The Guardianship of Best Interests: Institutional Care for the Children of the Poor in Halifax, 1850-1960 9780773587946

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T h e G ua r d i a n s h i p of Best Interests

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M c Gill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. Series One

G.A. Rawlyk, Editor

1

Small Differences Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815–1922 An International Perspective Donald Harman Akenson

2

Two Worlds The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario William Westfall

3

An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839–1918 Marguerite Van Die

4

The Dévotes Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France Elizabeth Rapley

5

The Evangelical Century College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression Michael Gauvreau

6

The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods James M. Stayer

7

A World Mission Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for a New International Order, 1918–1939 Robert Wright

8

Serving the Present Age Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada Phyllis D. Airhart

9

A Sensitive Independence Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881–1925 Rosemary R. Gagan

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10 God’s Peoples Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster Donald Harman Akenson 11 Creed and Culture The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750–1930 Edited by Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz 12 Piety and Nationalism Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850–1895 Brian P. Clarke 13 Amazing Grace Studies in Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States Edited by George Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll 14 Children of Peace W. John McIntyre 15 A Solitary Pillar Montreal’s Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution Joan Marshall 16 Padres in No Man’s Land Canadian Chaplains and the Great War Duff Crerar 17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America A Critical Analysis P. Travis Kroeker 18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917–1981 Robert K. Burkinshaw

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19 Through Sunshine and Shadow The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 Sharon Anne Cook 20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844–1994 Brian J. Fraser 21 The Lord’s Dominion The History of Canadian Methodism Neil Semple 22 A Full-Orbed Christianity The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau

23 Evangelism and Apostasy The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico Kurt Bowen 24 The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827–1905 Eldon Hay 25 Methodists and Women’s Education in Ontario, 1836–1925 Johanne Selles 26 Puritanism and Historical Controversy William Lamont

Series Two In memory of George Rawlyk Donald Harman Akenson, Editor 1 Marguerite Bourgeoys and

Montreal, 1640–1665 Patricia Simpson 2 Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience Edited by G.A. Rawlyk 3 Infinity, Faith, and Time Christian Humanism and Renaissance Literature John Spencer Hill 4 The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada Edited by Charles H.H. Scobie and G.A. Rawlyk 5 Labour, Love, and Prayer Female Piety in Ulster Religious Literature, 1850–1914 Andrea Ebel Brozyna 6 The Waning of the Green Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 Mark G. McGowan

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7 Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900 John-Paul Himka 8 Good Citizens British Missionaries and Imperial States, 1870–1918 James G. Greenlee and Charles M. Johnston 9 The Theology of the Oral Torah Revealing the Justice of God Jacob Neusner 10 Gentle Eminence A Life of Cardinal Flahiff P. Wallace Platt 11 Culture, Religion, and Demographic Behaviour Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace, 1750–1870 Kevin McQuillan

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12 Between Damnation and Starvation Priests and Merchants in Newfoundland Politics, 1745–1855 John P. Greene 13 Martin Luther, German Saviour German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 James M. Stayer 14 Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 William H. Katerberg 15 The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896–1914 George Emery 16 Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel Paul Charles Merkley 17 A Social History of the Cloister Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime Elizabeth Rapley 18 Households of Faith Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 Edited by Nancy Christie 19 Blood Ground Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 Elizabeth Elbourne 20 A History of Canadian Catholics Gallicanism, Romanism, and Canadianism Terence J. Fay 21 The View from Rome Archbishop Stagni’s 1915 Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question Edited and translated by John Zucchi 22 The Founding Moment Church, Society, and the Construction of Trinity College William Westfall

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23 The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches Haim Genizi 24 Governing Charities Church and State in Toronto’s Catholic archdiocese,1850–1950 Paula Maurutto 25 Anglicans and the Atlantic World High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection Richard W. Vaudry 26 Evangelicals and the Continental Divide The Conservative Protestant Subculture in Canada and the United States Sam Reimer 27 Christians in a Secular World The Canadian Experience Kurt Bowen 28 Anatomy of a Seance A History of Spirit Communication in Central Canada Stan McMullin 29 With Skilful Hand The Story of King David David T. Barnard 30 Faithful Intellect Samuel S. Nelles and Victoria University Neil Semple 31 W. Stanford Reid An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy Donald MacLeod 32 A Long Eclipse The Liberal Protestant Establishment and the Canadian University, 1920–1970 Catherine Gidney 33 Forkhill Protestants and Forkhill Catholics, 1787–1858 Kyla Madden 34 For Canada’s Sake Public Religion, Centennial Celebrations, and the Re-making of Canada in the 1960s Gary R. Miedema

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35 Revival in the City The Impact of American Evangelists in Canada, 1884–1914 Eric R. Crouse

46 Political Ecumenism Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in De Gaulle’s Free France, 1940–1945 Geoffrey Adams

36 The Lord for the Body Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880–1930 James Opp

47 From Quaker to Upper Canadian Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801–1850 Robynne Rogers Healey

37 Six Hundred Years of Reform Bishops and the French Church, 1190–1789 J. Michael Hayden and Malcolm R. Greenshields

48 The Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693–1796 Colleen Gray

38 The Missionary Oblate Sisters Vision and Mission Rosa Bruno-Jofré

49 Canadian Pentecostalism Transition and Transformation Edited by Michael Wilkinson

39 Religion, Family, and Community in Victorian Canada The Colbys of Carrollcroft Marguerite Van Die

50 A War with a Silver Lining Canadian Protestant Churches and the South African War, 1899–1902 Gordon L. Heath

40 Michael Power The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier Mark G. McGowan

51 In the Aftermath of Catastrophe Founding Judaism, 70 to 640 Jacob Neusner

41 The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 1931–1970 Michael Gauvreau

52 Imagining Holiness Classic Hasidic Tales in Modern Times Justin Jaron Lewis

42 Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congregation of Notre Dame, 1665–1700 Patricia Simpson

53 Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing with Ecstasy The Growth of Methodism in Newfoundland, 1774–1874 Calvin Hollett

43 To Heal a Fractured World The Ethics of Responsibility Jonathan Sacks 44 Revivalists Marketing the Gospel in English Canada, 1884–1957 Kevin Kee 45 The Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth- and TwentiethCentury Canada Edited by Michael Gauvreau and Ollivier Hubert

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54 Into Deep Waters Evangelical Spirituality and Maritime Calvinist Baptist Ministers, 1790–1855 Daniel C. Goodwin 55 Vanguard of the New Age The Toronto Theosophical Society, 1891–1945 Gillian McCann

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56 A Commerce of Taste Church Architecture in Canada, 1867–1914 Barry Magrill

59 The Covenanters in Canada Reformed Presbyterianism from 1820 to 2012 Eldon Hay

57 The Big Picture The Antigonish Movement of Eastern Nova Scotia Santo Dodaro and Leonard Pluta

60 The Guardianship of Best Interests Institutional Care for the Children of the Poor in Halifax, 1850–1960 Renée N. Lafferty

58 My Heart’s Best Wishes for You A Biography of Archbishop John Walsh John P. Comiskey

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The Guardianship of Best Interests Institutional Care for the Children of the Poor in Halifax, 1850–1960 renée n. lafferty

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2013 ISBN 978-0-7735-4055-2 isbn (epdf) 978-0-7735-8794-6 Legal deposit first quarter 2013 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Lafferty, Renée Nicole, 1973– The guardianship of best interests: institutional care for the children of the poor in Halifax, 1850–1960 / Renée N. Lafferty. (McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of religion. Series two ; 60) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7735-4055-2 1. Poor children – Institutional care – Nova Scotia – Halifax – History – 19th century – Case studies. 2. Poor children – Institutional care – Nova Scotia – Halifax – History – 20th century – Case studies. 3. Urban poor – Institutional care – Nova Scotia – Halifax – History – 19th century – Case studies. 4. Urban poor – Institutional care – Nova Scotia – Halifax – History – 20th century – Case studies. 5. Institutional care – Nova Scotia – Halifax – History – 19th century – Case studies. 6. Institutional care – Nova Scotia – Halifax – History – 20th century – Case studies. I. Title. II. Series: McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of religion. Series two; 60 HV866.C32N8 2012

362.73'2097162209034

C2012-905254-X

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

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To Dennis, Judith, Rocco, Christopher, Ben, Atreyi, and the incomparable folks at 7W and the St C.G. Through no fault of yours was this story long delayed. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the chance to tell it.

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Contents

Illustrations and Graphs Abbreviations

xiii

xv

Acknowledgments

xvii

Introduction 3 1 “We Need No Reform”: The Organization of Local Services and Administrative Innovation, c. 1850–1924 30 2 Race Uplift, Racism, and the Childhood Ideal: Founding and Funding the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children 63 3 The Unremitting Exercise of Watchfulness: Institutional Environments, Routines, and Practices 88 4 “Out of Mutual Respect Will Come Mutual Responsibility”: Coordinating Services and Promoting Interagency Cooperation after World War One 132 5 Managing “High Standards of Professional Ethics”: Institutionalization, Gwendolen Lantz, and the Emergence of the “Modern” Children’s Home, c. 1940–1952 163 6 From Protection to Treatment: Group Care and the Transformation of the Institution after World War Two 193 Conclusion

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243

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Contents

Appendices 1 Population of the province of Nova Scotia and the city of Halifax, 1851–1961 253 2 Religious affiliation of the inhabitants of Halifax, as a percentage of the total urban population, c. 1871–1961 254 3 Halifax institutions: Years of operation and estimated capacity 255 4 Number of children in care at Halifax institutions, 1913–1959 256 5 Number of children in care compared to reported capacities of Halifax children’s homes, 1913–1959 259 Notes

261

Bibliography

333

Index 361

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Illustrations and Graphs

illustrations 1 The Halifax Industrial School xxi 2 St Patrick’s Home for Boys xxi 3 The Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home 4 St Joseph’s Orphanage

xxii

xxii

5 The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children xxiii 6 The Halifax Infants’ Home

xxiii

7 The Home of the Guardian Angel

xxiv

8 Illustrating adoption placements, 1952 xxv

graphs 1 Estimated percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the infants’ homes, 1913–1960 96 2 Estimated percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the orphanages, 1913–1960 96 3 Estimated percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the boys’ reformatories, 1913–1955 97 4 Percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the NSHCC, infants’ homes, orphanages, and reformatories, 1924–1960 98

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Abbreviations

ADC AR

Anglican Diocesan Centre Archives (Halifax) Annual Report of the Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children AUBA African United Baptist Association CAS Children’s Aid Society CPC Catholic Pastoral Centre Archives (Halifax) CSA Council of Social Agencies (Halifax) CWC Canadian Welfare Council ECWA Esther Clarke Wright Archives (Acadia University) GBRE General Board of Religious Education (Anglican) HAICP Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor jha Journal of the House of Assembly (Nova Scotia) NAC National Archives of Canada NSACAS Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies NSACCI Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions NSARM Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management NSHCC Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children rsns Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia sns Statutes of Nova Scotia SPC Society for the Prevention of Cruelty

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Acknowledgments

I began researching the children who crowded Halifax institutions as a graduate student. Writing about them and attempting to understand their lives was frequently discouraging and discomfiting. They lived as I cannot imagine having to do, and despite my best efforts their voices remain mere whispers against the tumult of noise from the social workers, charity volunteers, government officials, journalists, judges, experts, and countless other grownups who spoke for them and over them – and whose voices ultimately dominate my own imperfect story of their lives. Childhood history occupies an unsettled, diminutive place in the grand narratives of this country, but as I learned – and hope that this book conveys – the histories of Canada’s youngest citizens are among the most important, even when they cannot tell these histories themselves. Although my name is on the cover of this book, it was very far from a solitary effort. At Dalhousie University I had the incomparable support and friendship of Dr Shirley Tillotson. Her guidance, insight, critique, and inspiration were essential to this project, and my thanks to her remain as heartfelt and necessary now as they were then. I also benefited greatly from the advice and wisdom of Michael Cross, Tom Faulkner, David Sutherland, Judith Fingard, Philip Zachernuk, and Lynne Marks. The research undertaken in Halifax was greatly assisted by Karen White and Sharon Riel of the Catholic Pastoral Centre, Winnie Bodden and Pat Townsend of the Esther Clarke Wright Archives at Acadia University, and Lorraine Slopek of the Anglican Diocesan Centre, who opened their collections unreservedly, offered advice and suggestions, and asked all the right questions to help me

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xviii

Acknowledgments

uncover this history. Thanks also to the staff at Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, who welcomed me by name and demonstrated enormous patience when I repeatedly (and unintentionally) sabotaged the microfilm readers. And I would be remiss if I did not thank my able and dedicated research assistant, Will Tait, who also deserves much credit for patiently slogging through the archives on my behalf. I received generous financial assistance from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada, the Killam Foundation, and the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University. I am also indebted to McGill-Queen’s University Press, notably its remarkably helpful and thorough anonymous viewers and its dedicated editors and support staff; thanks particularly to Kyla Madden, MaryLynn Ascough, and Ryan Van Huijstee. Robert Lewis, my extremely capable and helpful copy editor, also deserves special thanks for his efforts. His improvements are visible to me on every page, and his work will make reading this text far more pleasant. Many thanks are also extended to my friends and colleagues at Brock University, who were enormously supportive over the past several years as I struggled to complete this project, despite a number of upsets, distractions, and near-catastrophes. They also provided critical ears and necessary sounding boards, and I could not have finished this without their patience and encouragement. My thanks particularly to Heidi Klose, Dinah Martin, Tami Friedman, Rosemary Hale, Maureen Lux, Jane McLeod, Carmela Patrias, John Sainsbury, Danny Samson, David Schimmelpenninck, Mark Spencer, and Elizabeth Vlossak. Thanks are also owed to my students, who patiently listened (and even took notes) when I talked about the more difficult aspects of this project. Your questions and curiosity were an inspiration. I have been fortunate to have the support and affection of my wonderful family at all stages of work on this book – particularly those stages when it was at a standstill. My parents’ help was indispensable, and I am beholden to them for their encouragement, their calm, their friendship and love, and their unceasing willingness to dismantle the barriers thrown up around me (and sometimes by me). My thanks also for the inspiration, laughter, and opportunity to play provided by Matthew, Alexander, Liam, Nathaniel, Sean, Sarah, Kristen, Daniel, Ian, Christine, Michael, and Norbert. And for being my scaffold, my brace, and my friend, I thank my sister Heather.

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Acknowledgments

xix

My husband, Wayne, was my best and most supportive critic through the final stages of this project. Even knowing the dangers of consorting with a historian, he became my best friend and created the space I needed to find my way to the end. I thank him for his emotional support, for his skills with the coffee machine, and for being an unceasing source of joy and love.

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1 The Halifax Industrial School (hrm Archives, cr 30e.61.6)

2 St Patrick’s Home for Boys (hrm Archives, cr 30e.61.19)

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3 The Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home (nsarm, accession no. 1987-265, no. 5 / neg. no. n-87733, May 1874)

4 St Joseph’s Orphanage (Roman Catholic Archives of the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth)

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5 The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (nsarm, Helen Creighton, nsarm accession no. 1987–178, album 12, no. 26–27 / neg. no.: n-1502)

6 The Halifax Infants’ Home (From the Annual Report of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children, Journal of the House of Assembly [1919], pt. 2, app. 28, 74)

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7 The Home of the Guardian Angel (Roman Catholic Archives of the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth)

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8 Illustrating adoption placements, 1952 (From the Annual Report of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children, Journal of the House of Assembly [1919], pt. 2, app. 23, 16)

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T h e G ua r d i a n s h i p of Best Interests

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Introduction

The first sign of serious trouble appeared in the press on 17 October 1924. The Halifax Citizen, a weekly paper “devoted to the interests of workers,” ran a front-page story whose title claimed, “Fiendish Cruelty Practised upon the Inmates of the Halifax Industrial School.”1 Citizen reporter A.L. Breen had conducted a covert investigation into the school after rumours had begun to circulate about unsavoury conditions at the institution. The sizable, four-storey, wood-frame building on Quinpool Road housed up to 100 boys at a time, all of them there, ostensibly, to receive vocational training, a basic academic and religious education, and moral guidance. Some of the inmates had been convicted of delinquency or truancy by the city’s Juvenile Court. Others, of that vaguely defined class of poor children described as “neglected and dependent,” were considered too old to be cared for in one of the city’s orphanages; in its earliest years, these wayward, truant boys were the school’s exclusive clientele. Ranging in age from eight to eighteen, they slept in dormitorystyle bedrooms, ate together in a large basement kitchen, worked at splitting kindling for local homes, and were educated in an onsite schoolroom that was staffed by two provincially certified teachers. The impressive stature of the institution and the bucolic setting that surrounded it were supposed to provide “a place where the youthful law breaker has a chance to make good – a place where he is taught the principles of morality and the ethics of citizenship.”2 Instead of giving the boys this chance, however, Breen declared that they had been given only “treatment savoring of the dark ages.” One boy had allegedly been beaten with a broomstick while his hands were bound behind him. Another suffered serious injuries after a whipping with

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

the buckle end of a belt, and a “young lad, known at the institution as ‘Inkus’ … was said to have been so brutally handled that he became insane and was sent to the Nova Scotia Hospital.” The conditions at the home and the abuse of the boys were “a blot upon our city,” Breen wrote, and it was better to close the institution than to have its inmates “live in constant dread of the lash and of punishments which belong to the dark period of the middle ages” (see illustration 1).3 The Citizen’s exposé appeared on a Friday. By the following Tuesday, Ernest Blois, the provincial superintendent of neglected and dependent children and a former teacher and superintendent of the Halifax Industrial School, had convened a hearing at the city’s Juvenile Court.4 He called upon former and current employees, former and current inmates, teachers, neighbours of the school building, and the school’s superintendent, William Johns, to testify about the management and condition of the institution. The revelations made during the two-week-long inquiry were, as the Citizen described them, “startling,” “revolting,” and “horrible.” The Industrial School, as one headline proclaimed, was “A Place of Torture – Not A Reformatory,” and boys left the institution “Just as Bad Morally as When They Enter It!”5 Transcripts of the hearing reveal a range of alleged abuses, including underfeeding, inadequate clothing (particularly in cold weather, when several witnesses testified to frostbite on the boys’ hands and feet), and long hours of difficult, mind-numbing labour chopping wood. Along with complaints that the work could not constitute anything like the sort of industrial training the boys were supposed to receive, serious allegations were raised about the safety conditions in which it was conducted. Several boys received serious cuts and bruises, and one of the inmates, E.S.,6 lost his arm and suffered serious head and chest injuries in 1919 when the blade of a circular saw flew off of the poorly maintained machinery. E.S. testified that he had complained several times to Johns and the other staff members about the poor condition of the saw, to no effect. “The bearings were loose,” he said. “They were not held down firm on account of not having the bolts … I reported it three times … [Mr Johns] said to do the best I could.”7 The allegations of physical abuse – deliberate as opposed to accidental – are a particularly harrowing element of the complaints revealed by the published transcripts. Several boys and staff members reported that the superintendent, his son and wife, and other

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Introduction

5

members of the staff punched, kicked, knocked to the ground, and whipped the inmates, the favoured weapon being a thick leather trace that measured approximately five feet in length. One boy claimed that he had been whipped with a rubber hose after being accused of snitching syrup from the kitchen. Another was given two and a half cups of Epsom salts after taking food from the gardens without permission. Two of the school’s neighbours reported having seen Superintendent Johns hit one of the boys with the butt of a rifle during their daily drill on the school’s parade ground, and the school’s matron – Johns’s wife – was accused of having thrown a large carving fork at one of the boys when he made a mistake in the kitchen. According to one witness, the fork “stuck in the bone,” and he “cried to have it pulled out.”8 Disobedient boys were often locked in a small room called “the Coop,” where they were sometimes forced to stand up throughout the night or to sleep on the floor with only a single blanket to serve as a bed and a pail to serve as a privy. One boy – the aforementioned “Inkus” – who was described as being “feeble-minded,” was allegedly forced to eat his own excrement with a spoon. Another former inmate, W.S., told of being repeatedly kicked, punched, and jumped on and of having his head knocked into a radiator before being locked up in the Coop for a week. This particular punishment was meted out by one of the staff members and the assistant superintendent, Johns’s son, after the boy’s plans of escaping the school were revealed. As W.S. told Blois, “Mr. Bryan asked me if I was going to run away, and I said yes. He asked me why. I told him I did not get enough to eat.”9 Given the dreadful nature of the testimony heard at Blois’s hearing, the Citizen appears to have been justified in describing the institution as a “veritable hell on earth.”10 But even though the details of the school’s management are heartbreaking, that a boys’ home should be described this way is perhaps not particularly surprising to modern readers. In recent decades, stories of physical and sexual abuse suffered by residents of orphanages, residential schools, and reformatories have claimed headlines across the country.11 Millions of dollars in reparations have been paid out to former inmates, official public apologies have been issued, royal commissions have been held, lawsuits continue on in the courts, and the history of these homes now comprises one of the darkest chapters of Canada’s past. Even where deliberate abuse was not in evidence and where institutional staffs provided adequate and loving care for their charges,

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psychologists, doctors, and child welfare specialists have condemned the effects of institutionalization on the psychological and emotional well-being of children.12 The children’s institution looms up from a bleak, Dickensian past, full of violence, hunger, poverty, and desperation. Its eclipse in the social welfare system – by foster care, juvenile group homes, children’s aid societies, stronger children’s protection acts, and social programs designed to support poorer families – could not but appear as a sign of progress. The standard history of these institutions tells of their demise in the early years of the so-called “Century of the Child,”13 and whether this demise is told from a liberal perspective or a Marxist one, whether it is attributed to the birth of the welfare state, the rise of an aggressive professional class of social workers and childcare experts, or shifting ideas about childhood (or some combination of the three), it is generally seen as an improvement.14 That the lot of delinquent, dependent, and neglected children has improved since the salad days of congregate care facilities like the Halifax Industrial School is certainly true. How much it has improved is open to debate; as this study of Halifax children’s homes hopes to demonstrate, institutional closures were not the inevitable, uncomplicated result of a modernizing, improving, welfare state. Nor did the closure of children’s institutions eliminate all abuses and shortcomings within the welfare system. Indeed, their wholesale elimination created new problems and left fewer options for families and children in need. I do not argue for their reintroduction into the landscape of child welfare; however, they were, like many plans to protect the well-being of children, not geared toward causes but toward symptoms. Moreover, the children served by these institutions were not considered to be the same sorts of creatures we envision today when thinking about the children of the poor, about delinquents, or about young victims of abuse. Today, children’s institutions could not serve the purpose they once did because we have a different sense of who children are. Since the 1962 publication of Philippe Ariès’s landmark study Centuries of Childhood, historians have explored several ways that our current understandings of childhood and children were created. As these studies reveal, children and the experience of childhood are not universal or timeless, nor are they defined exclusively by biology. The place of children in society, in the family, in the church, and in relation to the state and the economy has shifted enormously over

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Introduction

7

time. Once understood as the raw, malleable material of adulthood, they have become the precious, innocent, and distinctly unadult beings we recognize today. This transformation was a slow but ubiquitous one, evident as much in legislation as in the economy, medicine, education, literature, and art.15 In the Canadian context, Neil Sutherland, Patricia Rooke, and Rudy Schnell (among others) have excavated the peculiarities of this “invention” of modern childhood, particularly for the period 1850–1920. In the context of industrialization, urban growth, and the concomitant upheavals these changes brought to families, observers – usually middle-class observers – began to worry, openly and occasionally with great legislative effect, about the state of the child. Compulsory schooling, child labour laws, children’s protection acts, institutions and charitable societies, and specialized medical and psychological professions were an expression of these anxieties and, to greater and lesser effect, part of a larger movement to transform the experience of childhood into that idyllic period of innocence to which it was believed children were “naturally” inclined.16 However, not all children were equal. The distinction granted by age was carefully, and often consciously, demarcated by other social and cultural markers. In Halifax, as the following chapters reveal, religious orientation was an attribute as significant as age or anything else that might have been used to understand and define a child’s place in his or her community. Ethnicity was an equally important marker of difference. The cosseted cherubs of Victorian nurseries or early-twentieth-century kindergartens were certainly not blacks, Native Americans, or other visible minorities, and these groups presented special challenges in a child welfare system that took this cosseted, white cherub as its standard of perfection.17 Moreover, few of the reformers or cultural observers of the period expected, or even wanted, the children found in places like the Halifax Industrial School to be understood or treated in the same manner as the children of middle- and upper-class families. These were the children of the poor.18 Certainly, reformers lamented these differences; almost nothing was as evocative or sympathetic as the image of a poor child, a homeless child, a hungry child. Such images were used to great effect by charitable fundraisers and fed the sense of urgency that attended the so-called child saving movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.19 However, the solutions offered to help poor,

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dependent children in Halifax were not calculated to alter the causes of poverty or necessarily to raise a poor child out of his or her class. Indeed, child welfare in the city, for many decades, worked on the assumption that the symptoms of poverty and delinquency – homelessness, truancy, neglect, hunger, and so on – were the most significant problems requiring attention. Poverty itself was simply a normal (if regrettable) fact of life. Thus, with few exceptions, these children were not educated to become doctors, nurses, lawyers, or captains of industry. Instead, girls were trained as domestic servants or laundresses. If the institution’s educational program was particularly robust, they might also be taught the rudimentary skills of stretching a dollar, keeping a household, or dressmaking – all of which were important accomplishments for the future that was desired and expected for them as the wives and mothers of working men or as maids in the households of the wealthy. Young boys were trained for manual labour – carpentry, farm work, or other rudimentary skills that would, it was presumed, provide them with honest, if not lucrative, future jobs with which to support their wives and children and with which to man the machinery of economic growth.20 These basic goals of child welfare were complicated by a significant feature of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century ideals of childhood: the children of the poor, as they were met on the streets of many cities, were both a thing to be pitied and a thing to be feared. They were simultaneously the tragic victims of their family’s poverty and the cause of this poverty. They were both sexually endangered and sexually precocious, innocent and criminally minded. They might be the source of a disciplined and productive future workforce or a social and financial burden on future generations. They represented the strength of the nation, yet they were the greatest threat to this strength – particularly if they had an “undesirable” cultural or religious background.21 Indeed, throughout Blois’s inquiry into the Halifax Industrial School, there were frequent juxtapositions of these sorts of opposing images, as the idea of the pitiful child in need of protection was invoked alongside that of the devious, future criminal. J.J. MacKinnon, for example, one of two teachers at the school, first drew a heart-wrenching picture of the boys, who were frostbitten and shivering with cold in his classroom. He was particularly affected by the complaints of “the little fellows I had in the primary department.” In the next moment, however, he effectively undermined the boys’ own testimonies of

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9

physical abuse and neglect by proclaiming that “my boys are awfully untruthful – there is not a boy in the school that I can depend upon for telling the truth.”22 The threat often believed to be embodied by the children of the poor is particularly well revealed by the reactions of those involved in the Industrial School inquiry to evidence of physical abuse at the institution. Rarely today would the use of corporal punishment be understood or openly accepted, as it was in 1924, as a necessary feature of child life for the delinquent or truant boy. Although Superintendent Johns flatly denied all accusations that he had used extreme force in disciplining his charges, he did not deny whipping them with a strap or striking them with his hand. As he described it, “I have corrected them.”23 This was an understanding with which several of his staff and the board of governors agreed. As stated by Mr Burchell, acting on behalf of the board, “it was an acknowledged fact that no reformatory could be properly conducted without corporal punishment.”24 At the close of the hearing, moreover, neither Blois nor anyone else present spoke out against the basic principle of corporal punishment – only the extremes to which it had been applied.25 In 1924, for the citizens of Halifax, for the provincial superintendent, and for the lawyers and reporters present at the inquiry, corporal punishment was a useful tool of discipline for this particular class of children because they were not the sweet, innocent figures depicted in advertisements for Pears Soap or on Paul Peel canvases. As Xiaobei Chen has aptly explained, early-twentiethcentury children of the poor, like their adult counterparts, were “guilty (or at least potentially guilty) of criminality and immortality, albeit in various degrees.”26 No greater proof of this belief, and likely no greater contrast between modern and historical understandings of childhood, can be found in early 1920s Halifax than in the circumstances surrounding Breen’s initial investigation of the Industrial School and in Blois’s decision to hold a public inquiry. The transcripts of this inquiry reveal that the news stories of too-harsh discipline and of physical neglect and cruelty were the impetus behind the investigation. As serious as these conditions were, however, two weeks prior to Breen’s exposé, the Citizen’s readership had been informed that three boys “sentenced to the Home for petty crimes” had been hospitalized after contracting “one of the most loathsome diseases known to mankind.” Worse still, the venereal disease had been

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

caught “in no ordinary way, but in a most degrading manner.”27 The implication of sexual abuse in this report – contrary to modern expectation – did not generate the reaction that the accusations of harsh discipline incurred. Indeed, the cause of the outbreak was not directly attributed to an adult staff member at the home or to an adult in the community. And whereas modern-day abuse scandals often appear to revolve entirely around the intimate exploration of sexual abuse allegations, those attending the hearings in Halifax heard very little about this problem. The details were spoken of in the vaguest terms, and the implications were left for Blois to investigate quietly, behind the scenes. Those examining the charges of cruelty, however, were not perpetrating a cover-up or ignoring the problem: they simply believed that matters of sexual behaviour were not appropriate topics for a public hearing and, moreover, that the boys themselves were the sole cause.28 From the start of the investigation, the boys at the Industrial School were not regarded by all as unqualified victims; like young boys across Canada during this period, they were considered to be as capable of vice as any adult when not given the proper environment, the proper degree of discipline and training, and the proper moral outlook, which reformers so carefully detailed and pursued.29 To greater and lesser degrees, all of the institutions explored in this study perceived similar challenges within their populations. If our understanding of the meaning of childhood must be so carefully excavated within particular historical contexts to be properly understood, it should be no surprise to find that our understanding of the institutions meant to care for children must receive a similar treatment. Institutions like the ones that sit at the centre of this story wanted to provide the best environment for protecting children and for protecting society from what they might become. Their supporters wanted to give the children of the poor some semblance of a “real” childhood expressed in play and laughter, but they were particularly interested in teaching them responsibility, obedience, and usefulness. This was very often a procedure subverted by sectarianism and racism. It was also mediated by selfinterest and restrained by the belief that there were particular consequences, or legacies, laced into the bodies of these children that emanated from their class, their religion and gender, and their skin colour. Often, these other interests and influences were well hidden from public view, disguised in the powerful and pervasive

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Introduction

11

language of “the best interests of the child.” As I argue here, throughout the history of child welfare in Halifax – arguably throughout the history of Canadian child welfare – programs, institutions, agencies, and legislation were all justified and understood within the flexible boundaries of this phrase. And so ubiquitous and familiar is the phrase (or some variation of it) that its full meaning is often lost or misunderstood; the source of its power is detached from the services and institutions that define and depend upon it and that, in turn, affect the lives of children who require them for survival. On the surface, the meaning of “the best interests of the child” is quite clear. Each year, for example, Ernest Blois provided the public with an annual report detailing the work of his office and of the children’s aid societies and institutions operating in the province. These reports outlined the basic intentions of child welfare programs: to protect children from cruelty and abuse and to mitigate, as much as possible, the worst consequences of poverty, such as hunger or cold during the winter months. However, other purposes, at once both subtle and explicit, crept into the language of these reports. Child welfare was also about creating useful citizens and preventing children from growing up to be criminals or paupers who would be both a financial burden and a moral threat in their communities. As Blois and his fellow child welfare workers believed, a healthy, capable, moral adult was produced in childhood, and these healthy, capable, morally centred adults were the desirable stuff of citizenship and national progress.30 They worked to keep the economy running efficiently and profitably. They kept the peace through their respect for authority and government and for the nation as a whole. When called upon, they fulfilled their duty to the nation through military service, through motherhood, through the payment of taxes, and as childcare workers repeatedly expressed, through carefully reproducing these values and motivations in their own offspring. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all of these ideal outcomes provided impetus for changes and demanded certain continuities within the child welfare practices in the city. As Chen has observed, the campaign against cruelty and neglect of children was, implicitly and explicitly, a “citizenship project.”31 This emphasis on creating “useful” citizens (which often meant those who would labour, eliminating the possibility of pauperism) and on preventing future crime (which required those who would labour honestly and without complaint) runs thick through the

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

culture of child welfare and points to a very different meaning for “best interests” than is immediately visible. The best interests of the child were equal to, and sometimes eclipsed by, the best interests of the community and the particular social and economic goals sought by those who governed. For this reason, a close consideration of the child welfare system in Halifax reveals not only the mechanisms employed to apprehend or understand dependent and neglected children but also that welfare services were emblematic of the broader concerns and perceived problems of social governance. Indeed, the “problem” of the dependent child, the neglected child, or the endangered child made sense to welfare workers and government officials only in relation to these broader concerns about social order, citizenship, and economic prosperity.32 Child welfare workers were in the business of making good citizens, and they were not alone in this enterprise. Over the nineteenth century, state infrastructure across Canada (colonial, provincial, and federal) grew increasingly complex and increasingly concerned with gathering information on citizens. However, the collection of information was not done merely to satisfy curiosity, nor did it describe reality; rather, it described elements, sectors, portions, and fractions of the population that interested governing bodies for specific political, utilitarian purposes. Governments were interested in knowing about populations in order to maximize their potential – for example, as taxpayers, as potential conscripts, as workers, or as members of any number of possible, useable groups. They were concerned with preventing rebellion and increasing order, and they did so by knowing more, and knowing more intimately, a variety of aspects of their citizens’ lives.33 What happened within child welfare services was a mirror of these larger governing projects: knowing children, collecting data through case files and surveys, narrowing and streamlining procedures, and altering the methods used to deliver services to reflect these refined intentions were key features of governance within the child welfare community, both public and private. To point out the self-interested subtext of the basic ideals and practices of child welfare is not to suggest that its supporters or those who worked on behalf of dependent children were part of some sort of nefarious plot against poor children and their families. Indeed, the majority of these people were genuinely concerned about children, particularly those children who appeared, through neglect, poverty, or abuse, to be missing the fullness of an authentic

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childhood experience. They worked tirelessly on their behalf and poured an enormous amount of time, effort, and money into their projects.34 Moreover, a great many children were helped, supported, protected, healed, and given homes, affection, families, and opportunities for personal growth and education that might otherwise have been beyond their grasp. The conditions revealed at the Industrial School were a shocking anomaly in the city of Halifax.35 However, to ignore these underlying motivations and influences is to misunderstand the fundamental structure of services and programs for the children of the poor. It is to ignore the very mechanisms by which individuals, agencies, institutions – and even the provincial and federal governments – functioned and why they functioned. It is to misguidedly disconnect child welfare services from the larger goals and motivations behind the governance of populations overall. Understanding these structures, functions, and motivations and how they were rooted within the changeable, fickle realities of time and place is a fundamental goal of the present study. Although the pursuit of “best interests” may have helped, at times, to narrow the definition of a desirable citizen, it simultaneously widened the horizons for professional activity and intervention. As many historians have noted, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided fertile ground for professional ambition. Doctors, social workers, teachers, psychologists, and a host of other professionally trained folk actively and effectively argued that significant improvement in individual lives, communities, and the entire nation could be achieved through careful, professional intervention.36 The ideological machinery for these sorts of claims was well oiled by a pervasive faith in the certainty of progress through science; many of these professional groups claimed (and created) specialized knowledge and expertise using the imagery of the scientific. They also controlled access to this knowledge and the methods used to produce and apply it. As a result, professionals not only laid claim to the secrets and mechanisms of progress and improvement but were also empowered by these claims and made themselves indispensable in the process of exploring and expounding them.37 Professional social workers, child psychologists, and physicians presented governments – local, provincial, and national – with what they believed was scientific proof that their planned, professionally ordered services would create a more efficient, effective, and often cheaper set of services for dependent children. These services did not usually include

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

a space for the congregate care facilities that had preceded their arrival on the scene and that, in many instances, provided competition for scarce funding and support. Most of the time, professional proofs were accepted; combining the dialect of scientific professionalism with the urgency and commanding imagery of “the best interests of the child” was a virtually irresistible approach, and many institutions were closed in pursuit of these interests. In Halifax, some of the time, these professional methods worked. Some of the time, they did not; but at no time were the professionals themselves the detached, clinically distanced observers they frequently portrayed themselves as being. They were heavily invested in the system they helped to create, and they frequently redefined the rules to better suit their own interests as the game changed.38 Again, these sorts of motives do not imply deviousness or a callous disregard for the objects of child welfare; whether professionals or amateurs (both of whom were very often poorly paid), individuals were generally drawn into welfare work because of an abiding concern for the well-being of young people. However, to understand the mechanisms for change in the child welfare system – particularly in the crucial decades covered here, which saw the gradual closure of congregate care facilities – the infrastructure and partialities of professionalism must also be acknowledged. Not surprisingly, the sort of gatekeeping conducted by professionally trained childcare workers occasionally created a great deal of friction in Halifax between those who claimed professional status and those who could not. But the line between professionals and amateurs was not so distinct, the gate not so securely guarded, that there was not at least some blurring of status and definition. This blurring suggests the need to think carefully before accepting, at face value, the claims to exclusive knowledge and expertise made by professionals or, for that matter, the claims to special insight or talent so often made by untrained staffs and managers of institutions or other charities. It also provides a reminder that the child welfare system was not detached from the community in which it worked. Throughout the period covered by this particular history, child welfare services in Halifax were constrained by thin budgets and, sometimes, by thinner tolerance between those who tried to coordinate their efforts for the city’s children. The possibilities and promises of these services were curtailed by war, by disaster, by competition and miserly financial planning, and by pervasive poverty in the community. Possibilities,

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Introduction

15

changes, continuities, and conflicts were affected as much by their location as by the desires of professionals, the persistence of amateurs, the faith in (or doubt of) science and progress professed by the city’s leaders, or the abiding urgency of working toward “the best interests” of the city’s dependent children. If, as this study demonstrates, the line between amateurs and professionals was sometimes blurred, so too was the line between the methods with which each was generally associated – that is, between the “amateur” institution and the “professional” foster care system. Professionally trained childcare workers in many parts of the country spilled a great deal of ink at the turn of the twentieth century promoting their belief in this opposition. Institutions were dank, crowded, and damaging places where children were simply herded together and managed as one might manage livestock. Foster care, in contrast, applied the professional’s carefully honed skills in casework methodology and sought to provide children with a real home and family – the quintessential bedrock of civilization. Most current histories of child welfare in Canada maintain this sense of methodological opposition between institutional and foster care programs. They are, according to Rooke and Schnell, “fundamentally opposed” to one another.39 This impression of antagonism is not altogether wrong if the words and efforts of some professional child welfare workers are taken at face value. This is particularly true when historians focus on the life and work of J.J. Kelso, Ontario’s ubiquitous and apparently tireless director of child welfare – the so-called “architect of the Canadian child welfare system.”40 Kelso vocally and doggedly condemned institutions, promoting foster care as the only, and best, method of caring for dependent children. His transformative efforts in Toronto – and eventually Ontario – became the benchmark for the entire country; by the late nineteenth century, institutions were being closed, and fostering had been “invented.” Administered through the innovation of children’s aid societies and supported by fledgling provincial offices of public welfare, fostering spread across the country. By the end of the 1930s or thereabouts, institutions (excepting those for juvenile offenders) were a thing of the past, having been eliminated from child welfare programs just as many other charitable and questionably moralistic practices of the Victorian age had been eliminated. The modern welfare state had begun to emerge; indeed, it had broken away from its past, as

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

reformers and advocates sought to eliminate what was unsystematic, unprofessional, and out-dated. This version of events, as Mariana Valverde describes it, is both “simplistic” and “downright misleading.” It certainly does not apply to the picture of child welfare drawn in Halifax. To speak of the “emergence of the welfare state” in this manner is to ignore decades of government subsidies for, and regulation of, private institutions and charities and thereby to “hide from view a fundamental mechanism of the social welfare sector” in the nineteenth century.41 Drawing distinctions between nineteenth-century charities and the so-called rise of the welfare state also makes the “crucial and continuing involvement of charities and volunteers invisible.”42 As this history of child welfare in Halifax reveals, both the perception of a break between private and public systems and the historical focus on funding as the clearest marker of state intervention act to downplay or ignore the significance of other sorts of government supports for private services. One of these was the granting of legal authority through incorporation, which, as Charlotte Neff points out, gave private organizations the authority to act as parents over the children in their care – a not inconsiderable power.43 The emphasis on J.J. Kelso, often characterized by an uncritical acceptance of his own assertions about the innovation and newness of his plans, also obscures longstanding practices and laws that presaged foster care and the work of children’s aid societies in Canada. As Neff’s work on Ontario orphanages and apprenticeship legislation demonstrates, for example, child welfare advocates had, for many decades prior to Kelso’s arrival in the 1890s, been placing children (whether orphaned or merely destitute) in private homes to “save” them from the horrors of poverty and to turn them into useful citizens.44 Fostering practices were also in place in Nova Scotia – if only in a rudimentary way – before 1752, when public money (a meagre three or four shillings per week) was paid to individual homeowners to care for the community’s orphans. The Halifax Orphan House, which opened that same year to care for children too young to be apprenticed, was also supported (although not well) by public funds for approximately thirty years.45 Several of the city’s nineteenth-century charities – such as the North End City Mission and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (SPC), along with most of the existing children’s institutions – also placed children into private homes throughout the province, either

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as adoptees, apprentices, or what would become known as foster children. For many of these charities, such placements were a priority. At least some of them – like the Halifax Industrial School – also received grants from the city and province to conduct their work. The credit given to work in Ontario has also effectively masked the existence of much earlier legislation directed at child protection. In 1880 and 1882 the Halifax SPC managed to secure two pieces of legislation directed at child welfare, and although these laws were not, perhaps, as comprehensive or detailed as Kelso’s 1888 Ontario act, they nevertheless set out a definition of cruelty and neglect, set minimum standards for parenting, and granted the SPC the right to prosecute wayward parents and take custody of their children when an SPC agent felt it was warranted.46 Thus, as this study argues, although nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury governments in Nova Scotia did not directly provide for welfare services, they tacitly approved of the goals and methods of private charities by granting them legal status. They also effectively employed private charities, through grants and subsidies, to implement a variety of programs whose priorities they held in common with the administrators and supporters of these charitable efforts. Moreover, once extensive and open public funding and administration of welfare services had become the norm, private agencies and charities did not cease to exist. The mixed social economy that Valverde describes continued to function in the era of the welfare state; the provincial government continued to rely on the methods and practices of the private sector to deliver services, even as the private sector became increasingly reliant on public money. Children’s institutions, administered by volunteer boards and committees and often described by themselves as private charities, were maintained well beyond the period when, according to standard, Kelso-based narratives, the children’s asylum had been “discarded.”47 And although these homes and asylums were indeed increasingly subject to government regulations, these were often regulations that the institutional managers approved of and, moreover, had helped to define. Their boards and staffs actively participated and bickered with, and sometimes claimed victory over, the so-called “professional” and “modern” plans represented by the Halifax Children’s Aid Society (CAS) and the provincial government. And although they were eventually closed, it was not because they had failed or been eclipsed by something “new” and “improved” but because the

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

environment in which they had once thrived (relatively speaking) had changed.48 The oppositions between public and private, between amateur and professional, and between charity and welfare simply cannot be applied to the Halifax context, descriptively or analytically. I suspect that they cannot be applied to most of the Canadian context, whether in Nova Scotia or elsewhere.49 This depiction of the children’s asylum as political, vocal, interested, and perhaps even innovative is rather contrary to the general impression left behind by these institutions. It is also contrary to some historic currents that describe Nova Scotia – along with the rest of the maritime provinces – as conservative and as lagging behind the more innovative and dynamic central and western provinces.50 In some respects, Nova Scotian child welfare advocates were conservative and did “lag behind” the changes underway in other parts of the country – parts that may, because of their affluence and because of the influence of their personnel and agencies (like Kelso in Ontario), be considered “the centre.” Other places and other programs are axiomatically compared to the goings-on in this centre, and differences become more sharply apparent as a result. Histories of places beyond the centre – histories that are set in a single locale, as this study is – are often part of that brand of historical study known as “local” history. This is an unfortunate description, for it limits the analytical and metaphorical importance of their pasts; the “local” is associated with the parochial, with the margins of a given society. As Talal Asad has observed, “[t]o say of people that they are local is to imply that they are attached to a place, rooted, circumscribed, limited.” Those who are not local, those who exist and operate in the centre, are “unlimited, cosmopolitan, universal, belonging to the whole world.”51 This sort of association could render the differences observed in Halifax as nothing more than anomalies; the city provides a curious example of entrenched conservatism that serves only as a contrast to the national story. However, the present history should not be taken as an attempt merely to demonstrate an anomaly or local incongruity in the national narrative of child welfare. This study argues instead that the so-called “national narrative” simply doesn’t exist. What happens in Halifax is no more or less usual or typical than what happens in Toronto, or Montreal, or Vancouver, or Saskatoon. Indeed, what this story contributes to a narrative of child welfare that encompasses the entire nation is in part an account of how one community responded to, altered, and

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adapted methods and practices that, often originating or seeming to originate in “the centre,” were considered appropriate to meet the best interests of the nation’s children. In the process, the apparent universality of the centre-originated concepts and methods of child welfare is questioned. Or, put another way, it is thrown off-centre. The ways that general ideas about governance are translated within a particular community, and the ways that such a translation can alter intent, result, and meaning, are best understood and exposed through exploration of such “local” contexts.52 Halifax provides an excellent site for an exploration of these changes and continuities in child welfare practice, both because of its ethnic and religious stability and because of particular areas of religious and ethnic diversity. Established in 1759 by Colonel Edward Cornwallis, Halifax began life as a fortified military outpost, England’s answer to the French fortress at Louisbourg and a key strategic site in the struggle for control of North America. This early connection with imperial military concerns shaped the city’s population, culture, and economy for over two centuries; both the fortunes and misfortunes of war fundamentally affected the economic, demographic, social, and structural landscape of the city – including the landscape peopled by its dependent and endangered children. A port city, its economy intimately dependent on trade, the early inhabitants were largely drawn from the British Isles and the Loyalists of the United States. Black Loyalists arrived in the late 1700s as well, and although many of these early inhabitants left the city in 1792 as part of the exodus to Sierra Leone, the period between 1813 and 1816 saw the arrival of at least 2,000 former slaves, who were resettled in the area by the British. The largest group of Irish Catholics arrived in the 1830s, and by 1850 the city gave all the appearance of being a bustling, prosperous outpost of the British Empire.53 In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the population of this Garrison City by the Sea grew relatively steadily from just over 20,000 inhabitants in 1851 to over 36,000 in 1881. For several decades thereafter, however, the population was remarkably stable, reaching a modest 40,832 by the turn of the century. Growth in the first half of the twentieth century was uneven, stagnating in the 1920s and 1930s and spiking predictably around the two world wars. By the end of the period under examination here, the city boasted just over 92,000 inhabitants (see appendix 1).

