Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society

Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 10.1 (2003) 23-48

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MacNamara’s DP Domestics:
Immigration Policy Makers Negotiate Class, Race, and Gender in the Aftermath of World War II

Christiane Harzig

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Abstract: The Canadian labor market has always been in need of domestic labor. Throughout Canadian history the great demands for female help in households and on farms were never met. During the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, the choice recruitment area for domestics was, of course, Great Britain. These women would inevitably soon participate in the nation-building project, helping, as mothers of the nation, populate the country. In the aftermath of World War II, when Canada became an important political agent in the international refugee resettlement regime, bureaucrats from the Ministry of Labour tried to kill two birds with one stone: to bring relief to displaced persons in Europe and to supply the labor market with domestics. After the supply from the DP camps ran dry, administrators from Immigration and Labour tried to tap into new sources in Europe. They reintroduced an Assisted Passage Program to make the offer to come to Canada to work as domestics more attractive. However, the women they had [End Page 23] in mind had to meet certain standards, which, alas, neither the women in the DP camps nor the women targeted with the Assisted Passage Program were able or willing to match. How Ottawa bureaucrats and women activists in Canada on the one hand and field officers and women in war-torn Europe on the other hand negotiated their aims and interests and needs and wants—and thus reshaped Canada’s understanding of immigration—is the focus of this article.

Domestics have always been an important part of the Canadian nation-building project. Throughout the nineteenth century, the country aimed a number of special recruitment efforts at women from Britain and Ireland to fill the labor market needs for help on farms and urban households. It was generally assumed, however, that these women would soon find suitable husbands and thus become mothers of future generations of Canadians. From very early on it was clear that domestics were not just persons in great demand, nor were they women who were guarded by one specific male (husband or father) fulfilling prescribed family roles and functions. The domestic’s particular place as a worker and a woman in the private environment of the household made her especially vulnerable, and her position had to be negotiated anew every time. The unequal power relation, however, left her with little room to maneuver. Canadian society was an opinionated observer, sometimes protective, sometimes feeling threatened and on guard. ¹

Today women mainly from the Caribbean and the Philippines fill these jobs, allowing educated and skilled Canadian women and men to follow their various career options. Rather than seeking some form of collective solution, such as crèches, day care, or flexible work hours and time-sharing for fathers and mothers alike, the Canadian state has on the whole promoted easy access to inexpensive domestic servants or care givers. Throughout the decades many women, either managing large farming households or middle- and upper-middle-class urban households, have made use of this option. ² However, immigration policy makers always stood between the women who wanted to work in Canada and those who wanted to employ them. Though women who wanted to work as domestics were in great demand, male immigration administrators still wanted to choose and control.

Through the earlier history of Canadian immigration policy—a policy that divided the European world into preferred and less preferred nations and excluded the non-European world—a number of special programs targeted women who were willing to work as domestics for immigration and settlement. Because women from the British Isles were considered the most desirable, recruitment efforts [End Page 24] in Britain were mainly financed by the Canadian government. To make the idea appealing to young, single women, a regime of assisted passages, hostels, training centers, and support networks, including chaperones to guide the immigrant women, was established in addition to guaranteed employment. Between 1904 and 1914 three-quarters of the female domestics arriving in Canada were of British origin, and the British Women’s Emigration Association, in support of government efforts, was influential in recruiting some 16,000 women to come to Canada (Barber 1991). In the interwar years immigrant women from Scandinavia did not receive such preferred treatment but were nevertheless eagerly sought after in Canadian households (Lindström 1986). In the mid-1950s, when the European market for domestics ran dry, immigration policy makers gave in to pressure from the Colonial Office in London and demands from Canadian citizens and turned toward the Caribbean to recruit women to work in Canadian households (Harzig 1999). Again, these women were hand-picked: They usually had an above-average education, were in good physical shape, and possessed occupational skills. In exchange for two years of domestic service, they were granted regular immigrant status, thus becoming the first immigrant group of nonwhite origin to receive such privilege (Calliste 1993–94). Between the programs targeting British women and those geared at women from the Caribbean, another program was initiated, namely, the one aimed at women residing in war-torn Germany. This program played a pivotal role in Canadian immigration policy, insofar as, for the first time, non-British women were recruited to work in Canadian households in large numbers.

The years between 1945 and the early 1960s constitute an in- between period, when Canadian immigration policy oscillated between altruism and economic self-interest (Avery 1995, 144) and when a number of important policy issues were decided. It is the period between the highly restrictionist era of the 1930s, when Canada almost completely closed its doors, even to refugees who badly needed asylum (Abella and Troper 1991), and the early 1960s, when the point system was introduced, which eventually changed the outlook and texture of Canadian society. The need for domestic labor and the domestics themselves played a very important part in preparing these changes.

In this article I examine the in-between period, making use of the records of the Department of Labour and the Immigration Branch. The files contain internal and interdepartmental communications as well as correspondence with concerned citizens and experts. The people whose voices are audible in the records mainly represented the employers’ side and interests, including women who worked for the [End Page 25] Department of Labour, though they tended to argue in the interests of fair working conditions and wages. The voices of domestics, however, are conspicuously absent.

Thus, the article aims to show how immigration and labor administrators and policy makers reacted to the various pressures coming from international politics (Great Britain and the International Refugee Organization or IRO), humanitarian interests (the plight of displaced persons in camps), labor market demands, and internal political interests (housewives, women’s activists, members of Parliament). These adjustments saw the transition from a semi-humanitarian DP program to a systematic labor market recruitment policy. This recruitment program spread from DP camps in Germany to the rest of Europe; the agents from the Department of Labour sought high and low to find suitable domestics. In the mid-1950s, however, sources for domestic labor ran dry, not only because people found employment in their home countries but also because most European states had better working conditions for domestics than did Canada. Thus, recruitment went on in other parts of the world, and the Caribbean domestic workers program was initiated. As can be shown, these recruitment programs had much more in common than one might assume.

The article will first take a brief look at the international scene, presenting the “DP problem” from a European perspective to provide some context for the international and human dimensions of the program, the dynamics, and the difficulties Canadian administrators faced when organizing the resettlement program, of which domestics were just a small aspect. ³ It will also demonstrate the minuscule contribution this program made in aiding in the plight of displaced persons in Europe. Second, the article will discuss the emergence and administration of the DP domestic workers program and the various follow-up programs catering to the demand for domestic workers. It will then take a gendered look at the policy-making process behind these programs. The analysis will show the individual agency of administrators, such as Arthur MacNamara and Margaret Grier, who inserted their own benevolent paternalism and professionalism, respectively, into the dynamics of Canadian policy making. It will also point to the various class-, gender-, and race-based assumptions and prejudices made manifest by government officials, representatives of women’s organizations, and officers “in the field” who were involved in the process.

