prostrate. Ultimately, however, the organization, which had been conceived during the Empire's Edwardian summer, was forced to come to terms with the realities of modem Canadian society. It was not an easy reconciliation. Indeed, the Faiibridge era in British Columbia was characterized by an intense struggle between an imperially-minded generation of child savers and a new breed of professional child care workers. I The organization Leo Amery called "the finest institution for human regeneration that has ever existed" was conceived by Kingsley Ogilvie Faiibridge. 3 Born in South Africa in 1885, Faiibridge was raised in Southern Rhodesia where his father worked as a surveyor for the British South Africa Company. He was an ardent disciple of Cecil Rhodes and, from an early age, had been eager to make some tangible contribution to the cause of the Empire. He would do so through his child emigration scheme. 2. Fairbridge Fann Schools, Inc., Annual Report, 1934, p. II; 1936, p. 4. 3. The Autobiography ofKingsley Fairbridge, London, 1932, preface. TilE FAIRBRIDGE SOCIETY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA 227 Fairbridge's interest in child immigration sprang out of his first visit to England, in 1903. He was appalled by the widespread poverty and by the abject condition of children who struggled for survival in city slums. "The waste of it all", he wrote afterwards, "children's lives wasting, while the Empire cried aloud for men. " 4 He decided that the best way to "save" these children was to send them to the British dominions overseas. The children would benefit by being removed to a salubrious environment, while the dominions would benefit from the additional manpower. In 1909, having returned to England as a Rhodes scholar, Fairbridge outlined his plans to a group of fellow enthusiasts at the Oxford University Colonial Club. He proposed to emigrate destitute children between the ages of eight and ten-"before they have acquired the vices of 'professional pauperism' and before their physique has become lowered by adverse [environmental] conditions." Eschewing the practice of Dr.Bamardo's organi zation, which boarded out or apprenticed immigrant children with farmers, Fairbridge proposed to establish a residential farm school overseas. This children's community was to consist of several large cottages, a day-school and a well-equipped farm. Children would live together in groups of a dozen or so, under the care of solicitous "cottage mothers". By providing a basic education and an edifying regimen of "physical culture", the farm school would transform erstwhile slum-dwellers into sturdy settlers. Boys would be taught agriculture, stock-raising and other skills which would allow them to become farmers. Girls-who figured less prominently in Fairbridge's scheme of things-would be taught such skills as would allow them to become "governesses, housekeepers, cooks and domestic servants'' . 5 Fairbridge's proposal was a composite of several other schemes and systems. He drew on the "cottage homes" favoured by some philanthropic organizations in Britain, and upon earlier proposals for immigrants' training centres in the colonies. He also derived some of his ideas from the Oxbridge-based ''settlement movement'' which encouraged "men and women of the educated classes" to bring "culture, knowledge and personal influence to bear upon the poor. " 6 As he told his Colonial Club audience: "The men and women of the staff [of the proposed farm schools] must be gentlemen and gentlewomen of culture and refinement in order to bring up the children in a clean and wholesome atmosphere. " 7 The Colonial