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The ethnic makeup of this population was remarkably uniform in some respects; between 1850 and 1950, its citizens were overwhelmingly drawn from the British Isles. Until the census of 1961, in fact, the number of people identifying themselves as English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh did not drop below 79 per cent and had been well over 80 per cent for much of that time.54 However, the city and its surrounding neighbourhoods also housed one of Canada’s largest black populations. Within the city itself, blacks rarely accounted for more than 1 or 2 per cent of the population – but this was a visible minority, nearly 6,000 strong provincially by the turn of the century (with just over 700 resident within Halifax) and nearly 12,000 strong by the end of the 1960s (over 2,000 of whom lived in the city).55 The ethnic uniformity that surrounded them may well have helped to perpetuate the ease with which racial segregation was maintained within the child welfare system; as illustrated in this study, the struggles of the province’s Home for Coloured Children were generally ignored by the larger community of white child welfare workers and advocates, as well as by white citizens eager to find a place for their charitable dollars. The relative ethnic uniformity of the city did not translate into religious homogeneity. As might be expected, the major division was between Roman Catholics and Protestants, and this split was reflected in the denominational inspiration of the various children’s institutions. The Roman Catholic Church claimed, during the nineteenth century, approximately one-quarter of the provincial population; from 1871 onward, this number hovered around 40 per cent in Halifax, increasing slightly to just over 43 per cent in 1961.56 Protestant populations are frequently considered as a whole, whatever the final distribution among individual denominations, and this study follows that pattern where appropriate (many of the institutions, for example, simply claimed “Protestant” heritage in distinction to their Roman Catholic counterparts). During the nineteenth century, however, and even into the first few decades of the twentieth, this characterization of “Protestant” was not accurate – at least not as far as many Haligonians were concerned. The Anglican population, in particular, frequently distinguished itself from other Protestant sects (and, in one instance, even managed its own denominationally separate institution). The Church of England claimed, provincially, approximately 14 per cent of the population in

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the last half of the nineteenth century but regularly accounted for 25 to 30 per cent of the Halifax faithful until 1951 (see appendix 2).57 As I argue throughout this study, these religious differences mattered. Denominational partitions dismissed by some as unnecessary (or even damaging) were considered by others to be vital to ensuring a child’s future – this future being thoroughly entwined with the specific religious culture into which the child was born. Historical studies of institutional care and child welfare in Canada, however, have acknowledged the importance of religious differences only by separating out one denomination or the other; Protestant and Roman Catholic agencies, societies, and institutions are studied separately. At times, this separation is practical and necessary because of the enormous geographic, cultural, and religious landscape of the country.58 Such separation nevertheless implies that these agencies made a distinct and separate contribution to child welfare services. The competitive nature of the interaction between Roman Catholic and Protestant (or Anglican) agencies in Halifax, by contrast, suggests that such a separation would distort the picture of services in the city and obscure the fact that denominational rivalry was a central feature of child welfare provision. Indeed, along with racial differences, religious distinctions were among the most important ones made among Haligonians. For this reason, both Catholic and Protestant homes are considered here.59 Awareness of religious, ethnic, class, and gender differences profoundly influenced the attitudes and activities of child welfare workers in the city. These attitudes and activities were also influenced by the traditions and expectations established by the province’s Poor Law. Until 1958, in fact, the principal configurations of welfare were determined by this legislation. First adopted in the mid-eighteenth century, the Poor Law established local responsibility for the indigent of all ages; officials in the provincial Poor Law districts (and later municipalities) were assigned the tasks of appointing an overseer of the poor, who determined eligibility for relief. Whereas some of these districts allowed for outdoor relief in the form of cash payments or other material supports, Halifax bylaws forbade this practice. Within the city’s purview, the only options for the needy – outside of any assistance they might receive from their church or local denominational charities – were generally found through indoor relief in the poorhouse. This institution, whose population

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

was a predictable mix of the disabled, the elderly, and the unemployed – along with many of their children – cast a long and rather depressing shadow over the city’s history.60 As a feature of welfare provision, the Poor Law influenced, reflected – and, indeed, perhaps reinforced – many of the fundamental attitudes and practices that characterized both the work of provincial institutions and agencies directed specifically at children and the content of legislation intended to protect them. Like the Poor Law, for example, child welfare legislation (and many child welfare workers and volunteers) demonstrated a particular affection for the concept of local responsibility. Just as the overseers of the poor could bill the costs of supporting a Poor Law claimant in their district to his or her family, institutions and agencies empowered as children’s aid societies could do the same. Financial support for children sent to institutions in Halifax from other parts of the province was expected (although not always forthcoming) from the district or municipality where the children had legal settlement. Local authorities could then, according to the Children’s Protection Act, seek compensation from the children’s relatives for the costs of maintaining them. This arrangement seems punitive in many respects, as it placed enormous financial pressure on families and communities who had little means of generating funds. It was, however, well in keeping with the tenor of individual Christian reform and state management in the province (and elsewhere). The mid-nineteenth century was not a time when arguments for massive state intervention and funding were possible – indeed, these arguments were barely plausible for many in the mid-twentieth century.61 But it was a time when Christian social regeneration was thought to depend upon, if not begin with, the individual, who would then influence his or her community through good works and by example.62 Maintaining local responsibility for welfare costs was therefore not only fiscally and politically appealing but also well in keeping with then-current Christian mores. Of course, this explanation is easily criticized as fancy window-dressing since it enabled cash-strapped governments, shy of interfering with matters long considered outside of their purview, to rationalize the benefits of local responsibility quite well, even as they strangled the possibilities for thoughtfully managed and adequately funded charitable assistance to the poor. The Poor Law also mirrored and reinforced a preference among Haligonians, at least through the nineteenth century and the first

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23

several decades of the twentieth, for indoor relief. In part, this means of managing poverty acted to contain the poor – some might argue even to control them – as it simultaneously sought to save them from the cruelties of poverty and want and to prevent them from becoming dependent (this latter element apparently achieved by keeping wages for work obtained through the poorhouse lower than those paid for workers outside of it and by ensuring that the surroundings were not so comfortable as to inspire a desire for long-term residency).63 At the heart of these methods and the attitudes that inspired them was the belief (not unlike that which made local responsibility appear both necessary and desirable) that an individual was more or less responsible for the condition of his or her life – with less responsibility falling to those with physical disabilities or those too young to care for themselves. For children, particularly, institutionalization presented specific benefits: not only did it provide the means of caring for children, feeding them, sheltering them, and keeping them safe from harm, but it also provided the opportunity for training. Within the walls of an institution, every aspect of a child’s life could be carefully measured and controlled, setting him or her on the path that the staff members (and the often formidable boards of management that directed them) believed best suited to the child’s interests – and consequently to those of the entire community. Although children were, throughout the entire period under study, placed in community homes through apprenticeships, fostering, and adoption, the idea of a central “home” for collecting and sorting (and controlling) them was obviously appealing; it suited local understanding of the possibilities for child saving and reform efforts. Institutions were also impressive, complex places that gave physical proof of benevolence and of the concrete participation in reform undertaken by the city’s various religious communities. Of course, they also maintained, through this same visibility, a very prominent and frequently damaging distinction between the children of the poor and “normal” children (a distinction of which managers and superintendents were increasingly aware by the early twentieth century). They also carried all of the attendant dangers of institutionalization, as I describe throughout this book. But they were not simply buildings defined by their architecture or their echoing dormitories or by a narrow vision of child rescue that was easily overcome by the “wisdom” of reformers like J.J. Kelso. Indeed, the reformers responsible for defining and transforming

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the institutional landscape in Halifax were often those within the institutions themselves. Importantly, by discarding the idea that there must have been a break and that a single moment of origin for the modern child welfare system can therefore be discovered (such as Kelso’s campaign, for example), this story of Halifax institutions reveals very significant continuities between programs and services usually perceived as opposites. There were, to be sure, several very significant changes and new features added to the architecture of welfare over the decades covered by this study. From provincial and federal funding programs to the creation of new offices and the closure of wellestablished institutions, the child welfare landscape of 1960 was vastly different from that of 1860. These differences, however, should not be used to obscure the continuities. The provincial government continued to rely upon private agencies to deliver services, and it continued to regulate many features of private service delivery as a requirement for funding and support. Within the private agencies themselves, the urge to classify and separate children according to particular understandings of children’s nature and of societal and denominational needs not only continued but was also intensified with explicit support from the state; the need for a productive and orderly populace required careful and detailed knowledge of the human resources on hand.64 As knowledge increased, a more careful sorting could occur. Child welfare agencies of all stripes – professional and amateur, public and private – classified, described, and separated children like Victorian entomologists collecting butterflies or beetles. And to a general cataloguing of denomination, race, and sex, Halifax child welfare workers added perceived ability (both mental and physical) and emotional and psychological health. Foster care itself, I suggest, may have been the most finite version of this type of classification since it involved sorting individual children into carefully selected home environments according to criteria that focused on the most intimate aspects of a child’s self. On the surface, in public reports, government studies, administrative memoranda, press releases, and public addresses – the sources that necessarily dominate this study – child welfare workers and advocates described the choices made for dependent children as those that served the “best interests” of the children. However, decisions to close institutions or keep them open, to hire professionals or rely on the work of volunteers and amateurs, to make changes to

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legislation, and to undertake any sort of alteration within the city’s network of services were constrained by the city’s and province’s economy and history. These decisions were haunted by racism and sectarian division, by interagency conflict, by awareness of class difference, and by assumptions about gender. Perhaps the only certainty that does exist throughout the complex weave of changes and continuities, as well as within any specific moment of change or choice traced in this study, is that the children of Halifax themselves remained relatively powerless. Historically, these children are also distressingly silent.65 Like many others before me, I often looked in vain for a sense of how the children themselves – the dependent, delinquent, and neglected clients of Halifax’s child welfare system – perceived their own lives and the services that were intended to help them. The result of this silence is that the therapies and programs of child welfare tell us more about the perceptions and wishes of grownups than they do about children. And when powerlessness and silence were overcome, it was usually because these therapies and programs had failed, utterly and completely, to provide even a modicum of protection and care; children were heard, most often, in moments of suffering. The conditions exposed within the walls of the Halifax Industrial School are a case in point. The stories of abuse recounted in the Juvenile Court for a few brief weeks in October 1924 throw the abstractions of academic study (for the reader as much as for the researcher) into sharp and painful relief. The following chapters cannot pretend to offer solutions to such distressing conditions, nor can they adequately describe the lives of those children who found themselves, at one time or another, caught up in the system. However, by exploring how and why some options were chosen and others rejected and by seeking to exhume the enduring, taken-for-granted presumptions about the children of the poor and the welfare services meant to assist them, this study may offer a way around some of the most enduring and damaging ideals we currently maintain about what really is in the “best interests” of children. It is tempting, in writing a history of children’s institutions, to focus on the more sensational, stirring aspects of the story – the scandals and events like those surrounding the Halifax Industrial School in 1924, for example, which made headlines and which have impressive shock value. Such moments of crisis can reveal unspoken

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motives and assumptions and can lay painfully bare the muddled and contradictory architecture of child welfare services. They can also, and often do, spur on significant changes in policy and legislation directed at vulnerable children. Understanding their intricacies is therefore vital (particularly when the outcomes of the new policies and laws are not always universally positive or anticipated).66 However, the mundane, day-to-day facets of child welfare were the rule and the place where the consequences of choice were worked out. For the historian, these facets often characterize the only moments that are accessible, as is the case here. However much I wished for more of the intimate details exposed by the Industrial School inquiry (if not for more of the circumstances that created such outcomes), what is left behind are clinical reports, government studies, and glossy and optimistic appeals and annual reports from managing staffs and government officials. These distillations of what the grownups thought worthy and necessary to preserve as a historical record are doubtless very different from what the clients of these services would have considered significant – and as this book explores, they are sources that present some interpretive challenges for the historian. However, although they may make for far less compelling reading, they can be a far better basis for understanding the system as a whole; it is these mundane elements of institutional care and the organization of child welfare services in the city of Halifax that are the focus of this study. Overall, the intent here is to map change and continuity in order to see how our general understanding of child welfare development is affected when institutions rather than children’s aid societies are placed front and centre and when the claims of amateurs and professionals are placed in the intimate contexts that inspired and constrained child welfare workers and in which their efforts had some effects (although not always the ones intended). I also hope to demonstrate – as these child welfare workers did, implicitly and explicitly – that class was not the only consideration at play in the implementation of policy: gender, race, and religion were inseparable from the fundamental understanding of what class difference entailed. And although not oblivious to the obvious connections that can been drawn between these child welfare programs and those directed at, for example, single mothers,67 I have chosen to examine child welfare independently of these other services for particular reasons. Child welfare did indeed form part of a larger vision for

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state-centred programs directed at the poor, but the objects of these particular programs were qualitatively different. Children were not considered citizens but rather citizens in the making, and part of my concern here is to explore the effects of age – that is, of cultural understandings of childhood – on the formulation and provision of welfare. The uniqueness of the clientele was certainly foremost in the minds of those working the field. Childhood, in all of the myriad ways that it was conceived, presented specific challenges and opportunities to welfare providers, reformers, and social workers who were attempting to alter (and sometimes to maintain) the shape of their community. Apart from those exceptions indicated in various of this introduction’s notes, very little attention has been paid to these youngest recipients of charity and welfare in Canada. Chapter 1 of this study explores the scope of reform activity in Halifax from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth, including the establishment of children’s homes, child protection legislation, and the creation of governmental and extragovernmental agencies intended to regularize and render efficient the provision of services and laws. Particular attention is paid to the creation of the Office of the Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children, which was, in the long term, the most significant development for child welfare services in the city and province. Although children’s aid societies are often given this stature in histories of child welfare, it is my contention that the Office of the Provincial Superintendent deserves this (perhaps dubious) honour. This office represented the first (occasionally hesitating) step toward welfare governance in the child welfare field, and its implications for institutional independence (and management of children’s aid societies) were significant. However, the pursuit of efficiency through this and other efforts at organization was not an easy one, even when there was general agreement about the need for, the objectives of, and the most productive methods for achieving child rescue and welfare. The city’s troubled economic and social landscape, its religious proclivities, and the proclivities of those providing charity and welfare – not to mention the devastating impact of the 1917 Halifax Explosion – made any simplistic solutions impossible. The decisions that informed child welfare organization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also had profound implications for the province’s black population, which chapter 2 explores through the story of the founding of the Nova Scotia

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Home for Colored Children in 1921. Efforts to save and reform endangered children were based upon specific, racially conceived notions of ideal childhood, which black reformers and welfare advocates had to contend with and adapt to their own communities’ needs. Chapter 3 turns to the internal organization of the institutions themselves, exploring their physical environments, early fostering programs, and the practices put in place to ensure the health (both physical and moral), education, and future prosperity of their inmates.68 The financial arrangements that made these institutional regimes possible – and that constrained their possibilities – are also explored, including the promise and peril of their increasing reliance on public monies. Chapter 4 shifts the focus from internal management to external organization, paying particular attention to the interwar context in which these institutions operated. It explores, particularly, the earliest efforts at voluntary cooperation, which were envisioned as a necessary part of an efficient Christian community and were intended to help agencies with the restraints imposed by their social and economic environment. However, as happened throughout the earlier part of the century (and as would also be characteristic of the post– World War Two period), these efforts were frequently stymied by discord, squabbling, and mistrust. The most significant of these quarrels, for the managers of the institutions, related to their dispute with the secretary of the Halifax Children’s Aid Society, Gwendolen Lantz, which is the subject of chapter 5. As demonstrated there, institutions emerged, through this dispute, as the carriers of modern, professional methods, whereas the CAS (normally considered the harbinger of modern child welfare practice) appeared backward and retrograde. The victory over Lantz in 1952, however, was a pyrrhic one. Institutional managers had actively defined their organizations (using fears over “institutionalization,” for example) as temporary, stop-gap solutions for endangered children. They had adopted – in the “best interests” of the children in their care and to serve their own interest in presenting a viable protest against the CAS – the concerns of professional child development experts. These experts considered the types of services provided by congregate facilities to be not only old-fashioned but also dangerous. How new theories of child development – and the space these theories created for continued institutional care – were adapted in Halifax is the focus of chapter 6. Group care, as it was commonly referred to,

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offered the opportunity for these private institutions to continue working with specific groups of local children. With very few exceptions, however, most of them were unable to adapt to this new therapy, usually because of mounting financial burdens. Ultimately, what is revealed through this transformation of the institution’s place in the city is the growing power of the provincial government and the active engagement of institutional boards and managers both in the definition of “best interests” and in the expression of the city’s response to youthful dependency. Sometimes, these definitions were rooted in professional child development theory. Other times, they were shaped by perceived community needs. But most often, they had to conform to the limits of the community itself and answer to the legacies of segregation – both religious and ethnic – that had informed their earliest inspiration. Sadly, these definitions never managed to completely solve the problems faced by the city’s too-large population of endangered children.

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1 “We Need No Reform” The Organization of Local Services and Administrative Innovation, c. 1850–1924 In 1925 a self-described “ordinary mortal” wrote to the editor of the Halifax Citizen to warn of an impending horror. After attending a public lecture by one of the city’s most prominent reform advocates, he had learned that the good citizens of Halifax were being “threatened” with yet another social survey. A flock of “ladies” armed with their ubiquitous clipboards would soon descend in a flurry of questions and pry into “[f]amily proclivities, thrift, tendency to improvement, moral standard, evil tendencies, immorality, mental condition and disease.” This information would then be “carefully tabulated and placed in a card index system under the care of the statistician or the historian of the organization.” However, no matter how well organized the information, it would not have any effect whatsoever on improving the lives of those who had provided it. The survey would be carried out, instead, “among the class who are the victims of a great deal of … manipulation and mismanagement,” which seemed, to the author, a dysfunctional and wrongheaded means of dealing with the problems of poverty. Surveyors would see only the symptoms, he argued, and not the true cause, which, undoubtedly, lay at the feet of bad governance and “wastage.” As far as the accuracy that such a survey would produce, “[i]t would seem to me that only the down and out, and those absolutely devoid of any self respect would furnish answers to such questions as these.” Moreover, “private detective work like this, as it is carried on by social service workers and others, has a tendency to nullify the very object it is supposed to attain. It has the effect of keeping many deserving people, who through some temporary misfortune

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are in distress, from applying for aid. They do not relish the idea of having their fingerprints taken.”1 This ordinary mortal’s objections to the meddling of nosy lady surveyors expressed the discomfort many felt as their private lives were regularly – and increasingly – subjected to scrutiny from the sprawling reach of government and charitable-reform bureaucracies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His experience was not new. The legitimate boundaries of governance (whether by states or by extragovernmental organizations) had been tested, altered, and expanded since the end of the eighteenth century to encompass the realm of the social and personal.2 Governments became interested in understanding, manipulating, and controlling collectivities, and although this agenda was not always (or even usually) pursued for nefarious purposes, the end result was that issues once considered private (such as individual sexual and reproductive conduct or the methods used in raising one’s children) were coupled to issues of national policy and progress; they became matters of public concern. This joining of national and private interests was fundamental to the architecture of liberal governance that became the norm in the West. At the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, a critical period for the elaboration of social services like child welfare, governments and extragovernmental agencies believed that the nation’s prosperity, rooted in its economic, social, and cultural future, depended upon ensuring that individuals and populations reached their full potential. Despite the concerns of ordinary mortals jealous of their privacy, intervention in the day-today functioning of private lives was considered not simply practical but also necessary.3 Therefore, examining how Halifax services were run, monitored, inspected, and altered, as well as how they were added to and augmented by child protection legislation and provincial regulations, not only reveals collisions of class interests or evidence of attempts at social control through social survey; it also reveals mechanisms of governance in the city and the province and exposes the permeability of public and private realms of experience. Moreover, it uncovers how these ideas of governance were fitted (sometimes imperfectly) to local circumstances. This chapter explores the earliest manifestations of these forays into welfare governance by detailing the array of services and legislative initiatives implemented to protect the city’s children in the last half of the nineteenth century and earliest years of the twentieth. It

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considers particularly how denominational rivalries, which reflected both local and national contexts, inspired and regulated the provision of these services and laws and how they were then affected by the creation of a provincial office responsible for the protection of children. The Office of the Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children was charged with supervising childcare services in Halifax, and the administration of this office reveals how policy, intent, planning, and rhetoric both responded to and were reflective of the context in which they operated.4 Whether responsive or creative, moreover, these services did not emerge smoothly or deliberately, nor were they part of a cooperative, unified effort on the part of middle-class reformers, nor was their implementation a top-down process dominated by a determined or consistently thoughtful provincial government. Child welfare advocates were not just responding to the visibility or reality of child poverty and neglect in their increasingly crowded and expanding city;5 they were responding in particular ways that used the language and techniques of welfare governance and were reacting to local religious and political realities in the hopes of shaping and directing future citizens. Like the assumptions guiding reformers, agents, missionaries, and charitable visitors in other city organizations,6 they were motived by a mix of benevolence and paternalism; the conventional signs of social control were certainly present, as were sincere expressions of concern for the well-being of the young. The urgency they expressed about their work and the manner in which this urgency was woven into virtually every aspect of the nation’s progress intensified their determination, providing them with the wedge needed to widen the territory of this intervention and expose its hidden corners to the prying eyes of ladies with clipboards. As the “ordinary mortal’s” objections suggest, the targets of social reform efforts were not always amenable to the methods or intentions of social workers, visitors, agents, or missionaries. There were frequent instances of resistance and refusal among the poor and working members of communities where social reform efforts were underway; runaways from children’s institutions might be understood, in fact, as resisting the efforts made to reform them.7 However, the poor and those who purveyed charity in the city were not always at loggerheads; the targets of social reform frequently made use of welfare services in a self-interested way. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, orphan asylums, including the

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reformatories, offered Halifax families a means of surviving periods of extreme economic distress or unemployment. For a comparatively small sum (and in some cases, no sum at all), their children could be boarded, fed, and educated while they worked to re-establish themselves.8 The city institutions available to families or individuals in need managed their affairs with the public and with their clientele in a way that made them useful both to poorer families and to ideals of social improvement and reformation. But although there were some efforts at cooperation in this endeavour, the city’s children’s homes generally operated independently of each other, sometimes jealously so. Their mutual antagonisms as much as their shared goals set a complicated but important set of precedents that would profoundly influence what occurred within institutional settings and within the services that gradually replaced them. Nearly a quarter-century before the ordinary mortal complained of social surveys, the country embarked on what Swedish author and social activist Ellen Key expected to be the century of the child. Sir Wilfrid Laurier marked it as Canada’s century. In either case, it seemed an auspicious moment. In Halifax people of all ages were engaged in celebrations from the contemplative to the raucous, marking the arrival of this promising new era. Their morning presses reported that trade, manufacturing, wholesalers, and mercantile businesses were flourishing and that the economic prosperity of the Garrison City by the Sea was virtually assured.9 They were equally preoccupied with the Boer War, Canada’s “baptism of fire” in the British Empire’s conflict; the embarkation of troops and supplies from the Halifax dockyards and stories of British victory and Boer deceit consumed the front pages of their newspapers.10 Thomas Raddall’s picturesque history of the city confirms this portrait: conversation in Halifax at the turn of the century was full of the Veldt; its streets were teeming with the red coats of the British garrison. With the population hovering just over 40,000 people,11 Raddall’s city was a place of stability and gentility, where the most serious social problems appear to have been caused by tobacco chewers expectorating on public sidewalks or young horsemen dashing recklessly down Windmill Road.12 City dwellers had experienced some obvious economic stagnation in the decades since Confederation, there had been some notable calamities,13 and there was a constant refrain of complaint about the dilapidated, dirty condition of the

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streets and about the meagre state of public transportation, but signs of improvement and charm abounded. In her impressively detailed Glimpses of Halifax, Phyllis Blakeley expounded upon many of these symbols of progress and optimism at the end of the nineteenth century, from garden parties, sail races, and concerts to the opening of a public library, the expansion of free schooling for the city’s children, and the heroism of the local fire brigade. There was also growth, from new suburban developments and industry in the north end to new public buildings in the downtown core, including the impressive Renaissance-styled Dominion Building at George and Hollis Streets and the recently built City Hall at the Grand Parade. The Saturday market near the waterfront bustled with “rugged farmers and their stout, good-natured looking wives,” and visitors waxed benevolent about the poignant poverty of the Acadians, “Indians,” and Africans, hawking produce and flowers.14 As the nineteenth century ended, the city was a quaint bastion of English tradition, where five-o’clock tea was served with “muffin and gossip” and where sailors in wide trousers strolled “in the dusk of evening” with the “fair and charming young ladies” of the city on their arms.15 The sort of stability and tradition implied by both Blakeley and Raddall for turn-of-the-century Halifax was not entirely fictional or nostalgic. Unlike many North American cities, Halifax did not attract large numbers of immigrants in the last years of the nineteenth century or in the first years of the twentieth. The result was a measure of demographic homogeneity, wherein the majority of residents had been born in Nova Scotia. As Judith Fingard has speculated, the resulting veneer of ethnic tranquility may have mitigated some of “the worst features of urbanization in the industrial age.” Although the constant presence of soldiers and sailors certainly kept rum shops, taverns, and brothels busy, there was comparatively little violence in the city, comparatively fewer disasters, and the population “avoided persistent ethnic and political rioting.”16 On the surface, the city may well have appeared as prosperous and bustling as Raddall and Blakeley claimed: the port was Canada’s eastern gateway, and the city’s skyline bristled with the spires of over two dozen churches, not to mention the grand stone architecture of the civic and provincial buildings. There were several hospitals and a half-dozen colleges within the city bounds, elegant hotels attended the needs of international clientele, and the citizenry had

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access to a wide range of newspapers and magazines carrying information from home and abroad.17 This was a tenuous stability, however, and a very thinly enjoyed prosperity. Although the city may well have avoided the “worst features” of rapid urban and industrial growth at the turn of the century, it suffered the worst features of economic stagnation. The City Council was frequently unable to maintain or expand necessary utilities because of empty coffers (caused in part by the fact that so much of the land within its jurisdiction was owned by the provincial and dominion governments and was therefore not subject to taxation). And although poverty, hunger, and violence may not have been epidemic, they were wearingly persistent. The poor often lived on a razor’s edge of ruin, well beyond the margins of quaint anecdotes about teatime gatherings, garden parties, or sailing excursions. Many more poor folk lived well beyond the margins of official statistics altogether; along with the uncounted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of soldiers, sailors, and merchant seamen residing within the city, Halifax’s population increased with tidal regularity each winter as the seasonally unemployed took up shelter until springtime brought more regular work. These demographics skewed sex ratios, tested the meagre infrastructure of city housing and utilities, swelled the ranks of the poorhouse and prison, and often resulted in very precarious household relationships that too often deteriorated, leaving women, children, and men destitute and dependent on charity for survival.18 Poverty, homelessness, crime, and the conditions in which many poor labourers worked did not go unnoticed by the wealthier segments of Halifax society. Like their contemporaries in other cities across North America, middle- and upper-class Haligonians organized and participated in a number of different efforts, not all of which were appreciated by their target audience but all of which were planned to mitigate what they saw as the worst effects of unemployment and poverty. The police force and magistracy were reformed and professionalized, campaigns against drink and drunkenness were expanded, free schools for the children of the poor were opened, and significantly, several key interventions were made into the sanctity of family relations to root out cruelty and neglect and to punish the offenders.19 Much of this reform effort was fuelled by anxieties over the perception of disorder, crime, and unrest in the city. It was also instructed by a pervasive confidence in

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the possibility of improvement and reform, both individual and social. This confidence, far from unique to Halifax, has been traced to a post-Enlightenment faith in human advancement through the careful application of specific methods of reform and to the work of evangelical Christians throughout the West. In Canada, by the early 1830s, those adhering to these principles believed that they “would transform society by a slow permeation of Christian values and conduct expressed in the lives of converted individuals, who would ‘voluntarily’ combine in civic associations for the purposes of social improvement.”20 Social improvement of this nature, however, did not generally mean the transformation of economic or political systems that contributed to inequality; it meant transforming individual behaviours and physical environments, eliminating the symptoms rather than the causes of dislocation, poverty, unrest, and privation. It was, as many historians have noted, a subtle form of social control.21 Although some reformers called for radical social and economic restructuring of capitalism and traditional social organization, the majority held fast to the belief that true improvement required only individual dedication to personal regeneration, necessarily buttressed by a renewed faith in Christ.22 A host of organizations, agencies, and societies were inaugurated in Halifax in the late nineteenth century and earlier that reflected these ideas, seeking to revitalize, support, and where possible, reform the citizenry – but not the system. The poorhouse is the clearest example of an institution whose goals were limited to dealing with symptoms of poverty, and its presence looms large on the city’s horizon. But not all of the urban poor were forced to receive indoor relief, and a growing number of denominational organizations focused specifically on ameliorating poverty through outdoor assistance. They operated by sending volunteers or (more rarely) paid agents to visit those in need and assess both their wants and their worthiness. The charities would then provide the “deserving” poor with food, clothing, and fuel or even money. One of the oldest of these was the Charitable Irish Society, organized in 1786 to assist Irish settlers in the province, although it frequently aided other ethnic groups as well.23 In the nineteenth century, those of Roman Catholic persuasion could turn to the Society of St Vincent de Paul (organized in 1853) and its sister agency the Children of Mary (1854), whereas Protestants could turn to the Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (1866). In

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1868 the North End City Mission was opened to bring religion to the poor and combat intemperance, and in 1876 the Halifax Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (SPC) was organized to protect the helpless from abuse.24 In the later 1800s and early 1900s, these societies were also joined by organizations that sought to reform more than just the condition of the poor. The city boasted a Local Council of Women, a Board of Trade, the Civic Improvement League (dedicated to the reformation of municipal politics), a Community Chest, the Catholic Women’s League, several denominationally specific branches of the Social Service Council of Canada, a Society for Mental Hygiene, and numerous athletic, temperance, and voluntary societies and clubs.25 The promotion of individual reform in the service of social improvement was not restricted to adults; a variety of educational and recreational services were also directed at the city’s children. Like programs for grownups, these services were usually organized under general religious auspices or by specific churches and were intended to shape a particular kind of adult – one who was independent, responsible, and charitable. Sunday school classes were a central feature of such child-centred social reform and were believed vital to the moral development of the citizenry. Most of the local churches operated a board or committee for religious education, which oversaw the production of Sunday school curriculum and the management of other activities to spur children’s interest in the work of the respective churches, whether at home or in international missions.26 There were societies and clubs for young people as well, some devoted to the work of national and international charity and others focused on promoting virtuous living, individual Christian devotion, and prayer. These included groups like the Anglican Young People’s Association, the Anglican Boys’ Mission (which worked on a variety of fundraising and craft projects for missions), and the Anglican Band of Hope (which educated children on the importance of temperate behaviour).27 Other Protestant churches sponsored similar organizations, like the Little White Ribboners (the childcentred branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union)28 and the Canadian Girls in Training (which focussed on promoting personal responsibility and community service by providing churchsanctioned recreational activities, camps, and jamborees).29 The reform-minded citizenry in Halifax, like their contemporaries across the country, also looked to expand social services for children

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who were deemed neglected and endangered, whether due to the actions (or inactions) of their parents or because of their own bad behaviour (a clearly limited list of causalities but one generally understood as complete). The expansion of services for endangered children was made possible by – and certainly helped to promote – a gradual erosion of the legal and cultural autonomy of the family under English Common Law.30 The unquestioned right of parents to determine their child’s educational experience was slowly eroded through laws mandating compulsory education. The right of parents to the economic contribution of their child to the family income was similarly eroded through child labour laws. By the end of the century, even the right of parents to discipline their children as they saw fit was in question, as organizations like the SPC expanded their jurisdiction from the protection of animals to the protection of women and children. Such interventions into the homes of poor families were often justified through the rhetorical association between poverty and vice, and as a result, they cannot be defined as socially radical innovations. Indeed, the expressed intentions for interference into the private sphere of a family home were decidedly conservative: along with decreasing mortality rates, they sought the prevention of pauperism, crime, vice, and ignorance as well as the promotion of a productive workforce. In Halifax, in their work among the poorer classes, the North End City Mission and the SPC, for example, frequently took advantage of their power to remove children from their parents’ home when such action was deemed necessary in order to, as the missionary for the City Mission expressed it, “rescue them from the evils of poverty and lives of future crime.” Reflecting the dual meaning of “best interests,” these children were then placed with families outside of the city, “where they may become useful and valuable members of the community.”31 Prior to the later decades of the nineteenth century, there were few facilities for coping with children who had been orphaned or abandoned or for dealing with children who broke the law. Children apprehended by organizations like the City Mission and the SPC were usually placed in foster homes or adopted (although “adoption,” as it was then understood, was more akin to an apprenticeship or work placement),32 and those found guilty of a crime were sentenced to county jails. By the end of the century, however, reflecting both the expanding scope of reform culture and the growing visibility of poor children in the city, there were (along with the poorhouse, which

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housed children with their parents) ten institutions operating within city bounds – some for the care and reformation of delinquents, others for the care of infants and newborns, and others for orphans or so-called “half-orphans” (those with only one living parent). For delinquent boys, a constantly worrisome population for local reformers, the Halifax Industrial School (Protestant) was opened in 1864, and St Patrick’s Home for Boys (Roman Catholic) was opened in 1885. In that same year, the Sisters of Charity opened an institution for delinquent, Roman Catholic girls and young women, the Monastery of the Good Shepherd. There were also two small institutions for older Protestant girls, including the College Street Home, with a capacity of only ten or twelve girls, and St Paul’s Home for Girls (Anglican), which could house up to thirty girls, some of whom were, in later years, committed as delinquents by the Juvenile Court. The city’s orphans and half-orphans, as well as a number of children whose parents required temporary shelter for their children, were housed in the Protestant Orphans’ Home after 1857 or in St Joseph’s Orphanage (Roman Catholic) after 1868. The latter institution, operated by the Sisters of Charity, was opened to accommodate the growing number of Roman Catholic orphans who had been, to that point, housed in the Mother House on Barrington Street; the order had been caring for orphans since its arrival in the city in 1849.33 There were also three infants’ homes in the city: the Halifax Infants’ Home (Protestant) opened in 1875, the Home of the Guardian Angel (Roman Catholic) opened in 1888, and the Salvation Army Home and Women’s Hospital opened in 1893. In 1921 the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children joined this network of institutions (see appendix 3). Importantly, most of these institutions were incorporated. This standing allowed them to operate as legal parents for the children under their care; within certain limits set by child protection and education legislation, they could teach and discipline their charges as they saw fit. They could also (and frequently did) restrict visitations from family members they believed to be inappropriate influences. They could arrange legal adoptions or apprenticeships for their charges as well. The constitution of the Halifax Infants’ Home, for example, stated that the Ladies’ Managing Committee – a group of volunteer women from the community, almost exclusively of the middle- and upper-income brackets, who ran the home under the guidance of a male Advisory Board – could arrange adoptions for

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the babies in their care, particularly those who had been “left at the Home without being paid for by parents or guardians.” The ladies would “carefully examine the character and standing of persons seeking to adopt any of the children” in order to “satisfy themselves that the child will be educated and trained for a life of usefulness.”34 (Chapter 3 explores the setting, funding, programming, and administration of these homes in much greater detail.) The array of services for children in Halifax at the turn of the century might appear somewhat bewildering. There were charities, clubs, schools, the City Mission and the SPC, a well-established charity daycare for working mothers,35 and nearly a dozen institutions, some of which were incorporated, received direct public monies, and/or were recognized as children’s aid societies and all of which appealed to the public for support. It is a context that might be described – as many pre-welfare-state contexts are, as “piecemeal and unsystematic” or as “disorganized and haphazard.”36 This was certainly the opinion of one distinguished visitor to the city, J.J. Kelso. On 26 November 1905, Ontario’s ubiquitous superintendent of child welfare was the featured guest at a public meeting in Halifax. The city’s Academy of Music was “crowded to the doors” to see him speak at an event chaired by the province’s Liberal premier, George Murray, and he was joined on stage by a number of the city’s prominent male and female citizens as well as by “representatives of the church, the law, and the state.” Following requisite introductions and emphases upon the gravity and importance of the topic, Kelso spoke of the age as one of “combines in commercial lines” and stressed that “what he wanted was a combine to save the children.” After years of work in the field of child saving, he had come to Nova Scotia “at the solicitation of the Local Council of Women, to endeavor to start this project here.” The province’s system of caring for the neglected child was inadequate, its laws were “defective,” and there was a vital need for interested citizens to be educated about the necessity of improvement. Kelso also proposed, with hearty agreement from most of those present, that Nova Scotia adopt the “modern” model of child saving as practised in Ontario. Like its western neighbour, Nova Scotia (particularly, Halifax) needed to abandon “the old-fashioned idea of orphan’s homes and reformatories with more or less artificial influences” and to create instead a “strong and powerful” organization – a Children’s Aid Society (CAS) – in order to protect its endangered children, educate

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weak and failing parents, and develop a network of foster families that could replace the city’s institutions. Such an organization in the city would be of untold value, he argued, because “[i]n the little wayward boy, who goes out on the streets today unkempt and wild, there may be many a rough diamond, who, under proper treatment, might develop into a great citizen who would in after years shed lustre on the name of Halifax.”37 His message did not fall on deaf ears. Only a month after Kelso’s visit, a group of concerned and politically connected Haligonians formed a CAS for Halifax, which was incorporated in April 1906. That same year, its president, Justice Benjamin Russell, and several of its members (including the future provincial superintendent of neglected and delinquent children, Ernest Blois) formed a committee to overhaul and consolidate the province’s disparate acts relating to the protection of children; their efforts resulted in the Children’s Protection Act of 1906.38 It is not entirely clear, however, why this incarnation of the Halifax Children’s Aid Society did not last. According to one account, the agency “had not flourished” because “there was no permanent official to stimulate and carry on the organization.”39 Certainly, the absence of any substantial records of the society would suggest that its activities in the city were limited. In 1914 the provincial government acknowledged its apparent failure and returned the powers of a CAS to the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, which had operated in this capacity prior to 1905.40 The impression left by Kelso’s visit and the subsequent quick crumble of the Halifax CAS intensifies the sense of confusion and bewilderment arising from a cursory glance at the city’s child welfare efforts in the late nineteenth century. The city’s services, in this picture, might have secured temporary success with the Children’s Protection Act, but they were otherwise a cacophony of unprofessional stop-gap measures that left children to roam the streets like feral cats; the system was, as later historians would describe it, unsystematic and jumbled, and it required modernization and major reform to bring it in line with the orderly, intelligible, “modern” program Kelso had advocated for Ontario. Kelso was seeking what James Scott has described as “simplification”: a systematized, uniform regime that could be easily deciphered – and hence manipulated – by state officials like himself.41 But what appeared to Kelso as inefficient and unprofessional, and what appears today as

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rather slapdash and disorderly, may well have made perfect sense to local people.42 Charities and institutions – despite certainly working parallel to similar efforts across North America, using a similar language of social reform and social gospel, and connecting private issues with national interests – were organic; they grew out of, and within, the community’s specific cultural interests and politics. At least one attendee at Kelso’s public meeting recognized this fact and saw something different when he surveyed the city’s child welfare landscape. The Reverend C.L. Ball, an American by birth who had spent at least a year as a minister at the Universalist Church of Redeemer in Halifax, struck “a new and to some minds a most practical note” on that evening at the Academy of Music when he respectfully noted that the speakers there had “ignore[d] the merits” of Halifax’s system. “We need no reform,” he stated, “just development.”43 The most obvious way that services in Halifax were influenced by local cultural mores is evidenced by the sectarian nature of institutional arrangements in the city. In Halifax the community that was to be improved through the protection and reformation of endangered children was one whose children were, from their birth, as much members of a particular denomination as they were members of the city, the province, or the country itself. Consider, for example, the Anglican Church’s “Font Roll,” which was a Sunday school for baptized children from infancy to age three. The roll’s primary purposes were to formally recognize that children of all ages were members of the Church of England, to impress on parents the importance of Anglican Sunday school for their children, and to encourage the church itself to start the work of proselytizing children as soon as they were baptized, instead of waiting until age three or four, when they attended regular Sunday school classes. As described in the church’s diocesan newspaper, the Font Roll was considered “one of the best means possible” of preventing the “drift” of children to other churches: “By enrolling these little ones as members of the school this leakage is effectively stopped.”44 Denominational competition also influenced the organization of the city’s earliest educational institutions and charity schools, which predated the establishment of local child welfare institutions by several decades. Parallels between these early educational efforts and later welfare administration, in fact, are unmistakeable. Advocates for charity schools in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

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made little separation between the concerns of child welfare and the concerns of education, and both required denominational segregation. Caring for the children of the poor meant providing them with an education that would save their souls as much as it would provide them with practical skills or knowledge to make their way in the world, so the dissemination of this moral and practical education was conducted along relatively strict denominational lines. At various times dating from the mid-eighteenth century, pupils were divided between Roman Catholic, Church of England, and Protestant schools. In the later nineteenth century, these divisions (particularly between Roman Catholic and Protestant schools) were deliberately maintained by legislation through the organization of the school board bureaucracy and through informal agreements about maintaining equal representation on the board from the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. Racism also structured the institutional response to education, as it did the institutional response to child welfare; black children were generally (and between 1876 and 1884, legally) required to attend segregated black schools.45 As well as affecting the politics of Sunday school enrolments and charity schools, awareness of denomination also shaped child welfare services in particular ways. This situation was not unique to Halifax; as Hugh Cunningham has noted in relation to child welfare efforts in England, despite any basic agreement about need, philanthropic child rescue was characterized by “jealousy, rivalry, and competitive denominationalism.”46 Institutions were established with a benevolent desire to do good, a self-interested desire to control future crime and prevent pauperism, and an understanding that the best way to accomplish these tasks was to focus one’s efforts on particular types of children. The churches, religious groups, and religiously minded folk who organized and administered these homes generally considered the protection of their “own” children a significant component of the protection of the religious community as a whole. As a result, with the exception of the Salvation Army Home, the boards and superintendents of these agencies would rarely accept clientele of the “wrong” religious persuasion. Families, parents, or single mothers-to-be would be referred, instead, to the appropriate agency. This religious exclusivity was not taken lightly, nor was it considered to be a mere administrative convenience, a way of dividing up the caseload across the institutional spectrum. Indeed, several of the city’s institutions were created in response to

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the work of institutions operating under a different denominational stripe. Whether charities and rescue projects were Roman Catholic or Protestant, religious unease was a frequent spur to their creation in Halifax throughout the nineteenth century, and tension between these two groups was well entrenched in the city, both within and without the realm of social services.47 The Halifax Industrial School, for example, although not explicitly Protestant at the time of its incorporation in 1865, cultivated this sectarian character in direct opposition to the city’s Roman Catholic community; in 1870 its board of directors secured federal legislation confirming this posture.48 As Judith Fingard has noted, they did so “based on the presumed opposition of the Catholic Church to Catholic boys being sent there and on the arrogant Protestant assumption that the city prison, inhabited very largely by Catholics, was probably good enough for them in any case.”49 In 1885 the Roman Catholic community countered this imbalance through the establishment of St Patrick’s Home for Boys. Similar sectarian rivalry coloured the operation of the city’s two infants’ homes. Whereas the Halifax Infants’ Home (Protestant) had as part of its constitution the provision that “[n]o religious test shall be applied as regards persons seeking admission of themselves or babes, or as regards adoption,”50 the Roman Catholic community espoused a more stringent view of things. As a fundraising pamphlet for the Home of Guardian Angel declared, This institution has for its object the protection and nurture of infants whose lives are often in peril from exposure, neglect and other causes; above all, it is destined to prevent these little ones from falling into the hands of Protestants – an evil which existed to a great extent previous to the founding of the Catholic Home … Without such an institution many of these unfortunate little beings would never see the light, and many more would, as in the past, find entrance into the Protestant Home, and thus lose all chance of being brought up in the Catholic Faith.51 Most, if not all, of the city’s Protestant institutions also kept records of the particular Protestant variety of their children and, if possible, gave them access to denominationally specific baptisms, Sunday schools, and foster homes. This practice was more closely observed between Anglicans, on the one hand, and other Protestant groups,

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on the other, as evidenced most clearly by the maintenance of St Paul’s Home for Girls. Here, “moral and religious training [was] one of the main features of the institution” and was promoted so that the girls “should form good solid christian characters” and thus “continue ever true faithful members of the Church.”52 The desire to separate Anglican children from other Protestants is also revealed by the ongoing concern of the Anglican General Board of Religious Education (GBRE) in Halifax over the maintenance of a specifically Anglican perspective in Sunday schools. In 1925, despite potential problems with the teaching materials, the GBRE declared that “it is important to retain and foster the sense of unity within our Church engendered by the use of the Church’s own publications, even when having to put up with minor defects of chronological arrangement, pedagogical inaccuracies, etc., all of which, if they exist, can be corrected in use by any live superintendent or teacher.”53 The Anglican Church also found itself in conflict with other Protestant denominations over the religious education of the inmates at the Maritime Home for Girls in Truro. Opened in 1914 to accommodate Protestant delinquent girls from the three maritime provinces, this institution was supported and managed by an interdenominational board comprised of Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, and later Presbyterian and United Church members. In March 1925 the local Anglican priest in Truro reported that the superintendent of the home had objected to “his holding of Confirmation classes” there. There had also been an ongoing battle over securing the regular attendance of Anglican girls at Church of England services in the town and great tension over the fact that the superintendent had “cause[d] all the Girls in the Home to attend a Methodist Church.” The problem persisted throughout the interwar period, resulting in several strongly worded protests from the Anglican branch of the Council for Social Service, including one demanding that any Anglican girl who was to be “paroled” into the community be placed, as far as was possible, in an Anglican home.54 Sir Richard William Scott, appointed to the Canadian Senate in 1874, a defender of separate schools in Ontario, and the author of the Canada Temperance Act of 1878, would not have found the priestly bickering at the Maritime Home for Girls particularly surprising. In 1891 he and his fellow senators were debating the merits of an act to incorporate the Monastery of the Good Shepherd in Halifax as a home for delinquent girls and young women. Unlike

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many of his fellow senators, Scott approved of the act in part because of its denominational character; “if you send [delinquents] to an institution where you have all classes and all religions,” he asked, “what is the effect? When you have the clergy of the different denominations quarrelling amongst themselves you have a subject for scandal amongst the criminals themselves as to what is true religion.”55 The Senate debate over the merits of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd’s establishment sets the custom of denominational sorting in Halifax into sharp relief. In one way, it highlights the contextspecific nature of institutional sectarianism; several senators were certain the practice was a peculiarity of Nova Scotian tradition. However, the debate also reveals the wider, federal-level engagement, if an unconscious one in this case, with denominational politics and the preference for Protestant influences. Indeed, a careful reading of the debate suggests that if the Good Shepherd home had been Protestant – or perhaps if the bill had not arrived so soon after the controversy over the Manitoba Schools Act56 – the bill would have passed without much comment. William Miller, the LiberalConservative Senate member from Richmond, Nova Scotia, voiced the earliest concern about the bill, describing it as a dangerous precedent that was attempting to graft sectarian and proselytizing motives of the Catholic Church onto Canada’s criminal law (something that, presumably, the Protestant institutions did not do). “Legislation of this character,” he stated, “has done a great deal already to provoke irritation and create difficulties in various parts of the Dominion”; by its very nature, it was “not in harmony with the spirit prevailing amongst the people.” However, he denied that the previous federal recognition of the Halifax Industrial School (Protestant) was in any way similar, describing the school as “a very harmless institution, without very much of a religious character, and I think certainly not anything of a proselytizing character that was established in Halifax for Protestant boys.” Miller also expressed frustration over the fact that incorporation of the Industrial School had been used to supply “the groundwork for getting a sweeping sectarian Act for the Roman Catholic institutions of Halifax” (i.e., St  Patrick’s Home for Boys), and he worried about the possibility that similar institutions would soon spread across Ontario, Manitoba, and the other provinces.57 Other senators expressed similar opinions and similarly ignored the existence of Protestant reformatories. The Liberal-Conservative

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member from Prince Edward Island, Samuel Prowse, described the idea of committing lawbreakers to religious orders for confinement and reformation as being the practice of the “dark ages.” It was a retrograde bill in his opinion, which “will produce evils in the future … and will prove injurious to the peace and prosperity of this country.” Conservative member William MacDonald of British Columbia echoed this opinion when he referred to one clause in the bill – which would require any girl fostered or paroled in the community to be placed with a Roman Catholic family – as capturing “the spirit of the middle ages.” He further worried that because the institution would be privately operated (and therefore dependent on charity), the children would be “exposed to the danger of being badly fed, badly clad and treated like slaves.” Apparently unaware that reformatories in Nova Scotia had been receiving public grants for decades (and possibly deluded about the adequacy of government grants to public reformatories elsewhere), he argued that these dangers of economization would not affect a “public” reformatory.58 The bill was not without supporters during this debate. Several members expressed the opinion that the institution would eliminate the injurious practice of sentencing young girls to jail alongside hardened, adult criminals and thereby subjecting them to moral degradation rather than reform; even a Roman Catholic institution would be better than that. Others sought to quell anxieties about the fact that women rather than men would be responsible for the institution, pointing out the particular skills and experience that the Sisters of the Good Shepherd had in dealing with delinquents and “women who have fallen from virtue.”59 George Allan, Conservative senator from York, also pointed out, not without a hint of mockery of Miller, that proselytization “was the last thing that suggested itself” in the bill “because I presumed that no one would be sent there that did not already belong to the Roman Catholic faith.”60 One of the strongest defenders of the bill was Richard Scott, who spoke at length about the necessity of promoting reform rather than punishment and then elaborated, as others had before him, on the absolute necessity of religious instruction to this purpose. “If we are going to reform criminals it is not by sending them away to institutions where they cannot be taught religion,” he said. “Reform can only be secured under religious training, and that training can only be given in institutions under the charge of a religious body.” Placing delinquents “under the influence of teachers of the faith in which

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they were born” was the most practical and effective method of caring for them because “experience has proved” that the greatest success in reformation occurred when attention was paid to denominational matters.61 Debate over the legality and appropriateness of denominational segregation in Nova Scotia appears to have been restricted to this federal debate over the Monastery of the Good Shepherd. Within the province itself, denominational segregation was a matter not only of custom but also of law, and it applied to the sentencing of boys to the reformatories and to the placement of children in institutions and foster homes. According to the 1906 Children’s Protection Act, “[n]o Protestant child shall be placed in any Roman Catholic institution or any family, the head of which is a Roman Catholic, and no Roman Catholic child shall be placed in any non-Catholic institution or in any family the head of which is not a Roman Catholic.”62 This provision was reaffirmed in subsequent children’s protection acts well into the later decades of the twentieth century,63 and it was further buttressed by the belief, articulated by Richard Scott, that religious instruction was a vital element in any successful program of “saving” endangered children. In 1918 one of the city’s longstanding judges of the Juvenile Court, W.B. Wallace, declared that modern social work’s “imperfect success” in the realm of child welfare was a direct result of the lack of spiritual emphasis in its methods. “To be successful,” he declared, social workers “must undertake their work in the spirit of Christian brotherhood.” The “love of statistics and a desire to do … social work in a most ‘scientific’ way” were ill calculated to appeal to those in need.64 Ernest Blois agreed, if only to wax poetic and garner support for his annual report – which, if nothing else, demonstrates the religiosity of the community he lived in and catered to. Given that the laws and the courts of the province had failed “to compel, or even induce right living,” he wrote, the only sure way to obtain “perfect results” lay in “that form of religion which comes from the grace of God in the heart.”65 Support for the denominational sorting of the city’s neglected and delinquent children had the quiet effect of bolstering the institutions’ administrative independence. By virtue of their religious character, if nothing else, they were doing work that was “absolutely necessary” in the city, despite what Blois called the “fashion” for disparaging institutions and “plac[ing] undue importance upon … foster homes.”66 However, in the first decades of the twentieth

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century, a number of legal and administrative changes were introduced that demonstrate a desire to curtail at least some of the institutions’ independence and thereby promote particular elements of welfare governance in the city and the province. It should be emphasized that these changes do not represent a break with previous practice; although they introduced significant changes, they also allowed many features of the welfare landscape (including denominational sorting) to remain intact and, indeed, to thrive. The most obvious of these changes were structural and included the creation of the Juvenile Court and Ernest Blois’s office. The atmosphere attending the creation of these bodies, however, had been prepared by the gradual expansion of laws that identified, with increasing specificity, the children who would themselves become the ultimate justification for the elaboration of provincial and civic child welfare programs. Statutes intended to protect children, to keep them in school, to prevent them from working (too hard or in dangerous occupations), or to help in the identification and capture of those who were being neglected or endangered were issued by the provincial legislature with increasing regularity in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As Charlotte Neff helpfully reminds us, legislation of this nature did not simply appear out of nothingness; statutes were the culmination of discussion and debate about ideas and principles that were already part of the public discourse in the province; they were attempts at responding to concerns and public awareness about specific social conditions.67 Legislation thus tightened a pre-existing weave of public and private perception; it regularized practices and defined responsibilities for endangered children at the same time that it identified and described these children. Laws were shaped by cultural assumptions about the children of the poor, about the causes of poverty, and about the results of neglect, and they point out the ends to which government was exercised. One of the first of these laws – first in Nova Scotia and in Canada – was the Act to Prevent and Punish Wrongs to Children, passed in 1882. The text of the statute expressed both a broad anxiety for children’s physical and moral well-being as well as contemporary opinions about the need to place boundaries on guardianship and to find room for young people to experience childhood. It gave legal force to the dual intention of child welfare to serve both the child’s and the community’s best interests. According to the act, for

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example, a child’s life should not be too harshly disciplined or too lax or free of regulation; a balance had to be found between what was considered necessary for childhood (innocence, freedom, etc.) and what was considered necessary to train a child for future usefulness. Thus parents could be convicted under this statute if they had “assaulted, beaten, ill-used, abandoned” or treated a child with “habitual cruelty and neglect.” More vaguely, and offering a much wider canvas for legal interpretation, parents or guardians could also be charged for allowing a child to grow up “without salutary parental control … in circumstances exposing him or her to lead an idle and dissolute life.” Some definition of how these circumstances were defined is found in the first section of the act, which prohibited anyone under sixteen from entering saloons, taverns, dance halls or dance classes, billiard rooms, cippi rooms,68 clubs, or concert halls without a parent. Nor were they to be admitted “into any bawdy house or house of ill fame under any circumstance whatever.” The act also acknowledged a degree of partnership between the public and private sectors in caring for children thus identified as endangered or neglected. Under section three, the court could take custody of any child brought before it under the provisions of the act and could “commit such child to an orphan asylum, charitable or other institution.” In what was likely an unintentional equation of the province’s children with its livestock and house pets, the act further stipulated that if the case had been brought forward by a “society incorporated for the protection of children, or animals,” fines collected from offenders would be distributed to this society “in aid of the purposes for which it is incorporated.”69 When this act and its subsequent revisions were consolidated into the Children’s Protection Act of 1906, the underlying motive to reign in parental behaviour and protect both the present life of children and their future potential remained intact. However, the moral and physical dangers believed to threaten this purpose had multiplied and were much more carefully detailed. Added to the earlier list of threatening environments were series of threatening behaviours linked to these environments. They included a child’s presence on the street or in a tavern late at night; begging, stealing, or “receiving alms”; associating or living with a thief, prostitute, habitual drunkard, or vagrant; growing up subject to inadequate education, parental desertion, or homelessness; and using obscene language or demonstrating “immoral conduct” in a public place or schoolroom.70

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The act and its predecessors underscored the common belief, held across the country, that environmental causes for delinquency, crime, and social dislocation were among the most significant.71 Poverty was the persistent handmaiden of neglect, and the boundary between neglect and delinquency was never particularly firm. Indeed, the full title of the 1906 Children’s Protection Act noted that it was intended “for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children” (emphasis added). How such children were to be reformed was not specifically laid out in the statute but was implied by several provisions regarding the manner in which they were to be treated following apprehension. Particular care was to be taken to protect the child’s privacy during court proceedings, and judges were to guard against any possibility of contact between the child and any other “criminals or persons accused of a crime” who might be in the courthouse. If children’s home environments were found wanting, they were to be placed in an institution or private home that would provide for their education, teach them “some useful occupation,” and treat them with kindness.72 The 1906 act was gradually consolidated with many other laws related to delinquency, the sale of tobacco and opiates, and the regulation of child labour – consolidations that had the effect of both expanding and hardening the horizons of child protection. With each successive act, the boundaries of acceptable behaviour and suitable environments for children were more strictly defined, and the inventory of immoral, corrupt, and delinquent behaviours and environments was expanded. In 1912 stronger provisions for the punishment of those committing offences against children or contributing to their corruption were also introduced. These provisions widened the circle of responsibility for protecting children and shaping them into moral and productive adults, and they deepened the consequences of failure.73 Importantly, the province continued to maintain a degree of vagueness in its language and to define a broad scope of power for its superintendent of child welfare and for any recognized CAS, both of which preserved the courts’ ability to interpret and respond to dangerous or threatening circumstances in a far-reaching manner. In 1917, for example, the Children’s Protection Act introduced the specific language of “best interests” when determining how the placement of a child apprehended under the terms of the act would be decided. This terminology placed enormous discretion in the hands of the judges to define appropriate childrearing

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methods and to assess the suitability of a home or the behaviour of a parent or guardian. And even when it was “best in the interest” of children that they stay with their parents, the rights and powers of the CAS and the provincial superintendent were in no way “impaired by any such agreement.”74 Undoubtedly, this legislation gave necessary material protection to children who found themselves in abusive or threatening circumstances. The potential it created for intervention into private families, however, should not be minimized. Nor should the fact that, like most of the child welfare efforts in the province at this time, children’s protection acts did not provide solutions for underlying social or economic causes of child cruelty, dependency, neglect, and delinquency. In part, this inconsistency between the intent and content of the province’s laws can be traced to the existing belief that child welfare efforts struggled against the heavy tide of heredity, as well as environment. Thus legislation could be protective, but as Blois and the secretary of the province’s SPC argued, it could be preventive only insofar as it attempted to deny “bad” parents or guardians the opportunity to rear “thousands of children” who were “the unfortunate creatures of environment and heredity.”75 Although the definition of neglected, delinquent, and endangered children became increasingly specific through the province’s legal machinery, the mechanisms for apprehending them became increasingly elaborate. In some sense, these mechanisms represent a far more proactive approach to child rescue; instead of relying entirely on institutions (which were physically and metaphorically immobile) to accept orphans or half-orphans carried to their doors by parents or concerned citizens, child welfare advocates and agents roamed the streets looking for them. And as the laws made clear, the city’s child savers believed that it was not simply the absence of one or both parents that rendered a child in need of rescue. By the early twentieth century, child welfare was interpreted to mean prevention as well as rescue.76 Significantly, prevention was often seen to require efficiency, a word so ubiquitous in child welfare and social reform records in this period that it retains a somewhat hackneyed meaning. On the surface, efficiency appeared to be an innocuous and laudable principle; it meant that children would be rescued (and charities administered) faster, with less effort and greater effect, at a lower cost, and without wasted energy or resources. The implementation of efficiency in

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Halifax’s social welfare circles, however, often carried other meanings and results. Over the twentieth century, the pursuit of efficiency elevated the significance and perceived worth of casework, recordkeeping, and procedure (sometimes at the expense of the people in need); it required a far more in-depth and intimate investigation of the private lives of those who required or sought social assistance in any form; and, at times, it promoted suspicion of the needy as a class, establishing as near-fact the assumption that applicants for charitable assistance, or even endangered children, could not be trusted to know their own needs or, in some cases, to be honest. In Halifax a number of charitable organizations in the city – including the children’s institutions – saw efficiency as a necessary good. Not coincidentally, the urge to become efficient was particularly pressing during periods of extraordinary economic or social stress in the city, such as following the outbreak of war in 1914. For example, the anticipated confusion and upheaval, as well as the fact many charities were desirous of “conserving resources” in anticipation of an increased demand, led to the inauguration of the city’s Social Service Bureau. The bureau acted as a sort of clearinghouse and was operated by a social worker who kept “a confidential card index of persons seeking relief” and a “record of the nature and extent of the relief given by each society” to individuals or families. The system was meant to prevent “overlap” – a rather muted description of the apparently rampant evil of double-dipping by the city’s needy population.77 The bureau had been talked about for several years and was finally established in August 1914 as part of a concerted effort to “organiz[e] the charities of the City more efficiently.”78 One of the first efforts of the bureau’s organizers, not surprisingly, was to secure a social worker who had been “efficiently trained.”79 The creation of the Office of the Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children in 1911, which was secured after years of campaigning by some of the most socially and economically prominent citizens of the city, was described by Blois’s successor as “a daring experiment, socially and financially.” It was, to be sure, the most ambitious state-centred initiative capturing this pursuit of efficiency.80 In several of Blois’s annual reports, efficiency offers an implicit and explicit backdrop for his description of child welfare work in the province. In his second report, for example, he warned that there were “many important matters to be considered and satisfactorily settled” before it could be said that the province

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was “on an efficient and credible foundation.” When failures and shortfalls were part of his yearly reckoning, he stressed not only that his office was dealing with “the most perplexing problems of human life,” which resisted even the best, most efficient efforts, but also that greater financial support and personnel were required to conduct the work “in that efficient manner which a Government office should be and which the importance of this work demands.”81 As the work of this office demonstrated over the next several decades, the desire for efficiency required the erosion of institutional autonomy and the gradual streamlining of institutional practice to bring them in line with government regulations and principles. In the grand projects and in the minute details of administration within the provincial office, the intensification and simplification inherent to welfare governance thus become clearly visible. What also becomes apparent is that the growing influence and political power of this state-centred office was neither a consequence nor a symptom of some underlying, “normal” process of twentieth-century modernization. The office was active, occasionally unpredictable, and disorganized, and it was a variable interest in a complicated array of services (many of which predated it by decades) that were vying for attention, for funding, and for recognition within the city. Moreover, Blois – a former worker in the institutional system himself – and those supporting and administering institutions and other charitable efforts often agreed upon their shared purpose and the structural, material challenges they all faced. However, the office was always powerful; acting under the auspices of the attorney general, Blois was the province’s first civil servant responsible solely for issues related to children and child welfare. Apart from fulfilling other duties outlined by the statute, he acted as the official CAS agent in those parts of the province that had no established CAS (including Halifax), performed the duties of probation officer for provincial juvenile delinquents, administered legislation related to children, conducted annual inspections of the province’s institutions and foster homes, and “assist[ed] and instruct[ed]” children’s aid societies across Nova Scotia.82 Blois’s office was essentially opened up like an umbrella over the province’s agencies and institutions; whereas once they had been subject only to the rules and constitutions laid down by their boards and governors (and, of course, by the provisions of earlier provincial statutes affecting child protection efforts), they were now required to accept guidance, leadership, inspection, and

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even rebuke from a provincial officer. No institutional board in Halifax objected to the creation of the office (certainly, Blois was a known and respected entity in the city), and more than a few of them surely saw it as a boon to their efforts on behalf of needy children; the fact remained, however, that although the purposes of and motives for child welfare remained the same, the environment in which they existed had been significantly altered. One of the first and most crucial efforts undertaken by the provincial superintendent, and perhaps the most subtle and invasive in terms of altering this environment, was his effort to understand what went on within the various agencies and behind the walls of institutions. Blois began this process with the physical inspection of asylums and reformatories and by meeting or corresponding with superintendents and CAS agents. As a former superintendent and a man fully versed in the purposes for which a CAS operated, he would not have been unfamiliar with the arrangements or practices of the homes and societies he inspected. But compiling observations on the entire provincial child welfare scene required more than visible observation. As evidenced by his very first annual report, Blois enlisted the participation of institutions themselves in creating a simplified picture of their services. Each of the provincial children’s homes and reformatories was required to fill out an annual survey describing its sources of funding, its clientele, its physical environment, and a few specific details about its day-to-day work with children. Information gathered about funding included itemization of the amounts of public and private money received, the total cost of annual maintenance, and the average annual cost of support per child. Details on the clientele included the annual number of admissions and discharges, deaths, illnesses, foster home placements, mental and physical capacities (entered as “No. of children crippled” or “No. of feebleminded”), and the number of inmates who were orphans, half-orphans, or “illegitimate.” The physical environment required specifications on both exterior and interior spaces. How many acres did the institution own? Was there a garden, and were crops grown there? How many buildings were on the property, and how many stories did each have? What were they built of, did they have fire escapes, and were they arranged in the congregate or “cottage” style?83 Questions about interior arrangements were equally specific. On average, how many cubic feet of air were there per child in the bedrooms? Were the toilets inside or out, were there individual

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or “plunge” baths, and were there individual or roller towels? Did the children sit on benches or chairs in the dining room, and what sort of tablecloths were used, if any? Institutional managers were also required to indicate whether medical and dental inspections of the children were carried out and whether corporal punishment and solitary confinement were used to discipline the inmates (and, if so, whether records were kept). These statistical returns, which were published each year as part of Blois’s annual report, likely made the process of inspecting the institutions much easier. If nothing else, the superintendents and managing boards had a very clear sense of the sort of information Blois was interested in seeing on his annual visits. But these documents were not descriptive of institutional environments and activities in any authentic way. Indeed, as evidenced by the sort of information contained in the anecdotal accounts occasionally appended to the returns by superintendents, the statistics rarely touched on aspects of care that the institutions themselves considered important, such as Christmas parties, summer outings, hockey games, church excursions and Sunday school lessons, their opinions on the adoption of “illegitimate” children and work with single mothers, or stories that demonstrated what they believed was the ultimate success of their efforts – the creation of a useful, independent, and happy citizen. Blois did not dismiss these concerns and expressions of triumph; if nothing else, they did occasionally make their way to print in his annual reports. But his own purposes and goals are revealed less by his inclusion of these accounts (which was inconsistent and decreased in frequency throughout the 1930s and 1940s)84 and more by the sorts of information he requested as part of the statistical returns (which became more elaborate and gradually consumed more space in each report). The provincial superintendent’s office – although certainly concerned with describing the challenges of child welfare work and outlining the threats and dangers facing the province’s children and the possible solutions thereto – was particularly concerned, as related to institutions, with detailing environments. Over time, his subjective accounts of child welfare work were increasingly restricted to the work of children’s aid societies (in Halifax and across the province), which likely reflected the fact that their work consumed most of his time. The institutions were, effectively if not intentionally, reduced almost entirely to the skeletal sum of their physical plants, their demographics, their methods of punishment, and their financial needs.