Displaced Persons in Europe and Canadian International Engagement

When Canadian administrators were pondering whether it was advisable to select young women from German DP camps to work [End Page 26] as domestics in Canada, they were confronted with vast and complex war and postwar population movements, the extent of which was hardly reflected on in the offices of the Ottawa Labour and Immigration administration. For several years previously, Europe (especially Germany) had seen a massive redistribution of people. What Canadian bureaucrats were asked to deal with in October 1946 was only the tip of the iceberg.

Allied forces, first evaluating the problem in mid-1944, estimated that there would be 11 million displaced persons and refugees on the move, 7.7 million in Germany alone. ⁴ Each day the need for assessing the growing dimension of the problem arose anew as troops encountered such people during their military advance toward Germany. With totally chaotic and destabilized conditions, as well as a lack of proper nourishment and medical care, it was almost impossible to provide adequate help. Rudimentary care and transportation to so-called assembly centers was all that could be provided at first. In April 1945 the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces published a memorandum outlining the major Allied objectives concerning displaced persons: liberation, care, and repatriation.

It was the military’s responsibility to reach that goal. This meant, first and foremost, to prevent uncontrolled movement that would be detrimental to military advancement. In addition a structure had to be put in place to care for the displaced persons and protect them from potential attacks by Germans. Most important, it implied organizing the fastest possible means of repatriating the people. An organization was created, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and model camps were designed, the average number of people per camp assigned, and ratios calculated—all on paper. The reality in demolished Germany was more complex and difficult to manage, and the problem turned out to be much larger in scope than imagined. A moderate estimate accounted for 10.8 million displaced persons in Europe, and 6.36 million were officially registered in August 1945 in and around assembly centers in Germany. However, the voluntary and individual repatriation movement had already begun. Despite Eisenhower’s order “to stand fast and don’t move,” many forced laborers, especially those from France, the Netherlands, and other Western countries, took control over their own fate and headed home as fast as possible. By the end of September 1945, only four months after German capitulation, the military, with the support of UNRRA, had managed to repatriate 4.6 million people—that is, an average of 33,000 per day. However, 1.2 million stayed in the three western zones of Germany, and most of these remaining people came to constitute the “DP problem” that occupied at first Allied and later German politics for years to come. ⁵ [End Page 27]

From October 1945 to March 1946, repatriation came more or less to a standstill because of transportation problems and the particularly long and severely cold winter. In spring 1946, when UNRRA intended to resume its efforts, the situation had changed drastically. Among those who had stayed in the camps during the winter were groups of people who could not and did not want to return home for numerous reasons: political, economic, personal. Ukrainians presented a particular problem because citizenship and nationality did not correspond. Because Ukrainians refused to return to either the Soviet Union or Poland, they were put into special camps (organized by nationality) so as not to “infect” the other camp inhabitants with the antirepatriation virus. The same problem emerged with the Balts. Here, however, a rather “elegant” political solution was found: Because the Western Allies refused to recognize the occupation of the three Baltic states by Soviet troops, the Baltic DPs were exempt from the repatriation order, though it was quite well known that many of them had been Nazi sympathizers and/or collaborators and often even members of the SS. Allied administrators chose to ignore this politically incriminating fact. Poles were also increasingly reluctant to return to Poland. Those who had come from the eastern parts of the country had actually no place to which to return because their homes had been occupied by Russians, and others were hesitant because of disconcerting news about political, social, and economic conditions under Soviet rule. Meanwhile Jews, who in 1945 constituted only 3.7 percent of the DP population, had been moving west from Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary in the subsequent years, seeking protection in the American-occupied zone. By 1947 they accounted for 25 percent of the DPs in Germany and Austria (Wyman 1989, 149). Despite large-scale propaganda campaigns, aid in provisions, and mild (and not so mild) coercion, by the end of 1946 approximately 910,000 DPs remained in the camps who would not return under any circumstances.

Other developments actually worked against the repatriation concept. Not only were there unfavorable conditions in homelands, but people in the camps had settled into a routine. They were able to organize their own lives, with newspapers, schools, entertainment, and political organizations. Some of them had found jobs, either in the DP administration or in the German economy. Because of the rather generous provisions, their living standard in the camps was often higher than that of the German population around them and most certainly higher than what they would have encountered at home.

When UNRRA had reached its limits regarding repatriation, the IRO was put into place in July 1947. What UNRRA was not allowed to organize, IRO put forward as the solution to the problem: a resettlement [End Page 28] program. ⁶ After lengthy negotiations with countries in South America, Europe, the British Commonwealth, and North Africa, and after getting the support of a number of private organizations to take care of the emigrants, a program was installed that would allow the resettlement of DPs from July 1947 onward. The effects of the resettlement programs varied; for some it opened up new prospects, whereas for others it was a dead-end street. In the words of the German historian Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, the legacy of the resettlement program was a “social wasteland.” In 1949, when the program, which had included only the young and able-bodied, was completed, a hard-core DP population was left which was neither willing nor able to resocialize (Jacobmeyer 1985, 169). It was up to the German government to deal with this legacy.

In addition to the immediate developments resulting from the war drama in Europe, a number of national and international events in the postwar period provided the broader context for immigration policies and programs. Canada came out of the war as a strengthened, more assertive global player. It had partipated actively in the founding of the United Nations, participated in UNRRA, promoted a multiracial commonwealth, participated in various UN peacekeeping efforts, and was involved in the conception of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The name of Lester Pearson (foreign minister, to become prime minister in 1963) may stand as a symbol for these international activities. These external activities were substantiated by internal developments. From 1946 until the mid-1960s, Canada’s economy experienced a significant boom. The natural resources industry as well as manufacturing saw large-scale private investment and restructuring with—at that time—the related growing demand for people power. With unemployment sometimes as low as 2.8 percent, workers were in constant demand. In fact, the lack of people often hampered expansion. At the same time, a rather belated recognition of mistakes with regard to Japanese internment and the refusal to grant asylum to Jews during the war years led groups with a humanitarian interest, church and community groups, some parts of the labor movement, and people on the left of the party spectrum to demand a more active involvement in refugee politics and a revision of Canada’s racist and anti-Semitic immigration policies.

