“So often a long-awaited book is disappointing. Happily such is not the case with Sutherland’s masterpiece.” Robert M. Stamp, University of Calgary, in The Canadian Historical Review “Sutherland’s work is destined to be a landmark in Canadian history, both as a first in its particular field and as a standard reference text.” J. Stewart Hardy, University of Alberta, in Alberta Journal of Educational Research Such were the reviewers’ comments when Neil Sutherland’s groundbreaking book was first published. Now reissued in Wilfrid Laurier University Press’s new series “Studies in Childhood and Family in Canada,” with a new introduction by series editor Cynthia Comacchio, this book remains relevant today. In the late nineteenth century a new generation of reformers committed itself to a program of social improvement based on the more effective upbringing of all children. In Children in English-Canadian Society, Neil Sutherland examines, with a keen eye, the growth of the public health movement and its various efforts at improving the health of children.

Labouring Children (1980) is a study of child immigrants, based on numerous original sources, and presents new views on childhood, social work and Canadian rural communities. Between 1868 and 1925 eighty thousand British boys and girls, mostly under fourteen, were apprenticed as agricultural labourers and domestic servants in rural Canada. A surprising feature is the involvement of the Evangelicals, who considered that they were giving children from poor homes a fresh start in the world, yet who were otherwise famed for their emphasis on the virtues of close family ties; and conversely, the parents of the children, largely labourers, who were at the time regarded as too ground down by economic imperatives to find time for affection, but who expended a great deal of effort to maintain contact across imposing distances. This book begins with an analysis of the growing child’s place within these families, and looks at the alternating prominence of demands for wage labour and fear of the ‘dangerous classes’ which influenced emigration policy idealism. The demand for child labour in rural Canada and the work of the children is described in an analysis of the apprenticeship system. The book also illustrates how the British child immigrants were household rather than family members in Canada and outsiders in the rural schoolroom as well. As adults they did not generally become farmers but entered factory jobs, service employment in urban Canada, migrated to the US or returned to Britain. Finally, the book discusses the ending of the movement after World War I, as Canadian social workers, echoing British socialists, argued that even the children of the poor deserved fourteen years of growing and schooling before they were obliged to sell their labour. Incorporating much rich documentation from numerous case records, and presenting a new quantitative use of some of those records, this book sheds light on a dark corner of the Canadian migrant experience.

The present system of child welfare in Canada dates from 1893, the year in which the Ontario Legislature passed 'An Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to, and better Protection of, Children.' The Act provided for the establishment of Children's Aid Societies with extensive legal powers to intervene in cases of child neglect and cruelty, and gave officials sanction to the foster care system. These radical departures from earlier policy resulted from the actions of John Joseph Kelso, the man who was named as the first Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children – a position created by the same Act. At 29, Kelso was already one of Ontario's leading proponents of child welfare reform. He had earlier stimulated the formation of the Toronto Humane Society and subsequently guides its early growth. In 1888 he had formed the Children's Fresh Air Fund and the Santa Claus Fund, out of which, in 1891, he founded the Toronto Children's Aid Society. From 1893 to his retirement in 1934, Kelso directed and promoted the establishment and development of Children's Aid Societies in Ontario and played an important role in their spread to other provinces. In 1921 he was appointed administrator of Ontario's first Adoption Act and the Children of Unmarried Parents Act. His reform activities extended into the children's court movement, the closing of reformatories, organization of playgrounds, and advocacy of mothers' allowances. This biography provides an account of Kelso's life and career as a social reformer, and reveals him as the undisputed chief architect and builder of Ontario's welfare system. It will interest the academic and professionals as it traces the roots of social welfare services and the profession of social work, and the general reader interested in Canadian history and social reform.

Children and youth occupy important social and political roles, even as they sleep in cribs or hang out on street corners. Conceptualized as either harbingers or saboteurs of a bright, secure tomorrow, they have motivated many adult-driven schemes to effect a positive future. But have all children benefited from these programs and initiatives? Lost Kids examines adults' misgivings about, and the inadequate care of, vulnerable children. From explorations of interracial adoption and the treatment of children with disabilities to discussions of the cultural construction of the hopeless child, this multifaceted collection rejects the essentialism of the "priceless child" or "lost youth" � simplistic categories that continue to shape the treatment of those who deviate from the so-called norm.

The biography of a British girl, split from her family by the British child migration program, learning to cope with her hard new life in Canada. Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry — Book #1 In 1937, 10-year-old Marjorie Arnison was shipped from Britain to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School near Victoria, British Columbia. For years she wouldn't talk about her past. It wasn't until daughter Patricia explored archival records and shared them with her mother that a home-child saga emerged. Marjorie Her War Years — Book #2 Sent away from her family and England to an isolated farm where she was at the mercy of a tyrannical “cottage mother,” Marjorie Arnison had to learn to forget her identity in order to survive in her unfamiliar and hostile new home. It was only much later in her life that the memories of where she came from began to resurface.