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Children’s aid societies came to dominate, rhetorically and spatially, the work of the provincial office.85 The concern with institutional environments, as reflected in these annual reports, is not surprising or out of place given the tenor of child rescue and child welfare. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, those in charge of institutions were very concerned to provide their wards with a homelike environment, and as provincial legislation and the wider discourse of child rescue indicate, environment was considered key to the healthy growth and moral health of children. Therefore, questions about the sorts of tablecloths and towels used spoke directly to an institution’s success in creating a homelike atmosphere. When environments were in good repair (or undergoing heroic improvements, as Blois often noted), it was considered more likely that the children in these institutions were well cared for, and it was more likely that the management boards would receive praise and credit.86 However, as the routines of Blois’s office became more settled – likely to the detriment of the status of these institutions in the child welfare system – this sort of information was, increasingly, the only information considered valuable enough to convey to the public through his office. Statistical returns, as well as revealing to the historical observer the nature of Blois’s interest in institutional care, also made his job much easier and arguably more efficient. The duties of the provincial office were extensive and would likely have stretched the limits of an entire fleet of officers, let alone a single public servant and his small staff. These surveys helped to simplify the labyrinthine intricacies of existing child welfare services by setting out, schematically and minimally, those aspects of care that he believed to be most significant. They allowed him to step into his annual inspections with a basic map of the land and to anticipate the sorts of changes, improvements, or alterations to the physical or social environment that he believed would be necessary, whether they involved altering physical layouts, building fire escapes, or improving the grounds and schoolrooms. The reports were thus what James Scott describes as “a convenient, if partly fictional, shorthand” that made the child welfare landscape legible and therefore subject to manipulation. They were surely redundant for institutional managers but were an important tool for making these institutions readable to an outsider.87 Like other forms of government data collection (and certainly like the sorts of data collection undertaken by social workers or the Social

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Service Bureau), the statistical returns also reinforced the weight of Blois’s office. They were an annual, physical reminder of his authority, and because they gave him knowledge (however schematic, abstracted, or incomplete)88 about the functioning of the institutions, they gave him the ability to request – and demand – changes. As more of the local institutions became dependent on provincial funding, which was tied to Blois’s inspections (see chapter 3), the power of the provincial superintendent’s office only increased. These reports did not rely entirely on the statistical returns to express the authority of his office. Anecdotal observation was also included, and although occasionally formulaic (he frequently repeated sections of the report, verbatim, from one year to the next), it demonstrates the manner in which both quantitative and qualitative assessments were employed to judge, to praise, or to censure institutional managers and governing boards (as well as children’s aid societies or foster parents) and to make his work – and theirs – appear all the more indispensable to the well-being of the entire province. The official, fixed statistical tables were interspersed with stories and, occasionally, photographs that highlighted the fragility and desperate need of the “little ones” at the same time that they emphasized the “good work” and necessity of the children’s homes89 or their failings and weaknesses.90 Although these inspections, the annual reports, and the statistics – indeed, the entire edifice of the provincial office – had been created to foster the best interests of the province’s endangered children, it is clear that the scrutiny of asylums, orphanages, and reformatories was as much a scrutiny of the administrators and managing boards as it was a scrutiny of the children themselves.91 This is not to say that institutional managers or governing committees initially resented Blois’s interference or thought the exercise of his office interfered with their day-to-day operations or the pursuit of their ultimate goals. Indeed, as later chapters reveal, they were frequently able to use the power of his office to achieve these goals and effect change in the city’s welfare administration. Although this added layer of scrutiny and authority would ultimately make the continued existence of institutions impossible to countenance, these early years were characterized by cooperation and a high degree of concurrence on shared purposes. Cooperation became increasingly important after 1914, as the war presented an enormous challenge for local charities. A rapidly

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expanding population (both civilian and military), economic upheaval, and a severe housing shortage exacerbated existing social problems, and the “pleasure seeking attitudes of war time” introduced new ones.92 Reports from Ernest Blois and Juvenile Court judges reveal that the loss of a parent, even if only temporarily, put extraordinary pressures on families and on the city’s local institutions. They voiced a general impression that juvenile delinquency rates had risen and that the city’s children suffered neglect more frequently than during peacetime. Revealing a rather shabby faith in the work of Halifax mothers and ignoring the enormous financial stresses that the war placed on many families,93 Judge W.B. Wallace reported that increases in delinquency and neglect were most likely caused by “the withdrawal of effective parental supervision, in consequence of the absence of a father overseas.” Deprived of “essential moral support,” mothers were frequently “incapable of controlling the conduct” of their children. Sometimes, their failures were the result of dissolution; these were the “saddest of all homes” and presented court officials with “their most difficult work.” But even in those homes where alcohol was not present, mothers were “nevertheless almost wholly to blame for the wretched conditions that exist.”94 Blois was never so blunt in his assessment of cause, but the tensions of wartime also attended his reports. As the war persisted, his calls for public interest and assistance for his office’s work became more frequent and his expressions of despair more common. Describing his work in 1916, for example, he wrote that as his office “was called upon to investigate case after case of children living in the most wretched conditions of extreme poverty, filth, and vile moral surroundings, our task appears greater than our ability, and resources to work with … We must frankly confess that … there has been failure to deal with any degree of satisfaction, with many cases brought to our attention.”95 In December 1917 the challenges of child welfare increased in an unimaginable way, inaugurating a period that, Blois claimed, would “ever stand out as one of extraordinary stress and activity.”96 On the morning of 6 December, following a series of navigational errors, two ships, the Mont Blanc and the Imo, collided in the Bedford Basin. The Mont Blanc, loaded down with over 2,500 tons of picric acid, TNT, gun cotton, and benzol, caught fire. Shortly after nine o’clock, with a force and magnitude not exceeded until the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima nearly thirty years later, the ship exploded. The intensity of the blast reduced nearly 325 acres of the city’s north

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end to rubble. It destroyed hundreds of homes, local businesses, schools, and four area churches. Hundreds of windows were smashed throughout the city, some as far as fifty miles away. Almost 2,000 people were killed instantly, and over 9,000 were wounded – many of them blinded by flying glass. The chaos and destruction wrought by the explosion left a permanent scar on the city, catching children at its epicentre.97 War conditions had already added to the number of children in the city’s institutions (see appendix 4), but at least 70 more were orphaned by the blast, another 180 lost their fathers, and 120 lost their mothers. For the majority of those in the latter group, their circumstances were further exacerbated because their fathers were serving overseas or because their surviving parent had been injured. Within a few days of the disaster, a special Children’s Committee was established to deal specifically with this group of victims. Ernest Blois was appointed chairman, and he was joined by Judge Wallace, R.H. Murray of the SPC, an official representative of each of the city’s children’s institutions, and two child welfare workers from Toronto and Boston who arrived to help with the work. This committee, working “long hours … under tremendous physical and mental strain,” dealt with an astounding 1,500 children in the first month of operation.98 Many of the children required hospitalization, foster care, or adoptive services; all of them required shelter, food, and clothing and, undoubtedly, psychological and emotional care and comfort. Some even required basic identification before their situations could be dealt with. The committee sought rapid placement of many children, either in foster homes or with relatives, to reduce as far as possible the disruption of their lives. But although the committee was anxious to move quickly, the dangers that speed posed were keenly sensed in an atmosphere that placed much emphasis on environment. Blois reported, It is a comparatively easy thing to dispose of children. Almost anyone would give a child food and clothing, and no matter how poor the food, how ragged the clothing, or how unfit the shelter, the child will soon regard it as a home and respond in character to its environment. Change in family life most wonderfully affects the character and physique of the child. Therefore, it is of great importance to fully realize now before it is too late the tremendous change which the disaster has wrought in the lives

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of so many Halifax children, and to provide [them] every safeguard, every advantage and every opportunity.99 Despite the committee’s understanding of the scope of its task, many of these early placements were disappointing. Following the explosion, people took in children out of deep sympathy for their situation, only to find that they lacked sufficient resources to keep them. In other cases, children were returned to Halifax when it was discovered that they had been placed in homes whose religious affiliations clashed with their own. However, not only sectarian prejudice created problems; the committee also had particular difficulties finding placements for “colored orphans [and] a few feeble-minded” children.100 Damages to several of the city’s institutions only made this work more difficult. Most of the homes suffered some degree of destruction, ranging from broken windows, doors blown off hinges, and cracks in the walls and foundations to the partial collapse of walls and ceilings – damages that would become a source of structural and financial stress for several years, despite financial assistance from the Halifax Relief Commission. Tragically, damages were not confined to the physical structures of the institutions. At the Home of the Guardian Angel, one baby died as a result of the explosion, and several others (including members of the staff and religious) were severely injured. The worst effects were felt by the Protestant Orphans’ Home on Veith Street, which was completely destroyed. Only fifteen of forty-one residents survived, and several members of the staff were also killed. In the home’s annual report to Blois, the secretary, M. Scott, wrote that although “the terrible disaster of December 6th wiped this Home out of existence,” it was “striving to rise from its ashes, and amid many difficulties [to] continue its work.”101 Indeed, despite these challenges, most of the city’s institutions acted as shelters for children and adults who had been left homeless – a necessary service but one that nonetheless taxed the resources of the city’s welfare services to their limits.102 Given these conditions, it is not surprising that the Halifax CAS was reincarnated in 1920. Its foundation did not follow arguments for the elimination of institutions or for the modernization of services in the city but instead was seen as a way of meeting demands for the expansion of existing services and of increasing their ability to deal with the greater number of endangered children that the explosion had created. The city’s SPC, the institutions, and the provincial

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office were overwhelmed with cases in the months following the disaster, and the CAS was envisioned, in part, as a means of alleviating this workload.103 Blois himself, exercising the influence of his office, asked that a separate agency be established, and for at least the first year of its operation, the mandate of the Halifax CAS was only to assist the work of the provincial superintendent and the Juvenile Court. It was not until 1925 that a permanent social worker, Gwendolen Lantz, was hired to run the society’s operations.104 Although the echoes of the Halifax Explosion eventually faded, the sorts of challenges it presented and the limitations it exposed continued to bedevil child welfare advocates throughout the interwar period. Even as the effort to promote efficiency and to coordinate the work of child rescue and reform continued (and, after 1925, intensified), economic and structural distress limited the options available to institutional managers and the provincial superintendent. Less obvious limitations – those that child welfare workers imposed upon themselves, such as the desire to segregate children according to denomination – created different sorts of challenges. Although a desirable feature, denominational segregation did become an administrative trial. It underpinned, even justified, continuing competition and separation between the institutions, when collaboration and mutual support might well have provided much better services to local children. When the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children was opened just a few years following the end of the Great War, this tendency to segregate was easily expanded to ethnic difference as well – with arguably more troubling results.

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2 Race Uplift, Racism, and the Childhood Ideal Founding and Funding the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children The formal opening ceremonies for the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC) took place on 6 June 1921, across the harbour from Halifax and about six miles east of Dartmouth on a 212-acre property in Preston, Nova Scotia. Several thousand people participated in the celebration, gathering for a formal threequarter-mile procession to the property complete with a grand parade marshal and carriages and cars carrying the province’s lieutenant governor, its acting premier, and a host of other civic and provincial celebrities. An honour guard was provided by the members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Girl Guide and Boy Scout troops, and music, both martial and sacred, was provided by the Salvation Army marching band, the fife and drum corps from the Halifax Industrial School, and a choir specially organized for the event. Speeches were made, prayers were spoken, photographs were taken, gospel music was performed, and refreshments were served; the man who stood at the centre of it – Yarmouth native James Kinney, the first black graduate of the Maritime Business College and the advertising manager of a prominent Halifax firm, as well as the man who would become the home’s longest serving secretary manager – declared that the opening was “the greatest event in the history of the coloured people of Nova Scotia.”1 The province’s African United Baptist Association (AUBA), an organization deeply involved in the home’s administration and financing, confirmed that the opening was “an epoch making day for the colored race of the Maritimes,” and the Halifax Morning Chronicle

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called the institution “an achievement of which all good citizens may well be proud” (see illustration 5).2 As this chapter details, the opening of this institution represents a significant elaboration of the tendency to segregate children according to religious affiliation, which was so fundamental to the province’s early welfare services. However, the home was not simply foisted upon the province’s black population by white caregivers interested in maintaining whites-only orphanages (although this motive certainly existed). It also emerged from within the black community itself as an expression of ethnic pride. The realities of racial tensions in the city and province and the visible preference for institutional modes of child rescue made the home a necessary addition in the province, but so did the social, spiritual, and political aspirations of the black community’s leaders. The local circumstances and decisions that led to the founding of the home reveal both this racial tension and the deeply racial understanding of civilization and childhood that was so ubiquitous at the turn of the century in Halifax and elsewhere. The NSHCC joined the ranks of child welfare institutions relatively late, given the claims made in 1914 by J.J. Kelso (and repeated in provincial superintendent Ernest Blois’s report to the legislature) that “the orphanage method of rearing dependent children is now generally recognized as out-of-date,”3 but its appearance garnered nothing but praise in the province. Indeed, Blois frequently expressed admiration for the work that all institutions conducted in the city, including the NSHCC. However, he was clearly aware that his support went against the grain of professional opinion, and he took pains to distinguish those elements of Nova Scotia’s children’s homes that mitigated the worst criticisms of institutional care. As he had argued in 1918, the “good work and importance of the children’s institutions are grossly misrepresented.” Despite worries that congregate care led to the as yet ill-defined condition of being “institutionalized,” Nova Scotian children were “not kept for any great length of time,” and their caregivers were “quite eager to place the children out, when the right homes become available.”4 The homes were vital to protecting the province’s endangered children because of a shortage of willing foster parents and because of the relative expense of private boarding homes in comparison to these charitable establishments. In addition, many of the institutions were serving groups or classes of children who were considered unfit for foster

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care or adoption. Some children had been placed temporarily by parents who were unable to care for them owing to illness or loss of income or by social workers who hoped to one day reunite them with their families. Others had emotional, physical, and behavioural problems that rendered them unfit, in the opinion of the caregivers, for foster placement. According to Blois, “for one cause or another,” these children “cannot, with justice to society, be placed in foster homes.”5 Moreover, “those who sometimes criticize these institutions should bear in mind they are all comparatively small, and provide ample space and opportunity for outdoor play and exercise.” In other words, Nova Scotia’s children’s asylums were fully capable of providing children with as near an ideal childhood as could be expected in adverse circumstances. All that was required, he declared, was a cosmetic change, a means of dissociating these children from the stigma of institutional care. Thus his office had “urged the advisability of our institutions eliminating words ‘orphanage,’ ‘Home,’ ‘Industrial Schools,’ etc. from their names. No child should be known as an ‘orphanage’ boy or girl, or a ‘home’ boy or girl. Why not call these child caring institutions simply such names as; ‘Riverside Cottage,’ ‘Armdale House,’ or ‘Rosebank Farm’?”6 If the practical considerations of managing the province’s population of endangered children prevented a concerted shift away from institutional care, so too did the symbolic place that these homes held in the community. The institutions were much more than the sum of their practical efforts; they were living expressions of a particular cultural and religious community in the province. This blend of the practical and the symbolic was particularly conspicuous at the NSHCC, as evidenced by the pomp and ceremony of the official opening. In the nearly two-decade-long campaign to organize and fund the building of the home, its place in the community came to transcend the basic elements of the service it would provide to children in need. It was fundamental to the creation of what Kinney frequently called “race pride” and “race uplift.” In other words, he viewed it as the physical expression of the black community’s place in the wider culture and politics of the province, a means of demonstrating its worth and ability to its membership, to the child welfare system, and to the population of the province as a whole. Within the core of the home’s symbolic meaning, however, lay a very practical consideration for its creation. As much as the city’s existing institutions were eager to segregate children for their “best

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interests,” according to their religious origins, so too were many of them eager to segregate according to skin colour. According to Sister Ambrosia of the Home of the Guardian Angel, for example, black infants were accepted only in exceptional circumstances, “when they are found to be destitute and without any friends to provide for them.” Her counterpart at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Sister de Paul, declared that she “prefer[red] not to take such children into the institution, as we have no means of separating them from the others.” In an indication that, in this instance at least, religion was a slightly more important factor than race in deciding on a child’s placement, Sister de Paul stated that she would take Roman Catholic blacks of school age, as required by the province’s Compulsory School Act, but that she did “not consider it desirable to have them in the house after they have reached a certain age.” No such equivocations were forthcoming from the Protestant Orphans’ Home, which declared simply, and somewhat vaguely, that “under present conditions colored children could not be received.”7 In their endorsement of the plan for the NSHCC, the home’s board of trustees suggested that the desire to segregate black children extended far beyond the walls of the institutions, thus making the new home more important in the province. In a document prepared sometime in the early months of 1917, the board explained that existing children’s homes objected to the admittance of black children because they “must remain for a long time in the institution and cannot be placed in foster homes as can the ordinary white child.” As well as implying that black children were thus somehow “abnormal,” the board then explained that “the economic condition of the colored population of this province does not permit them to absorb neglected and destitute children. It is very rarely that a suitable foster home is found for a colored child.”8 The result, as Blois explained to the home’s first matron, was that most of them “find their way into County Poor Farms or Asylums, which are not fit places for children.”9 In what was perhaps a necessary bit of subterfuge to make the plans for the home seem even more imperative, the fact was ignored that some of the city’s children’s homes, such as the Salvation Army Home and the Halifax Infants’ Home, did accept black children.10 As reported by Charlotte McInnes, secretary of the Ladies’ Managing Committee of the Infants’ Home, “we have been and always will be pleased to receive black children on the same terms and conditions as whites.”11

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Racial segregation was not an experience unique to dependent black children in Nova Scotia. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the black communities in and around Halifax lived in segregated neighbourhoods in the city’s north end and in Africville. There was also a large concentration of blacks in the community of Preston, where the NSHCC opened. As Judith Fingard has noted, “[t] he long term effect of this residential segregation was ghettoization,” but in the short term, “the close contact gave the blacks a sense of unity needed to resist the attempts by whites to shape their destiny.”12 Within these communities, black Nova Scotians developed separate voluntary organizations, lodges, schools, and churches. The records of the Women’s Auxiliary of the AUBA, for example, indicate that it had established its own separate system of charitable visiting for the ill, the elderly, and the poverty-stricken members of its community.13 Not surprisingly, placing the NSHCC within this network, close to a large community of blacks, was considered “a distinct advantage.”14 Of the separate organizations within black communities, the church was particularly significant, and it was within the leadership of the black Baptist Church, in particular, that the guiding philosophies of the NSHCC were most strongly echoed.15 According to the AUBA in 1918, “the Colored Race in Nova Scotia has no other Institution to look up to but the Church. All our movements of uplift emanate from her, and the higher her vision and greater her foresight, the higher will the status of citizenship be for those who keep within gunshot of her aims.”16 Thus the church’s spiritual role was considered inseparable from its practical, social position within the wider black community, a position itself dictated by the status of its leaders. For many black Canadians, the church provided opportunities for leadership and social advancement denied them in white congregations, and it was generally the elite members of the black churches who became spokesmen for and leaders within their communities. However, this was not a role consistently filled by the clergy; throughout Nova Scotia in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth, there had been a steady drain of ministers, young and old, to the western provinces and the United States. At Halifax’s Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, the result was no fewer than ten ministerial changes over a twenty-five-year period, a rapid turnover that left the leadership of the “Mother Church,” as it was known, in the hands of prominent black families, part of what Robin Winks has called “an aristocracy of the faith.”17

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This elite comprised a group of socially and racially conscious blacks whose position in the wider community was closely linked to their desire to achieve respectability through the promotion of temperance and moral uplift.18 Among members of the AUBA and others supporting the NSHCC, this plan for uplift was also founded on a belief that racial solidarity, and a consequent acceptance of the segregation that solidarity might impose, was vitally important. Although segregation was the clearest signal of the extent of racism in the province, when coupled with a language of solidarity and further buttressed with scriptural references and imagery, it became an article of faith and a basis for social action that promised great benefits for black society. It also induced a sense of moral, financial, and political obligation among members of this wider community to establish and operate racially based organizations like the NSHCC. Thus true freedom lay not in protest against unfairness but in acceptance of Christ’s plan for the black population. Jesus “was a symbol for liberty, a freedom from the restrictions and limitations of the flesh,” and to be free, blacks were urged to “take hold of Christ in whom you will find all things lively, pure and true.” The “African race” would come “into its own, not by demanding its rights, but by proving to the world … its fitness to bear its burdens and responsibilities.”19 Blacks needed to promote “sane temperate living in every phase of life, with strong determination to build character on a sound foundation starting first by seeking the Lord Jesus Christ and obtaining full regeneration, then following it with loyalty to race upbuilding and race institutions, as well as that broader view that we are all members of the human family, and we will fill a place in life where we will not be ashamed.”20 In 1920 the then Reverend W.A. White of the Cornwallis Street church further stressed that as “each race [strove] for a place in the sun,” blacks were obligated to obtain “a clearer view of the possibilities within us, for our latent natures must be stirred and we must work out our own salvation, by … Realization of Self … Race Confidence … [and] Race Regeneration.” He concluded that “[i]f we so strive, when Jesus comes to gather His loved ones, we shall not be found wanting.”21 These opinions were echoed by Kinney in his address “The Negro and His Accomplishments,” delivered at the AUBA in 1918. “A race without race consciousness or race pride,” he argued, “has lost its greatest incentive, for it is that something which makes one feel that one’s race is good and worthy of the respect of all other races.”22

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The desire of these members of the Nova Scotian black community to foster the improvement and progress of their race separately from the white population was certainly an acceptable tactic as far as many white Nova Scotians were concerned. One of the most common expressions of racism in the province was found in the desire to promote separate communities, schools, churches, and other institutions, a separation that allowed whites to deny responsibility for the depressed condition in which the province’s black communities lived. Poverty, unemployment, dependency, and all other social ills could be blamed on individual failing rather than on systemic dysfunction. Because there were no formal legal restrictions on the freedoms or civil liberties of black Canadians, the high levels of illiteracy among their children could be easily blamed on the supposedly natural weaknesses and character flaws of individual blacks rather than on white discrimination and prejudice. “Canada is a country of great opportunity for the colored man,” declared the mayor of Halifax at the 1918 session of the AUBA. “It all depends upon the man himself as to what position he finds himself placed. Ancient history proved the capabilities of the race.” At this same gathering, which was hosted by the Cornwallis Street church, E.D. King, a representative of the white Baptist churches in the city, declared, with no small degree of paternalism, “I pray that God may help you solve all problems socially, spiritually and morally, making yourselves a credit not only to your own race, but to the citizenship of the Province as well.”23 In June 1921 the Halifax Morning Chronicle captured much of this sense of disinterested condescension in its highly romanticized account of the ceremony that marked the opening of the NSHCC. “The greater part of the program was participated in by representatives of the colored population,” the paper declared, a fact that was “most creditable to them.” The choir was “expressive of that minor chord of harmony which is characteristic of the negro melody and negro life,” which was “far too often harsh and severe,” for reasons the paper delicately avoided mentioning. However, as was usual with “all such functions associated with the colored people,” the program was “largely religious,” filled with the “inimitable negro religious ecstasy and fervor[,] and the spirit of faith and hope shone in their faces and there were still melody and harmony in their voices.” The day was, overall, one to be cherished by “hundreds of these people.” [And for] the little bright-eyed curly haired children, now the inmates of the Home, it was certainly a day long to be

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remembered, for in the years to come they will tell about the great Governor of the Province who shook hands with them, patted them on the head, and smiled and spoke kindly to them. Then the old people will have treasured in their hearts the memory of the same kind Governor talking to them as if he had always known them. What a wonderful day it was to these people [w]hose lives are like a twilight, where the sun never shines full and clear as it does in the white man’s life. This was a flash of color in the drab of existence. And they made the most of it.24 Not surprisingly, given the tone of this description, the Morning Chronicle also granted full credit for the eventual opening of the home not to “these people” but to Henry Bauld, a prominent white businessman from Halifax, a member of the provincial legislature for the Liberal Party, and the man who would serve as president of the NSHCC’s board for thirty-three years. Certainly, Bauld maintained a consistent and influential interest in the home throughout his life, and his support for the institution and its inmates was unquestionably sincere. But in the view of the Morning Chronicle, he was a champion, a white hero of the underprivileged, downtrodden black man; to his “personal interest in these people, perhaps more than any other factor, is due the splendid institution opened yesterday.” Virtually ignoring the labour of the AUBA and men like Kinney (whose “tireless and continuous effort”25 Bauld himself credited as the sole cause for the home’s successful opening), the paper implied that Bauld had almost single-handedly orchestrated the home’s creation. During a period of depression and difficulty, he had “gone persistently forward, many times against very great discouragements … [and] pressed on until yesterday saw the consummation of his plans.”26 The assumption that the NSHCC’s success was due to a white man was not inconsistent with the general understanding of black men’s capabilities at this time. At the turn of the century, pseudo-scientific racial classifications and rankings were assiduously promoted as fact by white evolutionary anthropologists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and eugenicists. Such opinions offered apparent proof of the physical, mental, and moral inferiority of blacks, as well as of Asians, Aboriginals, and other visible minorities. Blacks were generally believed to be naturally indolent, vicious, debauched, and of a lower intellectual capacity than whites. They were believed to be less

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evolved and therefore less capable of handling the complexities and challenges of modern civilization. Indeed, civilization, as it was understood by much of the white, Western world, was a product of evolutionary progress where (white) man had emerged from his primitive (black) savage beginnings, rising to his current state of physical and intellectual advancement. The savage and barbaric coloured races, in contrast, were less evolved humans.27 Such arguments about race and civilization were not confined to discussions of men28 or of human communities in general but, through a developmental theory known as recapitulation, also formed the basis for the contemporary understanding of childhood. This theory was most articulately expounded by influential American psychologist and pedagogical theorist G. Stanley Hall, and through his work and that of his supporters, it became axiomatic in child study circles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.29 To a certain extent, recapitulation identified all children with savagery. Importantly, however, it was believed that when a child/ savage was consciously aided and trained, he or she could develop into the highest expression of human evolutionary progress.30 It was equally understood that only those races whose members were already evolved could claim the full benefits of recapitulation for their children. As nonwhites were considered less evolutionarily advanced, their children could be expected to develop only as far as their race itself had developed. Therefore, although the intelligence of black children was often considered equal to that of white children, they advanced no further. Their parents were generally believed to be “roughly as intelligent as Anglo-Saxon children, precisely because their intellectual development stopped in the evolutionary state corresponding to white childhood.”31 In Nova Scotia recapitulation theory clearly marks the annual reports of both the provincial superintendent and the Juvenile Court judges in Halifax in the first decades of their existence. Both of these offices frequently mobilized the child-as-savage equation when exploring the conditions of (white) children within their jurisdiction and expressed persistent concern about the problems that would arise if the savagery of children brought before them remained unchecked. According to Judge W.B. Wallace, delinquents, truants, and children left to roam the streets of Halifax displayed a “want of self discipline” and weak moral fibre, as they “had never been taught the binding force of moral law … They are brought up

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like young savages and know no discipline.”32 This imagery was also used in Ernest Blois’s descriptions of the consequences of a poorly administered children’s reformatory: “When a child has been for a considerable time in an institution” whose programs for education and discipline were substandard, “it has the table manners of a savage, while lacking in the knowledge of … a host of things which we would reasonably expect a child of its age and mental capacity to know.” By contrast, when placed in a well-administered institution, a child taken from “the most wretched [home] conditions imaginable, nearly approaching the savage state,” would “in due course” emerge as a “clean, well-mannered child … full of smiles and sunshine.”33 The most cursory examination of the imagery of childhood in this period exposes how deeply these racial concepts had influenced the contemporary understanding of children, particularly the contrasts perceived between blacks and whites, between dirty savages and sunshine-civilization. The most common and popular images of perfected childhood – reproduced through artists’ canvases, newspapers, novels, magazines, pamphlets, and posters distributed across the country and used to promote everything from tonics and soaps to expensive well-baby clinics and nursery schools – were peopled by plump, rosy-cheeked, white toddlers. These images conveyed what most people believed to be the essential, natural state of childhood: fragility, moral and physical innocence (bordering on utter ignorance), and a purity that was equated implicitly (and occasionally explicitly) with whiteness, demanding vigorous and diligent protection.34 Indeed, these stark perceptions of race were very likely part of the justification, if unspoken, for the exclusion of black children from several city institutions. Child welfare workers’ containment of threats to childhood required, they believed, the containment of behaviours and physical states that were racially conceived: for members of the white community, segregation of the black child was thus a natural and logical part of child saving, just as was maintaining religious separation. The racial ideal of white childhood (and its attendant perception of black childhood) was one of the crucial elements informing the architecture of welfare programs for children. It was critical, in the first instance, because of its tangible effect – segregation. But it also intensified the sense that services for children in need were urgently required and indispensable. In 1918, for example, Blois included a

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photograph of two young children, both white and decidedly cherubic, alongside a story about the reunion of two orphaned sisters. The younger girl had been rescued from a foster home where violence and “the fluent use of profanity” had created a “look of terror [on her] pale, appealing face.” The reunion, both “beautiful and touching,” replaced this expression with a “joyous, contented smile, trustful and unafraid”35 – precisely the sort of attitude embedded within the images of ideal childhood and assumed natural for the young. The children in the image – almost certainly not the two sisters written about – are undressed and have their arms around each other, highlighting their vulnerability even further. They are the embodiment of innocent helplessness and of distance from the concerns and dangers of the adult world. Their presence within this particular report lent enormous credibility to Blois’s work, even as it entrenched the often unspoken but deeply influential notions of racial difference. The image helped to justify the expense and effort of child welfare services by illustrating, powerfully, both what was at stake and what the ideal outcome might be.36 Many of the city’s institutions created a similar effect with the inclusion of photographs in their reports to Blois’s office. The Monastery of the Good Shepherd, for example, embellished its annual report in 1920 with an image of its formerly delinquent and neglected girls arranged in neat rows, from eldest to youngest, and attired in bright white pinafores. The clothing is evocative of virginal purity, which was particularly well suited to diminishing the common link made between female delinquency, on the one hand, and sexual danger and impurity, on the other.37 Photographs of the boys at St Patrick’s Home published in 1919 also preserved an explicit link between their physical appearance and moral purity. In this case, however, the indoor (feminine) passivity of the class photo was replaced by the bucolic activity of the institution’s farm, where the boys were photographed working in a sun-drenched hay field. If the Good Shepherd’s photograph presented a feminine ideal, this picture presented a masculine one. The images bluntly portrayed the connections made at this time between the countryside and a wholesome morality sustained by creative physical labour and inspired by a supposedly purer set of Christian values than could be found or expressed in an urban setting.38 Like Blois’s cherubs, these images were physical proof of success at the same time that they intensified the corporeal nature of the childhood ideal.

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These images of childhood reformed, protected, and perfected made the identification of endangered children relatively simple. Innocence was not a difficult-to-detect state of emotional or moral being but a physical attribute.39 Thus the ideal reinforced the environmentalism that was so central to the child welfare movement as a whole, and it reinforced the fundamentally racial nature of childhood as embodied by recapitulation. It also made the first steps of child saving obvious to those doing the saving. Appearances spoke to health, both physical and moral, so removing physical impurities from a child’s body, or removing a child from an environment of apparent physical corruption, was the first, and in some cases the most significant, step to be taken in saving a child for civilization; dirt and blackness needed to be wiped away, revealing the child’s natural clean whiteness. Thus institutional routines for bathing new inmates and clothing them in garments provided by the institutions served a functional as well as symbolic purpose. And in Blois’s office, it was often the poor physical condition of neglected children – expressed through contrasts of dark and light – that marked particular children as these future inmates of city institutions or foster homes. In 1919, for example, he reported on a “typical case” where, “in a dark attic room of a wretched hovel in one of the worst districts” of Halifax, a “little bundle of rags and filth” was found with bleeding feet and a “huge, unsightly growth on his neck.” Medical treatment was obtained but not before “a good scrubbing revealed a beautiful boy … with a sad pathetic face and thin undernourished body.” Reclamation of the child was certainly difficult, but success was secured by this cleansing and the consequent revelation of the “beautiful” child beneath the dark filth.40 The racial understanding of child welfare work was often much more flagrant than subtle and occasionally revealed a combined worry about environment and heredity as causes for the destruction of childhood. On at least one occasion, for example, Blois made use of the term “street Arabs” in his description of two young children encountered by his office, deliberately equating the dirty appearance and bad behaviour of the children with a society that was considered equally dirty and uncivilized. The children were like Arabs because they were dark, filthy, idle, and nearly savage.41 Indeed, Blois wrote that they were “dirty, ill-clad, under-nourished, cross-eyed, veritable little street Arabs with ‘sub-normal’ written all over them.” Their heritage was “awful,” with “every form of mental and physical

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defect on the father’s side and tuberculosis and alcoholism on the mother’s.” The children were the “inevitable result” of their parents’ unfortunate union and home, which was “a few crowded, evil smelling rooms in a mouldy tenement.” When confronted by the childcare worker from Blois’s office, the parents put up “violent opposition” to their children’s removal from the family, and the mother, in particular, was “a pathetic sight,” whose grief “was like that of an animal being deprived of her young and her grasp of the situation equally intelligent.” The mother was eventually “reconciled” to giving up her daughter upon witnessing the condition of the home into which the girl was placed – “bathed in sunshine with little girls at their games surrounded by the evidence of love and comfort.” The young boy, however, was still “at large” and had been seen roaming the streets, begging. “There is no place for him,” Blois despaired, “but ultimately, the poor house or the jail.”42 Not the least of the disturbing issues embedded within this case is the evident racism, which is both implicit in the assumption of a genetic basis for the family’s problems (no reason was given for their poverty beyond their “awful” heritage) and explicit in the reference to “little street Arabs.” The utter lack of sympathy for the parents or understanding of their grief at being separated from their children also draws the social gulf between provincial social workers and the city’s poor quite sharply. The following year, in a discussion of interracial unions in the province, these attitudes toward minorities were echoed and, significantly, were entwined with fears about moral and sexual purity, as well as about the physical environment in which the children of these unions were raised – an environment manifestly tainted by the mixed race of the parents. “One has only to look about the streets of our cities and towns to see many people of foreign nationality,” Blois reported. “Unquestionably many of these are useful and worthy citizens. We find, however, homes where the negro and white races are living together and rearing families. Also where a foreigner from Southern Europe or Asia is living with a native woman and raising a family. In some cases there is no legal marriage. In most cases, the standards of living in such homes are not what we have been accustomed to in this Province. This is especially true in matters of sex morality.”43 Undoubtedly, the black community of Nova Scotia was touched by these racist attitudes, evident both in the reception blacks received

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from whites and in the inability of blacks to make full use of existing child welfare services. Despite this racism, black Nova Scotians did not reject outright the equation made by white welfare workers between the state of the child and the state of the nation. Indeed, they made frequent use of the metaphor in their promotion of the NSHCC’s interests. However, although the home’s promoters did link children’s welfare to a perception of advancing civilization, they clearly conceived of civilization in different terms – not as a justification or proof of white supremacy but as an argument for racial equality. As argued in a fundraising pamphlet circulated in the 1920s, “[t]he intelligent and sympathetic view of the public along all lines of social effort places civilization’s progress on [this] basic factor: The greatest asset of the human race is its children, so guided that their bodily strength and development should prepare them to receive the heritage which each generation must bequeath to the next. By the safeguard of health and the protection of childhood, we further contribute to that equality of opportunity which is the unique basis of our civilization.”44 Quoting from the text of a bequest granted to the home by a citizen in Saint John, New Brunswick, a booklet celebrating the home’s tenth anniversary evoked a similar sentiment. “[A]ny investment made for your Home,” the donor declared, “would procure satisfactory returns because you [take] children from [an] environment that tends to destructiveness, and [place] them in an environment that … develops constructiveness, not only financially, but physically, mentally, socially, morally and spiritually. When you help to train a child and give it the proper start in life, you provide 40 to 60 years of service to the state.”45 Just as the home’s promoters rejected the racist implications of “civilization” as the concept was used in reports like those produced by Blois’s office, they also rejected the position of inferiority assigned them by recapitulation theory. Black children were civilized or not on the basis of their access to the institutions and services of a civilized society, particularly schools, not as a result of biological or evolutionary backwardness. Concern over access to quality education, in fact, had been a persistent concern of the AUBA since its earliest years. In 1877 P.E. McKerrow, the superintendent of Sunday schools for the black community in Halifax and a member of the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, stated that “it was the want of learning that kept our forefathers in slavery, and for it today we are suffering.” The condition of Nova Scotia’s blacks was “deplorable …

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for although our votes are sought both in parliament and civic elections, yet no recompense do we receive, but have to put up with the meanest of school houses that the province can afford, which deserves the greatest censure from the educated world.”46 The blockade that prejudice placed on access to education persisted well into the twentieth century. A 1923 “Report on Education” submitted to the AUBA argued that “[t]he greatest need of the race, so that it can hold its own in contributing its share to world improvement, is educated men and women. It is true that because of race prejudice, the encouragement to aspire intellectually has no charms in it, but as time advances and changes, we hope for a change for our race in social, religious, and political affairs. It behoves us therefore to prepare for those advantages which may be ours in the future.”47 Many prominent Nova Scotian blacks, including those involved with the creation of the NSHCC, believed that access to education in such a prejudiced environment had to be promoted and sustained from within the black communities themselves. Following the example set by American activist Booker T. Washington, many in the province agreed that “the colored race must first know itself, [take] stock of its own powers and tools, actual as well as potential,” and then “intelligently go about adapting every possible means to the end sought.” The wider black community had a “vital and integral part [to play in] national life,” but it was a part that would be found through nonthreatening persistence and self-awareness, not through forceful demands for integration and equality. Blacks themselves had to recognize opportunity, and if they failed “to fit ourselves for it, then indeed whatever else other nations and races of people may achieve for themselves, we gain nothing.”48 The earliest movement toward the establishment of what would become the NSHCC was conducted along the lines established by Washington in Tuskegee and Hampton. Prominent Halifax lawyer James R. Johnston, the first black graduate of Dalhousie Law School, a long-time clerk of the AUBA, a member of the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, and the superintendent of its Sunday school, brought the first proposal for an industrial and normal college for blacks before the AUBA in 1908.49 It was several years before the association was able to consider the proposal fully, but in 1912 the Education Committee reported that it was finally time to direct attention “to the question of an industrial education, which, if properly directed, would result in the material, intellectual, and social development of

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our people.” The committee further recommended that some attempt be made “to procure, during the year, the services of Dr. Booker T. Washington, or some like educator for a lecture tour throughout the province.”50 The following year, the president of Halifax’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (SPC), R.H. Murray, addressed an audience at the AUBA’s annual meeting and “spoke on his visit to the South and told of what he saw at Hampton by way of industrial education, and recommended that some action be taken to start a similar institution in this province.”51 A formal committee was struck at this meeting to consider the matter, and early in 1915 the NSHCC was incorporated by an act of the provincial legislature.52 Johnston’s original plan to establish this industrial/normal college in Nova Scotia was not universally supported. Over the 1910s the purpose of the institution was gradually shifted away from the education of young blacks and toward the welfare of dependent and neglected black children. A number of factors brought about this transformation of intent, not the least of which was a dispute between the institution’s original promoters. In his plan for an educational college, Johnston was supported by the Reverend Moses Puryear, who arrived in Halifax from Pennsylvania in 1909 to take over the congregation at the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church. Puryear was an activist “deeply committed to community development” along the lines advocated by Washington, and he believed that “practical, industrial education [was] the best vehicle for black progress.”53 Having personal acquaintance with the Hampton institute, Puryear was well positioned to support Johnston’s plan. In March 1915, however, just a few weeks before the home was incorporated, Johnston was murdered by his brother-in-law in a family dispute.54 Very shortly thereafter, the direction of the proposed institute was guided more firmly by the hand of James Kinney. Kinney had worked with both Johnston and Puryear at the Cornwallis Street church and was as deeply committed to the Washingtonian principles of community advancement as they had been. Indeed, in 1915 he carried on a brief correspondence with Washington himself. In a letter dated September of that year, he wrote that at his “most impressionistic age,” following the death of his own father, he had begun to read Washington’s work. And although he had “not been Tuskegee trained, I feel I am one of her products.” From Washington, he had learned “the rules of the game of success in life … that it made no difference what color you were,

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if you could deliver the goods when opportunity arrived [and] Dip down your bucket among the white men you know, and who know you.” He strove to “live by these rules [and was] travelling on the upward way.”55 Unlike Johnson and Puryear, however, Kinney’s upward way involved the promotion of a welfare institution rather than an industrial or normal college. It is very likely that this difference in approach was influenced in part by the sorts of white men he knew and who knew him, such as prominent philanthropists Henry Bauld and R.H. Murray of the SPC. Indeed, in 1918 Blois suggested in a letter to the provincial secretary, George Murray, that division over the purpose of the institution was organized along racial lines. Whereas the “leaders of the colored people” supported “something more in the nature of an institutional training school … on a smaller scale, as the well known Boker [sic] Washington Schools in the United States,” the “white members of the committee” favoured “[a]n institution to care for neglected colored children along the lines of our orphanages for white children.”56 Indications of this divided purpose were also present at the time of the institution’s incorporation in 1915. The first board of trustees included Moses Puryear, but he was joined by Kinney, Blois, R.H. Murray, Bauld, and several other white men from Halifax and Dartmouth, all of whom were involved in charitable welfare activities in these cities.57 Not surprisingly, given the makeup of the board, the institution’s incorporation gave a strong impression that the proposed home was not intended to be, primarily, an educational facility. On the one hand, the board was granted the right to purchase and hold property “for the care, education and proper training of the members of the Afro-American race.” On the other hand, however, there was no explicit mention of its purpose as a normal or industrial college, and (following the well-established pattern of institutional segregation) the act to incorporate the NSHCC further empowered it “to act as a Children’s Aid Society for matters affecting the children of the colored race … pursuant to the provisions of the Children’s Protection Act.”58 By contrast, when Puryear presented a resolution to generate “moral and financial aid” for the new institution at the annual session of the AUBA in September 1914 – only four months following its incorporation – he referred to the home as “the Industrial School of Nova Scotia for Colored Children.” Moreover, the preamble of this resolution argued that support for the institution was necessary because of the substandard quality of

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educational opportunities for black children in the province, particularly the lack of “industrial, domestic and business training of our young men and women.” He also urged that it was “the duty of the race to produce its own leaders who shall be architects to carve our place in this western civilization.”59 Several years later, the decision had not yet been firmly or formally made about the home’s ultimate purpose,60 but there are strong indications that the charitable aspect was prevailing. In February 1917, for example, it was noted in a description of the proposed institution that training and education were central to the project and that because the benefits of this education “will be shared by the whole province … we therefore consider it the duty of the government to assist in the establishment of such a training school or institution.” However, this document made it equally clear that the institution would be geared toward the functions of child welfare because “it appears that the best and most practicable way of caring for neglected and destitute colored children is to provide a training school where these children can be kept until they are in a position to be self-supporting.” The children themselves were “justly entitled to such care and training as will fit them to become useful members of society,” and the “objects of the institution would be to thoroly [sic] train the children committed to its care to become selfsupporting citizens.”61 It is also extremely doubtful that the trustees would have been able to generate enough money to support anything other than a charitable institution. Although they had secured a meagre $1,000 grant from the provincial government in 1916, there was no guarantee that they would continue to receive funds beyond those required from municipalities for the upkeep of children housed there. Indeed, when Blois wrote to the premier in August 1917 requesting permission to draw on the provincial account for this $1,000, the premier responded with something less than enthusiasm: “It may be that I was a little too enthusiastic in my desire to assist these people,” he wrote, “and perhaps a more economical arrangement can be made.”62 When, through the summer months of 1917, the trustees took steps to put the institution into physical form, they also appear to have been planning to operate a welfare institution. Puryear was endeavouring “to secure a suitable woman to take care of the Home,”63 and Blois was seeking a suitable property on which to establish it. The spot chosen was a small cottage on the grounds of

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the Halifax Industrial School. When Blois approached the chairman of the Industrial School’s board to request use of the property, he explained that they wanted to “have it always available for the reception of small colored children, until such time as they can be otherwise disposed of. There are comparatively few of these cases, but our existing institutions either will not or cannot accommodate cases when they arise … and the idea is to secure a suitable working property outside the city should the demand warrant such an undertaking.”64 In December 1917 the demand for services did indeed appear to warrant an extension and elaboration of these plans, and the pressure to emphasize the charitable over the educational also increased substantially in the wake of the Halifax Explosion. Although the NSHCC trustees had acquired access to the Industrial School cottage for a modest $200 a year and had also secured the services of a trained social worker from New York to act as matron, the structure itself was “completely wrecked” by the blast.65 In the confusion and stress of the explosion’s aftermath, the ability to generate funds and support for an educational institute for black Nova Scotians was doubtless very low on the province’s and city’s list of priorities. Many black children were also left orphaned by the blast, adding to a class of dependants that the Reconstruction Committee had noted was a particular difficulty.66 A small committee made up of some of the original trustees – Bauld, Kinney, and Murray – did meet with the premier in the weeks following the disaster, and a report to the AUBA on progress in the home’s development at this time implies that there was little doubt that the corporation would serve as a welfare institution, with education and training as part of a program of child saving rather than community building. Indeed, in describing the effects of the explosion in this report, Kinney implied that even before the formal opening of the home, those who were intended to be its residents were not candidates for institutional training but dependants. “[O]wing to the fact that twelve more children were found” after the explosion, he wrote, the trustees had decided to seek out a larger building than the original.67 According to Charles Saunders, Puyear’s decision to leave Halifax in 1919 was a direct result of this “shift in direction,” one that he “could not in good conscience abide.”68 In his absence, the reformed NSHCC board of trustees located and purchased the MacKenzie property, a 211-acre lot with approximately 25 acres of arable land