Still, more time passed before these changing attitudes bore political fruits. In his much-quoted 1947 statement, Prime Minister Mackenzie King not only reiterated the basic principles that had guided Canadian immigration policy all along but also addressed the refugee issue. After outlining Canada’s need for workers in the primary industries, he discussed the refugee program. Though the government was not obliged to accept refugees, he stated, it was nonetheless prepared [End Page 29] to assist in meeting the problem of refugees and displaced persons. The government, he announced, would be “sending immigration officers to examine the situation among the refugee groups, and to take steps looking towards the early admission of some thousands of their numbers.” However officers would be very selective and “consider applicants for entry into Canada, examine them on a basis of suitability and physical fitness, and make arrangements for their orderly movement and placement.” In anticipation of criticism he asserted Canada’s previous “whites-only” policy:

With regard to the selection of immigrants, much has been said about discrimination. I wish to make it quite clear that Canada is perfectly within her rights in selecting the persons whom we regard as desirable future citizens. It is not a “fundamental human right” of any alien to enter Canada. It is a privilege . . . The people of Canada do not wish, as a result of mass immigration, to make a fundamental alteration in the character of our population. . . . Any considerable Oriental immigration would be certain to give rise to social and economic problems. ⁷

Thus, King, who at that time took full responsibility for foreign affairs, informed the House of Commons about a program the Ministry of Labour was developing. It was obvious that the resettlement program was designed to be very limited. From the outset it was clear that Canada’s primary incentive was not humanitarian aid but the recruitment of qualified and able-bodied workers. In addition, the privilege/selection aspect of the statement reflected the influence of immigration policy administrators in the late 1940s and 1950s. The records of the Department of Labour and the Immigration Branch provide us with insights into the intricacies of running an administration, as well as the attitudes of administrators who are at the same time policy makers, the communications among concerned people and the compromises necessary in adjusting to postwar realities.

Plans and Programs to Recruit Domestics

The IRO resettlement program has been labeled a labor recruitment program on an international scale. Of the approximately 700,000 people who participated in the program, 373,000 went to the United States, 182,000 to Australia, and 152,000 to Canada. After political negotiations with ethnic groups and church leaders and representatives from the business community, and after recommendations from the Standing Committee of the Senate on Immigration and Labour, the Department of Labour and the Immigration Branch offered four different programs through which DPs could be [End Page 30] selected for resettlement in Canada. Besides a minor program for orphans, sponsored by Catholic and Jewish organizations and an effort to resettle Estonians living in Sweden, there was the sponsorship program for relatives—the category could be most flexibly applied—and the bulk labour program, which catered to the needs of the labor market. About 95,000 people were eligible under the close relative scheme, and 52,000 were part of the labor program. About 14,000 of these were placed as domestic workers. ⁸

The program to order domestics “in bulk” received its impetus from a note from the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees to the High Commissioner for Canada in London in October 1946 with respective copies to External Affairs in Ottawa. The note pointed out that Her Majesty’s Government had recently introduced a scheme to select 1,000 women from DP camps to work as domestics in the United Kingdom and stated that it was hoped that the government of Canada might possibly “be prepared to consider similar arrangements which would. . . help to relieve the shortage of domestics in Canada and at the same time materially assist the solution of the general problem of the resettlement of refugees and eligible displaced persons.” ⁹

Officials at External Affairs and at the Department of Labor were at first reluctant to consider any such movement, but the demand side of the market in domestics was very vocal and the elected politicians were aware of it. In correspondence it was noted that on the one hand, during the wartime labor shortage women had left domestic service by the hundreds of thousands to work for better wages in war industry, and now, it was lamented, they “would rather loaf and starve than to go back to housework.” ¹⁰ On the other hand, another letter writer pointed out, Canadian housewives were “worn out as the result of the war years,” having been without domestic help for so long. This author also referred to the local Council of Women in Vancouver, which was “making a drive on Members of Parliament and others interested, asking that the immigration Dept. let down the bars and bring in young women from European countries . . . on the understanding that such women will be willing to take positions as domestic workers.” ¹¹ Housewives had been willing to “shoulder this added responsibility” during the war, it was argued, so something should be done to relieve them. Administrators and politicians agreed: “It is no doubt that 2000 domestics would help to make the housewives of Canada believe they had a good government.” ¹²

During the following month, Arthur MacNamara, deputy minister of Labor and one of the driving forces behind the various DP movements into Canada, tried to get a more detailed sense of the demand for domestics, communicating with the ministries in the provinces, [End Page 31] with women’s groups, and with female administrators in the ministry responsible for women’s employment. ¹³ The messages he received were clear and mixed at the same time. Clearly, there was a great demand for women to work in private homes, hospitals, sanatoriums, and caretaking institutions. Representatives from the larger urban centers (such as Vancouver and Montréal) eagerly expressed their demand and willingness to arrange for domestics working in private homes. Other provinces stressed the need for nurses’ aides and caretakers, to work especially in “mental and tuberculosis institutions,” ¹⁴ that is, those places where Canadian women would not want to work.

It was also necessary to ensure that the immigrant workers would receive decent contracts and adequate wages, not be exploited, and not undercut local wages. Labour politicians in British Columbia, for example, more or less opposed the plan because they feared that it would undercut ongoing efforts to regulate this particular section of the labor market via protective legislation. ¹⁵ Others stipulated that the immigrants should receive some kind of introduction to Canadian way of life and training in Canadian household methods. Here the “hostel” versus the “direct from the train” plans were debated, an issue emphasized by the women who were involved. The employer women want to make sure that they received women with some kind of experience, and the women from the Labour administration, who took an interest in the status, quality, and respectability of female employment in general, assumed that prior training ensured respect, work pride, and less chance for exploitation (I return to this point later).

