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Barnardo Children in Canada, page 4

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As a result, multiple stage indentures were introduced. Immigrants who were less than eleven years old were placed in boarding out situations in Muskoka, Simcoe and Victoria counties. There they were to attend school regularly and to perform light household chores. Their costs to the family were to be repaid not in labour, but through a monthly payment from the Homes. When a young girl reached eleven or twelve, she was moved from the marginal farming district to a household in which the family could afford to shelter her without cash subsidy. Here she worked for two years at child care and housework in exchange for her board, clothing and a specified amount of schooling. These homes were in more prosperous parts of Simcoe and Victoria and in Peterborough, Ontario and in Dufferin, Manitoba. By age thirteen, the Home visitors usually considered a girl sufficiently competent to be worthy of wages. If her mistress disagreed with this evaluation, the young girl was moved on. to a new place. Under her wage1 indenture, the young immigrant received two . to1 three dollars a month from which her pin money and clothing expenses were deducted. The remainder of her earnings were forwarded quarterly to the Homes to be held in trust until she reached age 21. The Home forbade her to do field labour, but she helped in the poultry and dairy work on the farm, washed and baked and aided in the routine housework and child care. Rural placements were preferred for all home children When boys were graduated from boarding out places in Muskoka or Haliburton, they were moved directly to wage placements in expanding farming areas. Many young men were initially placed or moved at age eleven or twelve to Manitoba. In the West they were most often placed in Souris, Marquette, Lisgar or Brandon districts. Because boys' work role depended more crucially upon physical strength, a longer term wage agreement was required. Farm masters accepted young boys on four to six year indentures, which stipulated that the apprentice be provided with board and clothing, trained in all aspects of farm work and paid a lump sum of $75.00 to $150.00 when his term ended at age eighteen. When their indentures were completed, most young men were admirable farm hands, good ploughmen and experienced woodsmen. After 1887, Barnardo emigrated young men over sixteen unable to find employment in Britain to his Industrial Farm near Russell, Manitoba, a rigorous and highly disciplined institution where they worked for a year to gain experience and re~pay the Homes their passage money. These men were usually first placed around Shoal Lake and Birtle or across the Saskatchewan border near Moosomin and Indian Head. Older immigrants worked on yearly contracts for specified wages rather than under supervised indentures. opposition brought an end to the immigration of children to Canada Most Barnardo children found that their work responsibilities severely limited opportunity for further schooling in Canada. Many knew that they were obliged to work much harder than native and natural children, and regretted the long lonely hours on the farm. Until the years immediately before WWI, Barnardo placements were so dispersed that inspection visits were neither regular nor frequent. As a result, the apprentices had no one to take their part with employers and were highly dependent upon their masters' good temper and good will for fair treatment. The Canadian labour union movement and groups concerned with neglected and publically dependent Canadian children offered strong opposition to juvenile immigration. Representatives of organized labour protested the entry of children, particularly 'bewhiskered' children who would ultimately find their way from rural placements to urban centres where competition for employment was becoming increasingly severe. Unionists and welfare workers shared an apprehension that the young British apprentices were being overworked and underpaid in situations where they were afforded little protection. Canadian children's agencies- were jealous that any suitable homes which had been provided for immigrant children should rather be reserved for the growing numbers of Canadian waifs. This resistance brought forth provincial legislation and Dominion regulation which had some effect upon the quality of immigrants accepted for Canada but very little upon the quality of their life in the Dominion. It was rather British opposition of growing intensity after WWI which brought an end to the immigration of children to Canada. As expectations concerning State responsibility for the welfare of citizens rose, the removal from the Mother Country of children not yet finished their schooling and not yet able to understand the implications of their consent became increasingly unpalatable. After 1924, no more governmenf'sponsored children passed through the Canadian Distributing Homes, and private philanthropists began to follow the State's example. Adolescents continued to emigrate with the help of the Homes to find their first jobs after school-leaving here. But the immigration of British children to work in Canada was at an end. CANADA 1924 CREDIT: BARNARDO PHOTO LIBRARY. Design: Jean Ran court Montage: M-H. Robert National Museums Canada Musfes nationaux Canada

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