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near Preston. The choice has generally been described as a good one69 – and it certainly suited contemporary belief in the wholesome, healing atmosphere of the countryside. In 1924 Blois described it as “one of the best, if not the best, equipped children’s institutions in the province,” whose “buildings and grounds give evidence of great care on the part of the management” and whose children were “well fed and well cared for” in a house that was “kept in excellent condition, clean and comfortable throughout.”70 What Blois reported to the public in 1924, however, was at odds with what he thought about the property in September 1918. At that time, he did not approve of establishing a children’s home on the farm and “consider[ed] the situation altogether unsuitable.” He believed the site too far distant from Dartmouth (nine miles over rough road),71 such that “[d]uring part of the year at least it would be difficult to get to the farm with any degree of comfort or speed.” He was also concerned about the cost of hauling building materials to the property and about the viability of the land itself, which would be used for agricultural training of the home’s inmates. Despite its location near one of the larger black communities in the province, he also believed that it was “not readily accessible to the colored people of the Province” and did not think that “its influence would be felt much beyond Preston.”72 For Kinney, the institution presented another set of challenges. Certainly, within the community itself, it was upheld as an important sign of “race progress.” For white Nova Scotians, the home removed any concern that welfare programs for dependent children would be required to integrate. Welfare workers in Halifax, moreover, were now relieved of the very difficult problem of finding boarding or foster care for black dependants.73 However, there were constant financial pressures on the institution, which were greatly exacerbated by the fact that many of the provincial districts and communities that sent children there were delinquent in paying the required amounts for board and education. Government grants to the home were also, as many provincial institutions knew, not nearly adequate – and unlike some of these other institutions, the NSHCC did not have a large bequest or endowment from which to draw.74 Kinney’s skills as a fundraiser were consequently in steady demand throughout his entire tenure as the home’s secretary. Importantly, he was, for lack of a better term, “racially bilingual,” and he was very adept at presenting the home’s needs to

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both black and white communities in ways that addressed their specific concerns and interests.75 In efforts to generate support from the black community, Kinney’s appeals on behalf of the home were cast in a language of “race uplift” and “race pride,” which resonated clearly with the stated principles of the home’s greatest supporter, the AUBA. Kinney also, significantly, emphasized the potential damage to the reputation of the black community that would result from a failure of the home’s program because of financial shortfall. His appeals echoed the opinions of Puryear, while also making clear that some degree of obligation was owed to white supporters for their efforts on behalf of the home. If the community did not “render the assistance necessary,” he argued, it is quite likely that a situation will be created which would be quite unpleasant to each and every one of us who holds a deep measure of pride for Institutions for racial betterments. It is a home of great possibilities to the Race, and from it can emerge those fitted with training which will enable them to pursue higher educational branches, and lay a foundation for Leadership of the Race. If we fail in this means of support, we will lose out in the great essentials of racial opportunity which the Government and our friends have seen fit to provide.76 The home’s success was also powerfully linked to the meaning of responsible citizenship within the black community and to the ultimate goal of race uplift, namely equality. Blacks were asked to contribute to the institution “because responsible citizenship entails duties and obligations as well as rights and privileges. When my race or any other group of the community demands equality of citizenship they must be prepared to render the same service that other citizens render. We must make our contribution toward the public good in some form or other just as the other members of the community do.”77 Kinney’s position on citizenship paralleled that of the Nova Scotian black Baptist community in general. When “living in a community,” one minister preached, “each man gives up a certain measure of his own rights for the safety, protection, and welfare of the community.” This was one of the most fundamental “responsibilities of the Christian and the Church member to God.” It was also an expression of faith in Christian progress. The financing of their own institutions was a “demonstration of the ability of the Colored

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Baptists to prove their right to share in the respect and the Christian progress of our present day civilization.”78 James Kinney also sought financial support from white Nova Scotians, a necessity given the relative poverty of the province’s black communities. In at least once instance, he did so with a notable play of visual subterfuge, capitalizing on the ubiquitous and culturally powerful image of ideal childhood by featuring a chubby, smiling, white baby in a fundraising poster.79 In most other efforts to reach white donors, however, Kinney emphasized the home’s success as a racially segregated institution and appealed to the paternalistic streak so prevalent in the language and attitudes of white Nova Scotians. He did not capitulate to a language of racial subordination in these appeals but instead linked the work of the home to the work of Christian philanthropy. Donors to the home could be assured that they were not wasting their money on an ill-equipped or dysfunctional institution, and at the same time they could demonstrate “that neither race nor creed enters into the philanthropic spirit of our people when worthiness is the superstructure of their appeal.” He requested support for the children of the home “not as a matter of sentiment, but of human obligation. It is a part of the moral content of Christianity.”80 Ten years after the home’s opening, Kinney pushed this method of appeal slightly further, arguing that the home’s continued success must be taken as proof of the equality of black Nova Scotians, at least as far as their ability to provide welfare services was concerned. Thus the home was equally deserving of charity. “We … have realized,” he wrote, “that an institution must serve its apprenticeship of struggle and sacrifice before it makes a recognized place for itself; but we feel we have come through the hard, gruelling discipline that solid achievement demands, and should now receive the full encouragement that is due.”81 How much equality the white community was willing to grant to this home is debatable. Certainly, men like Henry Bauld were generous in their praise and sincere in their interest. However, even at the best of times, they reflected an assumption that the home was not part of a wider welfare community but remained an institution peculiar to black welfare. Roman Catholic homes were for (white) Roman Catholic children, Protestant homes were for (white) Protestant children, and this home was for black children. And because the home was a separate, racially defined institution, it provided an easy means of denying responsibility for the effects

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of systemic racism. By giving financially to the home, and perhaps even by means of public praise like that given by Blois in his annual reports, the white community could demonstrate that it had taken a worthy, Christian interest in “these people,” but it could equally declare that any failure at the home was the fault of the black community. As Bauld declared in 1921, “I am delighted that this institution has been provided and it has been pronounced by many who have seen it, to be the finest Institution of its kind in the Maritime Provinces; however, it can only be kept for the Colored Children, providing the Colored People rally earnestly and actively towards its support.”82 A 1919 appeal for support from the mayor of Halifax, J.S. Parker, entitled “Let Us All Chip in and Give the Fund for the Colored Children a Boost,” reflects this awareness of the separateness of the institution and its potential to provide an outlet for the expression of Christian charity while mitigating the possibility of integration. “Fellow citizens,” it began, “[t]he people of Halifax have always shown a hearty interest in every worthy cause that has presented itself. Do not let the colored citizens feel we are not interested in them.” The mayor then emphasized the home’s potential to relieve the tensions of race relations through segregation and indicated his belief – likely a common one – that without white support, the home would collapse. “Laying aside all other considerations,” he wrote, “let us realize that little lives are at stake. There is a crying need at this time for the establishment of such a home. It will settle city and town problems throughout Nova Scotia – it will arrest misunderstanding, and do for a portion of our fellow citizens what they are unable to do for themselves.”83 The mayor’s appeal was followed up several months later by an attempt to raise funding from within the city’s business community, instigated by W.H. Dennis, the vice president of the Halifax Herald. Dennis wrote to Parker in the hopes of “getting together such men as the Presidents of the Progressive, Commercial, Rotary … Board of Trade … and other influential men” to raise money. “[W]e might call it the Halifax Business Men’s Gift to the Colored Children,” he wrote, asking “[d]on’t you think we should do this for our own credit’s sake?” Dennis implied that raising money for the home had been a distinct challenge in comparison with other charitable efforts, and he echoed the mayor’s belief that the home would ease racial tensions in the region. “A few of us have been thinking very strongly on

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the attitude of our citizens regarding the Colored Children’s Home,” he wrote, “and the more thought we have given the matter, the more clearly we are convinced that it is our disgrace not theirs; that our reward must be a future menace in a more or less degree, that many causes not half so worthy have been ably supported.”84 Because of the highly charged racial awareness surrounding the NSHCC before and after its actual opening, it is difficult to envision the children committed to its care as neglected or dependent children alone. They were understood, by the black community, to be the embodiment of a racial potential, a means to uplift their community and to demonstrate the ability of black citizens to compete on an equal footing with whites. These children were also the foundation upon which blacks demanded, however politely, to be treated as equals in the province. For many whites, black children were, at best, a curiosity and a target for a self-interested sort of spiritual benevolence and, at worst, an undesirable element of the Halifax community, to be separated and ignored as far as was possible. For the home’s promoters, particularly James Kinney, the ability to negotiate and address these concerns successfully meant, in the immediate context of the home’s administration, successful fundraising. Ironically, the insistence upon the home’s potential for racial uplift, since it was linked to a policy of segregation and consistently supported by a large and vocal community like the AUBA, made it difficult to argue for integration with other welfare services. That all child welfare services were, to some extent, segregated “in the best interests of the child” made integration at this stage even more unlikely – and even undesirable from the perspective of both blacks and whites. Moreover, Kinney repeatedly called attention to the home’s qualifications and successes as a “Genuine Home Mission” and as a professionally administered welfare service. The layers and subtle shadings of this language meant that neither black Nova Scotians nor white ones had any reason to expect or demand change. The rights of black children, as they were understood by both sides of the Halifax community at this time, were being upheld, and their needs were being met. Analogous to the other institutions in the province, the interwar and postwar years presented several challenges that threatened the viability of the home’s existence, but the initial successes of the tactic of segregation ensured its endurance longer than what might otherwise have been the case. On the one hand, this endurance made certain that many children received care,

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education, and stability, despite the deeply embedded effects of racism and poverty in the province. On the other hand, however, it must be acknowledged that the home’s existence fed what Sherene Razack has called an “illusion,” one that was interwoven throughout the rhetoric of both black and white supporters of the home and that perpetuated the worst aspects of recapitulation, namely the idea that these children were “not oppressed, merely different [or] less developed.”85

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3 The Unremitting Exercise of Watchfulness Institutional Environments, Routines, and Practices When the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC) opened in 1921, the composition of Halifax’s institutional landscape reached its architectural summit. No more congregate facilities were created, and instead – with the sole exception of the NSHCC – all of them closed within the next half-century. Contrary to widespread opinion, however (both historical and contemporary), these homes were not forced to close by professional social workers or state agents who saw their methods as harmful or inimical to the fundamental goals of child welfare.1 Despite the somewhat sombre appearance many of these homes may have for modern eyes, the prevalent belief in the city was that they did good work, serving the “best interests” of the children and the community by training their inmates to “play a part in the future as citizens of our country.”2 Indeed, before the mid to late 1950s, there was no explicit external pressure for deinstitutionalization, beyond what was required to create and safeguard ideal environments for specific groups of children. Not all local children, the consensus ran, were likely to thrive in an institutional setting. This did not mean that the institution was at fault, that it had failed, or that it needed to be shut down; it meant instead that those specific children required something different. Foster care was, as a result of this consensus, an outgrowth of the institutional response rather than a replacement or a conflicting scheme for dealing with neglect and dependency. As outlined in this chapter, the careful delineation of childhood into acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and environments not only resulted in the separation of Protestants from Roman Catholics and blacks from whites but also generated a

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system of institutional discipline and regulation that made the shift to foster care appear both logical and highly effective in the creation of ideal settings for some children. In their early years, institutional managers and superintendents were responding, in part, to high infant and child mortality rates experienced among the city’s poor. They also attempted to create what they saw as a homelike environment, inside and outside of their institutions, in order to raise their charges for a life of usefulness, regulated by the habits and moral precepts of Christian teachings. They consequently paid attention to every detail of staff qualification, education, discipline, religious training, and the physical health of inmates, as well as to their diets and physical surroundings. Importantly, all of these efforts were circumscribed by the peculiarities of the funding and fundraising requirements of the homes and were punctuated by awareness that their charges were the children of the poor. As the interwar period wore on and as public funding of the homes (or, at least, awareness of such funding) increased, a measure of obligation toward the public also intruded into the language of institutional regimes. But the normalizing aspects of a complete disciplinary program within the institutions were furthered by the promotion of fostering and adoption rather than circumscribed by them; from the turn of the century, modern methods and traditional techniques of dealing with dependency were interdependent. The end result of this interdependency, however, was the promotion of an environment in which the institutions themselves were in part the authors of their own redundancy. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, occasional photographs of all of these institutions were published in provincial superintendent Ernest Blois’s annual reports. The images were likely intended to provide a context for the public to understand how dependent children were housed and to give institutional boards and committees the opportunity to display the material embodiment of their charitable efforts. As these buildings absorbed increasing quantities of charitable and public monies for their upkeep, they were as important an element in describing child welfare services as the bodies of the children themselves. In an era when fears about the psychological impact of institutionalization were growing, physical space was also an indicator of the possibility for quality care, and annual reports and minutes from managing committees demonstrate a persistent effort to

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decorate and improve interior spaces with clean linens, wall coverings, curtains, and flooring.3 The photographs of the homes’ exteriors, however, published in black and white and most depicting the homes in autumn or winter when the trees were bare, convey a somewhat gloomy, ominous ambience. Instead of the homelike atmosphere they worked to provide – and likely achieved to some degree – the homes now appear, through a lens clouded by knowledge about institutional abuse and by decades-thick cultural stereotypes of orphanhood, to be the murky, depressing places experienced by Little Orphan Annie, Jane Eyre, and Oliver Twist.4 Several of the orphanages in Halifax were architecturally impressive structures well suited to the demands of such Victorian-era literature, with elaborate wood trim, gabled windows, and carved lintels. St Joseph’s Orphanage and the Halifax Industrial School were thusly imposing as well as impressive, with looming threestorey central buildings flanked by massive residential wings; in the latter, toilets were located outside in a separate building, and the superintendent’s quarters were located in an attached yet architecturally separate home jutting off of one wing. Both homes contained separate interior spaces for infirmary care of sick inmates. Other institutions, like St Paul’s Home for Girls, the Salvation Army Home, and the early site of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, were built on a smaller, more domestic scale that likely did a better job of blending in with the surrounding buildings; in these institutions, bedrooms, bathrooms, staff rooms, infirmaries, dining rooms, and living spaces were contained within a single structure. The Home of the Guardian Angel sat somewhere between these two styles, with a main building resembling a large city home and a sternly squared side-wing addition that appears more institutional than domestic. The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, set apart from surrounding neighbourhoods like the Industrial School and St Joseph’s, was clearly designed in an attempt to balance the desire for a domestic atmosphere with the needs of a congregate institution; the threestorey building is homelike in its basic elements, reminiscent of a large country home or converted barn, but the scale of the structure marks it unmistakeably as an institution. The first floor housed separate dayrooms for boys and girls, the dining room, the kitchen, and laundry facilities, whereas the second floor contained the dormitories and staff bedrooms. Infirmaries were located on the third floor, and playrooms were housed in the basement.5 St Patrick’s Home for Boys,

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whose superintendent admitted yearly to the challenges of the physical surroundings, is perhaps the least attractive structure in these grainy, published photographs, appearing boxlike and plain-fronted, with a flat roof that intensifies an impression that the building was tumbling down around the boys’ ears. The Halifax Infants’ Home, possibly deliberately, avoided exposing its own imperfections by submitting a clean, black-and-white illustration of its facility (rather than a photograph) in which the institution is flawless, gracious, and precise. (Appendix 4 indicates the population levels in each of these homes between 1913 and 1959; see also illustrations 1 to 8.) The fundamental goals of child welfare – to protect dependent, orphaned, and neglected children from physical and moral harm; to give them the opportunity to experience childhood through play and through ignorance of strife and responsibility; and yet, at the same time, to prepare them for useful citizenship – were believed to depend, at least in part, upon the creation and maintenance of particular physical environments, such as those illustrated by the published photographs. However, the ability of institutional boards and managers to improve and even to simply maintain these physical surroundings was acutely affected by the manner in which they were funded. Here, sharper distinctions must be made between the reformatories and the orphanages and asylums, as different legal provisions affected how they drew upon public funds. The earliest provincial legislation regulating the public support of delinquent children was specifically directed at the Industrial Home and St Patrick’s Home in recognition of the fact that many of the children in these homes had not arrived there because of family circumstances but had been institutionalized by the courts. This legislation also mirrored the attitudes toward local responsibility then entrenched in the Poor Law regulations. Enacted in 1890, the act respecting support for delinquents required that the municipalities or towns from which the boys originated “make provision out of the revenues of the municipality for the maintenance of any boy so sentenced … at a rate not exceeding sixty dollars per annum for each boy.”6 However, the courts could not place boys at these reformatories without first ensuring that the municipalities concerned had the necessary funds to support their young offenders. By the early twentieth century, the amount paid for maintenance had been raised to $100 per annum, and a cost-sharing formula was developed between the municipalities and the province

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that acknowledged the difficulty of insisting on this somewhat narrow definition of “local”: 60 per cent of the funding was paid by the municipalities, and 40 per cent was taken from the provincial treasury. By the 1920s, the amount had been raised again to $250 per annum, according to the same cost-sharing formula. This funding also applied, as of 1910, to girls sentenced to the Monastery of the Good Shepherd.7 Not all reformatory funding originated in the public purse: these institutions also raised money through the labour of their inmates; St Patrick’s and the Monastery of the Good Shepherd received charitable support; and the two boys’ homes were also endowed (the Industrial School held a $50,000 endowment, and St Patrick’s briefly held $2,500).8 Only two of the other children’s institutions in the city, the Halifax Infants’ Home and the Protestant Orphans’ Home, were endowed, but the amounts of at least one of these endowments (that of the Infants’ Home), noted at just over $1,300 in 1919 and $15,000 in 1920, were substantially smaller than that of the Industrial School.9 This institution also relied upon boarding fees paid by the mothers or other family members of the infants placed in the home. Other institutions – and, on occasion, the reformatories – also relied on these private fees, but they were not a predictable source of funding given that such placements were often made because of extreme poverty or the loss of income of the parents. For the Roman Catholic institutions, the religious orders administering the homes provided some of the necessary funds for their work, and financial stresses were eased somewhat by the fact that, although the church did pay to house and educate the sisters, they did not draw regular salaries. However, all of the institutions relied on the willingness of Nova Scotians to contribute money, food, clothing, toys, and other materials to support their work. Such charitable giving from the community was considered essential to maintaining their services, although denominational loyalties did shrink the pool of potential donors: Protestants gave to Protestants and Catholics to Catholics. In each case, publicity was essential; requests for donations were made from city pulpits, in newspapers, and later through radio appeals, notably at Christmastime, when particular efforts were made to provide children with gifts and special lunches or dinners. Some of the earliest publicity for these institutions was apparently unintentional but clearly effective because of the visible contrasts orphaned children

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presented to those who lived closer to the ideal. In her account of the activities of the Sisters of Charity, for example, Sister Maura Power described the assistance of local orphans with Sunday Mass at the cathedral in the mid-nineteenth century. The sight of these young people “awakened generous interest in Catholic merchants of the city who contributed money, provisions, and clothing” to their upkeep. However, these benefactors were not simply moved by the sight of these poor children but also “appreciated the good training given the children, and particularly admired the dormitory with its long rows of well furnished little beds, neatly covered with white spreads.”10 The NSHCC, as noted in the previous chapter, found fundraising an even greater challenge, as it had a much smaller pool of potential donors. By the end of the war, reflecting both the unusual financial stresses the conflict placed on the city and the extraordinary costs incurred by damages from the Halifax Explosion, all of these charitable homes were receiving public funds, either from the city, the province, or both. The grants given usually reflected the size of the populations. In 1919, for example, the Girls’ Home on College Street received just over $440 from the city and province, whereas St Joseph’s, a much larger institution, received over $2,600.11 Although the receipt of public grants was somewhat novel for these homes in the early 1920s, it was not the first time that the province had supported destitute or neglected children, however meagrely. The earliest public funding for this class of dependants (not including the miserly, short-lived monies given to the Halifax Orphan House in the eighteenth century)12 was spent in grants to county poorhouses, where many destitute children were housed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in violation of child protection legislation.13 The Children’s Protection Act of 1906 extended the potential for public funding of other dependent and neglected children housed in charitable orphanages. This development resulted in part from the efforts of the first incarnation of the Halifax Children’s Aid Society (CAS) to consolidate and expand both provincial child welfare legislation and provincial and municipal responsibility for child welfare services. The act authorized the municipal government’s use of tax revenues for the establishment and maintenance of children’s homes or shelters and for the support of the children placed in them by the courts and the CAS. In 1909 an addendum to the Children’s Protection Act clarified this funding

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structure, stipulating that the municipality, town, or city within which a child had legal settlement would be liable for all expenses incurred in his or her apprehension and would be obligated to pay the sum of $2 per week to maintain the child in “a temporary home or shelter, orphan asylum, infants’ home, industrial school, house of industry, boys’ or girls’ home, or other children’s home.” Under these acts, however, the extent to which these funds might be considered wholly “public” – that is, drawn from tax revenues alone – was limited by allowing the municipalities to seek this payment through court action from “any persons liable under the law for the maintenance and support of such child.”14 Along with these legislated payments, there were also fees paid to institutions by municipalities and the provincial government to support children committed to institutions as wards of the state or of a CAS. Grants of $5 per week were paid directly to the institutions, with $2 originating with the province and $3 with the municipalities.15 That these grants to what had been strictly charitable, private institutions caused at least some unease within the province is indicated by Ernest Blois’s report in 1921. That year, Blois presented the public with estimates of the value of institutional properties (including their furnishings and equipment) and with estimates of the amount of money received from the province and municipalities for maintenance and support. After declaring that the institutions “are better performing the functions for which they were established, than are our reformatory institutions which receive large grants of public money,” he outlined how regular maintenance costs borne by the homes compared to government grants. For the reformatories, the total cost of annual maintenance was listed at $161,590, of which only $53,445 was paid by the state. For the child caring institutions, annual maintenance was estimated at $88,150, but only $12,850 was paid by governments. In both cases, no funding was given for the upkeep of the properties. “The object” of publishing these estimates, he wrote, was “to show the relative amounts contributed by Charity, and the Province, through the government or municipalities, for what cannot be denied to be a public service. It is well to remember, also, that the amounts raised by Charity come from comparatively few people, year after year. The benefits are shared by all. There should be little objection to granting the comparatively small amounts of public monies asked for to carry on this

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branch of the public service.”16 By the middle of the 1920s, Blois appears to have intensified his efforts to demonstrate that tax dollars were not supporting the lion’s share of what was considered to be a charitable and private service. His annual report in 1925, as well as listing the amounts received by each institution from public and private funds (something he had done since his very first report), noted what percentage of the total cost of maintenance this public money represented. Thus the Halifax Infants’ Home received 44 per cent of its maintenance costs from public funds, whereas its Roman Catholic counterpart received 22 per cent.17 Both the Protestant Orphans’ Home and St Joseph’s Orphanage received 35 per cent of costs from public funds, whereas St Paul’s Home for Girls received 15 per cent. Graphs 1 to 3 indicate an estimate (calculated from their annual reports) of the percentage of public funding granted to the four largest institutions (St Joseph’s, the Protestant Orphans’ Home, the Infants’ Home, and the Home of the Guardian Angel) and to the two boys’ reformatories from 1913 to 1960.18 Although data are not complete for the period before 1924 and are occasionally spotty thereafter, it is clear that by the late 1910s, and certainly by the early 1920s, all local institutions (including St Paul’s Home for Girls, the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, and the NSHCC) received public funds from the city and province to support their efforts, with reformatories taking the lion’s share of maintenance costs from these public sources. Some institutions claimed only small amounts or occasionally (as in the cases of the Protestant Orphans’ Home and St Paul’s Home for Girls) claimed to have managed without public funds altogether, presumably relying on fees paid by families who were boarding children and on bequests, endowments, fundraising, and charity. However, despite claiming to be unsupported by public money, both the Protestant Orphans’ Home and St Paul’s received payments from the Halifax CAS and from the Office of the Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children, which had been drawn in large part from public sources (i.e., cities, towns, and municipalities) for the upkeep of wards. It is possible that the superintendents of these two homes did not consider CAS funds public because they had been received from a private agency. It is also possible that they were aware of the potential effects of describing these funds as private; in comparison with other institutions – particularly during the Depression – they appeared far more affordable to the public.

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90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1913 1915 1917 1919 1921 1923 1925 1927 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937 1939 1941 1943 1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959

Percentage

Graph 1 Estimated percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the infants’ homes, 1913–1960

Halifax Infants’ Home

Home of the Guardian Angel

Graph 2 Estimated percentage of maintenace costs covered by public funds at the orphanages, 1913–1960

90 80 Percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 1913 1915 1917 1919 1921 1923 1925 1927 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937 1939 1941 1943 1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959

0

St Joseph’s Orphanage

Protestant Orphans’ Home

However, because of these variations and irregularities, the accuracy of the financial reports made to the provincial office is dubious, and the percentages noted in these graphs are estimates only. Moreover, not all institutions regularly indicated the amount of public funding they had received, although they acknowledged that grants had been made either by the city, the province, or both. For

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Halifax Industrial School

1955

1953

1951

1949

1947

1945

1943

1941

1939

1937

1935

1933

1931

1929

1927

1925

1923

1921

1919

1917

1915

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1913

Percentage

Graph 3 Estimated percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the boys’ reformatories, 1913–1955

St Patrick’s Home for Boys

example, in 1916 the Protestant Orphans’ Home, St Joseph’s Orphanage, and St Paul’s Home for Girls all reported receiving public money for the first time since the provincial office was formed. However, they did not begin regularly indicating the amount of public funds for several years, making accurate calculations impossible (gaps in the graph lines indicate those years for which no data are available). Where total maintenance costs and the amount of public grants were noted, rough calculations were made of the percentage of costs covered by public coffers (after 1924 the institutions were asked to make this estimate themselves, although it is clear from the cases of the Protestant Orphans’ Home and St Paul’s that they did not always do so accurately). Where the financial records of the CAS are available, amounts paid out to institutions by this agency were used to clarify those years when managers claimed to have received no public money.19 The glaring exception to these otherwise modest levels of public support was found at the NSHCC, where in 1925, for example, 85 per cent of the maintenance costs were covered by public funds. This disparity between black and white institutions persisted almost continuously until the 1960s. Indeed, the home claimed a consistently higher percentage of public money for maintenance costs than any other institution in the city, excepting the reformatories and, on a few occasions, St Joseph’s Orphanage, whose capacity was almost three times higher (see graph 4).20

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Graph 4 Percentage of maintenance costs covered by public funds at the NSHCC, infants’ homes, orphanages, and reformatories, 1924–1960

90 80

Percentage

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

0

Infants’ homes

Orphanages

Reformatories

NSHCC

High rates of reported public funds – indicating a much more concentrated population of public wards and reflecting as well that foster homes (and possibly private community support) remained elusive for black children – did not mean that the NSHCC was operating with a healthier budget than its white counterparts. Reported public money was not always money in hand. As Blois noted, for example, the management of the home was “having some difficulty over finances, due in a large measure to the delay by the municipalities in making payments for the children being boarded there.”21 No other institutions reported (or admitted to having) similar troubles. The situation likely resulted, in part, because the geographical origins of the NSHCC’s population were more widespread than for other institutions in Halifax County, making collection of support more difficult. It is also likely that nonpayment occurred because the regions from which these children originated were among the poorest in the province, being those in which the largest proportion of blacks resided.22 As the black community was, on the whole, a poorer one, and thus less able to generate alternate, charitable support, the ability of the NSHCC to function without this municipal aid would have been

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severely crippled. Indeed, in the 1920s the board of governors funded no fewer than three out-of-province fundraising expeditions, all undertaken by James Kinney. Seeking Blois’s support for the third of these, in 1927, Henry Bauld told the provincial superintendent, “Men of Wealth die [and] Community Chests are formed, large and generous contributions are given to EVERYTHING, but The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children is never remembered to the extent that others are.” The revenue earned on the home’s farm and taken in from local donations and government grants was “very hard to get, and in itself … is not sufficient to carry on in a modern practical way.” Moreover, he worried, “the time probably would come when the public would tire of yearly contributions.”23 Drawing directly from the well of “best interests,” Bauld stated that what the trustees wanted was “to find wealthy friends who will assist in a large (or even a small way) as they do with the Colored work in the United States of America. As hundreds of thousands of dollars are raised annually for Foreign Missions for those who may never receive the personal touch of our high Christian civilization, we feel we should bring before the people of Upper Canada the merits of this Institution, which is training our own citizens, who will live amongst us as potential assets or liabilities of our community life.”24 Curiously, Blois disapproved of this plan despite being fully aware of the home’s financial troubles and refused to write a letter of support and introduction for Kinney. His rationale for the refutation reveals that, in large part, he was deeply concerned with appearances and took no small measure of pride in keeping provincial services strictly provincial; scolding municipalities for nonpayment was a regular, acceptable part of his job, but he discouraged admitting to outsiders that a provincial institution under his jurisdiction was struggling. “In the first place,” he wrote, perhaps forgetting that the home was legally entitled to take in black children from across the country and that it was unique by virtue of its racially segregated arrangement, “the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children is purely a local institution, doing work no different from that of any other local charity.” He then voiced particular concern about what appeared to him to be an airing of the province’s dirty laundry – carried out, no less, before the “upper” provinces, whose geographic designation seemed to give them a distinctly superior place in his understanding. “I feel that we would be not only placing the Home but the whole Province in a very unenviable position,” he argued,

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“by making an appeal to the charity of the people of the upper Provinces. In my judgment this is no time to give Upper Canadians a chance to say we are beggars.”25 The level of public funding received by the institutions clearly fluctuated, sometimes quite dramatically, throughout the interwar period and beyond. This inconsistency was a direct result of the fact that the homes did not receive annual grants based on operating costs or what their managing boards and superintendents had determined to be their needs. Public money was restricted to the per diem grants for public wards, with occasional lump-sum grants when institutions underwent particularly stressful years (such as the Home of the Guardian Angel in 1917–18, which received a $5,000 city grant when it took in children orphaned and/or wounded by the Halifax Explosion) or when they made special appeals for assistance to conduct major renovations or building projects.26 Annually, this made revenue predictions somewhat challenging for the homes and required that they look elsewhere to fill their coffers and their cupboards. Their methods included revenue generated by the labour of their inmates, as well as the organization of a variety of fundraising events such as bake sales and jumble sales. On at least two occasions, the Halifax Infants’ Home organized a threeday street fair, noting in their 1924 request to the City Council for permission to hold the event that it was “unnecessary to draw to the attention of the Council the financial difficulties with which we have to deal.”27 In the case of the Catholic institutions and St Paul’s Home for Girls, specific annual collections were made among parishioners following appeals from the pulpits of local churches. After the city’s Community Chest was organized in 1925, many of these institutions also gave over their larger fundraising projects in favour of the centralized fundraising efforts of this organization, believing that a centralized campaign would be more efficient and effective. Importantly, however, from the perspective of sectarian interests, funds raised through the Community Chest could be “earmarked” for allocation to specific institutions or associations. This allowance was a significant element of the Roman Catholic archbishop’s support for the Community Chest in 1927.28 For those organizing the fundraising efforts of the institutions, presenting their work as “purely charitable [and] depending upon bequests and public subscriptions for support” surely lent an image of nobility and selflessness to their cause, giving them an edge in the

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competition for scarce dollars.29 But this type of appeal was not universally successful, and there were at least a few Haligonians who remained skeptical about the institutions’ abilities to manage their charitable dollars efficiently or, indeed, about their need for these dollars in the first place. In July 1928, for example, the Roman Catholic archbishop received a letter from a parishioner in Halifax, identifying himself only as “Worried,” who pointed out the irony of seeking donations for an apparently wealthy religious denomination. “Reading through the columns of the Evening Mail,” he had noted an appeal for funds for the Monastery of the Good Shepherd. “Well,” he wrote, “why not eliminate the number of Automobiles among the priests and have the money invested in the Good Sheppards [sic]. The Lord said, ‘If a man hath two coats, let him give one away,’ He never said, let him invest the extra amount in Automobiles … Many of the inmates of the Monastery were craving for Automobile rides, (that some of the priests take at leisure), but not having means of their own to purchase a car were tempted to ride with strangers, and the result was – the Good Shepperds [sic].”30 “Worried” was not the only person in the city to question the financial demands of institutions and charities. As part of the efforts to cope with its own financial difficulties, the Halifax City Council entertained a proposal from a special committee in 1924 to revoke the tax exemptions on provincial and federal government properties within the city. The committee also proposed repealing tax exemptions for churches, Sunday schools, and charitable institutions, including educational and hospital charities and the local children’s homes. However, although the effort to tax government properties proceeded, the city’s mayor appealed successfully to leave the churches and charities out of the scheme. With only a few exceptions, he noted, “all Churches and Institutions affected by this change are not in a position to bear any further demands on their already limited resources.” Taxing them “would only compel the further curtailment of the work carried on by them,” something that no one in the city could afford to see happen. Moreover, he noted, if these charities and institutions were unable to pay their share of the tax bill, collecting the required sums would likely injure the reputation of the city, proving “embarrassing to all concerned.”31 That Halifax institutions would have been unable to meet their tax bills was certain. The private donations and public funding they did receive barely covered their basic operating costs and were

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entirely inadequate to cover larger overhead expenses for the maintenance of grounds and buildings. In 1931 conservative estimates from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics indicated that the cost of raising a child from infancy to age eighteen was $5,750, or approximately $320 per year. The study that presented this estimate also noted that prices had been higher in earlier years (an average of $7,425 in total, or $412.50 per annum) and that variations would occur among the provinces.32 At most, public monies in Nova Scotia contributed only half of this sum through per diem grants. Blois made oblique reference to the weakness of provincial support for dependent children in an earlier comparative study of the monies paid by provincial governments for the care of delinquent and dependent children. “The total amount expended for these children in this Province is less per capita than that in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia,” he wrote. And although he had not been able to secure adequate statistics on payment levels across the country, he concluded with some bitterness that the Nova Scotian government “was particularly fortunate” in having to pay such small amounts toward the support of neglected and delinquent children.33 The provincial government did not have a monopoly on reluctance for public spending in the field of child welfare. In the early 1920s, Blois was also hard pressed to convince Halifax city councillors of their obligations to pay support for children apprehended by his office within their jurisdiction. Correspondence over several months in 1921 between Blois’s office and the City Council – and between their respective attorneys – reveals a stubborn resistance on the part of the city to pay what it undoubtedly saw as the exorbitant cost of apprehending, boarding, and maintaining local children in institutions and other temporary homes. The council accused Blois – or “some person” in his office – of “not fulfilling his duties” in extracting payment from the children’s parents or family members. City Council members were particularly troubled that they were billed for the cost of clothing as well as room and board, and there are indications that at least some part of their reluctance to pay this bill was caused by the fact that the money was going directly to the provincial office. One member of council suggested that the city consider future legislation that would require such funds to be paid directly to the institutions. In the end, the account (amounting to just under $5,000) was settled only after the attorney general’s office

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assured the council that it was liable for the payments under the Children’s Protection Act and that the rates had been set by order of a provincial judge (likely Judge J.J. Hunt of the Juvenile Court), “whose decision is final and not subject to investigation and report.”34 The funds granted to orphanages and children’s homes, however meagre and however unwillingly paid, were expected to support a wide range of institutional routines and practices directed at the care of dependent children, the promotion of their “best interests,” and by corollary, the protection of future community interests and prosperity. The funds were also expected to be spent in institutions whose managers and practices complied with the basic conditions set out by the Children’s Protection Act; indeed, payment was dependent upon compliance with provincial regulations and standards. Thus, because institutions had been, and continued to be, increasingly dependent upon these sources of funding, public money carried with it the means by which institutional independence could be eroded. For the most part, however, the regulatory requirements of the Children’s Protection Act were congruous with the sorts of expectations and goals that these homes and asylums considered fundamental for the welfare of children and that they had pursued for decades. The act itself had emerged as an expression of the interests and concerns of the child welfare community, not as a top-down set of regulations meant to impose new or unfamiliar regulations on the institutions. Indeed, nineteenth-century charities and philanthropic activities directed at children in the province may well have opened up the possibility for such state intervention as was represented by the Children’s Protection Act (along with many other laws related to children, education, labour, etc.).35 For example, according to the act – and according to the criteria Blois used to determine an institution’s eligibility for grants – all children under fourteen were required to attend school regularly.36 This insistence upon providing dependent children with skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, however, had been one of the earliest functions of child-centred charities in the province, harkening back to the late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ragged schools.37 In the city’s oldest institutions, schoolrooms had been maintained from their inception. Over the 1920s, most of these institutions began sending their charges to local public schools. In part, this was an effective cost-saving measure; school supplies and teachers’

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salaries could be eliminated from budgets. Managing boards also declared that the move promoted closer ties between the institutions and the local community, provided their inmates with a much needed change of scenery, and prevented them from becoming too tied and influenced by the confines of the institution.38 Notable exceptions to this pattern of classroom desegregation were the reformatories, where confinement was an essential element of their reforming methodology, and the NSHCC, which continued exclusive, onsite schooling until at least the late 1940s.39 The Home of the Guardian Angel also conducted kindergarten classes onsite, beginning in 1930.40 Wherever an academic education was received, however, the fundamentals of this education were intended to ensure that dependent children would grow up to be useful and self-reliant members of society. Usefulness also required something more, particularly as there was little expectation that these children would make their way in the world through academic pursuits. As was reflected in the requirements of the Children’s Protection Act, industrial and vocational training was an integral and necessary part of institutional programs, and children over fourteen who did not attend school were required to be “taught some useful trade or calling.” Making specific reference to the boys at the local reformatories, Blois quoted from a report by the trustees of the New York Juvenile Asylum, which he described as “one of the most modern and progressive institutions of its kind.” Boys within the reformatories, it was argued, “are not likely to enter any of the so-called learned professions; nor are they likely to become directors of important business enterprises … They will, however, be compelled to earn a livelihood and contribute toward the support of others … Surely it is better to discover and give direction to whatever productive skill may be undeveloped in them, and so enable them to become more efficient and progressive citizens, than to neglect their possibilities and suffer them to remain stationary or descend to lower ranks in the great industrial army.”41 The charitable asylums in the city concurred with this opinion and, as with academic training, had done so for decades before the act required it. At every institution where such training was applicable (i.e., excepting the infants’ homes), boys and girls were “instructed in such useful occupations as will enable them to earn a decent living” and as would fit them, “as far as possible … for the battle of life.”42 There was no pretence that these children would rise

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above their humble social station, although whenever possible institutional reports made note of former inmates who had gone on to study teaching or nursing or to earn commercial diplomas. What was not acceptable was that these children should become chronically dependent upon charity; this concern had been lodged in the heart of much charitable activity and educational promotion in the province since the early nineteenth century.43 As the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Halifax argued, there was an obligation on the part of caregivers “to provide for their children such physical development as will enable them to make an honest living, and such mental training as is well calculated to insure success in the ordinary pursuits of life.”44 The intent of these provisions for education, however, was not always fully realized, as practical and financial problems restricted the ability of local institutions to carry out industrial or vocational training to any great extent. This was particularly true for boys, as vocational pursuits considered suitable to their gender, such as farming or carpentry, tended to be more expensive and to require more facilities than those for girls. At the Halifax Industrial School and St Patrick’s Home for Boys, limited training was available in woodworking, shoe repair, and printing, but the small size of their properties meant that farming activities (which were greatly praised as the most practical and inspiring type of training for institutionalized boys) were greatly restricted. In each case, only a few of the inmates could be trained in this area, and the inability to provide adequate training was a source of constant frustration and preoccupation for the superintendents.45 The NSHCC was arguably better able to provide agricultural training for its boys – indeed, much of the home’s income was generated this way in the 1920s and 1930s; however, financial problems in the first years after its establishment greatly restricted the extent of other types of vocational training such as carpentry. “[U]ntil further funds are raised,” James Kinney reported in 1925, “[f]arm labour and chores, with elementary education is all we are able to do for them.”46 In the case of all three of these institutions, education was supposed to be economically useful, but the particular pursuits chosen (or hoped for) were also seen as those that would improve character, bolster physical strength, and inspire manliness – all features key to citizenship. As Archbishop Edward McCarthy warned, without carefully directed and disciplined education, the “greatest ambitions” for

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young men “would appear to be those of acquiring the reputation of graceful dancers and charming partners.” Instead, what was needed was “the virile, sturdy, hard-working type … for faithful husbands and conscientious fathers.”47 Too much emphasis upon physical labour, however, was considered equally detrimental. Throughout the 1920s, Blois roundly criticized the Industrial School for putting its inmates to work at chopping wood. In 1929 a visiting social worker from Manitoba, Henry Atkinson, echoed Blois’s concerns after his detailed review of the city’s reformatories: “The lack of constructive effort, the simple drudgery, the paltry returns in money and less in brain development, the low grade work it provides, lacking any mental effort, stimulus or inspiration, all condemn [wood chopping] as wasteful of the best interest of boy life.” Instead, predictably, Atkinson recommended agricultural training, which “builds up their health and teach[es] them how to enjoy doing work well.”48 Vocational training for girls was equally geared toward character development and the promotion of health and happiness. It was also tightly bound by awareness of class and gender and was thus almost entirely devoted to such activities as domestic work (e.g., cleaning, dusting, and washing floors and windows), food preparation, sewing, knitting, rug hooking, millinery, dressmaking, and laundry – in short, “all that pertains to the management of the home.”49 Undoubtedly, some of this work was not only physically demanding but also “simple drudgery,” giving “paltry returns” in mental and spiritual development. However, as it was considered work both natural and necessary for womanhood, its prominence in the educational programming of the institutions was easily defensible. “[E]very girl should know how to use the needle,” and if the girls were “ever to have comfortable and happy homes of their own they must be taught how to properly prepare food, sew, and the thousand and one things which the successful housekeeper must know.”50 And just as with agricultural work for boys, domestic work for girls was an important economic factor in institutional management; for example, sewing lessons involved the mending of fellow inmates’ clothing, fancy work and knitted articles were sold for profit, and “domestic science” included the general upkeep of the interior of buildings. At the Girls’ Home on College Street, the heavy laundry work taken in from the community was described as an “outstanding feature of the training … of which curtains [were] a specialty.” Girls at the home were offered a full three-year “course” in this work and upon completion

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became “as a rule, first class laundresses and good maids and they are eagerly sought for.” Not coincidentally, the laundry work also accounted for the lion’s share of the home’s operating funds.51 Other stipulations of the Children’s Protection Act that could be used to assess an institution’s worthiness for funding related to appearances – both of children and facilities. Cleanliness of person and attire, as well as environment, “an adequate supply of wholesome food,” clean and comfortable bedding, and “proper medical care when sick” were all criteria used in Blois’s annual assessments,52 but they were also criteria in keeping with what institutional managers hoped to achieve. From intake to discharge, institutional routines revolved particularly around a child’s physical condition, which itself was interpreted as a marker of the quality of care given. Indeed, during the hearings on conditions at the Industrial School, it was frequently the threadbare, ragged appearance of the boys that was remarked upon as evidence of poor management and care.53 Beyond bathing and supplying children with adequate clothing, however, or ensuring that the institutions themselves were kept scrubbed and tidy, key components marking quality of care were physical and, when possible, mental assessment tests (most children received rudimentary medical inspection upon admission, and many received annual checkups).54 Records for several of the homes are not complete for the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, so it cannot be definitively stated that they all conducted similar medical supervision of their inmates. But those institutions whose records do exist for this early period demonstrate that medical exams were axiomatic, whether conducted by a physician specially appointed to the institution or, after 1923, by the staff of the Dalhousie Public Health Clinic.55 Other agencies would have likely taken a similar approach, particularly for new residents who might carry infection to the other children in the home. Indeed, superintendents and managers took great pride in the health of their charges – nothing denoted problematic management more dramatically than high death rates or infections – and their annual reports were frequently consumed by descriptions of medical testing and treatment, infection rates, improvements made to facilities for isolation, and cures effected in particularly challenging cases. In 1927, for example, Sister M. Christina at the Home of the Guardian Angel made particular mention of a young girl at the home who was “afflicted with an

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aggravated form of tubercular hip.” However, the condition was quickly detected by the sisters and their medical experts, and after being kept in a plaster cast for nine months, she was “so far as physicians can discover, free from disease.” Her case was only one of many illnesses “completely cured by faithful treatment” at the home.56 Similarly, the religious of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd reported that “[w]hen sick, our ‘Children’ as we like to call them, receive the same attendance as the religious … The most abject of our Inmates are treated with as much consideration as if they were the children of the wealthy.”57 Superintendents and matrons across the city, whether Catholic or Protestant, also noted with pride when their institutions had been epidemic and illness free. At the NSHCC, for example, James Kinney highlighted the absence of serious illnesses and death as “evidence of the care and attention given to each child; and especially would you be impressed if you were to see some of the abused, ill-treated and half-starved little ones on their arrival at the Home.”58 Along with medical care, dental inspections became more common in the early twentieth century,59 and mental assessments were conducted, if not consistently then with greater regularity, after World War One. The latter practice was considered particularly important for assessing a child’s suitability for foster placement or adoption, something with which all institutional managers were concerned (as discussed below). Although mental testing was conducted more regularly for those children entering the system through the Halifax CAS, the provincial office, or the Juvenile Court (many of whom were subsequently placed in local asylums), several of the institutions were aware of, if not testing for, differences in mental acuity among all of their inmates.60 The ability to conduct mental assessments of delinquent and dependent children, however, was persistently hampered by the lack of qualified personnel.61 The Province of Nova Scotia did not appoint a provincial psychiatrist until October 1927, and at that time the position required frequent travel and long absences from the city. Prior to that date, Dr Eliza Brison, superintendent of the Daughters of the Empire Home for Feeble-Minded Girls, was engaged by Blois to conduct mental testing of children who came before the Juvenile Court and the provincial office in the city, beginning in 1919.62 Like the directors and superintendents of the institutions, Blois placed great importance on this medical and mental testing. He consistently emphasized “the

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importance of adequate medical care of the children” generally, but he also noted that it was “essential that our children should be examined as to their mentality … If this [can] be done, the number of ‘misfits’ or children placed in foster homes who turn out badly will be reduced to the minimum.”63 On a day-to-day basis, the institutions’ programs sought to regulate their children’s habits of personal hygiene, decorum, and deportment, to support and enhance their physical and mental health, and to promote normal growth and healthy adjustment. For example, the superintendent of the Halifax Industrial School argued that regular military drill at the institution “tends to make a boy alert and selfreliant, besides giving to him an appearance of smartness so different to the slovenly gait so noticeable when they come to the Institution.”64 The NSHCC also provided its girls with “training” on “neatness and cleanliness in work and personal appearance,” and Kinney explained that its programs, overall, were “in a real sense preventative as well as curative for the early stages of social disease” because children at the institution were taught “methods that hold, keep and restrain from the ways of danger and disease, and sometimes death.”65 It is also very likely that programs promoting “good habits” were instituted at the infants’ homes for children aged two to three and at the orphanages among younger children. The formation of regular habits was considered by many prominent childcare experts to be essential for the healthy development of young children. They were carefully drilled in daily routines that included regular times for meals, washroom visits, naps, and recreational periods in order to promote within them a sense of personal security and stability, whatever the insecurity and uncertainty of their surroundings.66 These institutional practices were important enough to be considered part of their qualifications for Blois’s approval and for provincial funding. As Blois interpreted it, institutional administrators were to make “every reasonable effort … to train every boy and girl to be neat, clean, courteous, industrious, obedient and studious.” Importantly, they were also “to inculcate the teachings of the Christian religion,”67 a stipulation that explicitly supported the religiously inspired work of the city charities and one that highlights the significance that religious training and motivation had carried for managers and boards since the inception of their institutions. Indeed, just as caring for the physical well-being of abandoned, neglected, and endangered children was considered part of Christian

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obligation, so too were vocational and academic programs and the regulation of habits and deportment part of a disciplinary structure whose underpinning was explicitly religious. As well as providing a repository of motivation for institutional managers and affording them a powerful language for the expression of their purposes, the objective of “lead[ing] children to Christ”68 regulated and organized daily routines. Children’s days were punctuated by prayers at mealtimes and upon waking and going to bed, and singing hymns was a regular part of holiday and school celebrations. Regular church and Sunday school attendance, either within the community or at services conducted within the institutions themselves, was also mandatory. This exposure to religious education and training was vital to the overall intent of institutional regimes. As the Committee on Religious Education for the Maritime Home for Girls argued, religious education “should be accorded as organic a place” in institutional programming as “vocational training or any other phase of teaching activity [because] no one can be said to be truly educated unless he has been educated in a religious interpretation of life.”69 For the children at the NSHCC, religious training carried with it the dual emphasis on freedom and restraint that was characteristic of the attitudes of the home’s founders. It was also described in a manner that echoed the fervent evangelical tone that accompanied the home’s opening: “The direct purpose of any education worth its name is the development of character by training the intellect, illuminating the conscience, stimulating the finer emotions, directing the will towards nobler ideals, enriching the sense of God in human hearts, and so purifying the spiritual vision and faculties for wise restraint, greater freedom and a larger and more liberal measure of consecrated service.”70 Roman Catholic institutions also granted functional attributes to religious education, an approach that was reflected by the emphasis placed upon the catechism in Catholic childhood education and one that stemmed from a sense that, as Catholics, these children would be duty bound to defend and uphold their faith in the face of criticism and derision. “Catholics will fail in their duty of Christian charity,” the archbishop explained, “when through lack of knowledge of their religion they are unable to explain, to defend, to prove the many vital teachings of Catholic faith.” He therefore admonished that “no mission [should be] without its Catechism Class [and] parents and others having the guardianship

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of children [were] under obedience to have their wards take advantage of these classes.”71 The archbishop promoted religious education as an antidote to personal distress, sinful behaviour, and social unrest. Religious ignorance, he argued, caused “many of [the] sorrows” of life, including “demoralizing customs, sinful pleasures and amusements, apostasy from the faith, invalidly contracted marriages, marriages with persons of other religions and the failure to help non-Catholics to benefit from what we so undeservedly enjoy.”72 He also pointed to the problem of homes in which parents were lax in their duties to discipline their children and to teach them obedience to their church. “One of the greatest abuses of the day [was] independence and revolt against lawfully constituted authority,” and he emphasized that “the leaders in those radical movements that cause such distress and misery in this world” were often raised in homes where “over-indulgent fathers and mothers … dared not check the rebellious spirit nor punish the disrespectful, disobedient act,” nor teach the importance of obedience to the laws of God and the Catholic Church.73 The inmates at St Patrick’s Home for Boys were thus taught “that their every action should be based on religion. They are made to feel that the foundation of their loyalty to their country must be built upon the loyalty to their God, and that they can be good citizens only in as far as they are good Christians.”74 In the early 1930s, boys at the Halifax Industrial School were also provided with a rigorous schedule of religious training of which the archbishop would have approved – in principle, if not in theological content. The “whole scheme” of religious training, which included daily services “when our boys get an opportunity to read ‘God’s Word,’” was planned “so as to awaken the best in the boy himself, to try and enable him to see the ‘vision splendid’ and thus be attended on Life’s Way.” The school’s motto, which the superintendent, W.O. Wilson, presented regularly to his charges, underlined this emphasis on individual responsibility: That the High Soul climbs the High Way And the Low Soul gropes the Low, And in between on the misty flats The rest drift to and fro. But to every boy there openeth A High Way and a Low,

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And every boy decideth The Way his Soul shall go.75 A similar emphasis upon religion’s ability to check social unrest and soothe a child’s baser instincts was articulated by Judge Hunt. If children were to develop into responsible parents, independent citizens, and upright, law-abiding members of their community, religious education, “the greatest educational force in the world,” was essential. Its presence “creat[es] a character that enobles [sic],” and its absence accounted, in part, “for the spirit of anarchy that is abroad.”76 Indeed, Hunt regarded religious training as a right that was to be protected and developed in all children – both for their own good and for the good of the entire nation. “Such instruction,” he wrote, was “more important than any other … Important to the child, important to the Nation to which the child belongs and in which he is soon to become an active member.”77 In 1920 Blois claimed to the public that it was his “intention to follow strictly [the] regulations” provided by the Children’s Protection Act and the mandate of his office, and it was his opinion that “institutions which do not comply should not receive the grant.”78 However, Blois did not always follow such a strict interpretation of his duties as provincial superintendent. When an institution was found wanting in some respect, grants were not withheld; instead, his annual report to the legislature became a call to action (if an oftignored one) that urged the provincial administration and the citizenry of the province to take a greater interest in the essential work of his office. In this vein, for example, Brother Stanislaus, superintendent of St Patrick’s, reported in 1920 that because of serious inadequacies in the institution’s physical structure (it was drafty and cold as well as small and overcrowded), “we cannot give our wards proper moral, mental and physical training.”79 However, despite failing in virtually every requirement, St Patrick’s was not closed or denied its grant; instead, Blois praised Brother Stanislaus “for his frank and honest report” and described the efforts of the brothers as “heroic.” He then noted that the home required “considerable financial assistance to place it upon a modern basis,” and he prodded the Catholic community in particular to step up to the plate. “The need is urgent,” he wrote, and “the cause is a worthy one – surely the people behind this Institution will not let it remain in this inenviable [sic]