Biases from previous decades nevertheless prevailed. Although all proclaimed that they were not prejudiced, they also argued that it would be best if the majority of women were Protestant, with a smaller number of Catholics. Brazil and Argentina were also taking part in the Refugee Resettlement program, so it was assumed that these countries could take most of the Catholics. This, it was argued, was all in the best interest of the women. With all the adjustment necessary it would be best for the “girls” not to be troubled with religious details. ¹⁶ Moreover only 10–15 percent of the women should be Jews. As one woman from British Columbia argued, “Racial or religious prejudice is, I hope, the least of my sins, but we should be quite sure that Jews are willing to be domestics. It is not their forte. Few are found in this occupation in Canada.” ¹⁷ Though everybody “knew” that next to the British, Scandinavian and Dutch women made the best domestic servants, the “Balts” came next. “The Balts particularly make excellent household workers but it is likely that nearly all of them would be unused to electrical equipment and Canadian housekeeping.” ¹⁸ In the absence of candidates from the [End Page 32] more preferred ethnic groups, Balts—who made up a large portion of the DP population—appeared to be rather attractive. Thus, the fact that Balts suddenly became the ideal source of domestics—when, after all, many of them were Roman Catholics and a large number were accused of being Nazi collaborators (Jacobmeyer 1985, 80)—may only be explained by the constructive power of want and need. ¹⁹

The most important issue was deciding who would be admitted. The women had to be very carefully selected with regard to their health, moral conduct, and previous experience. A Wassermann test to detect venereal diseases, chest x-rays and a pregnancy test were demanded. Although this was of special importance in the intimacies of the private home—one would only want the most healthy and morally impeccable person working around husband and children ²⁰ —this was also important to avoid the prospect of the women becoming public charges. The Department of Labour had to reassure the provinces that the women were so carefully chosen that they would never become a burden to provincial welfare.

During the debate two trends became obvious. First, although compassion with the plight of refugees still shone through, throughout the consultation process demands became more restrictive. Only the physically very fit and those with the greatest capacity for adjustment were desired. Second, officials from the Department of Labour seemed to operate on the assumption that they were in total control of the situation. The image that emerges from the correspondence resembles a group of dealers circling around and looking at a huge herd of cattle at their disposal while debating what selection criteria to use to determine the best. In addition they seemed to assume that the women they were seeking had no previous histories, no attachments, and no experience—tabulae rasae. This attitude appears to be particularly anomalous in light of the plight of DPs in the years 1944–1947.

The plan that was finally approved in July 1947 provided for the “Admission of Displaced Persons: 2,000 Women for Domestic Help,” and it recommended starting with a number of 1,000 “to be increased to 2,000 if this first group is found satisfactory.” ²¹ It called for a selection team of representatives from the Immigration Branch and the Department of Labour, including several women with experience in administering female employment. The women selected were asked to sign a contract to stay in domestic employment for at least one year. Transportation costs would be provided by the IRO and the Department of Labour (for internal transportation). Women should be brought over in groups of 300–400, and reception centers would be operated by the YWCA and by the Catholic Women’s League. Women would receive some basic instruction in citizenship, [End Page 33] hygiene, language, and household operations, and it would be the duty of the National Employment Service (NES) to place the women in private households as soon as possible.

Now I consider those dealing with the supply side of the market, that is the experience of the selection teams in Europe as recorded in these government documents. ²² It soon became apparent that the women in the camps were not all the maidens they were seeking. First, it seemed expedient to redefine the term single and to extend the age limit. Unlike the administrators in Ottawa, the selection team in the field could not ignore the fact that the women they encountered usually had gone through difficult if not traumatic experiences. Because they frequently heard about the unknown whereabouts of either husband or children, they had to come up with a new definition of single:

Domestics to be selected to be females without dependents whose whereabouts are known, up to 40 years of age and up to 45 in trained cooks or houseworkers, or experienced hospital workers. If married and no word of husband for some years, and he can be presumed dead, applicant may be accepted providing she signs understanding if husband found later and unable to qualify for admission to Canada the sole responsibility for consequent separation will be that of the applicant. ²³

No stipulations were made regarding children; apparently it was not too difficult for the NES to find families who were able and willing to provide for a young child when the mother was employed as a domestic. ²⁴

Next were the issues of ethnicity, religion, and “quality.” The selection team was hard put to maintain the quota of Protestants and Catholics because camp directors, who did the preselection, had other priorities in mind, caring little about religious affiliation and much about winter provisions, crowded living conditions, and maintenance of some decent standard of living. Though the NES had on file a number of applications for a domestic by Jewish families, Jewish women were only a tiny minority among the selected women. ²⁵ Moreover, recruitment officers instructed their selection teams to disregard camp quotas and select only the very best; a rejection quota of 15 percent was considered adequate. ²⁶ There was, however, competition in the field. British and U.S. officers were equally interested in domestics, and the latter especially did not appreciate the Canadian activities in their vicinity. The Canadians thought that “all the better classes have been taken.” ²⁷

Nevertheless, the program was so successful that it was expanded. Arthur MacNamara was very pleased, and he registered glowing reports [End Page 34] from satisfied private employers and institutions that were now able to care for a larger number of patients because of more personnel. From 1948 on the quotas for domestic servants were extended to 5,000, and officers and administrators began to reflect on where else to look for potential domestics willing to emigrate and work in Canada. First they spread out into DP camps in Italy and Denmark, but then they began to search among the local populations in Italy, the British Isles, and Ireland.

By the end of 1949 it became obvious that the supply from the DP camps had run dry. In May 1950, W. E. Harris, at that time Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, presented a memorandum to the Cabinet, outlining the generally decreasing immigration figures since 1948, pointing to the severe shortage of female domestics and nurses’ aides, and recommending that “consideration be given to providing loans to such immigrants to cover the cost of transportation from port of embarkation in Europe to distribution centre in Canada on a refundable basis.” ²⁸ At the time the report went unnoticed because the minister of Finance was unwilling to comply with the demand for money. But in December of that year, when the labor shortage apparently had become even more urgent, a second demand for such a program met with approval. A revolving fund of $1 million was established by the Treasury Board in January 1951, only to be raised to $3 million by Cabinet decision in March 1951. At first it was taken for granted that immigrants should at least pay $30 toward their own transportation, but by May 1951 this had changed: “In view of the narrow differential between wages rates and actual living costs in some countries of emigration, immigrants whose services are required in Canada are often unable to contribute thirty dollars or its equivalent toward the cost of their transportation to Canada.” Potential emigrants also experienced difficulties transferring money. It was agreed that the full cost should be advanced. Because it was assumed that immigrants would repay these funds, more immigrants could thus be financed. ²⁹ However, what was considered a straightforward procedure had turned into “a jungle of complex procedures which are directly in need of simplification,” as the chief of Operations Division recognized in a memorandum of 10 August 1951. This bureaucrat could not understand why the immigrant should have any obligation to reimburse the department for the transportation, because it was the Canadian state that would profit:

It is to be remembered that immigrants are sent forward by our own officers abroad and that the majority of cases have very little to say about where they are being sent. The responsibility for moving an immigrant from the destination to which we sent [End Page 35] him to a place where employment has been found for him should be our responsibility. To recover from the immigrant smacks of immorality.