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position very much longer.”80 Evidence that Blois interpreted the Children’s Protection Act somewhat flexibly – as mandating that he support and generate interest in institutions rather than forcing them to comply or pressing for their closure – is also found in his 1921 annual report, where he acknowledged that, in the case of small, unlicensed boarding homes for children under the age of twelve, “it would be invoking hardship on a great many people to strictly enforce the law” and remove the children. “We do not believe,” he wrote, “that it is the intention of the Act to place any difficulty in the way of persons boarding children, provided the children receive reasonable care and training.”81 In an environment so closely regulated by financial deficit, the ability of local institutions to maintain the atmosphere and program of support that was considered necessary to protecting local children was a significant challenge, and in many ways, Blois’s office provided support for their efforts. Perhaps because of his own experience as a superintendent of one of these institutions, or because of an awareness of their substantial presence and usefulness in the city, he was a steady advocate for their interests, even as he pointed out their flaws and shortcomings. The institutions were, ideally, preventive mechanisms as well as therapeutic systems for children whose situations – often their own homes and parents – threatened their “best interests.” Within the walls of the institutions, all aspects of children’s behaviour could be monitored, from their diet and education to their personal habits, playtime, and sleep time; for infants’ homes, the vital importance of anonymity could be upheld – for the protection of the illegitimate child as much as the mother. Education, training, and discipline worked to correct inappropriate behaviours and patterns of thought and to promote ideals considered appropriate to the religion, class, ethnicity, and gender of the inmates. In these ways, the institutions were performing what was expected of a parent. But neither Blois nor many of those familiar with institutional care in the city were ignorant of the challenges of this performance. One of the greatest challenges related to hiring qualified staff; the various orphans’ and children’s homes took the matter of staffing as seriously as their finances permitted and whenever possible hired professionally trained individuals to supervise their inmates and administer their programs. The Halifax Infants’ Home, for example, employed a social service worker in the 1910s, who conducted inspections of potential adoptive and foster homes, performed

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regular visitation among former inmates who had been placed or adopted, and counselled single mothers at the home. When the home shifted its program away from “maternity work” in 1924 – in other words, it no longer housed pregnant women and supervised their confinement but instead focused on the care of mother and child after birth – it continued to hire professionally trained nurses to administer and staff the home wherever possible.82 Similarly, the Monastery of the Good Shepherd recognized that its work “of reeducation and reformation requires a long moral and psychological training, which each Sister receives during the first years of her joining the Order.” She was “kept out of the work until she is judged fit to undertake it, by her Superiors.”83 However, despite the examples set at these two institutions – and despite whatever professional social workers might have wanted to see at these institutions – the definition of “qualified” often depended on the definition of “budget.” For most of the homes, the former was too expensive, and the latter too mean. Instead, emphasis was placed upon the moral standards and love for children expressed by staff. Indeed, these were qualities that many believed far outweighed any other attribute in a successful employee – a conveniently affordable belief for cash-strapped boards. They may have taken some comfort in this position, however, after a report was issued in 1925 by the Canadian Welfare Council’s Section on the Spiritual and Ethical Development of the Child.84 This committee recommended “that a special effort be made to emphasize the point, that the most important element in an educational system is the spiritual and ethical quality of all leaders,” a quality that was also extended to leaders within the child welfare system.85 (No doubt, the main body of the Canadian Welfare Council might have stressed professional qualifications more stringently if it had been addressing the staffing of child caring institutions more directly.) Although professional social work training often topped Blois’s list of desirable qualities for those employed in the field of child welfare,86 he did not discount the value of institutional staffs’ moral standing and expressions of love for children, particularly in relation to employees of reformatories. Here, staff qualifications took on greater significance (for his office, at least) because of the larger allocation of public money that reformatories received and because their inmates were in need not simply of rescue but also of reformation. “Fine buildings and a heavy endowment are not the essentials,” he argued, and it was

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not enough that the members of the staff are persons of good character. Neither is the ability to maintain discipline nor good business management the chief requisite. These are valuable attributes and should be insisted upon in the employment of executive officers of the institution. But what counts most is that very rare combination of good character and personality, which the inmates will, both consciously and unconsciously, imitate. Unless our reformatories are manned by such officers, the province is wasting money … And what is far more to be deplored the children are made worse by the confinement.87 In 1929 Henry Atkinson was of the opinion that only in the case of St Patrick’s Home for Boys had this level of staffing been achieved. Here, “[t]he boys were happy and free in their response to questions … indicat[ing] a spirit of cooperation between the boys and masters which is essential for real character building.” At the Halifax Industrial School, however, there were serious problems with the quality of staff, demonstrated in large part by a lack of friendship and “confidence between the Superintendent, staff, and boys,” which were deemed “necessary for effective work.” Echoing Blois’s earlier report almost verbatim, and clearly highlighting that salary levels were at least partially responsible, Atkinson advised that “[t]he value of any Institution depends wholly upon the staff. They must have that personality and good character which inspires confidence in the hearts of the boys … I doubt whether a personnel of $50.00 per month calibre can handle such a task.”88 Atkinson’s report on the reformatories also highlighted the importance that was placed on the physical setting of an institution and revealed another major challenge for local institutions: the creation and maintenance of that comfortable, useable, homelike setting considered so vital to the child’s “best interests.” His observations also highlighted the difficulties members of the public might have had if assessing these two institutions based on their published photographs alone; the dim, low architecture of St Patrick’s was, according to Atkinson, far more suitable than the looming sweep of the Industrial School’s Victorian facade. He praised the “good buildings” at the Catholic home as “[c]ommendable features” of the institution, “clean, bright, and well equipped to care for nearly every phase of boy life.” Of particular importance was the recently constructed gymnasium, which allowed for expanded recreational

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programs, a refuge from poor weather during playtimes, and a place for general assemblies. A similar space was not found at the Industrial School. There, although the buildings were clean, they were “old and entirely unsuitable for any real constructive work.” The dining room, still located in the basement, and the separately housed toilets were troublesome and potentially damaging to the boys’ morale. “The plant lacks modern conveniences,” he wrote, “and despite the desperate efforts of the staff to cope with the situation the tumble-down appearance of the whole place is bound to have a downward pull on the lives of the inmates.” His assessment likely did not come as a surprise to the superintendent, who had reported to Blois two years previously that although improvements had been undertaken “in the way of repairs, painting, etc., in an effort to make the present building as cheerful and comfortable as possible,” this effort was of “little use” because the building was “old and out of date.”89 Similar observations, both positive and negative, were made about other institutions in the city – although most of them appear to have surpassed the reformatories in official assessments. Cleanliness was essential inside and outside of the buildings, and children required adequate play space for rain or shine. Where possible, the existence of separate “hospital wings” or quarantine rooms to avoid the spread of infections and give the sick a quiet place to recover was also considered essential. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s these institutions constantly struggled to maintain the quality of their buildings and grounds to meet these – and their own – standards for cleanliness and modern convenience. This was particularly true for the Protestant Orphans’ Home, which had been relocated to a private home after its original site was destroyed in 1917. It was not until 1926 that a new building for this institution was finally completed and occupied, and during the intervening years, creating suitable environments for the children in its care was a constant preoccupation.90 But despite the cost and struggle, there does not appear to have been any doubt that the institution would be reopened rather than phased out in favour of a more robust system of fostering; Halifax in the 1920s was clearly still amenable to congregate facilities, and Blois argued that the need to rebuild this institution was “urgent, as there is no suitable accommodation for Protestant children.”91 Maintaining buildings and grounds certainly presented challenges, financial and structural, but it was essential to ensuring the

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segregation of types. These institutions had particular goals set for their inmates, and although religious and ethnic partitioning was important in achieving them, the ability to effectively separate their charges according to such criteria as age, mentality, or perceived moral condition was also considered vital to the overall success of their efforts. Indeed, delineation into “grades” – orphaned, halforphaned, crippled, feeble-minded, and illegitimate – was a regular administrative task, conducted both on admission and to satisfy the requirements of Blois’s annual questionnaires. However, the potential for contamination of inmates from the moral weakness or behavioural problems of one child was considered as serious as possible contamination from measles or influenza. In the minutes of the Managing Committee of St Paul’s Home for Girls, for example, there are several references to the concern of the home’s matron about the negative effect that the behaviour of some apparently feeble-minded girls (a characteristic frequently associated in these minutes with moral weakness) was having on the younger, more impressionable inmates. In May 1922 the committee was particularly concerned about one girl whose dubious moral outlook was disrupting work with the other girls. The chair of the committee “felt that it was not in the interest of the Home, and unfair to the other children to keep this child any longer than was absolutely necessary and suggested that a determined effort be made to have one of the child’s aunts take her” until such time as she could be placed in the Daughters of the Empire Home for Feeble-Minded Girls.92 As St Paul’s housed a maximum of between twenty and twentyfour children, greater individual attention could be given to the girls, and problems such as the one that arose in 1922 could be sorted out with relative ease. But for the city’s larger institutions, the mixing of types presented significant challenges both as their populations increased and as the criteria for segregation of types became stricter (fluctuations in population levels are noted in appendix 4). At the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, for example, a home that often cared for young women and adolescent girls with “questionable morals,” the religious carefully noted that they were not trained to care for those considered to be feeble-minded. However, despite their distinction between feeble-mindedness and immorality, “demands of that nature” were continually made upon them throughout the 1920s. As early as 1919, the home reported that “the wayward girl and defective girl require entirely different training and care, and

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when the two are necessarily inter-mingled the problem of training either class adequately is not satisfactorily solved.”93 Problems of segregation were also prominent at the boys’ reformatories. In 1922 Blois argued that because of overcrowding, “[p] roper classification and separation of the inmates is not possible at either place,” and these institutions were consequently “about as far from the modern idea of a reformatory institution as can be imagined.” Little appears to have changed by 1929, when Atkinson wrote that given the “overcrowded conditions” at the Halifax Industrial School, there could be “no pretense at segregation … [and] one finds neglected, dependent, defective, and delinquent boys herded together to the mutual damage and disadvantage of all.”94 The following year, Blois returned once more to this problem, writing at length about “mixing of types” at the boys’ reformatories and at the Monastery of the Good Shepherd. “We doubt very much,” he wrote, imperiously, “whether any institution recognized and approved as a reformatory for juvenile delinquency” should also be “permitted” to accept charity cases. “Modern Child Welfare demands a better method.” However, whatever modern child welfare demanded, Blois did not – or could not – demand a change to this practice, as the reformatories were all privately managed; they had begun their institutional existence providing placement for homeless, friendless waifs and strays, and it was a habitual feature of their work. He noted, instead, that it was “surely the duty of the province and the particular duty of the Boards … to see that no injustice is done any child or group of children and that the best means known are adopted in dealing with those committed to their care.”95 Lack of segregation because of overcrowding, according to Atkinson, could be overcome through simple changes in intake policies and through alterations to the institutions’ physical arrangements to bring them in line with the so-called cottage system. However, local circumstances created obstacles to the institutional managers’ abilities to effect either of these suggestions. These same local circumstances clearly demonstrate the gradual erosion of institutional independence that the elaboration of services in the city required. In theory, some of the institutions could have dealt with overcrowding by changing their admission policies; they were all ostensibly independent, privately administered charities. But, as the case of the reformatories shows, just as admissions were not entirely within

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Blois’s control, neither were they decided exclusively by the homes. Superintendents of all of the city’s institutions had the power to accept children placed by parents, relatives, or clergymen even if they were not public wards and even if their circumstances had not been reviewed by either the CAS or the provincial office. But just as reformatories were obligated to take those committed by the courts, institutional managers were similarly compelled to take public wards from the provincial children’s aid societies and the provincial office. Moreover, as these children were wards of a CAS or the province, institutional managers could not decide how, or if, they would be placed into a foster home (something they could decide for their nonward placements). Managers could refuse to take public wards, of course, but doing so in this particular environment would have contravened their own purpose of rescuing and protecting children in need.96 They would also thereby forgo the per diem grants that each child’s presence brought into the institution. In either case, accepting public wards – and then having little say about how their situations were to be resolved – was a clear signal that managing boards, committees, and superintendents had lost at least some control over institutional practices. The second proposed solution to the problem of poor segregation was the cottage system, whereby the larger, congregate buildings would be broken down into separate “homes” housing fifteen to twenty children each, all of whom had similar dispositions and backgrounds.97 Although this plan was greatly talked of in the city, not only by the reformatories but also by the larger asylums and orphanages, it was completely outside of the realm of financial possibility, particularly in the wake of the Halifax Explosion, when several of these institutions laboured under heavy debts and physical constraints. In 1919, for example, St Joseph’s Orphanage reported that [t]he demands made on the Institution are far beyond its power to satisfy in their entirety. These have increased considerably as a result of the explosion and of the Spanish Influenza which in both cases have deprived many helpless children of one or both parents … The Institution is now called upon to open its doors still wider, and fit in as many as it can hold without regard to that comfort and convenience which form so desirable a feature of every Institution. The increased cost of living, together with the increase in numbers adds much to the burden of maintenance

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which has to be sustained almost entirely through the voluntary contributions of the Catholics of the City.98 In an attempt to deal with its increasing population, St Joseph’s undertook the construction of a new wing, which was completed late in 1923. In reporting on this addition, Blois noted with some dissatisfaction, and with a similar air of frustration as had attended his later report on the reformatories’ intake policies, that St Joseph’s was now “the largest institution for the care of children in the Province. We do not like such a large institution for children, but those responsible for the addition were convinced that their action in building was justified by the increased demand made upon it and that it was a financial impossibility to re-establish the whole institution on the cottage plan.”99 Although occasionally frustrated by the limits of his office and frequently worried about the size of some institutional populations in the interwar years, Blois appears to have remained optimistic about the city’s institutions. For better or worse, they provided Halifax with the greater part of its child saving and child protection network; even with their too-meagre budgets, they were – at least for the first several decades of the twentieth century – better equipped than the city’s CAS, better connected to sources of financial and material support, and peopled by prominent, influential, interested folk. It would have been no trivial task to simply “discard” them for a perfectly imagined system of foster placements, peopled by professionally trained social workers and supported by ample budgets and a concerned and interested public. Failing this arrangement, there were nonetheless a great number of advantages to the institutional system. The simplest of these was their bulk. The architecture of children’s homes, whatever its style or disadvantages, was a functional part of the disciplinary regime of child protection services in this period because it offered physical separation of a child from those environments and people (often the child’s own home and family) that were perceived to be a threat to the child’s well-being.100 The successful reformation of a truant or delinquent, in particular, and the possibility of a happy outcome for a neglected or endangered child were believed to depend upon making as complete a break as possible between the child and his or her past. Most of these institutions

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therefore restricted access of family members to certain days of each month in an attempt to minimize negative influences. The admissions form for St Paul’s Home for Girls, for example, which was to be signed by the parents or relatives admitting the girls, stated that “[t]he Home may be visited once a month (Second Tuesday in the Month) during the afternoon,” unless other times had been approved by the superintendent.101 Atkinson’s critique of the reformatories signalled this belief even more clearly. For these homes, he argued, the “proximity of the city’s life creates a spirit of unrest among the boys, which invites attempts at escape and prevents the boys from settling down to real constructive work.”102 Atkinson’s concern about the immediacy of the city to these institutions underlines the manner in which Halifax itself was occasionally considered a threat to child life – or, if not all of Halifax, then certainly that vaguely defined manifestation of city life, the street, where the threats to morality and physical health were particularly concentrated.103 Across the country, concerns about children playing, loitering, or working on city streets were common, and the streetscape was increasingly identified as a danger zone for impressionable young Canadians.104 Part of the danger posed by the street was clearly physical, particularly as automobiles became a more common fixture of urban settings. In 1921, for example, the Halifax Herald carried a cartoon entitled “Death’s Playground,” in which several children were depicted playing in an intersection while heavy black automobiles with skulls on their front grills raced toward them.105 Blois repeatedly called for a curfew law to curtail the moral and psychological threats posed by the street, to eliminate the perceived growth in the number of children engaged in trade on city sidewalks, and thus to decrease the number of unchildlike children in the city. His concerns, as well as the concerns of other reformers and charity workers in the city, were expressed with particular intensity when the streetscape lacked light. “It is not an uncommon sight to see children of a very tender age selling papers, post cards, and small wares” on the streets of Halifax, he reported, “even until late hours at night … A great many of these children become exceedingly bold and saucy.” If children (always identified by Blois as boys) were not delinquent or truant, prolonged exposure to street life would surely make them so because they were “exposed to undue temptation” and “brought into contact with undesirable adults at an age when they are not able to withstand such evil influences.”106 St Paul’s

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Church Mission was equally concerned with the precariously ungodly nature of the street and gave its “greatest attention to the boys and girls” of the parish, noting that there were “many of these swarming the streets, through lack of good play grounds. Considering their familiarity with vice, the influence of profanity and obscenity, the dinginess of their tenement homes, it is a moral miracle that they are not entirely corrupted.”107 The religious at the Monastery of the Good Shepherd were similarly concerned and, indeed, viewed the streetscape – particularly after sunset – as one of the most calamitous threats to young girls. There were apparently “hundreds of girls from 12 to 15 … found parading the streets of the city night after night, exposed to a thousand temptations.”108 Whether threats of moral corruption originated within dingy tenement homes or busy intersections, the disciplinary regimes shaped by the practical, educational, and religious routines within institutions were thought to provide adequate, and even exemplary, protection. They were directed at protecting children from harm, reforming them where required, and providing them with some semblance of childhood, as it was then understood. These same routines and programs were also intended to promote a child’s “best interests,” which required creating and encouraging behaviour, beliefs, attitudes, and futures that were commensurate with culturally fixed expectations about the children’s social status, gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. For children who were neglected, dependent, or delinquent, the child welfare system sought to correct the misfortunes of environment and heredity by carefully measuring and separating children according to a carefully defined and predetermined set of individual attributes and abilities and then promoting these attributes through its programs and surroundings. Overall, the work was for the good of the entire nation. “The children of this country are either potential assets or liabilities,” Blois explained. “On which side of the balance sheet they finally appear depends on two things – heredity and environment during youth.” And because the child “had no control over either of these factors,” it was clear that the solutions lay with correcting individual behaviour and attitude using the facilities at hand.109 Most, if not all, of the managing boards and superintendents of Halifax institutions believed that to some extent, no matter the degree of comfort and “homelike” atmosphere they could provide within their facility, not all children they cared for were living out a

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fully realized ideal of childhood; the possibility of doing so required an actual home, the setting within which the ideal itself was based. From the earliest years of their operation, therefore, city institutions boarded out, fostered, and arranged adoptions for the children in their care. Such practices were seen as the key to the ultimate success of their goals and, in this sense, were a direct extension of institutional methodology, which sought to separate the various “classes” of children and to individualize treatment.110 Each child would be sent to live with a personally selected family whose situation and background were, as far as the homes’ adoption committees or boards judged them to be, suited “for the child’s best interest and happiness.”111 Indeed, as the managers of the Protestant Orphans’ Home declared as they reopened their institution following the Halifax Explosion, their “aim is to provide a temporary Home for orphans and neglected children until they can be placed in suitable foster homes, or taken over by responsible relatives.”112 Certainly, not every institution appears to have taken an approach to adoption and foster care that a professional social worker would have commended; at the Salvation Army Home (for unwed mothers), for example, annual reports from the 1910s note only a vague program whereby children were “kept until they are 2 or 3 years of age when they are adopted out, [and s]ometimes the mothers make the arrangements.”113 When William Owen took over the superintendence of the Halifax Industrial School in 1912, his report to Blois indicated a similarly loose approach to fostering and discharge. “Re placing out of boys,” he wrote, “I have reckoned out the number of boys placed in foster homes, according to the record left, the surplus 59 may or may not have returned to parents – I cannot say.”114 At other institutions in the city, not only were homes chosen according to the superintendent’s or case committee’s personal judgment of “best interests,” but caseworkers and members of the managing committees also visited children in their new homes to determine the success of the matches. The “expense of such visits,” according to the secretary of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, was “well repaid in the satisfaction of knowing the children were in comfortable homes.”115 When situations warranted, children were removed from homes that were considered below standard. The religious at St Joseph’s Orphanage described this aspect of their work as “the most difficult … the most anxious responsibility of those in charge of the orphans.” It required “the unremitting exercise of that

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watchfulness over the well-being of the children” and the extension of “that influence which must yet follow them a long distance after they have passed out of the Institution.”116 The Halifax Infants’ Home had perhaps the most developed and rigorous system of boarding out and adoption in the city in the late 1910s and early 1920s – or, at least, the one most carefully articulated. Arranging adoptions was part of the work of the home from the very beginning of its operation, but following the reorganization of its program in 1918, the board hired Elizabeth Woodward, a “trained social worker, who has specialized in children’s work,” to assist the home’s superintendent (who was herself a graduate nurse).117 Woodward “investigate[d] all applications for admission to the Home” and placed those children who were eligible for adoption into “carefully selected and personally investigated” foster homes. These children were also “placed on a year’s trial” in their foster homes before legal adoption was granted, and “during this year the visitor sees them every few months.” The result, according to the Ladies’ Managing Committee, was that “a very friendly relationship is thus established between the Home and the foster parents.” The institution’s use of boarding homes also extended to those children whose mothers did not want to relinquish custody of their children but required temporary care while they established themselves in a permanent job or marriage. Usually, the home attempted to board the baby with the mother’s relatives, but where this was not possible, the home paid $3 per week to board the child “in a very carefully selected private boarding home,” where the mother “was always a welcome visitor.”118 The home promoted this type of motherchild bonding for all of the unmarried mothers in its care. It also improved mortality rates among the infants by requiring that each mother remain in the home to nurse her baby for six months after the baby’s birth. Many women no doubt found this requirement emotionally onerous and restrictive, but from the home’s perspective, it “not only insures the health of the baby, but also forms a very close bond between mother and baby, which may mean the salvation of the mother … We are growing to feel that adoption should be the exception and not the rule for the illegitimate child.” Overall, the home’s boarding-out and adoptive programs were said to prevent the children from “becoming institutionalized,” as they received “love and individual attention which is impossible to obtain in the best run institution in the world.”119

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The program at the Infants’ Home, as well as similar efforts at other institutions, operated well within the parameters accepted and promoted by the provincial superintendent. In 1919 Blois noted that these practices had been, to his mind, improving. In the past, children had been simply “given away by institutions and committees with as little thought and consideration as there would be in parting with so many little kittens.” However, recent years had apparently “happily … awakened a truer and juster sense of responsibility and thus we find our children’s institutions employing expert visitors and investigators for this important work.”120 The provincial office’s work with foster care, in fact, closely mirrored that conducted by the institutions. Blois’s reports made continued reference to the importance of careful, personal investigations of every potential foster home to ensure that the personalities of would-be foster parents were compatible with the child’s and that the home itself met a particular standard; in this way, he also ensured greater personal control over the disposition of neglected and dependent children.121 Thus it was no longer acceptable that foster homes be chosen on the basis of letters of recommendation, a practice that had been in use at some institutions (and in his own office) in the earlier part of the century. “Often we find the writers of these recommendations will tell us privately quite a different story,” Blois reported, and so “a personal visit, by a person trained and qualified by a natural and acquired understanding of human nature, should be made at the home of every applicant.”122 The importance of visiting after placements had been made was also essential. This ensured that if a mistake had been made “by placing a child in an unsuitable home,” the situation could be redressed relatively quickly. However, although frequent visiting was requisite in some cases since it prevented the “sacrifice” of the poorly placed child, in other cases it could “lead to distrust and tend to prevent the child from becoming ‘one of the family.’” As a result, visitors required experience, along with “considerable tact and moral courage.”123 The same qualities were required of visitors within the provincial children’s aid societies. In 1917, acknowledging that many of the provincial societies could not afford a “regularly employed agent,” Blois nevertheless warned that “[t]here are often very unpleasant scenes” awaiting visitors, and the duties of a CAS required “experience, tact, and a certain physical and moral force, sometimes known as ‘muscular Christianity.’”124 However, despite

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these challenges, “many happy children” had been placed in foster homes by his own office, the children’s aid societies, and the institutions. “[W]e hold the belief,” he stated, “that when properly selected with an eye to the welfare of the child, but ever keeping in mind the absolute necessity of placing ‘the right child with the right home,’ thus safeguarding the interest of the foster parents as well, the normal child will be better off than in an institution.”125 Although the ultimate goal of foster care and adoption was to grant the child an opportunity to live in a “normal” family environment, there were specific guidelines to be followed when determining what constituted “normal” for each individual child. “Respectability” on the part of the receiving home was not enough. Potential foster and adoptive parents had to be “persons who understand children and who are willing to care for those in need of special treatment.”126 They were those who wanted the child to be a member of their family, not a cheap servant or labourer. “When you take a homeless child to your home to care for and bring up as your own child,” Blois advised, “remember these things; the child is human, and has faults. If you expect perfection (according to your notion of perfection) – you will be greatly disappointed. If you have not patience, love and a kindly disposition, the child will not be happy. If you are irritable, nervous, quick tempered, stingy, or a slave driver, don’t ask for a child to adopt. Get a dog. The dog can bite you and get even. A child can’t.”127 Acceptable foster and adoptive parents were also those whose religious and ethnic background matched the child’s. A major role of the foster/adoptive home was to safeguard the child’s education, religious as well as secular, by ensuring regular attendance at church and school. For this reason, there were practical and legal safeguards in place to ensure that children were, as far as possible, adopted or fostered into homes whose religious affiliation was the same as their own. The continual dearth of foster homes and adoption placements for black children also demonstrated that race was equally important in choosing a placement; the racial barriers, as well as the chronic poverty of the Nova Scotian black population, meant that it was “much harder to find suitable foster parents for colored children than white.”128 In 1928 the Halifax CAS also noted that a “serious community problem” was created by the “negro child and the negro unmarried mother.” Despite earlier claims by the Halifax Infants’ Home that black mothers and children were welcome, the CAS

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declared that “no institution will admit a negro baby who is under two years of age.” In these cases (the CAS report noted twenty-two children and fifteen mothers), the women “returned usually to their own homes which, in the opinion of the CAS director, provided little in moral or physical care.”129 Strict criteria in the selection of foster homes meant that in this period it was not only the black community that had an apparent shortage of foster homes and adoptive families. In 1928 Blois reported that it was “becoming increasingly difficult to secure the type of foster home which measures up to our standards.”130 A few years earlier, the president of the Halifax CAS, J.A. Walker, had noted similarly that foster placement was a particular difficulty for his agency and that “[n]early all the children taken over during the past year are still in institutions or temporary shelters [because the CAS] had been unable to find … foster homes for them.” Walker, however, argued that the problem was a result of poor staffing at the agency, as opposed to a lack of appropriate homes. The CAS in Halifax did not have a paid social worker at this time and instead relied on the services of the local policewomen, as well as on the staffs of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and the provincial office. With the assistance of a trained worker, Walker argued, suitable foster homes could be found for all of the CAS wards. In a statement that foreshadowed changes to the position and influence of local institutions in the child welfare system, he stated that he was hopeful that “before long we shall be able to enter into an arrangement by which all the institutions will co-operate with us in placing in the field a trained worker who will devote the greater part of her time in locating suitable foster homes.”131 The redundancy of institutional care within the child welfare system thus appears to have been in its embryonic stages in the early 1920s. Through their own participation in and emphasis upon foster placement and adoption, the institutions themselves were encouraging their own superfluity. But for a shortage of personnel and funding, according to the CAS, institutionalized children would have soon found themselves within the institution of foster care or adoption, and the institutions themselves would have acted only as temporary, emergency boarding homes. Blois agreed. Although he believed institutions were “a necessity” and saw much good in them, “we can also see a great deal of good in the ‘foster-home’ and ‘boarding-out’ systems’” since “a home is the proper and natural places for

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a child, [and] institutions are more or less artificial substitutes.”132 However, the institutions could not be so easily dismissed, if only because decades of presence and influence within the city gave them both credibility and utility beyond what might have been seen as appropriate by expert child welfare workers; local people continued to rely upon them directly to care for their children, and the oftrepeated concerns of the provincial superintendent about the shortage of quality foster homes demonstrate that Nova Scotians were more amenable to congregate, rather than individualized, solutions for dependent and neglected children. The disciplinary system that functioned within the institutions, and of which fostering and adoption were a part, also meant that although greater numbers of children were chosen to enter the foster care system, other children were revealed as unsuited to either fostering or adoption. Just as the sharpening definition of the childhood ideal exposed this ideal’s perversion, so did the careful categorization of children expose individuals for whom the institution was considered the most appropriate place. Institutions, therefore, were not becoming entirely or immediately redundant but were forcing a change to, and being forced to change, their mandates and practices in order to meet the needs of a more specifically and closely defined population. One category for which foster care was quickly ruled out was that of children between the ages of twelve and sixteen. The perception, probably grounded in fact, was that foster parents requesting older children were seeking to acquire servants or labourers for their homes, farms, and businesses. There was a clear historical precedent for such practices; St Paul’s Home for Girls began its work as a training ground for transforming troubled, teenaged girls into domestic servants. Boarding-out from the Halifax Orphan House in the eighteenth century was done specifically to provide apprentices and labourers, and other institutions across the country had maintained similar practices, to the point that the meaning of “adoption” was blurred with the meaning of “apprenticeship.”133 However, by the turn of the twentieth century, as a cultural consensus about appropriate childhood experiences – even for children of the poor – was reached, labour was ruled inappropriate (unless tied, as it often was, to training and education). Thus the managing board of St  Paul’s had begun to refuse requests for servants around 1905, declaring that “our children are only sent out for adoption.”134 In 1916 Blois

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argued that his own office had “fewer of such cases than any institution placing out children in foster homes” and that “[n]ot more than one out of twenty applications for children from 14 years of age upward is accepted.”135 However, requests for these sorts of placements continued, making the necessity for vigilance – and the ability to judge who would make an acceptable foster parent – imperative. In 1931, for example, Sister M. Wilfred of St Joseph’s Orphanage reported that “[a]s regards the placement of children in foster homes, the demands are generally for girls in their teens. This seems to indicate the people are seeking their own interests rather than the good of the children.”136 Although the motives of some would-be foster parents seeking older children were considered dubious at best, there was also a perception that these older children, particularly those who had parents living, were temperamentally unsuited to foster care. “These children may have a good record in some institutions,” Blois explained, “and may even express a great willingness to go out to a new home, but life at the institution is so different from life in the family and because the old habits have not been forgotten but merely disused, these older children do not fit into the home life as do the younger ones.” Moreover, since it was not possible to restrict access to such children in foster homes, as could be done in an institutional setting through rules about visitation, parents and relatives of these older children could find out their location and entice them home.137 Thus some older children presented a category of dependants for whom institutional care was necessary because it was both therapeutic and corrective and thereby protected their “best interests.” Similarly, there were “other cases,” notably those of chronic delinquents and truants, where it was “necessary to keep [children] for a considerable time under observation and training” within an institution in order to assess their viability as candidates for fostering or adoption.138 In his response to Atkinson’s report on the local industrial schools (in which Atkinson roundly criticized the lengths of time that some of the boys had been in the institutions, placing partial blame on the superintendent’s office), Blois hinted to Charlotte Whitton that, in certain cases, long stays in institutions were highly profitable. “A number of these boys,” who had spent upward of eight years in the Halifax Industrial School or St Patrick’s Home for Boys, “are now matured men in the City of Halifax [and] some of

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them have done remarkably well … One might [therefore] argue that a long term was more beneficial than a short term.”139 A similar case was argued by the religious at the Monastery of the Good Shepherd. The work of rehabilitating young girls could not be done effectively through short stays. This opinion, according to Sister Teresa, was supported by the inmates themselves. As one young girl was reported to have said – after expressing her joy at finding herself once more sentenced to the home – “‘Do they think that a drunkard can be cured in ninety days?’”140 Ironically, at least part of Atkinson’s 1929 review of reformatory care might have been used to support Blois’s position on the value of longer stays in institutions. In explaining why the institutions themselves had to conduct extensive follow-up care of their former inmates (as opposed to leaving this work to an independent social worker or employee of the provincial office), Atkinson argued that, in a well-run institution, the boys would develop a sense of trust, kinship, and affinity toward the staff that would provide muchneeded stability in their lives. They would be “responsive” to the “wise guidance” of the institution, and the institution itself would “know the boy, his strengths and weaknesses, and [therefore be] in a better position to give direction to him than anyone else.”141 Such a relationship would be unavailable to those whose time in the institution was brief. Generally, the Halifax CAS was in agreement with Blois; whereas foster care was desirable for children considered to be normal, others were better suited to the congregate institutional system. However, in the CAS’s 1928 report, there is a subtle indication that deciding who was normal had as much to do with financial constraints as with any other criteria. The report noted that “[t]he society has not been able to develop boarding home care as it would like, mainly because of lack of funds,” but it stated somewhat defensively in the very next sentence that “[s]ome children thrive on an institutional regime, and others never do well in an institution. Consideration must be given to the personality and needs of the child.”142 The decision about whether to place a child in foster care, the casework involved, the investigations and follow-up respecting these placements, and the general administrative chores of running an institution were clearly labour-intensive and complicated. And although for some children fostering was believed to be a definite

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improvement over institutional care, the decision to implement and expand fostering was not, in this period, based upon the belief that the institutional system required modernization or replacement. The institutions themselves actively promoted and participated in foster care because it was a method that held the potential to accomplish their most fundamental goals. Foster care was, in this sense, the extension of institutional imperatives into the community.

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4 “Out of Mutual Respect Will Come Mutual Responsibility” Coordinating Services and Promoting Interagency Cooperation after World War One The therapeutic methods that Halifax institutions adapted to city life had little opportunity after World War One to operate in a stable environment. As this chapter explores, the years between the wars and the years of renewed global conflict after 1939 were ones of extraordinary struggle and turmoil – not only for the institutions but also for the entire urban and provincial population. What remained consistent throughout the many discussions of child welfare in this tumultuous period was the demand for a more rigorous surveillance of the conditions under which delinquent, dependent, and neglected children were cared for – not only for the sake of the children themselves but also (and perhaps more particularly) for the sake of the taxpayers, as the institutions received increasing amounts of public funds. In the later 1920s and into the 1930s, improvements to the welfare system were also promoted through efforts at interagency cooperation on committees, through voluntary cooperative societies, and through the use of centralized reporting and recordkeeping agencies such as the Social Service Index.1 Established in 1934, the index consisted of an extensive filing system that recorded the names, dates, and reasons for which local families requested relief. The idea behind the index reveals both the persistent mistrust many local welfare people felt toward the poor and the persistent drive for efficiency that had characterized much social reform work of the prewar era. When individuals approached a welfare agency for support, the agency could refer to the index in order to ensure that it was not

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“duplicating” the efforts of another charity. In this way, the system could be made more efficient through the elimination of “overlap” (a polite term for “double-dipping”). But just as programs and practices for the internal institutional surveillance of children were dependent upon local conditions and constraints, so too were efforts like those at the index, which sought the cooperation and surveillance of the entire system. Besides the challenges presented by the economic context in the province and city, which were both entrenched and troubling, three important, interconnected factors contributed to the local conditions for cooperation and shaped its potential outcomes. The first was the apparent need to improve and expand administrative surveillance and coordination of the work of agencies and institutions themselves. The second was a strong, religiously anchored conviction that cooperative efforts were essential not just to efficient welfare but also to the reform and regeneration of Canadian society as a whole. The third was the growing tension between a demand for greater centralization and state control, on the one hand, and a continued demand for leadership from local interests, on the other. Complicating the message, if not the means, of these two positions was that no clear lines were drawn between advocates of one or the other. The combination of these elements, in the context of the economic strain and the perception of growing social dislocation and strife after the Great War, produced a number of idiosyncratic collaborative efforts in the city. Economic troubles were certainly nothing new to the city of Halifax or the province more broadly, but at the close of World War One, the benefits of wartime production and mobilization ended abruptly, the optimism of the new century faded, and several decades of bleak struggle ensued. Wages fell, unemployment rose, and for many in the province, migration became the answer to uncertainty. Across the Maritimes, an estimated 122,000 people moved away, and population growth stagnated.2 There was corresponding political ferment visible in the rising popularity of third parties, particularly the United Farmers Party, and in the organization of the Maritime Rights Movement. The latter, under the leadership and direction of middleclass business owners and professionals, sought greater political representation in Ottawa and a better financial deal for the eastern provinces within the terms of Confederation. In some industries,

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notably the coalfields of Cape Breton Island, labour unrest was also persistent and occasionally violent, as workers responded to the deterioration of wages and living conditions.3 In Halifax, however, the labour movement lost its wartime cohesion as the city’s economy entered a profound slump. Part of the postwar decline resulted from the nearly complete disappearance of the once substantial naval establishment and from the loss of nearly half of the city’s manufacturing jobs over the next decade. Whereas some businesses and factories closed or shifted their operations westward, others never rebuilt after the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Still others, like the Halifax Shipyards, dramatically scaled back their workforce at war’s end, sending hundreds of men into the ranks of the unemployed.4 The effects of unemployment were immediately apparent to civic leaders, and in 1921 the mayor felt compelled to convene an emergency meeting of the City Council “for the purpose of discussing the unemployment situation” and devising strategies for “bettering the condition of those out of work.” These strategies included expanding public works projects to create jobs for unemployed men, holding a special Tag Day to raise funds and awareness, and borrowing substantial sums of money “to cope with present cases of destitution.”5 From the perspective of the welfare workers and other concerned individuals in the city, jobs and money for working men were not the only requirements for dealing with destitution; the condition in which the city’s poor actually lived presented a substantial obstacle for the dreams of urban reform. Although there was little postwar growth in the city’s population, the enormous expansion of the number of city residents prior to 1920 had caused notable stresses within the city’s infrastructure that were not easily remedied in the economically deprived conditions of the 1920s and 1930s.6 This was particularly true for the provision of housing. As described by the Halifax Evening Mail in 1925, low income residences were “[d]ark, inevitably filthy, rookeries unfit for habitation by animals, much less human beings, much less children.” Such degraded housing conditions were threatening not only to the physical health of residents but also to the moral tone of the city, as within those walls “criminals and ne’er do wells [were] being produced.”7 And although deeply unimpressed with conditions facing the urban poor in Halifax, provincial superintendent Ernest Blois also deplored the existence of “country slums,” where “the most degraded conditions

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are to be found.” The problem was seriously compounded by the fact that, in the country, these slums remained hidden as a result of their isolation; “[i]n cities or towns … the home conditions are generally known to somebody, either the church, some charitable organization, or the neighbours, and dire poverty and cruel neglect are more speedily reported and investigated.” In the country, by contrast, fewer charities were operating, and neighbours were apparently far less nosy. But wherever slums existed, the cost was high, paid out in “low moral standards,” illegitimacy, feeble-mindedness, and “economic loss arising from this class of citizens.”8 Worse still, from these poor living conditions radiated “evil social ideas” that would “furnish the text for the main and most convincing argument of the social agitator of the destructive type. This country cannot afford to run the risk of developing a class of citizens who, both directly and indirectly, become a menace to organized society.”9 The “degraded conditions” about which Blois worried – sometimes identified as the effect of unemployment but usually attributed to personal moral failures and degenerate living – were, in his opinion, getting worse; a definite shift in cultural standards had occurred in the province. “[T]he home and family life as they once were known are fast disappearing,” he lamented shortly after the war, “and as a consequence, neglect of children and delinquency, are rapidly increasing. Inadequate housing accommodations, the high cost of the essentials of living, the mad desire for pleasure at any cost, loose morals, and low religious ideals are the chief causes for the breaking up of family life.” He then waxed nostalgic about the “old days” when people stayed put, implying that stationary lifestyles bred economic and social stability. In the past, “there was very little moving from place to place … Today, however, our people move … like flies in the sunshine,” and the results were sadly apparent to those working in the welfare field.10 The staff at the Halifax Children’s Aid Society (CAS) likely agreed with this assessment and certainly struggled with similar effects of the depressed economy. In 1925 the president of that agency noted that “[t]he business depression and lack of employment has impoverished many families, has increased the number of children that should receive attention from the society, but our resources are so limited that we can only deal with the worst cases.”11 Similar difficulties were faced by institutional staff. As reported by Laura Dean, matron at the Halifax Infants’ Home, “[w]e are passing through very strenuous and

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unusual times. Unemployment, in many cases, causes lowering of ideals, and religion and law are forgotten under miserable existences. These conditions react on our work and many of the cases brought to us during the past year are very young girls, who have been easily led astray. May God, in His mercy, show us some way to prevent these lapses of purity and good-behavior.”12 It was not only the shifting population, the lack of employment, and the widespread poverty that were perceived as creating problems; Blois also believed that poor conditions were linked to the type of people suffering under these conditions. Ethnic mixing had, in his opinion, lowered the quality of citizenship and eroded the religious atmosphere of the province. In the “old days” he claimed, “there were very few people of foreign nationality; the people were deeply religious and the moral standards were relatively high.”13 The specious connection he made between ethnicity and moral character was echoed in other highly racist characterizations of local problems. In December 1924, for example, a brief editorial in the Halifax Citizen argued that “[j]ustice has failed in Nova Scotia of late, particularly in the city of Halifax. Rape and debauchery fiends go about their daily pleasures without fear of molestation. Negro and foreign masters of organized vice drive nightly through the city in their limousines rounding up their white slave girls. The big moneyed organizations of the liquor traffic carry on their trade unchecked. There’s something wrong in the core of things.”14 These highly inflammatory opinions were manifested in more than print; physical attacks against African Nova Scotians and Chinese residents of the city occurred with regularity throughout the interwar period.15 The latter part of the 1920s saw no appreciable improvement in the economy or, according to Blois, in the social conditions that were conducive to good family life and healthy childhood. In 1928 it appears that he was considering the physical restriction of children in order to curb some of the worst problems. Writing to Charlotte Whitton of the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC) in January of that year, he requested information on curfew laws for children across Canada and was “anxious to get it at the earliest possible moment.”16 A year earlier, Whitton had also notified Blois that Dr Hincks, the director of the Canadian Mental Hygiene Society, had conducted a survey in Nova Scotia. She wrote that he had discovered the “most incredible conditions in respect to illegitimacy” and had reported that conditions “extended beyond mental hygiene questions into

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child welfare questions and general community social conditions and relations.”17 In his reply to this report, Blois noted that he was not surprised by Hincks’s findings. “I frankly admit that we have a bad state of social affairs in this Province,” he wrote. “I have been stating it emphatically in my Annual Reports to the Legislature for fourteen years, as well as on numerous occasions in public and private. Few people realize the tremendous difficulties under which we have been labouring … with respect to child welfare work and social work generally.”18 So great were these problems, in fact, that Blois was seriously considering retiring from his post as provincial superintendent in the late 1920s. Exhausted and frustrated, he turned down Whitton’s suggestion of a new position in British Columbia. “I had not thought of going into this particular line of work if I leave here,” he wrote. “Frankly, I am tired, dreadfully tired.”19 It appears unlikely that the turn of a new decade brought any relief for the overworked provincial superintendent of child welfare or for any other charity or welfare worker in Halifax. Indeed, with the onset of the Depression, unprecedented numbers of people in the province came to rely on charities, social services, and children’s institutions in order to survive. In January 1935 the CWC estimated that in Halifax fully 17 per cent of the city’s population was on direct relief. As the city’s ports were busiest in winter and as more Haligonians could secure some employment while the legislature was sitting, this situation was considered an improvement over what had been – and could be – experienced in the city at other times of the year. As far as local families were concerned, it was likely also considered an improvement over the earliest years of the 1930s. Publicly supported outdoor relief had been granted in the city only since 1933, and prior to then, “cases of destitution had been sent to the county poorhouse.”20 Because the province’s Children’s Protection Act officially forbade the placement of children in poorhouses, poverty subsequently carried the threat of family separation.21 Records of the CAS also indicate an enormous spike in the number of wards taken on within the city. At the start of the Depression, the CAS was caring for 125 children; by decade’s end, the number had jumped to 279.22 Outdoor relief, too, did not bring much in the way of security. Before September 1937 Halifax had some of the lowest relief payments in Canada, and the distribution of these “obviously inadequate” sums was conducted by “a humourless and unimaginative”

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commissioner.23 Some families consequently relied on the labour of their children, a situation noted with concern by members of the recently formed Children’s Division of the Council of Social Agencies (Division A). In September 1936 they decried the persistent presence of young children on the city streets selling papers and trinkets or begging for alms.24 However, not all of the province’s welfare workers agreed that the Depression was a direct cause of social problems in the community. According to Gwendolen Lantz, the social worker eventually hired by the Halifax CAS, “poverty has been the underlying cause in a large proportion of cases of domestic difficulties and separation of parents … The discouragement, fear and anxiety, over the past years of the depression, has resulted in social problems which in normal times would not have developed.”25 Although Ernest Blois agreed that poverty created challenges and noted that the Depression had resulted in a “deluge” of applications from parents and family members seeking assistance from local agencies and children’s institutions, he lay blame for these struggles at the feet of a different and curiously unnamed cause. The oblique inference drawn from his assessment (based upon statements made in other annual reports) is that he believed personal and moral failure was a more likely source of strife. Thus in 1937 he wrote that the concerns of family and child welfare could not “be wholly separated from the general economic conditions of the country, yet it should be noted that the problems of dependency, neglect and delinquency with which the Children’s Aid Society and this Department are chiefly concerned are not by-products of The Great Depression.”26 Although the outbreak of war in 1939 did bring some economic growth to Nova Scotia, it was a mixed blessing for the city. “Each day and hour seemed to be lived under a sense of the highest tension,” one social worker recollected, and “[t]he peace time agencies were caught unaware, and did not know what they should do.”27 Stephen Kimber has argued that many in Halifax saw war coming long before its official declaration (and thus could hardly have been caught unaware), but it is equally true that the city was unprepared “to assume its suddenly vital role in the world in September 1939.”28 The population within the city increased from approximately 66,000 in 1939 to over 100,000 within two years. Soldiers, sailors, officers, and “camp followers” joined the growing numbers of men and women who flocked to the city to take advantage of employment opportunities in wartime industries. However, the city’s infrastructure and

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housing facilities had shown little improvement during the 1930s, and as rental rates increased, rooms disappeared; military personnel were housed in skating rinks and gymnasiums, young women coming into the city for work slept in the halls and recreation rooms of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and conditions for the city’s poor deteriorated further.29 According to the secretary of the city’s Community Chest, Gwladys Kennedy (clearly not an unbiased commentator), the war had “affected Halifax more than any other city in Canada except possibly Vancouver.” In addition to dealing with the arrival of guest children, she declared, social agencies were reporting rising numbers of broken families, desertions, and separations, as well as an “enormous increase in illegitimacy and juvenile delinquency.”30 There were also a multitude of health crises, including outbreaks of scarlet fever and diphtheria, rising rates of tuberculosis, and the menace of venereal disease.31 Health and welfare workers were deeply concerned about the meagre living conditions and overcrowding that persisted in the city’s poorer areas, arguing that these regions were breeding grounds for disease and immorality. As had been the case during World War One, concerns about sexual immorality were particularly pronounced, occasionally outstripping concerns about poverty and poor housing and taking on the rhetorical character of late-nineteenth-century moral panics. The local Anglican Council for Social Service drew particular attention shortly after the onset of war, for example, to the problem of “Street Walkers” and the “dangers that will beset our soldiers and sailors from Venereal Disease” if nothing was done to strengthen “present inadequate laws, and otherwise cope … with the situation.” Just a few months later, it declared in a resolution to the City Council that “the conditions under which hundreds of men, women and children are forced to live in this city constitute a serious menace to health and morals,” and it demanded that action be taken to improve housing for the city’s poor.32 What was perceived as a serious deficiency in accessible and constructive recreational programs, both for children and for adults, exacerbated these concerns. In 1943 Gwynedd Monroe of the Community Service Department of the Halifax Junior League33 wrote to the CWC that “[t]here is no Community Centre or recreation program outside the Y’s, and the small children’s library operated by the Junior League.” She then noted the “the usual wartime stories of youngsters becoming prostitutes (except [not] technically, as they do not accept

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money).” With the city “full of soldiers and sailors, and no adequate – or for that matter inadequate – recreation available, the result is to be expected.”34 The war also brought physical dislocation and housing problems to the city’s welfare agencies themselves. One local social agency was homeless for almost a month at the start of the war, when it was forced out of its offices to make room for air force administration.35 According to its social worker Gwendolyn Shand (and doubtless many welfare workers in the city would have agreed with her), this disruption’s most deleterious effects were a vital loss of control over the centralized management of charity in the city and a concomitant rise in the spectre of charitable duplication. Whatever the demand for more services might have been, more was not always desirable, particularly when it came at the expense of supposedly efficient, centralized organization. Thus Shand complained of the City Council’s inability to “prevent the hasty establishment of all kinds of ‘wartime’ services,” such as “canteens, service centres, and hostels [which] were burgeoning all over the City.” Whatever benefit such services may have had for the city’s inhabitants, the resulting conditions made it “more difficult for the local welfare agencies” – those that Shand and other established charities considered legitimate – “to secure adequate funds.”36 The end of the war also brought the destruction and “mental depression of the V.E. Day riots,” and at least one local institution, the Halifax Infants’ Home, suffered structural damage from the explosion of the naval magazine on 18 July 1945.37 Although no injuries were sustained among the home’s inhabitants – in fact, “the children slept all night” – the building sustained several broken windows, fallen plaster, the collapse of one of the chimneys, and several cracks in the walls and ceilings. The magazine explosion roused memories of the confusion and destruction caused by the 1917 explosion, and it was perhaps in response to this that the Home of the Guardian Angel had been advised, later in 1945, to consider attaching identification disks to its infants “in case of fires or other accidents.”38 Coping with these difficulties was not easy given the chronic underfunding of social agencies in the province. Charitable dollars for child caring agencies were scarce, and grievance over the miserly nature of public support was correspondingly abundant, making for a rather constant refrain after World War One. The demand for greater funding so that these agencies could continue to ensure that

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dependent children would be rendered into useful, contributing citizens was one that, if not always effective, nonetheless carried enormous rhetorical strength and, at times, lyrical splendour. This lyricism was mobilized particularly well by Judge J.J. Hunt of the Juvenile Court, who informed the public after World War One that neglected children were, “[a]mong all others,” those who “command our deepest sympathy.” He then recounted, after a parable by St Ambrose, the story of a “great king” who “ordered a godly missionary to produce and give to him the treasure of the Church.” After several days, the missionary appeared once more “with scores of poor and homeless children, and pointed to them [and] said to the king, ‘These are our treasures.’” Hunt concluded that “[w]e in Canada can as truly say that from such are the treasures of our great Dominion.”39 Gwendolen Lantz, executive secretary of the CAS, favoured a similarly potent narrative in her annual report to Blois in 1928, although her text was drawn not from biblical authority but, in keeping with her own sense of professional rigour and experience,40 from the authority of psychiatry. Quoting the work of American psychiatrist Bernard Glueck, she began her report by noting, It is one of the most encouraging indications of the direction in which our civilization is moving that the degree of wisdom and maturity of a community is being judged more and more by the manner in which it deals with it’s [sic] childhood. This should not surprise us when we remember that everything which is to come after us, the good and the bad in human relations and human destiny, must of necessity be so largely determined by the manner in which we deal with the raw human material of the future, namely, the childhood of our own day.41 From Hunt to Lantz (and those between and beyond), child rescue and welfare were presented as vital projects for public support, whether one used religious or politico-scientific justifications or some combination of both. However, demands for greater public support – and, of course, funding – did have the effect of drawing the public interest into discussions of welfare administration. This was not a simplistic or unproblematic consideration, and concerns about the effect of public interest and funding became increasingly common after the Great War. Not surprisingly, they were particularly and openly manifested when revelations were made about the

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conditions faced by the boys at the Halifax Industrial School in the autumn of 1924 (discussed in the Introduction). Reactions to the inquiry, both by the public and by those working in the child welfare system, reveal a broad range of opinions on what constituted appropriate “public interest.” In the first instance, the revelations themselves were an unprecedentedly public moment for child welfare in the city. The walls of the Industrial School were effectively peeled back, revealing the day-to-day operations and experiences of the boys, which were a far cry from the school’s incorporated purpose to assist and educate its inmates. Prior to the Halifax Citizen’s exposés, all provincial institutions, the provincial office, and the CAS fully controlled what became public. Their annual reports, the most detailed and accessible documents relating to their administration, were carefully crafted with specific purposes in mind, one of which (arguably, from their perspective, the most important) was to generate public sympathy, demonstrate efficiency, and thereby increase donations. Indeed, in 1924 “public interest” in the institutions might be said to have been defined almost exclusively by this narrow understanding. In one of its earliest reports on the Industrial School, the Citizen made it clear that it understood itself as bridging a very different connection between the institution and the public. The paper’s “chief function” was to “reveal truths which would otherwise never be made known, and to urge and even demand reforms, of which there is such crying need.” The Citizen was particularly well suited to do this, the editor explained, because “a newspaper is in a peculiar position and can find out many things that most people cannot find out.”42 One of its readers, a concerned “Citizen of Ward Two,” agreed, suggesting that “an audit of the school’s books might reveal some interesting facts” and, further, that “[s]uch a question might well be asked … with all of our public institutions, both charitable and educational, so that we may know just what results are being secured with the people’s money.” And although the writer deplored the inhumane conditions alleged to exist at the institution, he hoped that “as a result of the Industrial School investigation, we shall see an awakening of our citizens to a larger realization of their obligations in connection with the public institutions situated within our fair city.”43 Thus, if members of the public were going to contribute, through their taxes or charitable dollars, to the support of places like the Industrial School, they were equally obligated, and within their