He had become reconciled to the fact, he wrote, that there was a price to pay for the growth in productivity that Canada would gain from immigration. ³⁰

Alas, his worries were premature, for a drama of larger proportion was unfolding. In September 1951 those who administered the funds sounded an alarm when they realized that there was not enough money available for the recruitment program, which had gained great momentum during the previous months, especially in Germany. In October 1951 the Assisted Passage Loan Scheme had to be stopped.

After much lamenting over the hardships, insecurities, and distrust caused by stopping the program; many negotiations with German and European authorities; and more internal negotiations with members of the Treasury Board and weighing of political options, the Cabinet, in March 1952, not only agreed to reestablish the $3 million scheme but increased the fund to $9 million. ³¹ By May 1952, the monthly repayments had increased; in February 1953, when a flood devastated large parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and England, some of the money was used to help the flood victims. In October 1953 the Assisted Passage scheme became part of the Immigration Act. Legalities had to be renegotiated, but that did not affect the immigrants.

For the next four years the program continued to run smoothly and included more European countries. However, different routines had been established. The program was not welcomed by everybody; specific cultural notions about the mobility of single women determined the degree of cooperation. The Norwegian government, for example, completely refused to cooperate because it did not want its people to emigrate. ³² In Greece there was much confusion because of misinformation by the embassy, ³³ and in Italy negotiations over who was to pay for transportation obstructed the process. ³⁴ The Dutch government, though promoting immigration to Canada, did not want its people to be burdened with debts to be repaid on arrival in Canada and preferred to provide its own support. ³⁵ In Germany, however, close cooperation had been established with the various federal branches of the national employment service (Arbeitsamt), setting up different schemes according to provincial operations and negotiating different national interests. For instance, although the Germans pressured Canadian recruitment officers to consider applications from single women with children, the Canadians were only willing to take widows with children. ³⁶ [End Page 36]

In August 1954, however, the program that had been so highly successful in providing domestic servants for the Canadian labor market began to reach a crisis point. While administrators in the Immigration Branch were making plans for 1955, ³⁷ they were beginning to realize that fewer women seemed to be willing to apply for immigration to Canada under the domestic workers’ scheme. After a correspondent from the Canadian embassy in France briefly outlined the reasons for the lack of interest of French women in the Domestics Program, ³⁸ a circular was sent out to the various superintendents in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Berne, Brussels, Karlsruhe, and Linz asking for information and stating, “it will be appreciated if you will let me have your comments regarding the various factors which tend to diminish the movement of suitable domestics to Canada. I have in mind such reasons as the demand for domestics in their own country, the comparative wage scale, social security benefits, etc.” ³⁹ In a memo, one official reported the devastating results:

1. There is a great demand for this class of workers in every country where we are recruiting.
2. Working conditions including wages, hours of work, social security benefits etc. are as good or better in European countries as in Canada.
3. Employment conditions plus the attractions and advantages of other types of work will inevitably lure domestics into other occupations. ⁴⁰

In addition to a number of possible remedies (such as increasing the age limit, accepting women with children, or relaxing the standards of application), the memo also addresses Canadian employers of domestic servants: “Canadian employers might be educated to the fact that immigrants come to Canada to improve their conditions and they must expect a big turnover with domestics as long as working and living conditions in domestic employment are inferior to those in commercial or industrial occupations.” ⁴¹ Obviously the bargain that had been established in this scheme—you promise to do what we don’t like to do, at least for a year, and we give you the chance to become Canadian—had lost its attraction to European women. Therefore Canadians had to turn elsewhere, namely, to the Caribbean to find people who were attracted by this sort of arrangement. ⁴²

Administrating Gender, Class, and Race

In 1947 H. McLaren, the head of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, was convinced that allowing women to immigrate presented [End Page 37] a problem: “Undoubtedly, it is a fact that to handle these women will require much more care in selection than is necessary in the case of men.” ⁴³ So too, the administrators assumed women would require much more care in protection. The domestics were workers, they were women, and they were non-British. Gender, class, and race issues constituted essential parts of the policy-making process, and protection was an important structuring element. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was asked to keep rowdy men in check when the women arrived in Halifax; it was argued that women needed special protection and escort during their train ride west, from Halifax to their places of destination, and an elaborate follow-up program was organized.

Arthur MacNamara invested much time and effort to get this follow-up program going. A national committee, which included representatives of the Department of Labour, the Immigration Branch, the YMCA, and the Catholic Women’s League planned, outlined, and suggested the broader framework of the program, and local committees composed of representatives of the local offices of the NES, the YWCA, the Catholic Women’s League, the Sisters of Service, and other service groups that wanted to participate were responsible for maintaining contact with the “girls” after arrival. They were to provide assistance to the newcomers, introducing them to the community and social services, finding access to language classes, providing leisure activities and making sure that the women felt comfortable; in addition, they were to function as a forum for grievances. A large network of such community groups was established.

In setting up the network, MacNamara demonstrated great skills as communicator and administrator-cum-politician. Negotiating the various forms of cooperation demanded patience and political savvy. The Catholic Women’s League and the Sisters of Service showed their unflagging willingness to cooperate, but the YWCA had its own agenda, which needed to be taken into consideration. Some chapters of the Y wanted to support the program only when certain health and labor standards were met and when the new immigrant women were not used to undercut Canadian women’s wages. ⁴⁴ In the end, however, this was much too prestigious a project for the Y women to pass up.

The Imperial Order of Daughters of Empire (IODE) were the most difficult group to deal with. Though at first it appeared as if the IODE was not in favor of importing displaced persons but preferred yet another recruitment effort for British immigrants, once the DPs arrived, they wanted to demonstrate their concern. MacNamara showed a serious animosity toward the IODE and was reluctant to include them in his follow-up plan. But after hearing rumors of official [End Page 38] disapproval from London, ⁴⁵ he asked a high-ranking woman officer from the YWCA to act as go-between. In the end, IODE volunteered to provide the incoming women with sanitary and hygiene products as well as some make-up.

In the story of the follow-up program, a number of policy-making issues come to the fore. Through the program, MacNamara was able to bind politically influential women’s groups to the interests of the Department of Labour. His willingness to deal with the women, listen to their suggestions, and get them involved assured him of their loyalty and made for some valuable positive public relations. Especially important was a Mrs. Eaton, who used her political clout with the National Women’s Council in support of the project. ⁴⁶ She was, in fact, Fraudena Eaton, the professional and efficient woman’s activist who had directed the Women’s Division of the Selective Service agency in Vancouver during the war. ⁴⁷ These negotiations with influential women also provided him with access to the hearts and minds of potential employers of “his DP domestics”; ensuring decent employer–employee relationships was an important element of the benevolent paternalism he had established. In addition, the evidence suggests that MacNamara was able to compromise and backtrack when he realized not so much that he was wrong but that he had made a political mistake. This ability to put personal vanities aside was also very helpful when negotiating conflicts over responsibilities and jurisdiction with bureaucrats from the Immigration Branch; in organizing this program they often ran into one another’s turf. In 1948, Ruth Hamilton, an advisor on women’s employment for the NES, evaluated MacNamara’s service in these terms:

I should like . . . to pay tribute to the tireless efforts of the Deputy Minister of Labour in behalf both of the project and the individuals [DP domestics] whose welfare it sponsors. Mr. MacNamara’s kindness through his personal attention to all details has been stimulating and encouraging to all of us who have worked with him in this special undertaking of the Department of Labour and the National Employment Service. ⁴⁸

Of equal ongoing relevance in administering the programs were the themes of marital status, the existence of children, and the question of moral turpitude. The first two issues, of course, relate to dependency, that is, to the fear of the Canadian government that a woman was or might become responsible for husband and children and seek to sponsor their immigration later. These questions might also be posed to men, but male workers participating in parallel programs were never questioned about their previous sexual experiences. The busy Mrs. Eaton from British Columbia, who was always [End Page 39] in correspondence with MacNamara about the DP domestics program, reminded him that a pregnancy test was of utmost importance when selecting the potential domestics. In his reply to Eaton, MacNamara expressed his thanks (and added a touch of irony):

I have your letter of May 5th, in regard to the need for strict medical examination, particularly to the fact that there are no babies on the way. I am glad you mentioned it as I realize the importance of the matter. Frankly, I did not think of this phase of the question myself. I have always had great faith in the stork story.

I referred your letter to Miss Grier and you can be assured that we will keep this phase of the matter before us. ⁴⁹

Eaton was also worried about the possibly morally damaging experiences the women may have undergone before arrival or during their stay in the DP camps; she did not want to deal with or be confronted by traumas resulting from previous occurrences. The government’s concerns in such matters were, on the whole, less humanitarian than they were practical.

The issue of whether the women had boyfriends, escorts, or former husbands and lovers also became a matter of concern for the administrators. As we have seen with MacNamara’s follow-up program, the women were very much looked after. How and where they spent their free time, and whether or not they behaved impeccably, even when chased by a group of men from their own nationality, was discussed and reported. When more women from Germany made fraudulent use of the Assisted Passage Program in the mid-1950s, Canadian administrators were quite annoyed. It had become widely known that a number of women used the Assisted Passage Program to get to Canada, only to sneak across the border to join their U.S. soldier boyfriends. The members of the selection team were advised to pay close attention to these potential defectors by listening to specific lingo used around the military base, and the medical examiner was asked to check whether women wore underwear that could only be bought in army PX stores. The memo informing about these events had a little note scribbled on the margin: “what more can we do!” ⁵⁰ One can almost see the bureaucrat throwing up his hands in desperation.

Not only were the targets of the domestic workers programs constructed along gendered lines, but the members of the selection team were also faced with gender-specific demands. A report from the Canadian Mission in Frankfurt describing the type of work done by the selection team left no room for frivolous constructions of femininity. While demanding some personnel replacement, she pointed out:

It would be ideal if in selecting women to come it were found possible to choose two women, not above 45 years of age, of [End Page 40] the self-reliant type who are able to work without close supervision. As you well know, living and travelling conditions in Germany are pretty grim compared to Canada, and the women coming forward cannot quite expect those attentions when travelling to which our women at home are so thoroughly accustomed. Frequently, locating transport or a billet requires a good deal of ingenuity, and unless a woman is able to look after herself, her needs may be overlooked; or else it will require the time of other officers to arrange things which the independent type of woman could arrange for herself. ⁵¹

The final topic here is the issue of female employment and employer–employee relations, evidence for which is, of course, more difficult to come by. It was fairly obvious to all parties concerned that domestic service, though an occupation very much in demand, was also an unattractive kind of employment. If Canadian women had any choice they would seek other occupations, as they had done during the war. Or they would marry and become housewives themselves, as they had done in previous decades. ⁵² One way of solving this problem was to provide legislation or contracts to force employers to adhere to some standards in working conditions and wages. Though there were some efforts to improve working conditions for domestics via legislation during the war-time labor shortage, there was little chance to reach that goal after the war. Thus, to prevent women from leaving their position as domestics as soon as possible, the contract was to bind them to their occupation, if not to their employer, for at least one year.

Nevertheless, the Department of Labour, together with the NES, attempted to impose some standards on the employer, binding them by contract to certain employment conditions. It was the task of the NES to supervise employer–employee relationships and, as the following story (related by Ruth Hamilton, who was in charge of supervision) shows, these relationships were highly affected by the gender-class nexus:

And here is another little story from case history:

Janina was a fine girl; I saw her myself and was impressed with her intelligence and good manners. But Janina had a bad case of acne on her face and her new employer was very disappointed when she met Janina. Before long the employer complained to our local office that she could not keep Janina because of her appearance. . . . As it happened, the woman officer handling the case had just received a call from a woman who asked her to send a domestic, stating that she was desperate and would take whatever help was available. Janina was suggested, [End Page 41] but it was explained that her appearance was temporarily not prepossessing. The prospective employer immediately said she understood, particularly as she herself was very plain and not at all attractive. So Janina changed employers. The new employer later reported in glowing terms of Janina. She said Janina’s appearance was improving with good diet and medical treatment. But that is not the end of the story. One day a very handsome woman entered the office and gave the same woman officer her name. She was Janina’s “plain employer.” When reminded of her disparaging remarks about her own appearance she said she simply wanted Janina to be assured in advance of meeting her that she was an understanding person. Which she certainly was—and Janina is still with her. ⁵³

Though this story happens among women, the concepts that characterize the relationship—appearance, understanding or the lack of it, diet—all refer to gender in conjunction with class: the good-looking, understanding employer women versus the disfigured, mistreated working woman, disfigured due to poor diet and in need of protection. Moreover, the attitude of benevolent paternalism that so prominently guided the DP domestics program reappears here.