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rights, to take an interest in the goings-on of these institutions and to demand change where they deemed appropriate. Whether intentionally or not, this author and the Citizen’s editor assumed that public funding rendered these private charities essentially “public.” If the Citizen’s reporters or their readers had examined Blois’s annual reports with any care (or at all), they could not have claimed to have been the first voice speaking out on behalf of the boys or attempting to generate public interest in the institution. They might also have recognized a very different perception of what the “public” could do or command within the child welfare field. In virtually every one of his reports to the legislature between 1914 and 1924 (which appear hopelessly ineffective by comparison to the Citizen’s ability to generate attention and response), Ernest Blois pointed to what he considered the chief failings of the Industrial School. The institution was “not in the condition it should be,” and although “such an institution perhaps was quite good enough fifty years ago … times have changed and methods have changed and there should be a decided change at the Industrial School if this Institution is to do the work required of it.”44 He criticized more specifically the lack of adequate clothing given to the boys and several times pointed to deficiencies in its industrial training and educational programs. He was also clear about what local and provincial tax payers should expect: “While the public is paying such a large proportion of the maintenance,” he wrote, “it is quite reasonable to demand a better system of training and educating the boys.”45 During the inquiry, this acknowledgment of the public’s right became a criticism of public failing; “[o]ne vitally important matter” revealed by the hearing was “a deplorable lack of public interest in the School and its affairs.”46 Blois had made a similar argument several years prior to the scandal, writing that although “[g]ood laws justly carried out [were] a help” to social improvement, “the primary need is the quickening of the moral and religious ideals of all the people.”47 In 1922 Blois speculated at length about how the defects of the Industrial School (and similar, but apparently less dire, problems at St Patrick’s Home for Boys) might be approached in an organized manner that would satisfy the “reasonable demands” of the public for the efficient and effective expenditure of funds at the reformatory. But the solutions proposed did not include direct input from the public, despite his belief that public interest was vital. He recommended, therefore, the establishment of a provincial commission

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that would address the question of relocating the homes to properties outside of the city, the possibility of organizing them along the lines of the cottage system, whereby the boys could be “carefully graded,” and finally, “outside of religious instruction,” the issue of “what education and training should be given.” Such a “Commission of independent persons in whom the public have confidence,” he explained, “would place these institutions in a proper light before the public and would be of very great assistance to those who are striving to find ways and means of bringing [them] up to reasonably modern standards.” Indeed, the sorts of concerns that could be addressed affected not only the inmates but also “in a less direct but nevertheless vital way the general public.” Blois’s notion of an ideal “public,” then, was one whose taxpayers were informed and supportive – but not necessarily intrusive or apt to request input or control. Their demands would match his own. As he explained to Whitton in 1932, insistence on an increase in the proportion of public monies to support the maintenance and operation of children’s homes was a risky business; “[i]f we depend only on Charity,” he told her, “then in times like we are passing through now, the Societies are apt to suffer greatly. While if we depend on public funds, those who contribute are too insistent on control.”48 C.A. Baragar, the medical superintendent of the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Brandon, Manitoba, expressed similar opinions after reviewing the evidence from the Industrial School inquiry. After the hearings had begun, the CWC requested copies of the reports published by the Citizen and mailed these out across Canada – exposing the school to national public interest. Baragar was one of many to respond. Despite acknowledging that a degree of the blame for conditions must be placed with the institution’s administrators, he argued that ultimately the blame lies with the public themselves and the ordinary citizen. Very often these institutions receive altogether inadequate support, both moral and financial. I think most public officials will agree that they feel they are working against tremendous inertia that tends to crush out in them initiative … The public must give sympathetic support, and if they do they have a right to expect … a reasonably great amount of success. It does seem unfortunate that these unhappy conditions must arise, and must result in a regrettable public scandal before the ordinary citizen can be interested and made [to] do his share.49

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This share was, as Blois would have concurred, restricted to financial support and to concerned but unobtrusive and trusting “interest” in the work conducted. The remedy proposed for the problems at the Industrial School was not to change the fundamental goals of institutional care or to close this particular reformatory. As when Brother Stanislaus admitted failure at St Patrick’s in 1920, the inquiry into the Protestant reformatory sought not to close the school but to draw attention to the worst circumstances of the home’s environment in order both to preserve the original religious intent behind institutional care and to bring it in line with modern practice. In Blois’s final report on the inquiry, for example, he clearly stipulated that the management of the school required professional direction. The boys who were resident at the school needed to be more carefully classified according to the principles of modern child development theories. The layout of the institution needed to be “modernized” and completely altered from its traditional organizational patterns. In short, the institution required in the city was not the original, mid-nineteenth-century congregate facility, whose main purpose was to save “poor and friendless Boys,”50 but a thoroughly modern facility with a professional staff and a carefully engineered setting designed to deal with the multiple causes and manifestations of modern juvenile delinquency. However, in this same report, Blois also stipulated that one of the most important requirements for this rehabilitation was an increase in the involvement of the city’s Protestant churches, both in the development of programs for the boys and in the overall management of the home.51 The inquiry had exposed the worst conditions, worthy of every syllable of condemnation that critics could utter, but because it sought reformation rather than closure, the hearings promoted the importance of well-functioning institutions rather than lobbying for their elimination. As echoed in his final report, Blois was particularly vocal about the need to improve cooperation and coordination of services in the city, but he was somewhat equivocal about the means for achieving this improvement. For the provincial superintendent, cooperation was foremost a mode of work that demanded greater rationalization of effort under the guidance and control of his office; it did not imply the sorts of partnerships and casual collaborations frequently envisioned and practised by local mangers and boards52 but a far more structured, state-centred set of practices. Given the demands of his office, this approach might be interpreted as having been

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predominantly practical. This version of practicality, however, necessarily placed his office in a central, commanding position. His job as the inspector of humane institutions (including county poorhouses) and the CAS, his position as the overseer of provincial foster care homes, and his role as a justice of the Juvenile Court for regions lacking their own had to be supported, supplemented, and strengthened, he believed, by a province-wide agreement on the basic principles of child welfare. This agreement was, further, best served by a top-down organizational structure, wherein his office was at the top, defining the specifics of these principles and the proper means of implementing them. As he reported shortly after World War One (in direct contrast to the continued operation of Poor Law regulations), there had been “a time when it was generally thought that the careing [sic] for the poor, the unfit, the insane, the orphans and neglected children was a matter for each community to deal with as they saw fit.” No one who was then familiar with problems of social welfare in the province, however, “would subscribe to any such doctrine. A progressive policy which will produce results of a permanent character must be founded upon this truth; – The whole Province is concerned in the well being of each individual citizen. We will never accomplish anything worthwhile as long as each community is left to deal with these matters according to its ability and from the view point of local interests.”53 These “local interests” were not only parochial but also potentially dangerous for children in need and could be eliminated only through centralized control. Without more centralized reporting, for example, he argued that there was a good possibility that an application to take a foster child that had been rejected by one agency would be accepted by another. To avoid such a situation, there was a need for the institutions and children’s aid societies to notify some central organization – his office was the obvious choice – when they rejected a particular application and to report the reasons. It was “very difficult to separate the child’s problem from that of the family and the community,” he argued, and “community” necessarily implied the entirety of Nova Scotia. “The whole Province is responsible as one big family for the social conditions existing” throughout, particularly as many towns, districts, and municipalities lacked, in his opinion, both the “leadership [and] the financial resources to carry on anything like modern methods of social work.”54 Even when leadership existed, as it did (however flawed

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and enfeebled by financial strife or denominational jealousies) within the institutions, local, narrow interests had to be sacrificed for the centralized whole. In 1927, describing what he saw, perhaps wishfully, as the “steady and well defined improvement” within provincial children’s homes, Blois wrote that managers had moved from a position of “proud and almost jealous private ownership to one of friendly cooperation.” They had apparently recognized the “higher and nobler conception” of welfare work, which accepted “the idea that a Home or institution for dependent children is one part only of a general community or state scheme of child welfare.”55 Defending this view to Charlotte Whitton a few years later, Blois rejected her “theory” that it was wiser to place responsibility for some services in the hands of “local people” within the province. “If it is sound and carried to its ultimate conclusion,” he wrote, “the City of Halifax might very well say to certain streets that they are responsible for their local condition and therefore the rest of the City would pay no attention to them. Indeed you might narrow it down to one block on the street, and then to one house on the block and to one tenant in the house and thus down to the individual, which gets you nowhere because that is where it is when you start.”56 Whitton’s reply to Blois’s somewhat reductive reasoning was astute. First, she emphasized that she was recommending partial local responsibility for the fiscal burdens of welfare programs (in this case, mothers’ allowances) as a more reasonable approach than placing the entire cost on the province. She then remarked that Blois’s insistence on centralization might be criticized as well; from the province, to the Dominion, to the continent, to the League of Nations, “to Moscow and the Third Internationale, or the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of Man, according to the spirit in which you approach it. And then we are back to where you are – the individual and his needs. You arrived there by the streets of Halifax in your letter, I by a world tour. Words, words! They can be made to urge anything.” This same letter, however, also hinted at the growing power and influence of Blois’s office in the province. Despite acknowledging that the somewhat prickly and irritated tone of his letter was perfectly acceptable – “I am glad … that you feel that you can use me for a safety valve to the extent that you have” – she then quipped, “It is good for you, and therefore, I would guess, good for Nova Scotia.”57 However, Blois’s vision of good for the province was not wholly defined by a belief in absolute state control. He clearly envisioned

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the provincial office as a necessary leader in the shaping and execution of policy but maintained an equally strong belief that voluntary, community-centred initiatives were vital for the reform and improvement of child life in the province – particularly given the expense of this reform and improvement. His position was thus determined, in part, by the necessity of generating charitable donations; the provincial coffers were not well trained in delivering money for social welfare, and the individual citizen had to be looked to – and, it was clear, should be looked to – in order to make up the shortfall. There was virtue in charitable giving and voluntary effort, and given the meagre support for social welfare expenditure from the state, Blois (and many others like him) made a virtue out of necessity. Indeed, as he argued at the time of the Industrial School scandal, engaging individual citizens in child welfare work in their communities improved existing services. As he further declared in 1940, the “marked development of social consciousness of the public” was the most significant of all improvements he had witnessed since taking office in 1912. It had been “the means whereby many important changes have taken place which have not been directly sponsored by this department but which had their origin in the desires of groups of private citizens to promote the welfare of their community by social planning and social organization.”58 Almost a decade earlier, quoting at length from the recently tabled report of the Royal Commission on Public Welfare in Ontario – a document he believed “very appropriate” to Nova Scotia – Blois provided another window into his thinking on private, local initiatives in child welfare, this time with regard to the CAS. “There is seemingly a tendency in some quarters,” the report read, “to make the Children’s Aid Societies mere annexes of the Municipal system. This should be resisted.” The lack of voluntary input would “seriously injure” the societies (and, no doubt, the health of provincial coffers if they then had to pick up where the societies left off). Instead, they were to “operate as free as possible from either Government or Municipal interference,” thereby retaining “an unofficial and human touch” that was, at its core, less expensive and likely more responsive to local-level needs. “The voluntary feature should be anxiously maintained and promoted,” the commission declared, “and the Societies should be pressed to ask for and depend considerably upon contributions by private citizens for all work other than the maintenance of wards.”59

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On the one hand, religious charitable agencies and institutions shared Blois’s vision of collective responsibility for social conditions in the province. On the other, they were clearly amenable to arguments about minimizing centralized, state control and managing welfare among themselves at the local level. Therefore, whereas Blois sought a gradually tightened administrative reign centred on his office, child welfare workers in the agencies and societies attempted to tighten ties between themselves in a variety of cooperative interagency initiatives within their community. This cooperation was envisioned, foremost, as an indispensable tool in the effort to reform and regenerate Canadian society along the lines set out by their vision of a Christian community.60 The ability to extend the benefits of an ideal childhood to all children, “to train the child for civic and social life,” and to “develop its character, uplift its ideals and fit it mentally, morally, and physically for its future work” required a sincere, rigorous, and combined effort and the reform of all aspects of social and political life.61 The Social Service Board of the Baptist Association of Nova Scotia argued, for example, that the “branch of Christian work known as Social Service should be more intimately allied with the work of the church,” as “[n]o evil can long flourish under her ban.” The church, therefore, had to “cooperate with all social agencies in the endeavour to place proper laws on the statute books as well as to enforce those already there.” Through such cooperation, “the principles of Jesus [could be applied] to our social and economic problems.”62 The association was unwavering in its belief that “our religious problems are vitally and inseparably related to life as it is being lived about us” and that the solution of these problems with their manifold complexities, is to be found in the application of biological and sociological law as well as in metaphysical and theological assertions. The essence of religion is unchanged and unchangeable but in its message and application, in an ever changing world, there must be continuous and constant adjustment. This does not mean that social service is to be divorced from christian service but that social service is christian service, and whatever makes a contribution to human welfare, is in the last analysis religious and in accord with the great purpose of Jesus. Our social problems are religious problems.63

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In the mid to late 1920s, this blending of religious and secular goals in the cause of child welfare was manifested in a variety of cooperative endeavours between denominational and nondenominational agencies in the city. Many times, such endeavours linked local child welfare workers with provincial and national social welfare organizations. Several members of institutional boards, for example, were also members of such religious organizations as the Baptist Association of Nova Scotia and the Social Service Council of Canada. Along with support for child welfare initiatives and institutions, these larger bodies actively involved themselves in virtually every aspect of national and community welfare and reform, including industrial relations and unemployment, the promotion of anti-gambling and temperance legislation, international relations, education, the care and training of the feeble-minded, and the reform of the criminal code and laws related to juvenile delinquency.64 These sorts of centralized, cooperative efforts were considered necessary not only because of the manner in which they enriched the Christian character of the community and those who served it but also because of the perceived interconnectedness of both the causes of and the cures for child dependency, neglect, and delinquency. For example, child welfare workers in the city had been drawing direct links between threatened and problem children and the physical environment of the city (particularly poor households) for many years. But although they could regulate and treat the symptoms of poor environments and meagre parenting by removing children from them, they were powerless to alter what they saw as several of the most direct causes of dependency, neglect, and delinquency. Charities could ask the province for money, but they had no larger say in how the government managed the economic and social concerns that, in effect, made their work necessary; neither, if his complaints were accurate, could Blois. And as the economy declined and the purse strings of both the government and private charitable donors tightened throughout the interwar period, independence – from each other and from other charity and welfare services – became increasingly difficult for institutional managers to defend or sustain. However, although there were a number of administrative outcomes of this desire to cooperate, not all of them were amenable to the predominance of the institutions within the city’s child welfare program. One of the most prominent examples of this cooperative trend was the agreement made between the Halifax CAS and the

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denominational institutions in 1925. In the early 1920s, the CAS, as was intended, became an important element in the effort to coordinate and improve the management of child welfare services in the city. This effort was intensified – in theory, if not always in practice – after the CAS had raised enough funds to hire a full-time worker, Gwendolen Lantz, in 1925. Lantz, a native of Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, received a bachelor’s degree from Dalhousie University in 1911 and also may have received a diploma from McGill University’s Department of Social Study and Training in the early 1920s. With experience as a visitor for the Halifax Relief Commission’s Rehabilitation Division after the Halifax Explosion and as a worker at the Montreal Children’s Bureau and at that city’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Women and Children, Lantz appeared well qualified, in both education and experience, to take on the position in the Halifax CAS.65 Lantz’s arrival corresponded with, and was dependent upon, the first attempt made to formally organize cooperation between the institutions. In March 1925 St Joseph’s Orphange, the Home of the Guardian Angel, the Protestant Orphans’ Home, and the Halifax Infants’ Home all began making regular, annual payments to the CAS, which were used to engage Lantz as a full-time caseworker. In return for a “comparatively small sum” paid to the CAS, representatives from each home were given a seat on the executive committee of the society, and their institutions’ applications for admission and discharge and their “social casework” were to be handled by Lantz. As Lantz described it in her first report as executive secretary of the society, the CAS was acting “as a clearing house for the problem of the dependent and neglected child and the unmarried mother and her child.” She also boasted that agreements such as this were “recognized as being the most modern and efficient at this time” and that Halifax was only the “second City in Canada (Montreal being the first), to adopt it.”66 (As chapter 5 demonstrates, this agreement did not work out quite the way it was intended.) In October 1926 representatives of provincial children’s aid societies and institutions, other interested social workers, and the provincial superintendent also “organized themselves for the mutual exchange of ideas in the hope of getting at the best working policies for all concerned.”67 The resulting Nova Scotia Society for Welfare Workers was a short-lived one, but for several years the organization held conferences across the province to discuss a variety of issues

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believed to be of mutual concern, from eugenics, behaviourism, and mental testing to foster home standards and the possible impact of reformatory experiences on boys.68 In 1927, however, Charlotte Whitton was in attendance at the conference – a much anticipated appearance sponsored by the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire – and her contributions may well have made some institutional representatives uneasy.69 Whitton spoke of institutions as “only one drug in the whole medicine chest of an adequate children’s welfare program” – and a diminishing, supplemental one, at that. According to a press report of her address to the city’s Rotarians, she reported that “specialists in social work had gone to Vancouver and conducted investigations which resulted in a modern and flexible service based on careful assistance to the home rather than on institutions.” The “modern community,” she was quoted as saying, “should be equipped to render help with the child left in the normal environment of the home … it should be the object of the community to equip the child normally for a normal life. Withdrawing the child from its home should be a temporary measure in most cases and a last resort in a few.”70 That local institutional workers had at least considered the possibility that theirs was perhaps not the best solution for the city’s young was revealed later in this same conference when, in a far more self-reflective and critical discussion than was ever expressed in an annual report, Brother Stanislaus of St  Patrick’s Home for Boys and H.O. Eamon of the Halifax Industrial School led a discussion “as to whether those institutions are to blame for failure of their graduates to make good in after-life, and, if so, wherin lies the remedy.”71 It is tempting to conclude that the brief existence experienced by the Society for Welfare Workers was a result of these sorts of critical discussions of institutional care; if cooperative efforts resulted in a push for closure, then surely institutional representatives would cease to cooperate. That they were, at the very least, less keen on cooperation than the provincial government is suggested by one report stating that Blois’s absence from the organization precipitated its disappearance, as though the provincial superintendent was the only thing keeping local agency representatives together. When, in 1930 and 1934, Blois was appointed director of both mothers’ allowances and old-age pensions, respectively, he was prevented “from providing the leadership necessary to keep the organization active.”72 However, other cooperative efforts were far more long-lived than this one and

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suggest that, perhaps, it was the provincial reach of the organization’s jurisdiction that weakened its endurance; during the interwar period, the idea – and more likely the cost – of province-wide organization was perhaps less appealing. The Council of Social Agencies, for example, was organized in Halifax in 1930, and its members were all drawn from the city itself. Despite the smaller geographic reach, the council maintained many principles similar to those of the provincial social workers’ organization of 1926. A voluntary, independent agency, it brought together representatives from the local children’s homes, the Halifax CAS, the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau, and other interested agencies, as well as individuals concerned with welfare issues ranging from recreation and housing to mental and physical health and unemployment relief. The original inspiration for the organization came in part, ironically, from the provincial social welfare conference in May 1928. It was also encouraged by a survey of welfare services conducted by a Judge Harkness of Ontario, who suggested such a body be created “in the interest of social service work.”73 The first president of the Council of Social Agencies (CSA), Mrs Geoffrey Morrow, consulted with Charlotte Whitton shortly after the executive of the council was elected, seeking advice on the best means of constituting the group. In her first letter to Whitton, Morrow displayed what might have been seen (from the perspective of the CWC), as a startling lack of understanding of the basic requirements for such a body, which foreshadowed the occasional ineffectiveness of the CSA in generating action on child welfare issues in Halifax. “At a meeting held today of representatives of all the Social Workers in Halifax,” she wrote, “it was decided to form a Council of Social Agencies and I was put in the Committee to get information explaining how it should be run and I am sending you an S.O.S. Do like a dear let me know the how and why of such an agency and any other information you think necessary.” Morrow further stated, with a slight jab at Judge Harkness’s efforts in the city, “I am quite sure we need one here and your friend Harkness strongly recommended it – the one practical idea he offered.”74 Following Whitton’s recommendations, the resulting council was divided into four sections, all of which reported to a central executive. These sections consisted of the Child Welfare, Family Welfare, Health, and Recreation Divisions. According to Whitton (and reflecting local belief in the interconnectedness of welfare problems), “[o]ut of a clearer perception of the community’s whole social problem and

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each agency’s part in its treatment, each group will logically perceive its joint responsibility towards the whole and towards the successful operation of the work of each other group. Each group will see that it cannot do a complete job in its sphere, if each other agency does not find it possible to do its part. Out of mutual responsibility, will come mutual respect, and that is the beginning of corporate planning and corporate responsibility.”75 Whether the mutual responsibility and respect Whitton described were the outcome of these efforts at coordination is debatable. Certainly, coupled with the city’s Social Service Index, the CSA appeared to function well as a means of eliminating the evils of duplication in charitable spending, thereby improving the efficiency (as it was then defined) of welfare services in the city. The regular meetings of the CSA’s Division A members (those working in the field of child welfare) also provided an opportunity to talk of common interests and concerns. In the early 1930s, they discussed a multitude of issues related to institutional care and administration, foster care, and curfew laws.76 However, there are several indications that, throughout the interwar period and into the early 1940s, there were indissoluble barriers to the effective cooperation of such agencies and the institutions in the city. Denominational politics were a particular source of friction in the welfare sector, expressed at times by a degree of indifference to the work of partner agencies and at times by blunt hostility and suspicion between rival denominations. However, these tensions were not restricted to the confines of the city, nor did they preclude interdenominational strife within a single institution. At the Maritime Home for Girls in Truro, for example, hostility between the participating churches on this reformatory’s board continued to impair the home’s operation throughout the 1930s. For the Anglicans, guaranteeing Anglican services for Anglican inmates was a particular challenge, as it had been the previous decade. The Council for Social Service for the Church of England in Halifax was also frustrated by the fact that the matron of the home did not distinguish the girls’ church affiliations in her records. Although such distinctions between Protestants were not legally required (as they were between Roman Catholics and Protestants), the Reverend Samuel Prince pressed the matter with the matron, as well as with Blois in November 1932, until satisfied that “proper classification” would be made.77 Other difficulties at the home arose in the late 1930s, when United Church

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representatives on the board demanded greater control of decisionmaking procedures. The demand, which instantly aggravated the tempers of the Baptists and Anglicans, was based upon the higher number of United Church inmates (and thus higher United Church funding) in the home. In response, Anglican and Baptist representatives began making overtures to the Presbyterian Church, hoping to bring another representative onto the board to offset the power of the United Church vote. The situation was not resolved until February 1938, when the full financial burden of the home was assumed by the maritime provincial governments. When this shift occurred, each participating church, including the Presbyterians, took an equal share of the board’s influence.78 Within Halifax, friction between denominations was not confined to battles between Protestants. In 1932 the Reverend C.F. Curran of St Joseph’s Rectory complained to the archbishop about what he saw as “the ultra-Protestantism of the Field Secretary” for the Community Chest, Gwladys Kennedy. His specific concerns, “from a Catholic point of view,” related to “the compiling of lists of names” by the Community Chest, “one [list being] Catholic and the other Protestant … with the evident intention of proving the contention that the Catholics, of the City of Halifax, were not bearing their fair share of the Community Chest Budget.” Curran reported to a special meeting with the chest’s Budget Committee that the archbishop himself “was very much displeased with this discrimination against the Catholics of the City, that he objected to our people being singled out for publicity, when absolutely no steps had been taken to ascertain from the Baptists, the Anglicans, the Methodists and other denominations of the city, the amount they had contributed.” He concluded that Kennedy “should be forbidden to make any comparisons or in any other way to stress the Catholic versus the Protestant element in this campaign.”79 Of equal concern to Curran was the Community Chest’s decision to reduce the budget allotments to two local Catholic institutions, the Monastery of the Good Shepherd and St Theresa’s Retreat, a boarding home for aged women, retired nuns, and young female workers in the city. For the Good Shepherd, in particular, the “proposed reduction of $1000 … in the opinion of the religious,” would not make membership in the chest worthwhile. But it was not simply reduced funding to which Curran referred. In explaining the concerns of the religious at the home, he revealed that the authority

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claimed by the chest to intervene in the business of the institution was a significant irritant. The chest claimed this right in much the same way as the provincial office claimed the right to inspect and demand changes within the institutions by referring to the rights of those members of the public whose well-earned dollars were given to support charitable institutions. Those giving grants in an era of financial constraint (which was a perpetual one, it seemed) had to have assurances that their money was spent efficiently. The Good Shepherd, like all other institutions in the city, had to abandon complete independence in order to claim its share. However, Curran insisted that Catholics would not see the Good Shepherd “embarrassed” by the paltry amount or by the intrusion. Instead, “Providence would make up their deficit. For all they were receiving – the results did not compensate them for the publicity given to all their affairs at the Monastery.” Curran also drew attention to the fact that the city’s larger Catholic institutions (particularly the Home of the Guardian Angel) apparently did “twice or three times the work” of their Protestant counterparts yet received a quota far below that given to Protestant agencies. Despite acknowledging that part of this difference must necessarily result from the fact that the religious worked without salary, he did emphasize that Catholicism was “the only denomination in the city to have a special letter, bearing on the merits of the Community Chest, read from all our pulpits; ours was the only religious body to depute one of its clergymen to organize the campaign among the adherents of our church. Our quota was already small enough without aiming at making it smaller.” Curran therefore suggested to the Budget Committee that unless their quota remained the same as in previous years, Catholic charities in the city would consider conducting their own campaign. He frankly admitted that such a move “would be disastrous to the good relationship hithertofore existing between the various religious bodies in the city of Halifax … [and it] would unavoidably lead to a serious outbreak of religious bigotry … that did exist in the city, despite the belief to the contrary.”80 In the end, likely influenced by Curran’s protest, the Community Chest decided not to reduce the allotments to these two Catholic agencies. The chest also appears to have taken at least part of Curran’s complaint to heart. In 1934 it sent a letter to all Protestant parishes in the city requesting that a prepared statement on the Community Chest be read at Sunday services in the week preceding

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the chest’s drive. The letter deliberately referred to the Roman Catholic archbishop’s activities on this front, perhaps hoping to inspire (or embarrass) Protestants into action through competition. “For the past three years,” the letter noted, “a strongly worded pastoral letter from His Grace Archbishop O’Donnell has been read at all masses in the local Roman Catholic Churches … and it has been felt that some of the Protestant Churches could do more to cooperate than they have been doing.”81 Interdenominational friction of this sort was accompanied, as well, by an attitude of wariness and occasional resentment toward any outsider presuming to speak for the local situation. A few years into his tenure as the assistant director of child welfare for the province, Fred MacKinnon told Nora Lea of the CWC that it was “common knowledge that the Maritimes are rather clannish, and like to have workers from their own area.”82 Clannish or not, the maintenance of an aura of difference from the outside bolstered defence of local practices, even as it acted as justification for local weaknesses and failings. R.H. Murray, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (SPC), reflected this attitude in his assessment of the problems encountered with William Johns’s tenure at the Halifax Industrial School. “The superintendent and wife are not natives of Nova Scotia,” he wrote, and although “[t]here isn’t such a lot of comfort in that … there is some.”83 Hattie Ogden, writing to Charlotte Whitton in her capacity as the general secretary of the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau, concurred with this opinion. “We are no doubt a peculiar people,” she wrote, “and we must go carefully and slowly … I have not lived in Halifax all my life and worked with the Halifax Welfare Bureau for six years, without knowing something of its people and how they are to be handled.”84 Even Ernest Blois voiced a degree of irritation at the attempts made by other child welfare professionals to review, to judge, or even to make recommendations on his work in the province. This was certainly evident in 1930 in his response to Manitoba social worker Henry Atkinson’s review of Halifax’s reformatories. He charged that Atkinson – a man who apparently had “limited experience” and no grasp “of the broad principles which govern political action in social matters,” as well as a “personality which [does not] impress … people favourably” – had misunderstood or “deliberately misrepresented the facts” about the reformatories in the city. This was particularly true, he declared, with regard to Atkinson’s

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description of the segregation of inmates. Atkinson had reported finding “neglected, dependent and delinquent children” in the institutions, to which Blois responded (contrary to his own annual reports) that, in Nova Scotia, “[w]e are not concerned with names.” Atkinson simply had not taken the time “to find out whether these words have the same meaning in Nova Scotia that they have in Manitoba.” Thus, although a boy committed to the home “may be technically a neglected child, he is in reality in need of reformative institutional training and under such a system a boy’s case is more likely to receive careful consideration.” Blois further argued that “[t]he word ‘dependent’ has no significance in this Province.” The institutional practice of taking in so-called dependent children voluntarily from their parents and guardians was, in fact, a preventive measure that allowed greater flexibility in dealing with these particular sorts of cases. And although he did admit that there was a “mixing [of] types,” he defined these “dependent” boys as “boys of wayward tendencies [who were] taken in rather than having them go on and be committed by the Court.”85 In this same letter, Blois also lashed out at Whitton’s apparent interference and presumption on matters pertaining to mothers’ allowance legislation in Nova Scotia (which was passed in 1931). “I cannot help wondering what would happen,” he wrote, “if you were actually administering a department rather than formulating policies for others from a purely theoretical standpoint. There is a big difference between actual administration and theory.”86 Although Blois’s later apology for this resentful outburst deflected blame from Whitton’s interference, it still revealed a degree of rivalry within the province. “[W]hat sometimes gets under my skin,” he reflected, “is the fact that people who simply could not administer a public department for a month, let alone for seventeen years, criticise us for not carrying out certain reforms or certain policies.” Echoing the cautious opinion he had expressed about public involvement during the Industrial School inquiry of 1924, he asserted that there were not only several differing opinions about what constituted a “right policy” in the province but also “many half-baked people in this world who seem to be full of theories.” Unfortunately, from his perspective, these people had “the ear of the public, through the press and otherwise, and we get all kinds of schemes advocated, sometimes injurious, which simply make it more difficult for the administering officials to carry on their work.”87

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The provincial superintendent did not simply struggle against the injurious influences of outsiders; he was also the man whom some provincial social workers credited with creating difficulty through his ignorance of local circumstances and bullish exercise of government authority. Patricia Rooke and Rudy Schnell have observed that Blois’s long tenure as superintendent led to some stagnation in the province;88 in 1946 several social workers would have considered this an understatement. Although overt expressions of frustration with Blois’s tenure and methods are exceedingly rare, occasional moments of tension reveal that his attempts to centralize child welfare at the provincial level were neither appreciated nor seen as the best method of caring for needy children. In April 1946, at a meeting of the Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies (NSACAS),89 this discontent made news in Halifax papers. Sixty delegates from across the province witnessed a “straight from the shoulder address” from Elizabeth Torrey, the CAS secretary from Sydney. A report sympathetic to Blois and the provincial office described Torrey’s “attack” as resulting from a cabal organized with Charlotte Whitton and Gwendolen Lantz “to spread rumors about the dangers of government interference.”90 In the newspapers, however, the public was informed that Torrey’s concerns were inspired by the “lack of co-operative understanding” between the societies and the provincial office. Her complaints were rooted in an explicit contrast between local- and state-level control – what Blois might have called the contrast between the parochial and the efficient but that Torrey clearly saw as the contrast between what was flexible and responsive, on the one hand, and what was distant and disconnected, on the other. She described Blois as operating with an “iron hand rule” and declared, in direct opposition to his emphasis on the importance of centralized organization, that “many societies would have been better off if they had used their own intimate knowledge of local conditions, rather than listening to advice from outside.” She accused the provincial office of capricious funding practices and of abandoning societies to the mercies of public vitriol. Since public discontent usually occurred, she argued, after a society had followed Blois’s advice, CAS workers discovered “to their sorrow” that the province would not assist them: “they merely let the Society take it, even if it meant slashed budgets.” She also believed that “the government agency did not see the whole picture of social work” and argued, instead, that “it was necessary to work

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for the community as a whole and not for the glorification of any particular department or agency.”91 Fred MacKinnon responded in part to Torrey’s complaints by claiming that what the province sought, in essence, was greater efficiency. “The Department … had only one aim in mind, and that was to build up in the Province, on the public and private level, the best possible social services manned by competent personnel.” That “Miss Torrey” was not such a competent person MacKinnon made clear in a later reflection on this conference. Her concerns, he stated, were merely the frustrations of a woman who had few friends or admirers and who was intent on using the provincial office as a “kind of whipping boy” to relieve them. He was not unaware of the tensions created by the shift in power to the provincial office, however, and bluntly avowed that Torrey was resentful of the province’s growing power. “No one likes being dependent or receiving largess from others,” he wrote, “least of all those who are capable of doing things we want to do and cannot. Mr. Blois was a ready and easy target for three frustrated welfare workers who admired him in one breath and attacked him in the next. Miss Torrey was merely the front for the three.”92 MacKinnon’s annoyance at the supposed impudence of Torrey’s attack on Blois’s administration was rooted in his desire – a deeper and far more pronounced one than his predecessor’s – to centralize services and rationalize the various practices of CAS staff across the province. In describing his apparent inspiration for the NSACAS, for example, he noted that the “singular and central problem” facing child welfare efforts in the late 1930s and early 1940s was “the isolation of agencies and individual personnel and the almost total absence of persons of like mind with who to discuss experiences … We were all intensely Provincial and parochial. Finances, attitudes, and tradition all tended to make us so.”93 Ironically, MacKinnon laid some of the blame for this situation at the feet of Ernest Blois. Whereas Torrey, Lantz, and Whitton had found Blois intrusive and autocratic, MacKinnon found him “suspicious of government direction and paternalism. He felt strongly that the Children’s Aid Societies should generate their own enthusiasm … I believed then and still do that government should lead and not be driven.”94 This sort of antagonism (and the desire to operate without being questioned) was not restricted to the superintendents of the provincial office or to relations between the institutions and the CAS. R.H.

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Murray of the SPC, for example, was particularly disapproving of Judge J.J. Hunt of the Juvenile Court. Hunt was, in Murray’s opinion, “non compos mentis,” a “travesty,” and Murray had “been trying for five years” to impress the truth of this opinion in order “to help everybody to know what he is, because of what I definitely and positively know of his stupidity and unfitness for office.”95 Similar personal tensions were exposed at the Halifax Infants’ Home in the early 1920s when a battle erupted over a decision by the Ladies’ Managing Committee to fire the home’s doctor. Although the details of the committee’s reasons for this firing are not stated in the records, it is very clear that the Advisory Board of the institution, made up entirely of men, was divided over the issue. (The Advisory Board was responsible for managing large overhead costs, investments, and legal issues, whereas the committee administered the day-to-day functions of the home.) For the ladies of the committee, the board’s unwillingness to give immediate and unambiguous support to their decision raised fundamental questions about the division of power between the two bodies. Some members of the board, in turn, argued that the committee did not have the right to take such action without their prior approval because it was they, not the ladies’ committee, who would be legally responsible if any action was taken by the doctor for wrongful dismissal. At the joint meeting held by these two bodies to discuss the firing, accusations were made about mismanagement on the part of the committee, and “discussion became heated and the joint meeting broke up in a more or less informal manner.” Several weeks following this incident, the president of the Advisory Board, the Reverend Dr Forrest, who had been associated with the home since its inception, resigned in protest over the handling of the issue.96 Such disagreements over jurisdiction, language, and policy within the child welfare system in Halifax were a stubborn feature of the project of broadening cooperation and integration of services in the 1920s and 1930s. Given that this was a child welfare system founded upon a fundamental belief in the necessity of at least some degree of division, the resiliency and continuity of these tensions are not surprising. However, attempts to cooperate, even in the face of these tensions, were a necessary consequence of the economic deprivations and the inadequacy of funding for child welfare agencies. Efforts at cooperation were, at least in part, a response to the material realities of a seriously underfunded and overburdened child welfare system in the city. Cooperation was thus both a nod to modern

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methodology and an expression of local responses to contextual challenges. As demonstrated in chapter 2, the effect of racism on the organization of child welfare was one of the signs of continuity between old and new. Similarly, as the inquiry into the Halifax Industrial School reveals, the promotion of new techniques and policies did not imply the closing of institutions (although the rumblings were certainly heard). Instead, these techniques were proposed as a means of ensuring that existing services were adequately prepared to promote and carry out the programs that were so important to the protection of childhood. To promote the changes that were needed to keep underfunded programs functioning, the providers of these programs had to describe their work in terms that expressed the continuity of their purpose, demonstrated the system’s efficiency, and allayed potential criticism of its cost. These terms they drew from the language of modern efficiency, heavily laced with the language of sacred purpose; however, the manner in which these terms conflicted with those set out by the provincial office and, indeed, by the local CAS would become increasingly difficult to ignore.

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5 Managing “High Standards of Professional Ethics” Institutionalization, Gwendolen Lantz, and the Emergence of the “Modern” Children’s Home, c. 1940–1952 Governing child welfare in Halifax had never been easy. Too few resources for too many children, too little funding and too many expenses, racism, religious and class prejudice, and the jaundiced bickering of managers, board members, social workers, fundraisers, and provincial officials all made an easy mockery of the seemingly straightforward imperatives of child rescue. The province’s meagre economic growth and its concomitant social problems appeared, at times, to mock even the effort itself. During World War Two, “[h]usbands and wives [had] drifted apart; children [had] become problems without the father in the home”; and although there were “thousands of new families” requiring assistance and advice, there were also those that had “not had a chance really to be established.”1 Peace time after 1945 certainly did not repair the damage done by the interwar Depression, as adjustments were hindered by the persistence of many prewar difficulties. In 1947 one social worker in the city noted that unemployment “closely resembles the early days of the Depression.”2 Although several slum clearance projects were under way, affordable housing was scarce, and many families found themselves “under canvas” in emergency shelters. There appeared, to some, to be “a good deal of apathy” about these conditions, and as late as 1950, the Council of Social Agencies (CSA) publicly deplored “the herding of several families together with no privacy and no family life.” Worry over these sorts of living conditions was

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not merely inspired by the immediate discomforts experienced by individual families; it was also inspired by fears over the havoc that these conditions would presumably wreak on future generations of citizens. This worry was about citizenship as much as about individual well-being, and it alludes to the ideological power that resided in the postwar image of the nuclear family and its independent household. Thus, the CSA warned, if the situation continued, “we are storing up problems in health, in delinquency, and in lack of family responsibility.”3 Amid these strained yet familiar conditions, welfare agencies were also attempting to cope with each other. According to the Reverend Samuel Prince, president of Halifax’s Welfare Council, social agencies needed to organize “on a war basis.” Although “each agency has built up a splendid efficiency in doing its own particular job,” he remarked early in the war, “the various organizations have not developed the ability to work together for common objectives. We don’t know anything about military strategy. We haven’t learned to decide on objectives, to plan an attack and to succeed in large scale social accomplishment. Well organized effort will secure anything in Halifax … What the social agencies of Halifax need to do is to learn like an army to concentrate on objectives.”4 However, efforts to improve things by increasing levels of cooperation and organizing for the mutual benefit of all were not always successful; many of the challenges experienced before the war remained a feature of postwar administration. Perhaps the most conspicuous gap between good intention and outcome occurred following the appointment of Gwendolen Lantz as executive secretary of the Halifax Children’s Aid Society (CAS) in 1925. Almost from the earliest point of her turbulent career, Lantz’s work was hampered by the sorts of socio-economic problems that had bedevilled those in the field before her. But it was also characterized – and seriously impaired – by personal conflict with other child welfare workers. Lantz was characterized by many who worked with her as arrogant, authoritarian, and abrasive, lacking in the open sympathy and kindness so highly prized in institutional staff. She had, according to some, “an almost uncanny faculty of putting others in the wrong, even on occasions when the Children’s Aid itself [was] patently to blame.”5 This reputation developed despite Lantz’s own sense of professionalism and despite her inability to secure even marginally adequate financial support for her society. Indeed, throughout

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the lengthy and bitter conflict with the managing boards of the institutions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the institutions – historically characterized as the old-fashioned, unmodern element of twentieth-century welfare – managed to position themselves as progressive and professional against the claims of a trained social worker. Lantz, and consequently the Halifax CAS, came to represent the most unprogressive element of the child welfare system in the city. To a certain extent, the friction caused by Lantz’s personality made her an easy scapegoat for problems in a system that had been – and continued to be – severely underfunded and historically structured by division and antagonism. In framing their case against Lantz, however, institutional managers downplayed these perennial problems of child welfare administration and strategically overlooked their own unwillingness to cooperate with each other. Instead, they focused blame upon what they saw as Lantz’s inability or unwillingness to meet their needs. Significantly, these needs were carefully articulated with reference to a modern, professional methodology that required institutions be managed as short-term care facilities. Thus, although the institutions were ultimately successful in their campaign against Lantz (with a great deal of help from a far more aggressive provincial superintendent), a sacrifice was made in the further shrinking of their own jurisdictions. How this retraction occurred through conflict with the CAS secretary and how interagency tensions and postwar contexts affected local services are explored in this chapter. In 1940 provincial superintendent Ernest Blois reported that, happily, Nova Scotia’s institutions were “no longer regarded as permanent homes for children but rather as hospitals and clearing houses where temporary care is provided in order to prepare the child for placement in a normal home.”6 Without exception, however, individual children’s homes in Halifax found the work of keeping themselves “temporary” a serious challenge. Suitable adoptive and foster homes were scarce, and placements had been dropping off for most of the 1930s, as fewer and fewer families could afford to take on the added responsibility of another child (for population rates at the institutions in this period, see appendix 4). In the mid1930s virtually all of the institutions noted that one of the greatest difficulties they faced was finding homes that met their standards, particularly for older children. In 1935, for example, St Joseph’s

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Orphanage reported that “[v]ery few children have been given in adoption because of the difficulty of finding homes good enough for them.” Over the year, ten applications for children had been refused, and only two children had been placed.7 Both of the city’s orphanages, in fact, found themselves caring for children they believed far too old to benefit from institutional care, particularly if they were boys (the majority of the staff at these homes were women, so it is presumed that the superintendents and managers were concerned that the boys be exposed to appropriate masculine role models). Despite their desire to place these children in the community, however, there was simply “no place for them to go.”8 Underlining the challenges of placing these children are oblique references in the minutes of the Anglican Council for Social Service in the late 1930s that suggest some of them were sent to the City Home, in contradiction of the regulations of the Children’s Protection Act of 1923.9 The end of World War Two, which might have brought some sense of domestic stability to the province, did nothing to improve the availability of placements, and the “distressing lack of foster homes” continued to be a major concern.10 In 1940 Blois had identified this difficulty in finding foster and adoptive placements as a disturbing trend across the province. “It was not a difficult task a few years ago to obtain free foster homes for children,” he reported. Many families were quite willing to take a foster child into their home, and a considerable number of these children were later adopted … During the depression years it became exceedingly difficult to secure free foster homes and few people were willing to take children … on any other basis except that of boarding. The change has not been a sudden one, but it may be said that the trend since 1930 has been increasingly toward the use of the boarding homes and the number of available free homes has declined. The net result of this trend has been that our maintenance costs for children in boarding homes has gone up tremendously over the past few years, and unless conditions change it is too much to hope that these maintenance costs will appreciably decrease.11 The effects that this lack of foster homes had upon the finances of the child welfare system were keenly felt across the city. Although

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institutions continued to receive regular funding from the boarding of wards for both the CAS and the provincial superintendent, as well as modest grants from the city and the Community Chest, maintenance rates continued to be set well below the actual cost of caring for a child, even as the number of children in institutional care reached some of its highest levels (particularly in the late 1940s) and even as the cost of maintaining facilities increased. In 1947 the CAS estimated that the annual cost of raising a child was approximately $492.12. However, the combined municipal and provincial grant for neglected children to the institutions was only $5 per week, or $260 per year. And although, “in certain instances,” the rate could be “raised to $7.00 per week … permission had to be secured from the Minister, and this [was] very difficult to get.”12 The institutions also continued to take in private cases, and although small weekly or monthly fees were sometimes paid by the parents, relatives, or clergymen admitting these children, many of them were kept completely free of charge. In 1948, for example, one-third of the total number of days of care at the Halifax Infants’ Homes was given for free.13 In the same year, St Paul’s Home for Girls had seven children placed by the CAS and ten placed privately, and at the Protestant Orphans’ Home, twenty-five were public wards and twenty-two private.14 The Monastery of the Good Shepherd, generally considered to be a reformatory, also took private “charity” cases, caring for twenty-one such girls out of a total of thirty-eight. The population at St Joseph’s Orphanage also had a high proportion of private to public placements, with 110 private and only 71 CAS and provincial placements.15 The ultimate consequences of these circumstances were the gradual deterioration of buildings, the inability to generate salaries for trained staff, and the worsening of the quality of the living conditions for children. At the Halifax Infants’ Home, “[o]ne of the biggest problems” identified in the late 1940s “was the inability to give sufficient individual attention to the toddlers group and … [a] lack of funds was the chief reason.”16 The consequences were dire, as these children were then under threat of becoming “institutionalized,” precisely what Elisabeth Govan of the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC) claimed had occurred at the Home of the Guardian Angel and at St Joseph’s, both of which she visited in 1950. Although the religious were clearly interested in the children and concerned about these conditions, she wrote, “they seem unable to do anything about it.” At St Joseph’s, the additional wing constructed in the

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1920s (whatever benefit it might have brought to a community in need of shelter for dependent children) had apparently fulfilled Blois’s worst fears. The building “presents difficulties,” Govan noted, because it was “of the old institutional type,” and the work was “very much handicapped by the building and the accommodation.”17 The situation at St Patrick’s Home for Boys was equally distressing. Although the boys were housed in “a comparatively new fireproof building,” the home was, according to K.M. Jackson of the CWC, “one of the most depressing places you could imagine.”18 (In an effort to overcome the growing – and, by 1947, intractable – concerns about the physical plant at the Halifax Industrial School, this institution had been closed, and the boys had been moved to the newly constructed, provincially operated Home for Boys in Shelburne.) In the early 1950s the provincial superintendent summed up the situation quite bluntly. “All of our child caring institutions,” he stated, “are being forced because of lack of funds to do substandard jobs.”19 Despite the financial and material challenges of institutional administration, the work conducted at Halifax’s children’s homes continued to be marked by the same hopeful persistence that had characterized their efforts in earlier decades. Their inmates were educated and fed wholesome food, given time for play, and taught the responsibilities of citizenship and the values of Christian behaviour through regular Sunday school attendance and daily prayers. The environments in which they lived were renovated, painted, and decorated on as regular a basis as finances would allow in order to create as “homelike … colourful and … cheery [an] atmosphere”20 as possible and “remove what has been called the monotonous institutional appearance.”21 Attention was paid even to the provision of child-sized furniture and individual cupboards so that inmates could be trained “to be neat and orderly and to have pride in their individual possessions when they leave the institution.”22 Although concerns about overcrowding were common (particularly in the mid to late 1940s, when the number of children in care came closer to the reported number of available beds – see appendix 5), superintendents worked to mitigate the potential for isolation by ensuring that their wards mingled with other children in the community, whether through school, church, outings to parks, or other community activities. In the case of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, even a change of name was attempted (although unsuccessfully) because, as the

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provincial superintendent noted, “most of your children are not orphans and many of them have parents living.” Moreover, the name “is not one which the average child will take pride in repeating to friends outside – not because the institution is not a good one but rather because of the name itself.” It simply did not measure up, in his opinion, “to the program and the real homey atmosphere” that existed in the institution.23 Persistence was a feature of other, less appealing, aspects of the city’s child welfare network as well, most visibly in relation to the difficulties caused by racial segregation. In 1947, for example, “[t]he problem concerning [the] colored unmarried mother” and her child was raised at a Board of Management meeting at the Halifax Infants’ Home. Limited accommodation for infants, as well as long waiting lists at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC), meant that black mothers were unable to get adequate services and support, and it was evident that the colour-blind approach adopted by managers in the early twentieth century had eroded. To remedy the situation, the board at the Infants’ Home voted – again – “that no racial discrimination be made on admission of any unmarried mother to the Home”; two years after this resolution, the home was caring for a coloured woman.24 However, racism here, as elsewhere, was not eliminated by such resolutions. Indeed, the presence of the Reverend W.P. Oliver at the 1947 meeting that resulted in the above noted resolution may have had as much to do with the decision to eliminate racialized admission policies as any general sense of the need for ethnic equality. (Oliver was the prominent pastor at the Cornwallis Street Baptist Church.) The reports of the Baptist Association’s Social Service Board in the late 1940s and early 1950s confirm the persistence of “race prejudice … in these Maritime Provinces.” Even those who professed themselves to be Christian, “uttered disparaging remarks and pass[ed] on bitter untruths about our colored brethren.” The material outcome of such attitudes was “a reluctance to accept colored children” in at least one maritime institution, despite the lack of accommodation at the NSHCC.25 Difficulties coordinating efforts on behalf of dependent children and other community groups may also have resulted from the continuing “jealousies and quarrels”26 between various groups and agencies and even among the membership of the CSA. At times, these disputes had serious consequences both for the recipients of welfare and for those involved in its administration. They could also reveal,

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quite explicitly, the profound class bias of city social workers. For many years, for example, welfare workers in the city had complained of the free breakfast program for underprivileged school children administered by the Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (HAICP). The “archaic practice” of this “mass feeding” had been “carried on for a lifetime by that organization … and the Association is completely sold to the program … quite regardless of the fact that children come to those breakfasts whose own parents should be feeding them, and it is simply a means of allowing mothers to sleep in in the morning instead of carrying their normal responsibilities.” Visitors from the CWC were particularly vocal in the condemnation of the plan but were also supported by the social work community in Halifax, which “recognized the evils of the A.I.C.P. Program” and “lamented [the] insistence on … subsidizing poor home-making.”27 Trouble also plagued the CSA, whose various divisions met together only infrequently “owing to some friction.” Within Division A (child welfare), attendance at regular meetings was extremely low, well into the 1940s, and although each institution and child caring agency had at least one representative on the membership roll, there were generally only eight to twelve people at each session – often one or two of whom were guests of regular members. It was noted frequently that this low attendance, behaviour particularly characteristic of institutional board members from the Protestant homes, seriously hampered the effectiveness of the division’s study. Lack of participation implied a lack of interest in the cooperative methods promoted by the CSA.28 Attendance by the religious of the Home of the Guardian Angel and St Joseph’s Orphanage was very consistent (perhaps owing to the vocational nature of their work and their more advanced social work training), but Protestant institutional managers appeared content to undertake their work in a degree of isolation, perhaps believing that no real benefit could be derived from reviewing methodologies with other (i.e., Catholic) institutional administrators. The only exception to this trend occurred in October 1936, when a surprising twenty-six members were present for the first session ever held at the NSHCC; that some curiosity about the coloured home, rather than a sudden desire to cooperate, inspired this level of attendance seems likely.29 In 1948 a separate conflict also emerged between Division A of the CSA and the Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies

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(NSACAS). Both of these organizations had been reviewing the province’s out-dated Unmarried Parents’ Act. As their respective reviews drew to a close, the division’s committee suggested that the two groups conduct a joint meeting at which their opinions on the act could be discussed and that a single recommendation be forwarded to the provincial government. However, when the two groups finally met, members of the division were surprised to hear that the NSACAS’s version of the act had already been sent to the legislature. Further, it appeared that “there had been unfortunate manipulation behind the scenes” by members of the NSACAS, including Halifax’s Gwendolen Lantz.30 Some division members (whose attendance had been otherwise quite irregular) arrived at this meeting and voted in favour of the NSACAS’s act. Ada Greenhill, an instructor at the Maritime School of Social Work and a regular member of Division A, protested to the executive of the CSA, arguing that the behaviour was “a breach of democratic principle.” Discussion of the differences between the two versions of the act was vital, if only to “help to confirm our own convictions.”31 Eventually, the act passed by the legislature was closer to the version forwarded by the division. The dispute, however, exposed and maintained deep fractures in the relationship between groups and individuals that, as the Reverand Prince had hoped in 1941, should otherwise have “formed themselves into a central organization and set forth like an army with banners conquering” disease, dependency, and delinquency.32 In 1944 Nora Lea of the CWC voiced the opinion that at least some of the trouble within the Halifax child welfare community was directly related to personnel problems. Key individuals were too weak, in her opinion, to effectively reign in the individualist tendencies of local agencies or too well entrenched in the habits of local welfare administration to recognize, in the first place, the need for such reigning-in. Executive boards operated along the lines of a family compact, where committee leaders were frequently reappointed for several consecutive terms. Within the CSA, she targeted Prince and the executive secretary, Gwendolyn Shand, as particular evidence of this problem. “[A]lthough exceedingly well meaning and, [on] the part of Miss Shand, most conscientious,” the leadership of the CSA, Lea believed, was “not forceful, nor foresighted, and there [was] a tendency to accept the status quo and jog along as well as may be with the facilities and the scope which are at hand.” Prince, she lamented, had been president of the CSA for twelve years, a