Another important aspect in employer–employee relations was “quality.” Canadian housewives, as they voiced their opinion through various local and national women’s groups, were very much in favor of “importing” domestic servants as long as they were of “prime quality.” Quality had two gendered components: It referred to looks, morality, and health, as we have seen, and it also referred to skills. We have already encountered some of the criteria: Domestics had to be young, healthy, and without any previous damaging experience, and their religion and ethnic backgrounds were to match that of their employers. Because they all assumed that these “girls” had come from the Stone Ages prior to electricity, the issue of training and experience became important, and were discussed at length. MacNamara agreed: “If a girl on first trial of a vacuum cleaner ran out the front door screaming 'blue murder’ we should have a place to send her where the intricacies of Canadian housekeeping could be explained.” ⁵⁴ Previous domestic programs in the 1930s had provided for training hostels in Britain with the Canadian government financing Canadian housekeeping equipment and a Canadian officer to supervise the scheme (Barber 1985). This time they would have preferred for the women to spend a few weeks in residential schools throughout Canada receiving some training in language, methods of cooking, and Canadian housekeeping. [End Page 42]

The language question was soon dismissed. Too many examples pointed to successful language acquisition through day-to-day contact. By the same token, some women argued that learning Canadian ways of housekeeping could best be done in private homes. Others, however, favored the concept of training centers. Margaret Grier, director of Women’s Employment in the Department of Labour, came up with a very detailed curriculum for these courses.

(c) the course itself should be quite simple. We cannot hope to turn out fully trained and competent household workers in four weeks except in the case of some who may have had previous training in their own countries but I believe we could give sufficient knowledge of the language, Canadian methods and personal hygiene, to bridge the gap and make it a little easier for both employer and employee to adjust. Such courses should include:

1. General Housework, care of furniture, use and care of the equipment found in almost every Canadian home today, e.g. vacuum cleaner, washing machine, etc.
2. Preparation and care of food—refrigeration.
3. Use of electricity and gas for cooking.
4. Assistance in care of children.
5. Personal hygiene.⁵⁵

Grier’s intention was to create a more professional profile for domestic service, on the one hand, to protect the women from the most harsh forms of exploitation and, on the other, to make this female employment category more attractive. Alas, it soon became clear that there was neither enough money nor enough clout behind the women to institutionalize such a program. It remained wishful thinking.

A number of themes emerged in this analysis of employer–employee relations that point toward the larger processes of immigration policy and nation-building: Canadian housewives, together with labor bureaucrats, believed they were in total control of the situation. They assumed that everybody was only too eager to come to Canada, and thus they could choose and pick solely according to their liking. Much like Prime Minister King, they regarded immigration as a privilege. Second, they envisioned the women they chose as empty shells, as fresh, clean, starched sheets without stains and tears—in fact without personal history, without roots. They not only wanted to pick according to their liking, they also want to (re)create, from scratch, the perfect—white—domestic servant, who could “advantageously be absorbed in our national economy,” as was demanded by Mackenzie King. And this perfectly recreated creature would blend in, would [End Page 43] become a participant in the continuous building of the Canadian nation within the British frame of reference. These issues were played out in particular ways because the targets were women

As the story of MacNamara’s DP domestics unfolded, it became clear that Canadian immigration policies in the immediate postwar period had to negotiate international interests and humanitarian demands, as well as the exclusionary privilege/selection idioms that had dominated immigration policies previously. A program directed at domestics—that is, women in great demand on the Canadian labor market—was particularly useful to address these otherwise conflicting interests. In constructing the program, administrators and government officials operated from and made effective use of prevailing assumptions of race/ethnicity, class, and gender and their relational dynamics. The resettlement programs showed two faces: What had been announced as a humanitarian program on the political level was operated and administered clearly as a labor recruitment program.

The concept of benevolent paternalism was the guiding principle under MacNamara’s administration: It was shaped by MacNamara’s friendly and communicative personality and a generally social democratic attitude left over from war, which catered to the interests of the workers but also assumed that total control was possible. Inherent in this benevolent paternalism was a gender-racist dimension that became particularly obvious with regard to European domestics. According to its concept of ethnic/racial hierarchy, Europeans next to the British, such as the Scandinavians and the Dutch, stood at the top, Jews and Italians at the bottom, with Balts becoming white in the process. Much attention was paid to their reception and care when arriving in Canada, with special provisions made available on the grounds that because of their gender, they were in need of protection. Such provisions entailed surveillance of their leisure time as much as their reproductive capacities. This sort of racialized and gendered attention became more pronounced later on with the administration of the Caribbean domestic workers program. The difference was in degree, not in kind.

 

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Christiane Harzig has published extensively on gender and migration. She is editor of Peasant Maids-City Women: From the European Countryside to Urban America, Cornell 1997. Presently she is teaching at the University of Erfurt and working as a freelancer in Bremen.

Notes

I thank the Canadian embassy, Faculty Research Program, German Speaking Countries, for providing a generous grant in support of this research. I also thank the knowledgeable staff at the National Archives, Ottawa, and acknowledge the very helpful and insightful comments of the anonymous reviewers.

1. The best summary on the history and present discussion of domestics is to be found in Bakan and Stasiulis 1997.

2. In the 1850s in Hamilton, one fourth of all households had a resident [End Page 44] domestic (Prentice et al. 1988, 75). In 1901, 42 percent, and in 1971, 22.3 percent of employed women worked in personal services (Prentice et al. 1988, 426).

3. On the larger context of immigration policy changes in the years 1945 to 1952, see Avery 1995, chap. 7.

4. The account on displaced persons in Europe relies on Jacobmeyer (1985) and Wyman (1989).

5. There were also displaced persons in the Soviet occupied zone, which later became East Germany. When Jacobmeyer was working on this study, however, figures were not available to him. See Jacobmeyer 1985, 82–84.

6. For an analysis of the development from UNRRA to IRO to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees in the context of the cold war, see Salomon (1990).

7. All quotes in this paragraph taken from NAC, House of Commons, 1 May 1947. The spelling in the original document has been maintained.