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tenure that, in her opinion, must be the source of much stagnation. Unfortunately, she wrote, “there appear[ed] to be no indication that he would resign and make way for a more vigorous and forward-looking person.” Of equal concern was Shand’s “easy and pleasant manner,” which had apparently produced “an attitude of tolerant acceptance … rather than any real respect for the Council as a body giving leadership.”33 Later that same year, Lea remarked to a member of the Junior League that weak leadership extended beyond the CSA and that there was “a decided lack of … virility” among many of the boards and executives of local agencies.34 Paradoxically, given his own lengthy tenure as provincial superintendent, Blois himself had foreshadowed these concerns in 1933. “I am afraid that our difficulty in the future,” he wrote to Whitton, “is going to be … that a small group of elderly people in the community, who have little or no knowledge of modern methods in social work, get control of the Societies. These people, on account of their social and financial position in the community, wield tremendous influence, and unless one is constantly associating with them, they are apt to become fixed in their ways and their ways are not always the ways that we would like them to walk in.”35 From the perspective of the child welfare agencies, this apparent lack of progress was likely seen as having to do more with their weak financial position than with their own flawed or too-independent leadership. Indeed, stability in membership and leadership may have been interpreted as a benefit in these conditions. Even Lea admitted that “much of the responsibility for the stagnation” in Halifax lay in the inadequacy of the financial setup of the system – and she pointed the finger, particularly, at the city’s Community Chest.36 Like the CSA, the chest presented, in her opinion, “a really sad and obsolete picture.”37 She was not alone in her critique. The chest’s secretary, Gwladys Kennedy, who had caused such distress among the Roman Catholic community in 1932, was described by Helen Burgess of the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau as being “so anxious to hoard money that she strangled the development of the individual agencies.”38 Kennedy’s annual report in 1944, as described by Lea, “laid great emphasis on the point that Chests existed to save the business man irritation and prevent overlapping rather than to serve the social agencies. All this may give you some idea of why I felt rather blue about the City of Halifax and its private agencies.”39

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The constant financial shortfalls in the budgets of the institutions and private agencies spoke clearly of the impact of Kennedy’s frugal proclivities on child welfare. And, because several of the homes and agencies – including the Halifax CAS – lacked even the smallest private endowment, small Community Chest grants created particularly difficult obstacles to the improvement of facilities and services.40 Throughout the entire period of Lantz’s tenure as executive secretary at the CAS, the subject of the chest’s meagre allotment provided a regular refrain in her reports – particularly because of its impact on the CAS’s staff size. Comparisons made between the Halifax CAS and other agencies in cities of comparable size indicated to her that although she could afford only three to four workers, she should have had a staff of between ten and twelve.41 There were strong suggestions made from several quarters, including the CWC and the provincial superintendent’s office, that the CAS should withdraw its membership in the chest and conduct its own campaign to make up this shortfall. The CAS was “not generally lacking in sympathy and support throughout the Province,” and some argued that even the threat of a withdrawal might be enough to secure more adequate support. It had certainly worked for the Roman Catholic archbishop. Although Lantz agreed, she remained unconvinced that the CAS’s board could conduct a successful campaign. The continuing “unhappy relationship” between the CAS and the Community Chest thus meant that the CAS was “operating on a most inadequate basis.”42 Although there was a degree of sympathy for Lantz’s problem with the Halifax Community Chest, there was also a degree of frustration with Lantz herself because of what was described as her “unfortunate personality.” According to the Welfare Bureau, Lantz’s “attitude cause[d] considerable resentment” among welfare workers, and “continual reports were received regarding complications caused by [her] temperamental difficulties.”43 Staffing problems at the society were thus more often interpreted as a problem of character rather than cash flow. Critics in the provincial office and the CWC pointed to the “excessive” rate of turnover at the CAS as proof, arguing that trained social workers employed under Lantz were treated as “glorified errand boys” who were “not given much responsibility for initiative in planning and working through [their] case work.”44 In 1950 Elisabeth Govan reported that “any person holding a position in Miss Lantz’ [sic] office would need to be someone who had no desire to take … responsibility … or to use her own

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initiative, as that is apparently what Miss Lantz wants … In the past, people of more initiative than her present worker who have been on her staff have found the situation intolerable … the placement of an executive type of person under Miss Lantz would probably lead to disaster.”45 Friction between Lantz and other childcare workers also extended outside of her own office and into her relationship with the institutions and the community at large. Eventually, this conflict initiated a significant shift in the interagency relationships in the city – particularly among the institutions. Complaints about Lantz had been “received constantly from other agencies, from principals and teachers, from nurses, from the police, from members of the clergy, from doctors, business men, and housewives.”46 The city’s local newspapers also claimed to “have been aware of difficulties with the CAS at least since 1929” but had “hesitated to publish criticism” because “it injures the whole welfare structure.”47 By the late 1940s, however, these complaints, “buttressed by specific instances, and even the exact words used on occasion,” had convinced members of Division A “that there was something very wrong with the methods and administration of the CAS.”48 In 1948 these tensions resulted in the cancellation of the 1925 agreement between the CAS and the institutions by all but one local orphanage, the city’s largest, St Joseph’s. In a letter to the provincial superintendent, now F.R. MacKinnon, institutional representatives indicated that “they have not been fully satisfied with the services rendered by the Society,” and they asked the superintendent to take over casework “in such areas as intake and discharge.” As MacKinnon later indicated, “there are several implications arising from such requests [with respect to] the community organization pattern in the City of Halifax.”49 Division A’s decision to speak out officially against Lantz and the decision to cancel the 1925 agreement may have been spurred as much by the changed leadership at the provincial level of child welfare as it was by Lantz herself. In the early 1930s Ernest Blois’s duties within the provincial Department of Public Welfare were greatly expanded by the addition of two significant portfolios. In 1930 he became the director of the newly minted mothers’ allowance program, and in October 1933 he was appointed the director of old-age pensions. The added burden of these two positions gradually diverted his attention away from other aspects of child welfare in the

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province, a situation he acknowledged officially in the spring of 1938. At that time, he invited Fred MacKinnon, then a caseworker for the Colchester County CAS, to act as the assistant director of child welfare in the province.50 MacKinnon, a graduate in mathematics from Mount Alison and Harvard Universities, was what Karen Balcom has called an “archetypal bureaucrat” – a man who balanced the outright exercise of official power with the careful cultivation of alliances and loyalties among his fellow officials, provincial politicians, and the public.51 This modus operandi was visible early on in his career. After spending a few years teaching highschool, MacKinnon obtained his master’s degree from Harvard in 1936. He worked briefly as a teacher and a salesman before applying to work for the Colchester CAS in 1937 – a career choice that he described as “blunder[ing] into the profession of social work.”52 Within the year, he had managed to obtain the support of Blois and the provincial minister of public health to obtain a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation, whereupon he studied social service administration at the University of Chicago in 1938–39. When he returned to Nova Scotia, arguably an unknown in the field (but one of very few men working in provincial children’s aid societies), he was appointed as the province’s assistant director of child welfare.53 Indeed, his appointment was a component of what several historians have identified as a significant mid-century shift in the gender – and the expectations – of highranking social workers, which occurred as provincial and federal governments undertook the enormous expansion of public services after World War Two.54 When, in 1944, Nova Scotia itself restructured provincial welfare with the creation of the new Department of Public Health and Welfare, MacKinnon stepped further up the promotional ladder. With Blois taking on the role of deputy minister of public welfare, MacKinnon became the province’s director of child welfare.55 When Blois retired, only three years later, MacKinnon rose to the position of deputy minister. MacKinnon approached his work with an obvious commitment to reforming both public and private services for dependent children in the province, where reformation clearly meant greater centralization and rationalization of services. Although he later wrote that he learned not to attach “too much importance to the role government might play developing a better community,”56 his career attests to the enthusiasm with which he approached the project of intensifying

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and streamlining the governance of child welfare services – although not without some enthusiasm for “citizen involvement and volunteer effort” as well.57 One of the most obvious moves taken in this direction was his emphasis on the apparent necessity of combining the services of children’s aid societies and local family welfare bureaus. The combination was one that Blois had noted in his final report as provincial superintendent – possibly owing to MacKinnon’s influence – but it was taken up with much greater force and detail by the latter. The suggested combination of these two types of agencies was explained as a modern, practical recognition of the inseparability of a child’s problems – financial, physical, or emotional – from those of his or her family. As Blois stated, “it is almost inconceivable to regard the child apart from the family and most, but not all, of the family problems are centred about children.”58 But this was also, in the broader trajectory of child welfare in the province, a distinct intensification of the social worker’s ability to peer into the intimate, personal, private lives of the children in care; the world of these children was not seen only in their behaviour, speech, or performance after their placement in a foster home or institution but had also expanded to include the world of their family. Combining these two services would also (and perhaps more importantly given the longstanding concern about “efficiency” in the province) eliminate duplication and overlap of services, thereby cutting costs. From MacKinnon’s perspective as the overseer of these services, the merger would reduce confusion and complication for the provincial office by eliminating apparently superfluous agencies, staffs, and local boards. Establishing these priorities very early in his tenure, he cautioned in his inaugural report about the dangers of “wasteful” duplication for the work of preventing child dependency. “It may be safely predicted,” he further warned, “that if some private agencies and in particular the Children’s Aid Society, do not become more sensitive to and more fully aware of the changing needs of an ever changing community they will find eventually that their opportunity for service has been lost.” Implying that past practice had somehow indulged in too much local nostalgia, he concluded that it was time for “real community need,” rather than “tradition,” to become the “the test of any service.”59 Centralization of control and standards was, for MacKinnon, as necessary as the elimination of overlap and duplication. This was revealed in his rather bluntly expressed doubt – noted in his first

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annual report as provincial superintendent – about the very existence of privately managed welfare agencies. Unlike his predecessor, who had frequently praised the dedication and service of private agencies (including children’s aid societies and the institutions) and who wrote of them as indispensable members of the community, MacKinnon was clearly perturbed by the fact that public funding did not carry a greater measure of public (i.e., government) control. Carefully distancing his office from any implication that greater control was his main intention, he described this “problem” as a nationwide concern. The relationship between public welfare agencies and, particularly, children’s aid societies “operating basically as a private agency,” he wrote, “is one being discussed widely throughout the Province and elsewhere in Canada.” He noted that although the societies were largely supported by public funds – and although the public had the wrong impression that the provincial office controlled the societies – they were “still privately controlled.” This created, to his understanding, an ethical difficulty for his office. “It is sound and well-established administrative procedure that public control should follow the expenditure of large sums of public money,” he argued, “and, if one were to base conclusions only on the financial aspects of the present set-up, the arguments would seem to be strongly in favour of the administration of the entire Children’s Aid Society program on the public level.”60 Concern for the lack of public/government control over private welfare services was not restricted to the children’s aid societies. After a detailed exposition of the provisions of the Children’s Protection Act, which imposed on his office the duty of inspection of children’s homes, reformatories, and orphanages, MacKinnon noted that “the authority to inspect an institution is in itself of limited value.” Such inspection needed to carry, he reasoned, the power of “some government body or official to insure that proper standards are set and maintained.”61 It is very possible that MacKinnon’s concerns in this report were directly inspired by the controversial case of the Ideal Maternity Home near Chester, Nova Scotia.62 Whatever its inspiration, however, it was the first overt expression of concern for the independence of children’s institutions, and it very significantly linked independence to the quality of care administered and thus to the maintenance of children’s “best interests.” “The supervision of privately owned and established reformatories, orphanages, infants homes and shelters is one worthy of our attention,” he wrote,

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“first because of the very large number of children cared for in these institutions and second because of the large sums of public money paid in per capita subsidies and grants to them for the support of the children.”63 Doubtless, institutional managers themselves would have objected to the description of funding as “large.” However, MacKinnon’s report subtly implied that increasing the power of the provincial office would improve both the efficiency and accountability of services and the quality of care experienced by the children. The expression of MacKinnon’s commitment to reform also had a visible and immediate effect on the content of the annual reports made by his office to the provincial legislature. In 1948, the first year in which Blois was not present in the office, MacKinnon eliminated what had been, since 1912, a central feature of the questionnaires sent to each of the institutions: inquiry about the physical atmosphere of the homes, from the sorts of towels, baths, and tablecloths used to the presence of gardens, fire escapes, and hospital wards. Instead, reflecting a definitive shift in emphasis that echoed his concerns with public and private control, he queried institutional boards about such things as the number of children “maintained wholly by private charity” within the home, as opposed to those maintained “partially by charity and partially by contributions from relatives or friends or by public support.”64 Foreshadowing both the upcoming dispute with the Halifax CAS and an informal but concerted campaign to fundamentally alter the function of institutions themselves, he also requested statistics on the number of children in care who were wards of a CAS or the provincial office and on the average length of stay of a child. This latter statistic, moreover, was entered in months, which had the effect of inflating – if only in appearance – the length of institutional stays of dependent children in the city. MacKinnon’s interest in the length of institutional stays was, at least for the first few years of his tenure, rather subtle, relegated to a single column of information in an elaborate table of data. It was also overshadowed by his concerns about the administration of and the cooperation his office received from the provincial children’s aid societies – particularly the Halifax CAS. As he repeatedly emphasized, these societies remained privately run charities; they did, however, work at the behest of the provincial child welfare legislation, which his office enforced. After 1943 they did so with at least some direct financial support from provincial coffers in the shape of annual grants-in-aid (some also appear to have received small grants from

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the city). Consequently, their work could be, and often was, taken as a direct reflection of the work of the provincial office. As Shirley Tillotson has argued, Gwendolen Lantz’s often problematic administration of the Halifax CAS, coupled with “her iron will, forged through years of embattled self-justification,” created a particular impediment to MacKinnon’s plans.65 The provincial superintendent therefore took several steps to have her removed as the executive secretary of the Halifax CAS. Initially, recognizing that his office could not control provincial children’s aid societies with any effectiveness under the Children’s Protection Act of 1923, MacKinnon persuaded the provincial government that an overhaul of the legislation was required. The new act (1950) introduced a system of grading by which MacKinnon’s office was given the authority to grant supplemental funding to a CAS that measured up to the province’s standard.66 This was a tactical, political move well in keeping with the twentieth-century rationalization of state policies that were intended to ensure efficient, legible spending and operation. The direct regulatory provision of the act, however, also gave him the means to gather evidence about Lantz’s work in Halifax, which later would become essential in securing her resignation.67 Importantly, MacKinnon did not work alone in generating this active opposition to Lantz in the late 1940s. He also harnessed the longstanding dissatisfaction of the city’s sectarian institutions in his campaign. The records of at least one of these – the Halifax Infants’ Home – indicate that his office took an unprecedented, active interest in its day-to-day operations, going far beyond the required annual inspection; the superintendent himself maintained frequent correspondence with the home’s Ladies’ Managing Committee and attended its monthly meetings on several occasions to offer advice and to encourage its efforts.68 The closeness of his relationship with this home was likely repeated at the other institutions and may well have encouraged managing committees and superintendents to openly voice their complaints concerning Lantz. It was certainly a method that drew the homes’ administrators into an active, cooperative dialogue with the provincial office about child welfare methods and philosophies in the late 1940s. And although this dialogue exposed a number of serious weaknesses in institutional administration, it also tended to seek the ultimate cause of these weaknesses in the actions of the CAS.69 As a result, the institutions emerged from the quarrel as the standard-bearers of modern methods – if modern,

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in this instance, is equated with state methods and the political aims of MacKinnon’s office, as opposed to the claims of Gwendolen Lantz and the CAS. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, institutional administrators took a deliberate, offensive position to improve their status and to offset problems that had evolved over several decades of financial and social distress. But this effort, built upon arguments about controlling threats to childhood and promoting children’s “best interests,” would ultimately restrict the sphere of influence of these local homes. The interchange between MacKinnon and the institutions took place between 1946 and 1951 as Division A conducted a self-survey of the agencies and institutions providing services within the city. The division also held a series of roundtable discussions between representatives of the institutions, the CAS, and MacKinnon to discover possible solutions to interagency friction. The survey committee declared from the outset that the agencies needed to be aware “that such a study [might] result in changes which they must be ready and willing to make.” However, it was also made clear “that no upsetting nor disastrous changes were intended.” In other words, the survey committee considered it very unlikely that it would recommend significant structural changes such as might directly affect the regular services provided by the institutions. Rather, its members would be looking for “just what would be needed to co-ordinate the forces at our disposal.” In 1949 MacKinnon also implied that these sorts of meetings were conducted to elevate the standards of care, and he carefully identified his own office as the catalyst for at least some of the resulting conferences and meetings. “The number of children whose lives are affected by the program of care offered by these institutions,” he wrote, “is very large, and unfortunately not enough has been done to encourage such private agencies in developing better standards … This need was recognized by the institutions themselves,” and “acting on the suggestion of the Department,” they had begun a series of meetings “centring around their entire program of child care.”70 One result of these meetings in early 1948 was the formation of the Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions (NSACCI), within which MacKinnon played a central coordinating role. As he later claimed in a brief summary of the association’s founding, the NSACCI may have provided institutional managers with the united front necessary to take on the challenges presented by Lantz.

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However, he also – somewhat disingenuously – ignored the deep, historical connection of these institutions to child welfare efforts in the province and the leadership and architecture they had provided these efforts, underlining once more the significance of his office’s leadership and coordinating efforts. “Up until the time of the first conference,” he wrote, “each institution had been like an island, isolated from the general stream of child welfare and from all other institutions. The Association [largely organized by him] brought them together and eliminated their isolationism. At first, it was no easy task[,] for the representatives were cautious in their involvement, regarding each other with suspicion. However, as time went on they began to relax.”71 Institutional representatives involved in these discussions, roundtables, conferences, and reports – however relaxed or fractious they may have been – made it patently clear that what they wanted was something quite different from the general stereotype of the nineteenthcentury congregate care facility. They were no longer praising high populations as evidence of their good work in child rescue,72 nor were they necessarily envisioning their facilities as replacement homes for the children of the poor; the pretence that their institutions could be considered “normal” had been abandoned. Instead, they were asking for strict adherence to the principle that their services were to be used only as temporary or emergency welfare measures. They envisioned their institutions not as end-placements for dependent children but as temporary care facilities, emergency shelters, whose programs would help a child to prepare for life in a normal family home. Three interconnected problems with Lantz’s work were identified as the cause for the failure to maintain this principle: the length of stay of CAS wards in institutions, Lantz’s refusal to grant the institutional staffs access to case histories, and the ultimate failure of the CAS to conduct thorough or even adequate preventive and protective work within the community. Whatever might have been said in previous decades about the problems caused by economic and social crises in the province – or about the mitigating effects that individualized care within city institutions could provide – the solution to the city’s child welfare woes in the late 1940s required, first and foremost, removing Lantz as the executive secretary of the city’s CAS. The first of these problems – the length of time that CAS wards were spending in the institutions – was the most common concern

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raised during the survey and roundtable meetings and in correspondence between MacKinnon and institutional boards and superintendents. This particular critique allowed institutional representatives to put forth a clear, professionally inspired, if ironic, opinion on the threat of “institutionalization.” Although employed by childcare workers in a frustratingly vague yet persistent manner, the term “institutionalized” referred to a growing body of literature on personality development. When applied to dependent children, the term sought to underline the psychological effects of isolation and alienation believed to result from long institutional stays, particularly for very young children and infants. The necessarily regimented style of discipline (once considered beneficial) and the lack of constant, individualized attention that congregate living spaces required and imposed – no matter how unwillingly – contrasted too powerfully with the ideals of close, intimate family settings, which were believed to promote normalcy (and therefore good citizenship). William Goldfarb, an American psychologist who penned several of the seminal articles on the concept of institutionalization, concluded that “the deprived infancy of the institution child resulted in a dramatic arrest in all aspects of his development.” He or she was “less well adjusted” than a dependent child raised from infancy in a foster home, and “the divergence” between them could not be eradicated “in spite of years of sober, individualized foster home service.” Institutionalized children were, he argued, more fearful, aggressive, restless, socially “retarded,” and apathetic, and they generally exhibited “lower intellectual output” and a higher degree of speech defect than their fostered counterparts. “The early impoverishment of the institution environment not only influences the child’s mode of adjustment, but affects the living content of his mental existence,” he wrote. The institutionalized child was therefore, simply, “less capable of normal human relationships.”73 Goldfarb’s conclusions were echoed in multiple studies throughout the 1940s and 1950s, most influentially in the work of John Bowlby and Anna Freud. Freud’s work on preschool wartime evacuees in England, for example, argued that more mental and emotional damage was done by the separation of a child from his or her parents than by the physical destruction of their homes and neighbourhoods.74 Bowlby’s well-known 1950 study for the World Health Organization reached similar conclusions. His particular concern was to study the effects of maternal deprivation, and his conclusions

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proscribed institutional care for infants entirely. For children over five, he recommended that institutional care should be used only during emergencies, that these “reception centres” be restricted in size, and that the length of stay be “thought of in terms of a few days only.” Describing the impact of the breaking-up of a home, Bowlby warned about the “bewilderment and perplexity” experienced by a child, “which leads [him or her] to be unable to accept and respond to his new environment and the new people caring for him.”75 Institutions were, at least as they were imagined and observed by these experts,76 no longer places that produced good and useful citizens. They were no longer in the child’s “best interests.” Professional explorations of institutionalization and maternal deprivation were often drawn from direct observation of children within institutional settings and, like legislation related to child welfare, were not necessarily surprising in their conclusions. In 1941, for example, several years before the first prominent studies of institutionalization appeared, provincial psychologist J.C. Harding inspected the Halifax Infants’ Home and reported on conditions that would not have surprised experts like Freud and Goldfarb. Although the home was well equipped to care for children under two years of age, there were several older children in the home who were “backward in their speech and in their general knowledge” and whose “mental advancement is held to the level of those younger than [themselves] because [they] lack … mental stimulation.” Those who had been in the home for longer periods (a year or more) were “particularly retarded,” and it was “impossible to tell how many of their failures are due to dullness and how many to an environment where they do not become familiar with the ordinary articles of home life … a fork has no meaning to them because it is an unfamiliar object.” And because the home did not provide an environment to “stimulate imagination and excite curiosity” (he did not suggest that, owing to a lack of funds or staff, it could not do so), the children were apparently unable to tell the difference between a dog and a sheep. “An environment which has not given a child of five opportunity to recognize a fork or a dog and which lacks [adequate] space for play does not permit normal development.”77 Several years after this report, and after undertaking a number of changes (some successful and others not) to the program at the Infants’ Home (whose failures would eventually be blamed on Gwendolen Lantz), the home’s superintendent, Mildred Bridgeford,

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submitted an annual report clearly demonstrating that the language of professional study had filtered into the language of the (nonprofessional) childcare worker. How could any institution, she worried, “possibly bridge [the] gap” caused by the “bewildering” separation of a child from his or her parents “and supply immediately everything he requires for his mental, spiritual and physical needs[?] The adjustment is a serious undertaking and must be in the hands of qualified and sympathetic people: Standards must be high! We not only wish to improve our building and bring the equipment up-to-date, but we earnestly desire to give the child intelligent care. Since we have him during his formative years, we know what is done or left undone for him now may mean his future success or failure.”78 During the roundtable meetings, similar concerns were expressed by virtually all of the local institutions. In their opinion, the situation was particularly dire for CAS wards left on their doorstep by Lantz because they were unable (legally) to settle them in foster placements, as they could with charity cases. The alterations MacKinnon had instituted to the annual statistical returns (which required that a distinction be made between charity cases and CAS wards) had the effect of exposing the high numbers of such children who could be (and consequently were) classed as “institutionalized.” Whether these individual children had actually experienced any ill effects from institutional stays was never confirmed; indeed, it seemed an irrelevant query, as the general opinion determined they must have. Statistics alone were enough proof. In 1951, for example, MacKinnon reported that the Halifax CAS had a total of 60 wards in foster homes but 105 in orphanages, where their average length of stay was five and a half years. “Of these about 50 children had been in institutions from 1 to 5 years, about 35 had been there from 6 to 10 years, and about 20 children had been there from 11 to 15 years.” Statistics reported by the CAS also indicated that it had placed only seven children in adoptive homes during the previous five-year period.79 Institutional managers and superintendents unanimously agreed that these children had been far too long outside of a normal family situation and that CAS agents did not visit them often enough. They were “forgotten child[ren]” and seemed “to belong to nobody.” As the superintendent of St Paul’s Home for Girls warned, “children should not be [in the Home] too long [as] there is a tendency to regress. They are not sure of themselves … They try to overcome the disadvantages of institutional life, but it is not possible.”80

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MacKinnon expressed this concern in even stronger language, describing the “retarding and blighting effects of long periods of institutional confinement” and implying that institutions were more like prisons than they were places of care or security. “[E]xcept in special cases where medical or psychiatric treatment are required,” he reported, “institutional care should be avoided … except for relatively short periods of time perhaps up to a month.”81 Repeated requests had been made by institutional managers throughout the 1940s that the CAS remove its wards and arrange foster or adoptive placements for them – presumably to prevent these children from becoming institutionalized but perhaps also because managers wanted to free up beds.82 For the most part, these requests remained unanswered. At St Joseph’s Orphanage, particular concern was expressed about several boys over the age of twelve, as the women running the home did not feel capable of providing the supervision or guidance necessary for teenaged boys. Despite the fact that St Joseph’s had been working with the CAS since 1925, Lantz replied to the orphanage’s repeated concerns about these boys by writing, “I had no idea that your orphanage wished boys removed at the age of 12.”83 The managing board of the Halifax Infants’ Home experienced similar difficulties in its relationship with Lantz. In March 1943 the board’s minutes registered a now familiar concern about the length of time that Lantz had left CAS wards in the home. In many cases, these children had been in the home for several years and were much older than the age allowed by the home’s constitution (three years). In 1944, for example, when Lantz contacted the home about the placement of two toddlers, she was informed that they would be admitted, “provided that 2 older children – now age 6 – be removed.” As these children were wards of the CAS, the home’s management could not legally transfer them to an orphanage or arrange for their placement in a foster or adoptive home, a frustration of management not present before the arrival of the CAS in the city, when institutions had conducted all placements independently. In 1947 the home’s Case Committee further reported that “obstructionist tactics [had been] employed by Miss Lantz mak[ing] the moving of children from the Home impossible [and delaying] the adoption of children by prospective foster parents.” There had been a “keen interest” in the adoption of fifteen wards at this time, but these cases had been repeatedly postponed because of Lantz’s apparent inattention. A

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month later, the board held an emergency meeting to discuss “[t]he difficulty experienced in Miss Lantz’s non-cooperation [in the] receiving and moving and adoption of children.” It was the “unanimous will of those present” that the CAS president be notified “that we no longer require the services of Miss Lantz as our Social Worker.” However, as the home still cared for several CAS wards, the problem of moving them to foster placements remained. In 1949 the board issued another ultimatum directly to the CAS president requesting the removal of these children, and through to 1951 similar requests were made on a regular basis.84 It is clear from correspondence with MacKinnon that not all of these difficulties were the fault of Gwendolen Lantz. The Infants’ Home required that unmarried mothers remain in the institution for six months following the birth of their children, a requirement that it believed essential for ensuring the health of the babies but one that led to “a very small intake” at the home. As MacKinnon informed the administrators, if they had followed the practice of the Salvation Army Service for unmarried mothers, the Child Welfare League of America, the Children’s Bureau, and the CWC (all of which set six weeks as the maximum time to keep a mother), almost five times as many women might have found assistance over the course of a year. “It can readily be seen,” he reasoned, “what this would mean in the terms of institutional care for the Protestant unmarried mother in this community.” MacKinnon further complained that the institution’s residency requirement had forced the CAS, “on occasions,” to find beds for unmarried mothers at the City Home; “[t]his, it must be agreed, is wrong, because the City Home by its very nature is not suited for such care.” Moreover, in the cases of transient girls – those from outside of Halifax – the provincial office had been “compelled” to “make use of facilities at the Home of the Guardian Angel because at no time was there sufficient facilities at the Halifax Infants’ Home to provide for those Protestant girls who might wish to be admitted there.” Although the home’s board had defended this policy by referring to its bylaws, MacKinnon and, notably, the sister in charge of the Home of the Guardian Angel declared the rule “completely unreasonable … which, if followed, would lead one to believe that we are more concerned with rules, forms, and constitutions than we are with the serving of the individual.” However, following this lengthy critique, and after expressing concern about the length of time that children were permitted to remain resident in the home (in

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some cases, five years or more), MacKinnon deftly shifted blame back to the doorstep of the CAS. To implement “a more enlightened and progressive policy,” the CAS had to “accept much of the responsibility for the situation as it developed there” because the CAS “has had … the responsibility for planning intake and discharge at the Home during the past several years” (according to the 1925 agreement drawn up between the children’s homes and the CAS).85 Other problems that had plagued child welfare in the city were similarly attributed almost exclusively to Lantz’s administration, including the apparent lack of suitable foster home placements. In the early 1940s the superintendent’s office, then under Ernest Blois, had identified the cause of this lack to be the poor economic conditions experienced in the province. In the late 1940s, however, in the context of the review of Lantz’s work, the scarcity of foster homes became an issue of her ability to discharge adequately the duties of her office. Throughout the roundtable discussion and in the final survey reports, it was universally agreed that the CAS – that Lantz – simply had not found a sufficient number of foster homes. Comparisons were made between the number placed by the CAS in Halifax, by other societies throughout the province, and by the provincial superintendent’s office (luckily for the staff members of St Joseph’s Orphanage, their own poor showing in the 1930s was not part of this comparison). Those involved in this investigation agreed that the staff shortages at the Halifax CAS were a causal feature, but the implication was that the shortage resulted directly from Lantz’s approach (both to her staff and to potential foster families), not from the unwillingness of the community to take on the responsibilities of fostering. Lantz countered these claims by stating that her CAS had very high ethical and material standards, that it “endeavour[ed] to have an objective, scientific approach to the problems which [came] within [its] scope,” and that potential foster homes had to meet not only strict character requirements but financial ones as well.86 Thus, when it was suggested that the Halifax CAS look into securing foster homes in Guysborough County, Lantz replied that this area was too far away to make visitation feasible and that the communities were “too primitive.” When it was suggested that her agency might make use of “responsible local people” such as clergymen, teachers, and housewives to visit these distant wards during times when the CAS could not, Lantz replied that “a clergyman is not a social worker,

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and she felt doubtful that the true situation [in the foster home] would be revealed.”87 This reply was certainly not likely to improve the denominational institutions’ opinion of their CAS secretary or the opinion of organizations like the NSACAS and the NSACCI, both of which counted clergymen as active members. Lantz’s professional ethics were also invoked to defend the CAS’s position on case histories. Case records were, in both practice and theory, the most significant documents produced by social workers. They were, foremost, the repository for detailed information about individual children, which, schematically organized, theoretically rendered the children subject to therapeutic manipulation and thus redeemable. As Lantz described them in 1932, they were a means of “making the best adjustments possible in situations where the individual does not meet the requirements of society or where society fails to fulfill its duty to the individual.” They functioned through careful investigation into a child’s “background, his possibilities, his weaknesses, his relationships toward his family, friend[s], school, associates, etc., and their attitude toward him.”88 But case records were also repositories for the creation and assertion of professional language and methodology; as much as they were the product of social work, they also produced the social worker, establishing and maintaining his or her authority as a professional. Possessing and producing casework was analogous to possessing and producing professional behaviour.89 However, when CAS wards were placed in institutions, the only information given to superintendents or case committees was the child’s name, date and place of birth, and former address. Despite protests from institutional managers that this was not enough information, Lantz argued that she had “been advised by the Child Welfare League of America and other authorities not to give out too much,” ostensibly because of the confidential nature of the information and the fact that institutional workers did not rank among the country’s professionals. She also countered these arguments about the importance of paperwork by arguing that the institutions were not making regular progress reports on CAS wards. However, from the perspective of the institutions, it was impossible to chart progress without knowing a child’s starting point, something that required access to case histories. Rising to Lantz’s defence, CAS president R.A. Donahoe declared that “the giving out of case histories [was] not looked upon as ethical, [and] in any case, the institution or

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boarding home is in a position to study the child. What caused the neglect would appear to be a matter for the agency rather than the institution.”90 Far more than professional ethics was a stake in this dispute; to have access to case records was to gain access to the power of the professional, and in demanding access to them, institutional managers were thus demanding a share in the authority that Lantz claimed for her office. Neither the institutional representatives nor MacKinnon expressed concern about the nonprofessional status of these institutional workers but instead emphasized that without “some knowledge of [a child’s] previous life,” childcare workers could not “give proper help” to their inmates. “All children admitted to institutions [had] some emotional problems” with which institutional staff had to cope, and without adequate understanding of their causes, there could be little real assistance or attempt at adjusting the child for placement.91 “[H]ow could an institution … be ‘father and mother’ to a child,” MacKinnon asked, “without knowing some of its history[?] We have reached a stage in child welfare methods where a history is considered essential.”92 Concerns about case histories and institutional stays were further complicated by the apparent reluctance of the CAS to claim legal guardianship over neglected or dependent children. In the opinion of the CAS’s adversaries, this reluctance meant that many local children lacked adequate protection. However, how many children were unprotected was determined not through direct investigation but through the authority of statistical estimates and comparisons collected by MacKinnon’s office. The latter noted that the number of children taken in as wards by the Halifax CAS was “very small” when compared to other societies, averaging only 17 per year between approximately 1945 and 1950. “It may be objected,” he wrote, “that a child welfare agency will take fewer and fewer children from their parents as it develops a strong preventative service. That objection is sound. The experience of social agencies, however, in Nova Scotia and elsewhere indicates that with our present knowledge and skill, there will be a proportion of cases in which wardship is necessary. It is difficult to see how the Halifax Society can explain this unfavourable comparison on the basis of the quantity or quality of its preventative work.”93 This problem of wardship directly affected the composition of the institutions’ populations and, consequently, the status of their

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finances, as they received per diem grants only for wards of the state or a CAS. It also cast further doubt upon the adequacy of the CAS’s protective work in the community. Families in Halifax who could not get assistance from the CAS often went directly to the local homes and asylums, seeking to place children privately. As noted above, these private placements were not funded, except through small boarding fees collected from those who could afford them. In the postwar period, the institutions did not employ their own social workers (excepting the Catholic homes, were the religious were trained); placement work was thus restricted by limitations in both time and money, if not in expertise. During the roundtable meetings, the institutional representatives directly raised these concerns, frequently asking “how better provision can be made … for these nonwards [and] what can be done to give them a more normal childhood and a better start in life.”94 In several of these cases, institutional administrators had appealed to the CAS; according to the province’s Children’s Protection Act, after six months of nonpayment from parents or guardians, the society could declare an institutionalized child a ward. This would guarantee, if nothing else, the payment of regular per diem grants to the institutions.95 As with other related problems of miscommunication and disagreement with the CAS and the institutions, however, superintendents and managing boards received little help from Lantz for these nonwards. Whether because she was already carrying such an enormous caseload or because she objected, on principle, to removing parental guardianship for nonpayment, Lantz was “strongly opposed to wardship in such instances” and was even “anxious to have this clause of the Act repealed.”96 The CAS, strictly speaking, was responsible only for those children declared neglected by the courts. Lantz recommended, therefore, that the institutions hire their own social workers. This would not only eliminate what she saw as the resentment caused by “suggestions or advice from the cooperating agency” but would also materially improve the work of the private agencies. Despite their “sincerely charitable motives,” she argued, by accepting nonward charges with what she believed to be inadequate casework on intake, the institutions were “encouraging the breaking up of homes.” Emphasizing her opinion on the value of professional training, she suggested that, with their own social workers on hand to deal with nonward cases, these problems could be eliminated.97

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MacKinnon and the institutional representatives responded to Lantz’s position on this issue in two ways. Predictably, they emphasized that the institutions could not afford to hire their own social workers. However, they also strongly implied that if Lantz had been fulfilling her duties adequately, “there would be no appreciable problem of intake and discharge.” Indeed, hiring social workers within the institutions would generate one of the cardinal sins of social work in Halifax: unnecessary duplication of effort.98 The CAS’s strict interpretation of its responsibility – that it was bound to care only for those children legally defined as neglected – was considered inadequate. “It is obvious,” MacKinnon argued, “that if this statement accurately reflects the policy of the Society little preventive work is being done, because preventive work goes far beyond meeting the needs of children who are legally or technically neglected.”99 The inability of the CAS to cooperate with the institutions was, in the opinion of the roundtable participants, evidence that it was failing to uphold its responsibilities within the community, particularly its responsibility to protect the “best interests” of children. Without case histories, the institutions were little more than holding cells; without adequate numbers of declared wards, children were left vulnerable; and without timely action on finding foster homes and discharging CAS wards from the institutions, many children were left in care for longer periods than was considered healthy or appropriate. The fundamental necessity of promoting a healthy, normal childhood for these at-risk children was dangerously compromised. A child’s “best interests” were thus invoked by institutional managers and MacKinnon’s office to challenge the authority of the CAS and its secretary. They were also invoked by Lantz to defend her society’s policies and practices. In either case, questions of jurisdiction and control were central, whereas detailed investigation into the experiences of the children themselves were not conducted (and likely not considered necessary). Institutional boards were clearly irritated by their inability to act independently on behalf of these inmates as per the long-established priorities and historic authority of their practice in the city. Lantz was clearly irked by challenges to her professional authority and to the independence of her office. In siding with the institutions – an ostensibly curious decision given his strong doubts about the efficacy and wisdom of institutional care altogether – MacKinnon was making a political, tactical

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decision based in part on his frustration with Lantz herself and in part on his desire to centralize child welfare services and house them within the public sector. His relatively brief tenure as provincial superintendent had doubtless demonstrated that whereas cooperation was forthcoming from institutional boards, it was not forthcoming from Lantz. This entire dispute thus culminated with the request for Gwendolen Lantz’s resignation. Those opposed to her tenure as director of the CAS argued that she had lost the confidence not only of the institutions but of the general public as well. “Where such good will has been alienated over a long period of time,” the survey committee reported, “only drastic changes in administration and in methods of work will suffice to restore confidence in an organization.”100 In the end, however, these “drastic changes” implied more than the removal of Lantz as executive secretary of the CAS. The arguments made by the institutions in their efforts to effect her removal also implied and required the reduction of their own jurisdiction and influence in the child welfare community. The modern and effective system that they sought through Lantz’s firing was one where institutional care was acceptable only in very particular cases and one where long-term stays, which had been considered a feature of some institutional therapies, were eliminated. The institutions declared themselves to be temporary resources for child welfare and thereby marginalized their position in the community even as they sought to expand it. A revitalized CAS was to carry on the work of protection and prevention, whereas the institutions were to practise therapies specific to those children whose emotional difficulties made them unsuited to either foster care or adoption.

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6 From Protection to Treatment Group Care and the Transformation of the Institution after World War Two Early in 1953 M. Thomas Blue, the former executive secretary of the Annapolis Children’s Aid Society (CAS), was hired to replace Gwendolen Lantz in Halifax. The change was likely a great relief to provincial superintendent Fred MacKinnon, not only because Blue had replaced the obstinate Lantz in the province’s largest CAS but also because Blue was male. In 1955 MacKinnon expressed – not for the first time – his concern about recruiting skilled, mature individuals to the field of social welfare work. Until such time as social workers were adequately paid for their skills, the attractions of the job lay in “the satisfaction that it offers in terms of personal accomplishment, and the service concept which is so much a part of it.” He did, however, note “one encouraging trend [in] the considerable increase in the number of men entering this vocation.”1 The change in the gender of the CAS’s director was not the only novelty in Halifax’s child welfare system after 1950, as this chapter demonstrates. There was also a sharp drop in the number of institutional placements due at least in part to the expansion of foster care and adoption placement services and to new and controversial welfare initiatives of the federal government. Beneath these changes, there was also a sharper definition of the “new” dependency of the postwar period – characterized by emotional disturbance – which allowed for a significant and ultimately successful reconceptualization of the institution’s role within the field of child welfare. At least some part of this redefinition should not have been entirely surprising to institutional managers, as it closely resembled the vision they themselves had articulated in their struggle with Gwendolen Lantz.

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As described in the official report from the Conference on Social Work held in Sydney in 1945, “modern welfare experience shows that institutional care of infants and children cannot provide natural and profitable training … [and] the recognized purpose of … orphanages is to provide temporary shelter.”2 The rest of this reconception, however, involved something far more substantial than a reiteration of the widespread belief that “normal” children would be damaged by institutional stays. It involved the creation of a new niche for institutional services, the group home, which was specifically designed for children unsuited to foster care or adoption. Institutions moved – or were pushed – into the field of treatment rather than protection. None of the changes implied by this altered design of congregate care were accomplished without the participation, whether in support or opposition, of the institutional staffs; their boards and managers remained as active and invested in the city’s child welfare fabric as ever. The resulting dynamic of change meant, however, the more complete subjugation of their own goals and policies to the needs of the CAS and the provincial office and, at times, a greater acknowledgment of the demands of that still-nebulous entity called “public interest.” In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the ability and willingness of the institutions to comply with the needs of these agencies, to cope with smaller populations (and thus smaller budgets), and to meet the requirements for taking on both the demands of this new dependency and the demands of modern social work were still shackled by the sectarian and ethnic habits of the previous century. The resiliency of institutional identities based upon religious and racial segregation meant the uneven application of professional and modern ideals of child welfare: some institutions willingly adapted their practices and effectively shut down as congregate facilities (although not without negative consequences), whereas others struggled vainly to keep their doors open, to reinterpret their purpose, and to articulate an alternate version of an institution’s role. One of the homes – the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC) – moved through the period with many of its program goals virtually unchanged. Ethnic prejudice in the postwar years trumped even the now-trusted claims of social workers about the damaging effects of congregate care. In the early 1950s the most visible evidence of change within the institutions was a significant drop in the number of institutionalized

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children. In 1945 there were just under 450 children housed in the city’s orphanages (excluding the reformatories), the highest population since 1926, when there were just over 450. Numbers shrank steadily every year until 1956, when there were approximately 200 inmates, and although the following year saw a slight increase, shrinking populations were the consistent trend throughout the 1950s (see appendix 4). There were a number of interconnected reasons for this drop. Particularly in the later part of the 1950s, more intensive and expansive approaches to adoption placement were carried out, including, significantly, facilitating placements for children who had previously been categorized as unadoptable or unsuited to foster care. In these cases, the postwar emphasis on the normalcy and consequent benefits of the nuclear family environment superseded labels of individual abnormality applied to children because of physical or mental disability. The practice of “labelling all children who did not measure up to rigid tests and requirements as unplaceable or unadoptable,” MacKinnon claimed, had been abandoned. Child welfare workers had “learned by experience that this was unwise and every effort is now being made to plan for these children on an individual basis and without labels or categories.”3 As the realities facing the children at the NSHCC and the challenge to interdenominational placements often raised by religious groups indicate, the labels and categories of colour and religion remained somewhat more intransigent than MacKinnon’s optimistic pronouncement would imply. However, there were also some significant changes in the governance structure of child welfare in Halifax, which facilitated a growing number of postwar adoptions. In 1956, for example, the provincial superintendent’s office established what it called an Adoption Clearance Service. Although it came at the recommendation of the Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies (NSACAS), the service was well suited to MacKinnon’s apparent preference for centralized, rationalized governance. It was intended, specifically, “to facilitate the placement of hard-to-place children in adoption homes and to co-ordinate better the placement efforts of all the Societies and District Offices” by housing all programs and case files in a single office. The service provided, according to its promoters, “an organized method of exchanging information among social agencies” about children for whom adoption homes were difficult to find and about parents who had “waited unduly long for a child.” It was also noted that, in particular, “[t]he

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children referred are usually older children, handicapped children, children of mixed racial origin, siblings who should be placed together and children who should be placed in a different geographical area.”4 The upward trend in the number of adoption placements in the late 1950s was frequently attributed to this centralized service. The structure of the provincial superintendent’s annual reports shifted dramatically in the 1950s to reflect this emphasis on adoption. Although MacKinnon gradually decreased the input from provincial institutions (both by eliminating much of the finer detail from the statistical returns and by halting the reprinting of institutional annual reports within his own), he substantially increased the particularization of the adoption process. Elaborate and visually daunting tables were constructed to display a wide array of statistical data on both adoptees and adopters. Rendering the report more accessible, however, MacKinnon’s office also produced simplified pictorial representations of these statistics, complete with male and female stick figures (representing children, adoptive parents, and single mothers), houses (to show where children were placed), churches (to indicate religious background), and tiny social workers seated behind desks, assisting clients.5 The illustrations indicated the numbers of children adopted, their ages, the ages of their adoptive parents, gender ratios, and the number of adoptive placements at various stages of the process. Even simplified fonts were employed, giving the impression that the reports had been personally handwritten for the public (see illustration 8). The simplification of statistical information reduced the enormous complexity of adoption and child welfare work (both practical and emotional) to an almost absurd level. The pictographs were also immediate and accessible in a way that the accompanying text and tables were not. As a result, they rendered the data tables more authoritative and impenetrable and simultaneously created a sense of professionalism and efficiency around MacKinnon’s office. For this reason, the graphic illustrations may have been reassuring to government officials and the public: they implied that an efficient, professionally operated program could make and remake families with surprising ease. And as they featured adoption statistics most prominently, adoption was consequently – perhaps unconsciously – established as the priority of the office. The information considered vital and worthy of interest to a concerned public suggested, rather bluntly, the subordination of institutional programs to the work of adoption placement.