8. The three largest groups were Poles (27.6 percent), Ukrainians (19.8 percent), and Jews (11.8 percent) These valuable statistical details are recently published in a study by von Holleuffer (2001) that chronicles in great detail the Australian, U.S., and Canadian DP programs.

9. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 18 October 1946. The United Kingdom pursued a seemingly contradictory policy with regard to migration from and into the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. While it was “importing” people from the DP camps in Europe, it “exported” people to the Commonwealth countries, mainly to Australia. The rationale behind this was that Britain would be able to assimilate Europeans into becoming good British stock, and Australia should be kept white. See Paul (1995). Unfortunately, this otherwise very informative article is imprecise and partly wrong regarding Canada.

10. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 22 February 1947. Jas. S. Eckman to Hon. James Allision Glenn (Minister of Mines and Resources).

11. Ibid.

12. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 8 November 1946. A. MacNamara to Hon. J. A. Glenn

13. There was a well-established regime of labor management organizations associated with the Department of Labour, left over from Depression relief measures and wartime labor recruitment efforts, including the NES, Unemployment Insurance Commission, and Canadian Vocational Training, all of which had a number of competent women in their employ, administering and managing female employment. See Prentice et al. (1988), 304.

14. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 25 February 1947.

15. However, this argument may not amount to much because in British Columbia, Labour has always been at the forefront of restrictionist immigration policies.

16. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 28 March 1947. “I should like to have a higher percentage of Protestants at least in our first group than is found proportionately in the total group, this only for the reason that in domestic placements a Catholic girl is better placed in a Catholic household, especially when she has every other kind of adjustment to make at the same [End Page 45] time. Many of our employers would be Protestant and their applications could not be overlooked.” Mrs. Rex Eaton to A. MacNamara.

17. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 28 March 1947.

18. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 25 February 1947, letter from Miss Grier.

19. Estonians and Latvians tend to be Protestant; Lithuanians most likely are Roman Catholics (compare Danys 1986, 134).

20. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 3 March 1947. Mrs. Rex Eaton to A. MacNamara.

21. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 9 July 1947. A. MacNamara to Raymond Ranger. Document marked confidential.

22. Another approach of looking at the supply side has been taken up by Freund (2003). He carefully analyzes, via oral history interviews, the motivations and desires of migrant women, many of them using the domestic workers scheme as an entrance into Canada.

23. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 7 August 1947.

24. Also to be decided in later years was the question of whether a married woman could follow her husband to Canada via the domestic servant scheme, thus securing preferential treatment in her visa application. The Immigration Branch, which was responsible for processing visas, tended to reject this option.

25. In 1947 in Ontario—as one of the few tables available shows—single DP domestics belonged to following national groups: Polish, 218; Lithuanian, 186; Latvian, 150; Estonian, 111; Ukrainian, 69; Yugoslavian, 64; Polish-Ukrainian, 58; Hungarian, 20; Russian, 17; Romanian, 8; Czech, 6; miscellaneous, 21; total: 928. Their religious affiliations were: Roman Catholic, 416; Greek Catholic, 126; Lutheran, 121; Protestant, 94; Orthodox, 69; Evangelical, 43; Jewish, 32; Greek Orthodox, 12; miscellaneous, 15. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 14 June 1948, Ontario.

26. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 20 February 1948. To the Selection Officers Miss Amas, Miss B. Sauriol, from V. C. Phelan.

27. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 29 August 1947. MacNamara to Cyril Phelan.

28. NAC, RG 26, vol. 95, 17 May 1950.Memorandum from W. E. Harris, minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

29. NAC, RG 26, vol. 95, 1 January 1951, 27 February, 1951, 13 December, 1950, 26 May 1951.

30. NAC, RG 26, vol. 95, 10 August, 1951. To “director” from “chief, Operations Division.” Emphasis in original.

31. NAC, RG 26, vol. 95, 5 April 1952. Memorandum from Laval Fortier to director of Immigration.

32. NAC, RG 26, vol. 95, 2 May 1951. Memorandum from Laval Fortier to director of Immigration.

33. NAC, RG 76, vol. 835, 553-30, 12 December 1953.

34. NAC, RG 27, vol. 290, “Administrative, Immigration, Italy, Domestics.” April 1949–July 1952.

35. NAC, RG 26, vol. 95, 4 February 1953. Memorandum to minister.

36. NAC, RG 76, vol. 835, 553-30, 12 January 1954.

37. The memos are signed: chief, Operations Division. [End Page 46]

38. NAC, RG 76, vol. 835, 553-30, 4 August 1954.

39. NAC, RG 76, vol. 835, 553-30, 16 August 1954. Replay from Oslo.

40. NAC, RG 76, vol. 835, 553-30, 14 October 1954. Quoted from a memo to chief/Operation Division from A. G. Morrison.

41. Ibid.

42. For a follow-up study on the Caribbean Domestic Workers Program, see Harzig (1999).

43. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 14 June 1947. H. McLaren, Unemployment Insurance Commission to A. H. Brown.

44. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 25 April 1947. From E. B. Watson, president, Board of Directors, YWCA .

45. “Miss Lorentsen [from the Department of Labor] has the idea that there is some resentment because the IODE was not chosen as the organization to be consulted in the first instance. Some expression of this opinion seems to have come from London.” NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 12 November 1947. MacNamara to Mrs. Harold Clark, vice president, National Council YWCA.

46. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 5 May 1947. From Mrs. Rex Eaton to A. MacNamara.

47. Prentice et al. (1988), 297. In her correspondence with MacNamara, she always signed “Mrs. Rex Eaton,” succumbing her individual identity to her husband’s.

48. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 30 April 1948. Europe’s Refugees in Canada. A Report on the Domestic D.P. Project by Ruth A. Hamilton, advisor on Women’s Employment, National Employment Service, Ottawa.

49. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 10 May 1947.

50. NAC, RG 76, vol. 835, 8 October 1952. To chief/Operations Division.

51. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 2 October 1947. To A. MacNamara from Frankfurt Canadian Military Mission.

52. British immigrant domestics were heralded as the future mothers of the nation in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See Arat-Koc (1997).

53. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 30 April 1948. R. Hamilton, Report on the Domestic D.P. Project, 5.

54. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 28 May 1947. To Mrs. Rex Eaton from A. MacNamara. On the patronizing attitude of Canadian officials, see also Avery (1995), 165.

55. NAC, RG 27, vol. 278, 2 April 1947. From M. Grier to A. MacNamara.

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