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The drop in institutional populations after World War Two (particularly after 1950) was also accompanied by changes to child welfare legislation that lowered, overall, the number of wards in the care of the CAS and the provincial office and that increased the operative independence of these two agencies. The Child Welfare Act of 1955 provided more expeditious ways for a child welfare agency to terminate legal guardianship, detangling some of the decisionmaking processes from the courts.6 The changes may also have, consequently, shortened the length of time some wards spent in institutions. In those cases where CAS or provincial officials believed children should be returned to their parents’ reformed home or where this had already occurred without a change in guardianship status, a simple court order could now be made to effect transfer, avoiding the necessity of complicated legal hearings, court appearances, and their attendant costs. This new provision, MacKinnon argued, would allow for a “true[r] picture” of ward caseloads at the children’s aid societies, identifying more clearly “the number of children actually benefiting from being under the care of the Director or a CAS.”7 Clearing guardianship cases in this manner also carried the potential to promote the appearance, if not the fact, that a CAS was conducting vigorous protective work in its community. Unlike the position MacKinnon had taken in his dispute with Lantz just a few years prior – and highlighting the deeply political nature of so-called professional methods – it now appeared that low numbers of wards, rather than high, were a sign of good professional practice. As was noted in MacKinnon’s annual report in 1960, the legislative change, combined with the Adoption Clearance Service, had reduced the total number of wards in the province by 471 over a five-year period. More than 47 per cent of these terminations of wardship were the result of adoption.8 Within the city of Halifax, the number of wards under the care of the CAS had also begun to fall when Thomas Blue began a more aggressive campaign to secure foster home and adoptive placements. In 1956 he reported that his society had managed to place children who were “well past the stage of infancy and in some instances ranged up to teen age. Others placed had physical handicaps or allergies, but in all [he was] convinced that every child so placed will have the opportunity develop physically, emotionally, and spiritually to the extent that every natural parent, who relinquished their child for placement, could thank God for providing through the adoptive parents.”9 Blue was also thinking creatively about ways of finding

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foster homes and adoptive families for black children, another group for whom placements were chronically scarce. In February 1956 he wrote to the director of child welfare in St John’s, Newfoundland, curious about the possibility of canvassing personnel at American military bases there in hopes of finding suitable (i.e., black) families for black Nova Scotian children.10 The contrast between Blue’s efforts and those of his predecessor was made triumphantly explicit, particularly with respect to his society’s relationship with the institutions. According to Gwendolyn Shand (who may well have exaggerated the new secretary’s impact in an effort to soothe the tempers aggravated by the dispute with Lantz), contacts between the CAS and the institutions were “entirely different now.” Even the trouble caused by the Community Chest seemed to have evaporated; institutional managers “[a]lready have much praise for Mr. Blue, and his approach to the various matters in which all are interested.” At a meeting of the child caring agencies held shortly after Blue took up the role of executive secretary of the Halifax CAS, “the whole tone of the discussion was entirely changed,” and there was “a feeling now of working out things together … There have been many unhappy moments for all of us, but … the solution of this situation has considerably strengthened welfare work in Halifax, and has also reinforced the Chest, and the Provincial Department. The present relationships are even better than we all could have hoped, and we are most encouraged.”11 Blue’s first report also made oblique reference to his intention to transform – or at least improve – the relationship between the CAS and the institutions. “It appear[ed] obvious” to him that “a total reorganization of our Society is necessary [and] in starting [his] term of office as Miss Lantz’s successor, [he] look[ed] forward to a period of pleasant relationships with all Agencies and Institutions in the City, as well as those outside with whom we co-operate.”12 Although the CAS continued to be understaffed and underfunded, these problems were apparently much less dire under the intrepid leadership of Thomas Blue. In 1955 Blue had a staff of one supervisor, four caseworkers (three full-time and one part-time), two stenographers, and one bookkeeper. There remained a significant backlog of cases, but with an operating budget that had more than doubled (from $15,000 to $33,000 between 1952 and 1955), the agency was far more capable of fulfilling its duties and responsibilities.13 Its constitution was also overhauled in 1954 in order to

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attempt, if only on paper, to redress what had been seen in 1951 as some of the most significant problems of organization and mandate. The CAS’s “objects” were more explicitly articulated as preventive – that is, directed toward “casework services to parents and children for the welfare of the family and preservation of the home.”14 Provisions were also made to impose limits upon the tenure of board members in order to prevent the perpetuation of what many saw as static, oligarchic rule within the agency. What effect these alterations within the CAS had on the diminishing populations of the institutions is difficult to judge. The steady decline of children coming through their doors suggests at least some contribution from this quarter. Other social welfare programs, like family counselling, homemaker services, and daycare centres, may also have contributed by offering poorer families more alternatives to institutional placement in the postwar years. These types of services garnered attention for their potential to maintain families during short periods of parental illness, unemployment, or hospitalization or when mothers were compelled to work,15 but they were far from robust in Halifax. The local branch of the Red Cross maintained a homemaker service, for example, that was intended to deal with “emergency” situations wherein a child’s primary caregiver in the home (usually the mother) was temporarily incapacitated by illness. But the program was small and established eligibility requirements that were frequently criticized as being too strict.16 Daycare facilities were equally limited. Some out-of-home daycare was offered by individual women, but the only charitable daycare centre in the city (at least until the late 1960s) remained the Jost Mission, whose capacity was a meagre twenty-five to thirty-five children.17 The limitations of these services meant that they probably had little impact on the work of decreasing numbers in institutions. However, Nova Scotian families did receive some financial backing from various state-centred programs of income support throughout the interwar and postwar periods, which might have diminished the number of parents compelled to give over custody and care of their children for financial reasons. This direct financial support was envisioned as an integral part of modern governance. As the Council of Social Agencies (CSA) explained in 1943, social welfare had become, “without our quite realizing it … one of the main functions of government … [and an] increasing amount of our tax money must go for the upkeep of the social services, as it already does in England,

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and more of the political planning of the government must be turned in this direction.”18 One of the earliest of these programs, established by the provincial government in 1931, was the mothers’ allowance. Although eligibility for the allowance was severely restricted for much of the 1930s and 1940s, it was nonetheless described by MacKinnon as a “milestone in social progress.” In relation to the province’s Poor Law system, it may well have been. Despite its limitations, the fund undoubtedly made it easier for some women – particularly widows – to support their children on their own.19 The introduction of the universal family allowance in 1944 was also considered by some to be a sign of “Great progress.”20 Among child welfare workers in Halifax, however, opinions on the federal government’s income support plan were divided. There were concerns expressed, particularly, about its potential to shift much needed support away from private childcare agencies and institutions and, simultaneously, to move control over child welfare issues away from local purviews. At a series of meetings of the Children’s Division of the Council of Social Agencies (Division A) throughout the 1940s, the potential impact of the plan on the province was debated. At the first of these discussions, MacKinnon suggested that the family allowance was, at first glance, the most “democratic” way of increasing the incomes of Canadian families, particularly larger ones. The “benefits that could accrue, physically, mentally, and emotionally,” would be great. However, he offered this opinion “against his better judgement” and went on to voice concerns about how the allowance might actually diminish the supervisory powers of local social workers. These individuals – not the federal government and, by implication, not a (poorer) child’s parents – were best suited to making the correct decisions about children’s lives. This “opposite side of the picture” was the opinion to which most Division A members subscribed: there was a danger in “giving allowances to all kinds of families without supervision,” they concluded, because “[in] many cases the allowances would never benefit the children themselves. The cost … would be very great, and … the benefits of much of the money [would be] lost” because of poor, unsupervised parenting. It was further suggested that the allowance would “help to keep wages down” since unscrupulous employers would “have an excuse not to raise wages” and that the money would not “bring the child better preventative, health, or educational services” – at least not those services that local welfare workers determined were “better.” Division

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A members therefore argued that it “would be more beneficial for the child, and less costly to the nation, if we strengthen our social utilities.”21 A rather predictable list of priorities for strengthening these utilities began by suggesting expanded support for “Child and Family Welfare agencies, with particular emphasis [on] financial assistance and the training of their personnel.” Public welfare services such as the Juvenile Courts and the funding of mothers’ allowances were also to be expanded, followed by improvements to educational facilities, greater support for medical, dental, and psychiatric clinics, and finally, the bolstering of recreational services.22 Opposition to the family allowance from the institutional representatives of Division A may also have been inspired by the fact that allowance payments, although applicable to institutionalized children, were not designed to deal with the most pressing financial problems faced by children’s homes themselves. As a result, the legislation was fundamentally, albeit not explicitly, anti-institutional. At a “large meeting” of Division A to discuss the permissible uses for these allowance payments, the guest speaker laid great emphasis upon their potential to improve the “normalcy” of a child’s stay in an institution: the payments could be used “for special occasions, such as birthdays,” or for “extras” like music lessons, toys, or bicycles, “a ski suit for skiing and even an evening dress in a special case.” However, the money could “not to be used to buy basic clothing” or “regular equipment” such as furniture or linens, which were shared by all children in the home. If a child required a particular piece of equipment because of some disability, “that piece of equipment belongs to the child and goes with him.” Further, institutional managers could not administer the fund at their own discretion, as its use was “subject to controls exercised from Ottawa.” Managing boards and executives could therefore not apply the fund to their largest expenses – staff salaries, food, electricity and fuel, and the upkeep of buildings.23 The interpretation of the federal family allowance as a threat to local, private charities and social agencies may have prompted a report from the CSA shortly after the war that highlighted the value and necessity of private welfare agencies. In 1945 or 1946 the report was tabled at a meeting of the Civic Planning Commission, presenting its members with a blunt assessment of the democratic necessity of private charities – particularly ones that could respond to the unique needs of a given community like theirs. Although the “public

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social agencies have grown rapidly of recent years,” city officials were informed, these agencies had not done away with the necessity for the private social agency or health agency. This is especially so in a democracy where the expression of the individual and the community will is a part of our way of life. The private social agency does what the public agency cannot … [it] fills in the gaps (and there are many), does the pioneering work … carries on the experiments in new methods of social work, educates the public … and gives the individual touch to “service” in a way the larger agency can never quite accomplish … It also gives a chance for the personal expression of the philanthropic instincts of many people in our community. The greatest authorities on social welfare feel that private social and health work will … be needed, no matter how many public social agencies we have … each helps to make a total welfare program for our community.24 The CSA repeated these sentiments in 1951, perhaps prompted by the national study of public-private relationships being conducted by the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC) or perhaps as part of a desire to repair damage to the public image of local private agencies following the scandal of Lantz’s “retirement.” In the Welfare Council’s report, the authority of the federal minister of health and welfare, Paul Martin Sr, was cited. The latter had argued that “the Private Social Agency … [was] needed to complement the work of Public Agencies,” which were, by nature, inflexible. “While government action can care for certain material needs, there can be no formal or official substitute for the human concern that springs not from duty, but from devotion.”25 Anxiety over the future of private agencies expressed by the members of Halifax’s welfare community did not originate solely with their perception of federal jurisdictional challenges. Given the long history of tension between child caring agencies, trouble also originated, predictably, with the welfare community itself. Ironically, however, it was the application of modern social work practices – which was supposed to have created an efficient and effective system – that resulted in an environment of tension and difficulty. At the city’s Roman Catholic institutions – St Joseph’s Orphange and the Home of the Guardian Angel – the services of professional social

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workers and regular in-service training programs, casework, and social counselling were standard features of management practices throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s. These practices and staff regulations became the cornerstone of a particularly aggressive and highly successful placement service after 1950, which answered both the requirements of contemporary social work practice and the denominational requirements of the institutions themselves. However, the methods altered longstanding practices and expectations in the local community, and because they were unevenly applied, they also revealed and created gaps and cracks in service. The major force behind the Catholic homes’ practices was Sister Mary Clare Flanigan of the Sisters of Charity, who arrived at the Home of the Guardian Angel in 1951. Born in Boston in 1902, Sister Mary Clare had wide experience in social welfare and in working with children before taking over administration of the home. She began her career as a teacher, she cut her social work teeth in Reserve Mines, Nova Scotia, with Monsignor Moses Coady of the Antigonish Movement, and after graduating from the Maritime School of Social Work in 1950, she joined an already experienced and well-trained group of women at the Sisters of Charity in Halifax.26 She brought with her “a personally crusading temperament [and] principles learned through professional training,” which led to substantial changes in the home. There were almost ninety infants in care at the time of her arrival, and despite what she referred to as “difficulties [and] criticism” encountered “when she took the position that congregate care of infants was not a proper function of child welfare,” she had reduced this number to only eighteen within four years.27 The success achieved by Sister Mary Clare and her colleagues was attributed to a comprehensive program of casework services. This included pre-admission conferences to determine whether institutional care was the most appropriate response to the needs of a particular unmarried mother, as well as medical and psychometric testing. After admission, weekly sessions with the unmarried mother (and, where the sisters could manage it, the putative father) were combined with an intensive program to secure foster home and adoptive placements for those children whose mothers did not want to keep them. As was reported in a policy statement issued by the home in the 1950s, the children who were kept in care were only those who needed group living – “the steadying influence of institutional routine; whose [lives], emotionally and physically, have been,

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up to the time of placement, more or less ‘helter skelter.’”28 Reflecting on her administration several years after arriving at the home, Sister Mary Clare hinted that this degree of service was required, in part, because of “the under-developed state of the usual casework services to the unmarried parent and adoption program of the CAS and the [provincial] Department of Public Welfare.” In particular, highlighting the concerns of her church for religious segregation, she noted that “Catholic adoption homes had not been found in sufficient numbers” by these agencies.29 Not surprisingly, given the historical significance that this institution had in the Roman Catholic community and the competitive, sectarian spirit that had attended its founding, the sisters’ abilities contributed to a sense of community pride. As the archbishop wrote to Sister Mary Clare, it was “good to know that this Institution is unsurpassed by any in the City for its standards of care.”30 Along with exposing what she believed to be substandard casework and adoption placement by the CAS and the provincial office (a notable reversal in roles), Sister Mary Clare’s professional rigour also created problems in the city’s child welfare system. According to the administrators of the Halifax Infants’ Home (themselves not immune to charges of creating trouble), the admission policies for unmarried mothers at the Catholic home were too restrictive, the number of available beds had been cut too severely, and this left some unmarried mothers without a place to go. In August 1953 the superintendent at the Infants’ Home reported to her board that she had been caring for a Roman Catholic mother and child because there was no place for them at the Home of the Guardian Angel, which would not allow admittance “unless [a girl] had made arrangements beforehand.” She defended the decision to admit this woman to the Protestant home by arguing that “quite frequently girls arrive here in an upset hysterical state and they need immediate attention and care.”31 Similar complaints about a “limited number of beds” at the Catholic home were reported by the CAS, and after a field trip there in 1954, Elisabeth Govan of the CWC hinted that the difficulties facing Roman Catholic unmarried mothers may have been exacerbated since they “were not able to be given accommodation at the Home.”32 These complaints highlighted not only the widening gap between administrative methods of the Protestant and Catholic homes and the effects of modern casework on traditional services but also the obstinate nature of denominational politics in

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the city. The problem of the Catholic unmarried mother was separate from the experience of her Protestant counterpart (at least in relation to the availability of beds); the Protestant superintendent felt compelled to defend her decision to admit a woman of the “wrong” religious persuasion. Practice and policy at the Home of the Guardian Angel also created tensions in the working relationship with the CAS, recalling the territorialism of the interwar years and belying the apparent atmosphere of cooperation touted after Lantz’s removal from office. Under Sister Mary Clare’s administration, the Catholic institutions refused the emergency placement of children by Blue and his caseworkers at the CAS. Sister Mary Clare reported to one of Blue’s staff that if the Catholic homes offered emergency placements, the “Children’s Aid would never do anything about getting a receiving home of their own.” Thus, Blue noted, although the “social work ideals and casework standards of Sister Mary Clare are both admired and respected … on some occasions, it is felt that the ideals and standards of our Society may not be as reciprocally appreciated.”33 Worse, there were even fewer options for local children taken in by the CAS. Similar conclusions were reached by a visitor from the CWC, Eric Smit, in the late 1950s. Although he reported admiration for the “modern practice and concepts” at both St Joseph’s Orphanage and the Home of the Guardian Angel, he noted that there was some lack of mutual understanding. Certainly there is a distinct contrast between the relatively fully staffed orphanage and the under-staffed child placing organizations. The same goals may exist in both cases, the same concepts may be held, but the capacity of the orphanage to carry these out is probably greater than the capacity of the other organizations. This can be a source of some irritation. In discussion during case conferences with other agencies agreement can be reached because of the similarity of attitudes, but the child placing agency may be unable to carry out its share of the plan.34 The gaps in service caused and revealed by the implementation of aggressive casework by the Sisters of Charity were far from the only problems existing among the city’s child caring agencies in the 1950s. In 1956 L.T. Hancock of the Maritime School of Social Work prepared a memorandum for Division A members, outlining the

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potential need for an in-depth survey of their services, which would then be used to update, modernize, and correct deficiencies in programming. He attributed many of the then-current difficulties faced by child welfare workers to a series of vaguely defined “significant changes … in Child Welfare theory and practice” that had occurred in recent years. Most of these significant changes, however, had a very specific effect: lower operating budgets. The improvements in adoption and fostering plans of the CAS and the provincial office, as well as legislative changes such as the introduction of the federal family allowance, meant that institutions had responsibility for fewer wards. As these were placements that had previously guaranteed reliable per capita payments, there was a direct, negative impact on institutional bankrolls.35 Although institutions continued to accept private placements, these did not necessarily generate reliable revenue. The availability of institutional placements was also shifted by the 1955 closure of St Patrick’s Home for Boys36 and by the reopening, in February 1955, of the Salvation Army Home. The latter development meant that, on the whole, fewer mothers and infants were admitted to the struggling Halifax Infants’ Home, and the former meant a further reduction in the number of institutional placements for Roman Catholic boys. In fact, places for (nondelinquent) adolescent boys in general were practically nonexistent after St  Patrick’s closed, as both the Protestant Orphans’ Home and St Joseph’s Orphanage had lowered the ages at which boys had to be removed (from twelve to ten years of age). In her correspondence with the CWC, Ruth Blue, wife of the CAS director, a social worker, and an active member of the Council of Social Agencies, noted that “[i]n Halifax we do not have even one institution which gives service of any kind to the older boy. This is a serious problem with us and a sub-committee of [Division A] is at the present time studying the question of care and the adolescent boy.” She stated that “[g]irls have not been quite as neglected as boys” but lamented that there were no institutions “that provide exclusively for the sixteen and eighteen year olds.” Adding to this, there was serious overcrowding at St Paul’s Home for Girls. As adolescents were the age group considered both too old for the majority of the city’s institutions and too unwilling (or unlikely) to adjust to foster care, the lack of appropriate institutional placements was considered an acute problem.37 When Hancock’s review was submitted to the CSA in May 1957, the unanimous decision of Division A members was that their

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relationships, which entailed many intertwined (and sometimes conflicting) responsibilities and goals, needed the direction and guidance that could be provided only by means of a thorough, professionally administered review. In contradiction to earlier preferences for the local (based in part on the belief that the local system could be truly comprehended only by a local person), the division believed this review should be conducted by an external party – someone less invested in the Halifax system and therefore more capable of identifying cracks and failings. The changes Hancock noted reflected “an alertness to more modern methods, and a feeling on the part of Boards and Staffs of Agencies that they must not remain static.” A review would help them to find the means for dynamic responses to local needs in order “to bring about better integration, to assess what we have and to decide what extra services we need to obtain in this community.” The timing for a review was considered most appropriate because at that moment, “[t]he attitudes … and the teamwork among agencies is excellent; it seems to be a time that a study could well be undertaken.”38 It is possible, however, that not all institutional administrators approached this review with great enthusiasm. They were certainly not unaware of the mounting contention from social workers (including one of their own) that institutions were outdated and perhaps even harmful to children, but not all of them agreed with Sister Mary Clare. Several members of Division A had struggled with the implications of modern trends in their field long before this review was planned, insisting that whatever innovation brought, “institutions have their place.” In 1948, after attending a social work conference in Hamilton, Ontario, two local superintendents – including Sister Mary Clare’s predecessor at the Home of the Guardian Angel – reported to the division that modern social work was too preoccupied with a somewhat mythical group of “damaged kids of the institutions.” It consequently had “not give[n] enough credit to what the Institutions were trying to do.”39 A decade after this report, institutional supporters were surely aware that any sort of external review – particularly one on the scale proposed following Hancock’s presentation – held the possibility of further restricting their role in caring for dependent children in the city. Moreover, Division A did not approach this review with the same promise spoken in 1951 – that no drastic modification of the system itself was intended.

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The individual who was eventually brought into the city to conduct the survey – Eric Smit, executive secretary of the Family and Child Welfare Department of the CWC – was not openly hostile to institutional child welfare services. However, he was far from approving of congregate facilities, and the entire structure of his review reflected then-current beliefs that institutions were no longer appropriate or necessary. His review was conducted over nearly a year and included detailed surveys and inspections of each of the city’s children’s homes and the CAS. He inquired into their policies and practices, their needs, and their own opinions of the sources of weakness and fissure in the city’s child welfare system. His final report was tabled in the autumn of 1958 and was, in some ways, predictable. Focusing on the inadequacy of funding, logistical problems with and gaps in foster care services, the lack of professional status of some institutional managers, and the disproportionate amount of money spent on child care as opposed to child protection, Smit’s findings echoed those of almost a decade earlier, when Division A members had sought changes in their relationship with Gwendolen Lantz and the CAS. Unlike the 1951 review, however, Smit’s interpretation of these problems placed institutional care, for the first time in the city’s history, in a position subordinate to the needs and programs of the CAS. The structure of the entire report, in fact, reflected an emphasis upon the ways that the CAS was to be serviced by the institutions. The manner in which Smit’s report often followed directly the concerns and complaints expressed by Thomas Blue was indicative of the former’s inclination to promote the work of the CAS over that of the institutions. Both men, for example, lamented that the Halifax agency did not have a receiving home and, as Smit expressed it, was therefore “forced into relationships with the institutions because it turns to them for help in caring for its wards.”40 The independence of institutional policies was thereby particularly irksome. As Blue reported to Smit, the problems faced by his agency could be overcome if the institutions adopted “a different emphasis on their intake policies” to better suit the needs of the CAS.41 Moreover, Smit argued, the institutions had to abandon their historic roles of administering foster placement and acting as community resources for parents and families in need, as these were inappropriate services. They needed instead to act “in partnerships with the other services, and should not consider [themselves] as a rival method of caring for the same

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kinds of children, or children in the same circumstance, as the foster family placement services [i.e., the CAS].”42 Smit’s suggestion that the roles of local institutions be redefined as supporting rather than starring ones did not discount altogether the necessity of institutional placements in the community. However, as well as suggesting a restructuring of the relations between the homes and the CAS, he also recommended a profound reorganization of internal relationships to achieve the best possible use of these placements. To successfully undertake the delicate work of intake policy (in the “best interests” of both the CAS and the child), Smit strongly recommended (as had Lantz almost a decade earlier) that institutions hire professionally trained caseworkers. The decision to admit a child to an institution could be made only “after careful study,” and if the person conducting this study was a member of the institution’s staff and familiar with its inner workings, he or she would “be in a better position to judge its capacity to meet the needs of the individual child.”43 However, although this was a position that could be combined with the role of superintendent, the longstanding practice of managing intake and discharge through a managing board or “case committee” at the city’s Protestant homes was deemed unacceptable. In fact, Smit argued that contact between the children and members of the board “should be limited in such a way that children are not conscious of the [board] members, but will accept the staff as providing the protection and direction that [the children] depend on.”44 Given the long history of these case committees – many of them had been part of the institutions’ structures since the time of their founding and continued to afford charitably minded Protestants the active engagement with reform so central to social gospel – this recommendation represented a radical departure from established practice. As Blue’s submission to the 1958 survey indicates, however, it was a move that the Halifax CAS considered fundamental to improving services. Blue believed that traditional board involvement in administering intake and discharge (not to mention other day-to-day elements of operation) had impeded his ability to work with CAS wards in some of the local homes. He complained that “Board Members carry responsibilities which I ordinarily would consider to be that of staff” and that staff reliance on these advisory committees for decisions on intake meant that cases were accepted not on the basis of a standard “policy” but on the board’s “own discretion.” He believed this was the cause of great irregularity in

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admission practices at the Protestant homes and also raised concerns about confidentiality that, ironically, echoed the concerns expressed by Gwendolen Lantz nearly a decade earlier. In “planning and discussion [of] the needs of our wards boarding in these institutions,” he wrote, “the board members share information on the children and attend CAS-Institution conferences regarding the children. The Superintendents with whom we work are cooperative and capable, but one gets the feeling that they are not free to discuss a child because some board members know the child’s problems better than herself.”45 Improving the overall quality of care and promoting professional practice in Halifax required more than hiring professionals or aligning intake policy to suit the needs of the CAS. In Smit’s opinion, each institution in the city also needed, through “careful study,” to reconsider its role in the child welfare system. He further informed local workers what the results of this self-study should be; the “full realization” of the institutions’ “ultimate aim,” he argued, was “to provide services for children with special needs.” In other words, institutions were not to be used as surrogate homes for “normal” children but as specialized facilities for group care. In the early part of the twentieth century, the value of the institution’s role in the community had been understood as deriving from its ability to protect children from corruption in order to ensure that they would not, despite their circumstances, deviate too far from a childhood experience that would ensure their normal development and therefore protect society’s best interests. In the postwar period, however, institutional strength in the field of child welfare, as it related to dependency, lay more explicitly in the treatment and correction of the consequences of corruption and deviance. In this respect, Smit’s opinions connected what he believed to be the proper focus of the city’s child welfare system with professional and popular psychological discourse about normalcy in the postwar era. As Mona Gleason has aptly demonstrated, the definition of normalcy to which Smit referred pathologized those whose behaviours or ways of life lay outside of a culturally defined ideal type.46 Thus invoked, normalcy was entwined, as child rescue had been, with a notion of “best interests”; it presupposed a nuclear family environment with a middle-class income and required adherence to specific gender roles that were believed conducive to the economic, moral, and social prosperity of the nation. The desire to promote stability

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and security in the aftermath of the Depression and the war and in the context of rising divorce rates, working mothers, and Cold War tensions meant that the best place for the nurturing and development of the nation’s normal children was their home, with both parents. The problems that confronted childcare workers, therefore, were “less likely to be physical” but instead encompassed the “social and emotional welfare of children.” These were problems of much greater import since, in the present “complex society,” Smit argued, it was “not enough for a person to be sound in body but he must also reach some reasonable degree of emotional maturity if he is to be successful as an adult. Child welfare [was thus] concerned … with those factors which militate against the growth and development of a mature and socially adjusted individual.”47 Smit’s recommendations and visions for child welfare were not immediately interpreted as threatening or as challenging the work that institutions performed in the city. In fact, group care, broadly conceived, was congruous with the interpretation of good child welfare that local institutions had promoted over the course of their histories. Quality of care was ensured through individualization (accomplished, in part, through various degrees of segregation) and through the promotion of methods and practices that would mitigate the worst effects of institutionalization and help inmates to mature into responsible, Christian, and self-supporting citizens. There was also widespread agreement expressed among the survey returns that special services for emotionally disturbed children must be a priority in the city. Indeed, in a remarkable echo of the Reverend C.L. Ball’s assessment at the time of J.J. Kelso’s visit in 1905, the board of the Halifax Infants’ Home declared that, “[r]ather than gaps existing there is an abundance of community services and … what they need is a redefinition of their role to keep in tune with changes in the welfare field.”48 Local child welfare workers had also spoken of the benefits and necessity of group care long before Smit arrived on the scene. In 1947, for example, Division A members made one of their earliest references to this concept during a discussion with Ada Greenhill of the Maritime School of Social Work. One result of this meeting was a clear delineation of who was best suited for institutional placement. These were children “for whom there is no need to establish ties of affection” with foster parents as compensation for deficiencies in their own family. They were children “requiring temporary

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care because of ill health of [their] parents” and “those who need the experience of group living.”49 Over a decade later, MacKinnon echoed this point of view, tempering his usual lack of enthusiasm for institutional care with a dose of the then-current language of group care: there would “always be certain children,” he argued, “for whom the specialized group care of an institution is essential if such children are to be given the opportunity to make the necessary adjustment so that it is possible for them to return to their homes and take their rightful places in their communities.”50 Those suited to group care were also those with specific, newly identified behavioural or emotional problems, not those who were merely “unable to cope with the academic curriculum” of their schools or who had “learning problems.” They were children in need of “a treatment resource” that institutions were uniquely suited to provide.51 Some were children who could not be expected to accept the rule of foster parents “because of their feelings and attitudes towards their own parents” or those whose parents were unwilling to see them placed with another family, “even with social work help.” The children most suited to institutional care were those with behaviour problems that could not “be effectively handled in a foster home setting (including emotionally disturbed children) … those who cannot establish close personal relationships; [and those] who require close, skilled observation.”52 Whatever the cause that determined the need for group care, the institutional setting had different purposes for girls and boys. Ideally, for example, a resident at St Paul’s Home for Girls would “respond … to the peer group very strongly” and find the “less emotionally demanding experience of the group” in the home more helpful as “she begins her move away from dependence upon the adult to selfdependence and ultimately adulthood.” For such a girl, balancing her apparent need for security with the “natural” fears that accompanied her “hesitating … steps toward her awakening womanhood” was essential in overcoming the consequence of a broken home, wherein she had learned to be “suspicious of the adult and … fearful of people ‘ganging up’ on [her].”53 Although security and emotional calm were the benefits of group care for girls (eminently suitable for her future role as a wife and mother), boys would discover, and be taught, a necessary balance between freedom and restraint. This meant granting them “more and more freedom” while still maintaining order and discipline within the institution. Without this balance,

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a boy could not be expected “to accept our leadership and to become a free and responsible man.”54 Importantly, however, group care for either boys or girls was not to be long-term care. Institutional placements were to be maintained only as long as was necessary for the child to adjust (although it was unclear how this “adjustment” was to be identified), and he or she was to be returned to a family setting as soon as was practicable. As Smit explained to James Kinney of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, although “group care of children has its place in a total child care program [it was] not considered to be an alternative to other kinds of child care” simply because it was more convenient. “Rather, it must be used on a discriminating basis after careful assessment of the individual child’s needs. In other words, a child should be placed in an institution only if it meets his total needs, physical, mental, emotional, under circumstances which indicate that some other type of care would not.”55 Thus, just as careful planning and investigation were required to fit a child with foster or adoptive parents, so too were they now required to fit the child with the institution. As the religious of St Joseph’s Orphanage declared, the institution was not to be used as a place of “last resort” but as a place whose services offered “the best range of opportunities and association for fostering growth.”56 The type of child who would not profit from group care was most specifically defined by age, where age provided a sort of benchmark for emotionally healthy adjustment. Children under three, for example, were “in quite a different category” than most dependent children “since they require a measure of individual attention, not usually found in a Child Caring Institution.” It was therefore logical to conclude – as many childcare experts had previously done – that “long periods of institutional care lead to retardation and negative behaviour and children brought up in this environment will offer poor prospects for a happy, normal life.”57 Similar concerns meant that preschool children (under the age of five) were also deemed unacceptable candidates for group care, except where their placement was done out of a desire to keep younger children together with their older siblings. However, the theoretical restriction on age, combined with the growing acceptance of the practical benefits of group care, did not lead to the immediate closure of the city’s infants’ homes, nor did it result in the automatic removal of younger children from

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orphanages or the transformation of programs to fit the models for group care. A gap between theory and practice, generally defended as necessary for meeting local needs, was carefully maintained. Indeed, the concepts and principles of group care were a doubleedged sword for Halifax institutions. On the one hand, they allowed managers and boards the opportunity to claim continuing significance for their institutions. The language of group care methods in the minutes of Division A and in those of the Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions (NSACCI), as well as in institutional reports, indicates that managers and superintendents were well aware of the ability of group care to provide them with a new and practicable rationale for their services as pressure to eliminate congregate facilities increased. Group care was not simply good for children but also good for the institutions, and it demonstrated their ability and willingness to adapt to changing local needs. When, in 1967, for example, St Paul’s Home for Girls considered whether it was possible for the home “to continue its present function,” a committee reporting to the board of trustees “explored the nature and extent of the need for a Group Home for Girls and … a great deal of interest was expressed in this type of new service.” According to the chairman of the home’s board, William Palmer, “it was felt that the group home type of operation would best serve the present needs of our area,” and the board was “taking steps to obtain additional information on the operation of such Group Homes.”58 On the other hand, however, the level of staff training needed for group care presented serious obstacles for institutions seeking to alter their mandates and continue functioning as child welfare facilities in the city. As Blue stated in 1956, proper training for child welfare staff was vital since, in deciding foster and adoptive placements, these staff members possessed a “power … that in most other circumstances rests with the Deity.”59 The financial requirements demanded by the labours of such a deity on earth, however, were restrictive and likely made the proposal from St Paul’s board impracticable; by 1970 the home had reinvented itself as a residence for female students from the Halifax School for the Blind. Indeed, group care was beyond the financial capabilities of most local institutions. In describing its staff qualifications to Smit in 1958, for example, the Protestant Orphans’ Home stated that “[t]he only qualifications re staff that we have been able to adhere to is to have an even disposition and a real love for children. We have no actually trained in

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social service members on our staff at present.” The home did reassure Smit, however, that it had “raised … standards lately and have increased our staff considerably.”60 A year later, after the superintendent had left and the home was “searching frantically for a replacement,” suggestions that it might hire a social worker were dismissed as “impossible.”61 Significantly, institutional managers were often told that their perennial financial concerns must be interpreted in a positive way and taken as a lower priority than the quality of their staff. At the annual meeting of the Halifax Infants’ Home in 1950, for example, MacKinnon argued that the deficit on the home’s account, amounting to just over $2,300, should be “interpreted as a healthy sign as it showed that the institution is going ahead in a progressive way and is earnestly striving to keep up with the pace of modern child care.” Certainly, the home’s president appears to have agreed, as she noted that expenses for salaries and provisions were the cause of much budgetary stress, but “the Board did not feel it a good policy to cut down on either of these as they were both essential to the children’s welfare.”62 In 1960 Smit wrote to Kinney at the NSHCC expressing similar opinions. Although “an institutional program is expensive,” he stated, “this cannot be an excuse for operating on a substandard basis, which cannot be truly helpful to the children … This is ‘strong medicine’ but, I think, important to think about.”63 Group care presented challenges, even threats, to the financial wellbeing of institutions, but it did not challenge or threaten the more fundamental concerns of their managers and boards for the denominational segregation and religious education of their inmates. The connections between religion and social service work had not been washed away by the rising tide of professional speak – nor was it necessarily the intention of professional social work to effect such a change. As a 1960 workshop on public assistance in the province emphasized (with a notable expansion of the definition of religious faith), “Christian and Jewish thought concerning the essential worth and dignity of the individual” was an essential part of a “democratic society,” and the beliefs attending this thought informed the most essential aspects of charity and welfare programs.64 Instilling them into the hearts and minds of troubled, dependent children was therefore as logical and necessary for society’s best interests in 1960 as it had been a century earlier. The reopening of the Salvation Army

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Home and Women’s Hospital under a new name further suggests that denominational rivalry was also alive and well in the city. Although Fred MacKinnon had been unable to persuade the Salvation Army to return to the city in the 1940s by means of compliments to its professionalism and declarations about the need for the “moral and religious training” it could provide, the proposal of the Pentecostal Church to begin a similar service in Halifax in the mid-1950s had this effect. In 1955 the Salvation Army’s Bethany Home was opened on Seymour Street.65 Existing minute books, annual reports, and correspondence of institutional boards and committees demonstrate continued persistence of motivation as well; the work of caring for the city’s dependent and neglected children retained the aura of urgency and Christian commitment that had characterized it during the prewar period and that was reiterated, for example, by the Canadian Children’s Charter of 1943. Each child in institutional care had a right to a suitable, secure home, good health, education, and wholesome play opportunities, and “in preparation for responsible citizenship,” each child was also to be ensured “opportunities for Spiritual Growth and the development of sound values.”66 Expressions of a religious motive were also ubiquitous within the ranks of the Council of Social Agencies and the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau. For institutional boards, committees, and city social workers, sacred references offered a point of motivation and focus, as well as a familiar means of conceptualizing and articulating the importance of their work in the community. During the 1940s, both of the top positions in in the CSA and the Welfare Bureau were held by religiously trained individuals, which tended to foreground these religious concerns even more. The executive secretary at the Welfare Bureau, Helen Burgess, was a trained deaconess of the Anglican Church, and the Anglican reverend Samuel Prince was the longstanding president of the CSA.67 On the one hand, the connections these two had to the Anglican Church hierarchy undoubtedly account for the prominence of religious language in their records, correspondence, and public pronouncements, making them less reliable as a gauge of the religious temper of the city more generally. On the other hand, these connections also underline the significance that contemporaries placed on religious training for their social work staff and leadership and cannot be dismissed as inauthentic because of current assumptions of social work’s inherently secular purpose and performance.68 As the

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social welfare workers who gathered at the annual meeting of the CSA concluded in 1947, they “need[ed] both motive power and special training,” but there was also an “underlying principle” to their work. “[T]he social services were an extension of the work of the Church” because “human beings are holy and sacred … All our work is meaningless unless we have such a philosophy.”69 Work conducted on a day-to-day basis with the citizens of Halifax was also necessary, Burgess argued, because the “main and basic fears [of] human nature and human needs” were caused by sacred and supernatural concerns. “These fears are that there is no Divine Spirit at the back of the Universe,” she wrote, “that there is no underlying purpose to Life or meaning in it … that there is no hope for Society … [and] that there is no assurance of future security here or hereafter.” And, although “some look[ed] to organized religion” or their own personal philosophies to “keep them[selves] steady,” others relied either on social agencies with their sympathetic staffs or “in bewilderment take refuge in drunkenness, indolence, and other forms of immorality.” Welfare agencies, she argued, were organized “to take care of the two latter groups and if we believe that civilization has developed upon Christian principles, we must assume a major responsibility in upholding every phase of social betterment.”70 Throughout the 1950s there was, to be sure, a noticeable drop in the frequency and potency of religious imagery such as this; professional concerns about social work training, pensions, and salaries for social workers, for example, often took precedence in reports and conferences after the war, even sidelining, in some instances, discussion of the children themselves. But it was still generally accepted that child welfare workers – in institutions and within other agencies – required both awareness of and sensitivity to the religious concerns of their employers and clients. In his final report, for example, even as he emphasized the significance of professionally trained staff, Eric Smit alluded to the necessity for staff members to follow the broader goals of their employers. Just as all employees should have “some training in child development and ability in group leadership,” he wrote, they were also to possess “personal traits of evenness of disposition, fairness and a good sense of humour.” Moreover, they “should understand the goals of the institution, accept its basic principles and work within its philosophy,” an idea implying that managing boards could (and should) consider religious affiliation as part of an applicant’s overall qualifications. After all, “[a] cook in an

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institution is not only a cook but is a person to whom children relate in some way and is therefore significant to them.”71 The concern with religious or moral orientation also extended to the environment and setting of the institution. In contrast to earlier assessments of institutions that had identified rural settings as particularly suited to the protective and preventive facets of child saving (i.e., removing a child from the sinful environment of the city), group care’s focus on treatment required that facilities be located near “community resources for worship, education and recreation.”72 A document from the CWC outlining best practices for a family welfare bureau made the necessity of paying heed to religious affiliation more explicit. The council strongly recommended that family casework be organized along denominational lines (defined as “Non-Roman Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Jewish”) because “[f]rom experience elsewhere, Council officials believe that in any service touching family life intimately, best results are likely to be obtained when such vital and distinctive forces as fundamentally different religious beliefs and spiritual convictions are frankly recognized, and service is organized on the bases of recognition and respect.” Close cooperation with diocesan officials and religious philanthropies was therefore also recommended, wherever possible, in the administration of both material support and counselling for troubled families.73 Continued participation by clergymen and church groups in the moral and financial support of child welfare in Halifax meant that this sort of cooperation remained a dominant feature of programs and services after 1950. For some (admittedly biased) commentators, religious faith was even touted as being more significant to the work of child welfare than professional training and experience. In 1955, for example, the Anglican bishop of Nova Scotia made a public analogy between what he saw as the “sacred vocation” of parenthood and the work done by institutional managers and staff. Whatever the “mechanics and technical procedures” and whatever skills were brought to bear on the “character training” conducted in the institution, he argued, parents and institutional staffs acted “with and for God. Their authority comes from God. Their natural love … is a God-given love. They are responsible to God in the fulfilment of their duties.” Managers, superintendents, and other staff members “shar[ed] vicariously in the graces and obligations of parental vocation … Their work is not a job; it is

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participation in a holy vocation, blessed, aided, and rewarded by God.”74 Thomas Blue, who had described child placement as the work of “the Deity,” would likely have agreed. Religion may not have been antithetical to modern practices, and the emotional health of dependent children may have required it, but denominationalism made the application of modern practices much more difficult and uneven throughout the city. So, too, did the requirement for racial segregation. In the decades following World War Two, although the trend toward fostering intensified and the understanding of normalcy was more carefully defined and broadly applied, social workers in the provincial office (and, undoubtedly, in the children’s aid societies) had to contend with the legacies of the longstanding methods for organizing children’s lives within the welfare system. In the provincial office, for example, foster placement services had to be reconciled with continued denominationally inspired regulations in the Children’s Protection Act. The legal requirement for religious sorting of children committed to institutions, reformatories, or foster care remained a feature of the 1950, 1955, and 1967 revisions of the act.75 In certain cases (usually ones dealing with handicapped children, who were far more difficult to place), the provincial superintendent managed to override this provision; the requirements of a “normal” home life trumped the desire to maintain strict separation of denominations. But it was not an uncomplicated process. When the superintendent believed that the religious provision impeded his ability to place a child in a suitable foster home, he first made application to the priest or minister in the community with whom the child’s faith was aligned (in all such cases uncovered in the late 1960s, the child was Roman Catholic and was being placed in a Protestant home). With a letter of consent from this religious official (who both agreed to the placement and vowed “to attend to the child’s religious needs”), he then appealed to the provincial minister of public welfare for permission to contravene the act.76 For many religious officials, this process was necessary to protect the right of a dependent child to his or her spiritual heritage. In 1965, for example, as the then director of child welfare for the province considered the placement of a child in the home of two agnostics, Fred MacKinnon (now deputy minister of public welfare), passed on to him an article penned by the auxiliary bishop of Toronto, F.A. Marrocco. The article was intended as “an outline of

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principles” on the subject of consideration for a child’s religious background in foster placement and adoption and was clearly a response to accusations that many children were being left to languish in institutions because of an out-dated and irrelevant concern over religious matching. Marrocco argued, however, that ensuring a child was placed within a “good” home meant ensuring that he or she had access “to all that God intended for him as a new adult, namely, spiritual development and success, as well as physical and material development and success.” Ensuring that a child’s adoptive or foster family practised the same faith as his or her biological parents was equally vital. “Even when parents were inadequate, a home life and heritage already begun did less harm to a child than would the adjustment demanded by a home life and a heritage that was new and strange.”77 Despite the opinions of people like Marrocco, the late 1960s saw an attempt by the provincial Department of Public Welfare to amend the section of the act related to religious qualification. The amendment, which would eliminate the somewhat cumbersome methods required to place children outside of their respective denominations, would allow a judge to “overrule religious qualifications if they prevent the placement of a child in a suitable home within a reasonable time.” The only denomination to support the bill of amendment, however, was the United Church, whose presbyteries in both Halifax and Lower Sackville wrote to the minister of public welfare, James Harding, to express “support and encouragement” for the move. “It is our opinion,” wrote Thomas Bullpitt from the Knox Church of Lower Sackville, “that such legislation is long overdue and it is our hope that in the not too distant future a further amendment may be presented which would give this authority now to be vested in a juvenile or family court judge, to the Director of Child Welfare.”78 The desire to change this provision was not realized in the late 1960s. Indeed, although a revision to the act in 1972 loosened the requirement for religious sorting within institutions (likely a response to the fact that, by the early 1970s, there were so few institutions in existence – and none in the city of Halifax), the provision, as it applied to foster children, remained in place until the act was replaced by the Child Services Act of 1990.79 In the 1960s there thus appears to have been limited support for the idea of scrapping the legal provision for denominational sorting. This was in keeping with the beliefs that informed the practices and

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policies of the institutions; the historic desire to segregate children by religion (and ethnicity) had been envisioned as a way of protecting dependent children from religious or racial contamination. It also provided a means of preserving the integrity of a particular religious or ethnic community, as the idea of “race uplift” most clearly demonstrated. This desire remained intact for much of the postwar period despite its effect on the implementation of what were considered to be modern and efficient child welfare methods – those that social workers had deemed necessary for serving the “best interests” of children. Local concern about segregation, however, often meant much more to local culture than the claims of casework and professional social work practice. Segregation preserved some of the most fundamental influences on a child’s character and therefore his or her future life. Even in the case of the Roman Catholic institutions, where the adoption of professional casework and placement methods had transformed the fundamental features of their practice, the ability – and the desire – to transform intake policies in order to meet current standards was constrained by their status as Catholic institutions. At St Joseph’s Orphanage, the religious reported to Smit that theirs was “a necessary resource in the community because it is the only Roman Catholic child-caring institution in this area.” As a result, the home had “no specific method [of intake] other than the requests we get from agencies and individuals for our service.”80 Similar religious concerns also continued to affect the administration of foster placement services. In November 1956, for example, Sister Mary Clare asked the archbishop to make a special appeal throughout the province to find placements for Roman Catholic children. In her request, she drew particular attention to the fact that twelve such children were currently being boarded in Protestant homes.81 The legacy of racial segregation was similarly pronounced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At the NSHCC, as at St Joseph’s Orphanage, community expectations, not compliance with modern methods, guaranteed a degree of permanence for the home’s program. Thus, although the board had begun, with the financial help of the provincial government, a $65,000 renovation “to bring our Institution up to or nearer the Child Care Standard,”82 the effort itself was directed at improvements to the existing facilities, not at a redefinition of intake policies or day-to-day programs to suit the demands of group care. The priorities for the renovation included

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the extension of the boys’ dormitories and the indoor playrooms, better storage, the creation of a study space for the children, and improvements to the isolation facilities, staff rooms, and kitchen. As Kinney reported in 1959, the home continued each year to care for upward of fifty children of all ages and backgrounds, and “even in the foreseeable future, according to our opinion and the experts, there will be the need of the type of service we are rendering … The way we see it, children are still coming to us for care and shelter and we must keep our facilities and services up to date, until such service is no longer needed.”83 It was not the case that all “experts” – certainly not all local ones – envisioned the type of service rendered by the NSHCC as either useful or appropriate for children. After the war, a distinct and unprecedented tenor of disapproval tinted the reports of a few provincial officials who visited the home for routine inspections. Although there are extant reviews that are generally positive in tone,84 the most detailed of those remaining are not. Nor are they dispassionate documents, as their authors were no doubt influenced by the mounting opinion that congregate care was an inefficient and damaging approach to caring for dependent children. At times, these reports also underscore the gulf that ethnic difference had lodged in provincial mores. Overall, they expose the widening gap between the NSHCC and the provincial superintendent’s office (at one time the home’s greatest supporter). Lillian Romkey, a social worker with the provincial office, composed the most damaging of the postwar reviews of the NSHCC following a series of visits in 1948. Although she was impressed with the home’s schoolroom and its young teacher, she was alternately overwhelmed by the decor in the staff and visiting parlours (implying that it was intended only to impress guests) and shocked by the Spartan, “cheerless” rooms occupied by the children, where “[n]umerous plain religious mottos make a feeble attempt to break the monotony of the white plaster walls.” “It is amazing,” she wrote, with a sharp note of disbelief that contradicted decades of emphasis upon the necessity and meaning of cleanliness in children’s homes, “just how 65 children can be so tidy.” Floors and walls were “scrubbed white and there is not one thing out of place … One wonders if the children just sit on the benches in the play room without moving, because nothing is out of place. Of course there were no toys nor play material around to be used.” She further noted that the

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matron, Elizabeth Fowler, “would like [the social] worker to believe that a magic wand is waved and the beds make themselves.” Throughout the report, in fact, Romkey suggested that Fowler and other members of her staff deliberately misled the visitors about routines and practices within the home, including basic elements of care such as the food prepared for the children. In most of her reports, she implied that if a visitor had not been present, the children would have eaten only a thin fish chowder or vegetable soup for lunch or some other clearly inadequate meal. When visitors were present – often on unannounced visits to the home – kitchen staff were apparently ordered to quickly supplement the meagre soup with bread and butter in order to make a better impression. That the staff dined on “vegetable soup, fried halibut, carrots, sliced tomatoes, pickles, potatoes, fresh apple pie, etc.” made the contrast even starker.85 The matron herself was described in particularly unflattering terms; Romkey claimed that she “cannot stand children talking” and that she “talks very disparagingly about the children,” calling them “‘poor trash.’” The children’s lives were too regimented, she concluded, and there were simply too many of them; the staff could not possibly have given adequate individual attention to each child, and the fact that the two women working under Fowler did not know how many children were in the home, or what their names were, provided ample proof. The visitor was also unimpressed with the manner in which the children said grace before meals at the home. Her description of this prayer, however, suggests that it was not simply the condition of the home (particularly the whiteness of the floors, walls, and linens) that she found unnatural (and, perhaps, disturbing). “They took their seats quietly along the three big tables,” she wrote, and “when every seat was filled the most weird noise was heard in the form of grace. It sounded like the gathering of many persons chanting prayers in the African jungle.”86 Two mutually reinforcing local conditions, both of which were underwritten by racial awareness, militated against the closure of the NSHCC in the postwar years. Indeed, despite growing concerns about institutionalization and specific worries about this particular institution, the traditional congregate care element of the home’s program was not halted until the mid-1970s. One of these conditions was the determination expressed by the home’s board and staff to maintain its service; the other was the serious and chronic lack of foster homes considered appropriate for black children.87 Two broad

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explanations were offered for the latter: indifference (on the part of local social workers as well as the population at large) and the poverty of the black communities wherein foster homes were sought. The result, as the provincial coordinator for foster homes declared in 1966, was that the home had become a “dumping ground for children.” The inmates were there “not primarily to meet their needs, but rather to meet the needs of agencies who are lacking in foster homes and of parents who are not able to provide a home for their children, and for whom no community resource is available.”88 Visitors from the Canadian Welfare Council concurred. In 1962 Clare McAllister conducted a field visit to the home on behalf of the CWC. Despite praising the “warmth and acceptance” displayed by the home’s staff, she expressed great concern about its isolation – both geographically and symbolically – from the wider community of child welfare resources. The home’s location, which had once generated praise for its wholesome, agricultural setting, was now too far from any “community activities” that might promote the integration of its inmates into “normal” community routines.89 Of arguably more concern was Kinney’s revelation that the provincial children’s aid societies that maintained wards there were “not sufficiently aggressive in seeking homes for the coloured children.” The result, McAllister noted, was a “large group of toddling children who are having no real experience of family life.” She wrote at length about the “question of responsibility” for this situation and concluded that “[m]uch of the tolerance of [this] situation is probably rooted in community attitudes toward coloured persons. This is of concern to social workers in Halifax … We must therefore upgrade community thinking to see these people as real citizens of the community with rights equal to those of other citizens, whether children or adults. The very existence of this facility, particularly now that it has a new wing and there is less overcrowding, probably contributes to the negligence of agencies in ardently seeking homes for the children who they now consign to an institution.” And although Kinney possessed “the warmest of natural intuition,” he lacked the “learned body of theory … to reinforce any campaign to better the situation.”90 Against the apparent indifference of social workers from provincial children’s aid societies and, at times, from the provincial office, staff at the NSHCC endeavoured to find foster homes for these children on their own. The practice of placing children out directly from,

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and at the behest of, institutional staff, a longstanding feature of institutional administration in Halifax, was undertaken throughout the postwar period by James A.R. (Ross) Kinney, son of the home’s founder, one of the trustees, and superintendent of the home. However, it is clear from the reports of provincial officials that the routines and customs of this institution-centred search for foster homes (which went unremarked in the prewar period) now went against the grain of professional opinion and were increasingly seen to overstep the home’s “proper” function. But it is also clear that Kinney and the home’s staff found themselves in something of a contradiction. On the one hand, social work visitors frequently remarked, with worry, on the length of time that some children stayed at the home. On the other, attempts by Kinney to find them foster homes were frowned upon, despite the fact that, in many instances, social workers within various provincial children’s aid societies were apparently “pleased to have [Kinney] evaluate the [foster] home” in order to make placements.91 Generally, it appears that the lack of an established, predictable discharge and intake policy at the home was at issue – or, rather, the lack of a policy that could be easily tracked and understood by outside officials and that complied with standards they deemed appropriate. The practice of receiving and caring for children placed privately was objected to on similar grounds. Reports from provincial social worker J.R. Casey in the latter half of the 1950s noted that Kinney was keen to increase the number of private placements, as he was “receiving pressure from well meaning community citizens to take children in on a non-ward basis.” Further, the superintendent expressed the opinion that taking in private placements “should be a function of their institution.” From Casey’s perspective – doubtless one with which MacKinnon and the other provincial social workers would have agreed – there was a “danger” in this practice, as children placed privately had not had their situations reviewed by a social caseworker. The latter could be trusted to know what was best for the child, whereas parents and “well meaning community citizens” could not.92 It is likely, however, that these parents and well-meaning citizens wanted to avoid having their personal troubles sifted through by a social worker; there was a degree of privacy inherent to nonward placements, as well as a greater degree of familial control, both of which could be threatened by the intrusion of a professional, no matter how well meaning.

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The outward lack of transparency implicit in nonward placement and, more particularly, in the home’s practice of finding foster homes for its inmates drew intense criticism from MacKinnon. In March 1966 he learned that Kinney had arranged “to board two and perhaps three or four children, in homes on Creighton Street and vicinity, which are owned by him.” A board member (who was not named in the correspondence) had informed him that the “cheques were made payable to the Foster Parent by the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children” but that “Mr. Kinney was on hand as soon as the cheques were delivered, only to have the cheques endorsed and turned over to him for the rent due to him for the homes in which the Foster Parents were living.” MacKinnon noted that “there may be nothing at all wrong with this arrangement but it is unusual,” and he warned Alfred Kenney, the executive director of the Queen’s County CAS, where the children had legal settlement, that the latter had to be “absolutely sure that the arrangement is a satisfactory one.” However, it was not simply the implication of Kinney’s financial benefit that concerned MacKinnon. Notably, he was “particularly concerned” about the fact that the placements had been made by officials at the home, not by social workers at the CAS. The arrangement was “curious,” and perhaps dangerous, as “[a] Child Caring Institution is not presumed to have any competence in Foster Home finding. This particular responsibility and competence belongs to our Children’s Aid Society.”93 Kenney’s reply, however, hints at challenges facing childcare workers in the province who were seeking homes for black children. “[T]he arrangement between Mr. Kinney and myself,” he wrote, “was made with both Boards fully informed.” Indeed, appended to his letter was the text of a formal agreement between his agency and the home, which had been drawn up the previous year and which specified that Kinney would arrange for and supervise foster placements for the Queen’s County wards. “At least from our viewpoint,” Kenney continued, “it was probably the best solution we could find at the time. At no time have I doubted Mr. Kinney’s integrity and sincerity. Our Agency looked upon the arrangement with favour so long as it was practical, and provided our teenage wards with an opportunity of growing up in a community environment.”94 Not only was the scarcity of placements for black children a source of worry for visiting social workers and Fred MacKinnon; it also altered perceptions of the home’s original purpose. In 1960

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MacKinnon declared that he could “find no specific mention of the prior thinking and planning which went into the building” of the institution. However, he described the NSHCC’s raison d’être as being the shortage of foster homes for black children. “There is a large colored population in Nova Scotia,” he explained, “and one would expect the usual quota of neglected and dependent children from the colored communities. At the same time, the living standards of that day were such and still are such that it was not easy to find colored foster homes … So, the only sensible solution was to provide centralized facilities for colored children who were unfortunate enough not to have a home of their own and the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children has filled this need up to the present.” MacKinnon also referred subtly to the schism between the black and white communities, which McAllister would note a few years later. Unlike his Ottawa counterpart, however, MacKinnon’s letter did not imply that the separation was problematic, only that it had naturally created special challenges for the coloured home. “The difficulties” for the NSHCC “were great,” he noted, because “[a] wealthy and affluent community is more likely to be concerned about its needy citizens than a community where the resources are more restricted.”95 The absence of any reference in MacKinnon’s letter to the NSHCC’s place in facilitating the black community’s desire for “race uplift” suggests that perhaps, from the perspective of the (white) social worker, such a goal was irrelevant to the real stuff of caring for dependent children. It was not irrelevant to the home’s administrators. Indeed, racial awareness – in this case, a protective, defensive awareness rather than the racism noted by McAllister – was the second local condition that affected the service offered by this home. Along with the generally indifferent attitude of at least some social workers, there was an equally powerful attitude of interest in maintaining the institution’s services among the board and the managing staff at the home. Thus in 1962, when the home’s board engaged E.J. Dick, superintendent of the Nova Scotia Training School, to conduct a review of its services and facilities, no mention was made of the possibility of such a review providing directions for change or fundamental alteration to intake or discharge practices. Instead, the matron and superintendent were “seeking advice and guidance on a more efficient organization … of accounting, controls, direction and budgeting.” Dick’s report was accordingly filled with information about expenditures and revenues, about reducing the former and

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increasing the latter, and about tracking both and making accurate estimates while simultaneously making improvements to the facilities. His description of the children themselves was correspondingly scarce, restricted to a few thin lines that noted their good appearance and the fact that they were “very well cared for physically and academically” by a staff that was “interested” in them.96 Echoing Sister Mary Clare’s concerns about the mixing of different denominations of children in foster homes, the staff members at the NSHCC also turned their attention to the subject of racial mixing. And although, like their Catholic counterpart, they expressed concern about the breach that cross-racial placements represented, their proposed solution underlined their desire to shore up the coloured home and maintain separate facilities for black children. In 1954 Ross Kinney wrote on behalf of the home’s trustees and directors to the provincial Department of Child Welfare, alerting it to the fact that “there are a number of orphaned and neglected coloured children in [otherwise white] Halifax Institutions and other [such] Institutions in Nova Scotia.” Having learned of this situation, the trustees and directors were “very much surprised that there would be coloured children in [white] Homes similar to ours,” he noted, and “very much concerned if this is a fact for we are equipped and staffed to do [an] excellent job in the field of child welfare for colored orphaned and neglected children.” Moreover, he wrote, perhaps alluding to the increased funding that more wards would bring, “we have the space and are in the position to render service comparable to similar [white] Homes as ours in Nova Scotia.”97 The possibility that the staff of the NSHCC could prevent ethnic mixing while simultaneously increasing the home’s population and, thereby, its revenues was revisited several years later. In 1971 the home’s president, Alice Croft, wrote to the provincial minister of public welfare, Allan Sullivan, and informed him that a survey of provincial children’s aid societies had revealed at least seventy-eight black wards being cared for in white foster homes. “If we are able to have a large number of the Black children that are now in Foster homes placed at the [NSHCC],” she wrote, “our future and our financial position would be a great deal brighter.” Then, as though unaware of the movement away from institutional care or assuming that racial segregation was more important (or both), she requested that Sullivan discover “just why children are not being placed in the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children.” She concluded her letter

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by explaining that as the home had been “obliged” to raise staff salaries, it was “in quite a serious financial position.”98 The response from the minister (likely drafted after consultation with MacKinnon) reveals that although provincial social workers were sensitive to the home’s concern over fostering black children in white homes, they were no longer willing to grant much say in placement decisions to the officials at the institution. Sullivan also distanced his own department from the choices of CAS workers. Taking advantage of the independent status of the CAS, which had so irked MacKinnon, he wrote that “[t]he decision as to where these children are to be placed is for the Societies in question to make. As long as the children are well cared for, our Department would not presume to instruct the Societies as to what they should or should not do.” On the question of how his own department dealt with the placement of black children, Sullivan deferred commenting until he had conferred with his staff.99 Records then reveal that social workers in the department undertook to write a policy statement outlining specifically how they made decisions for the placement of black wards – a policy that, clearly, they had not believed required concrete articulation until their decisions were questioned by the managers of the NSHCC. Perhaps engaging the same strategy undertaken by the City of Halifax in its expropriation of Africville in the 1960s – a strategy frequently defended as necessary for the integration of black and white communities and purportedly intended to eliminate the isolation and poverty of the city’s black residents100 – the policy made it implicitly clear that racial segregation was no longer an appropriate priority. What mattered, according to the first draft of the document, was deciding “the best possible plan for the individual child.” Although social workers would take “all factors into consideration – age, family background, individual needs, etc” – placement at the NSHCC would happen only if “the institutional placement is as good as, or better then [sic] a foster home placement” and only if the home could demonstrate its “ability … to provide an appropriate program to meet the needs of black children.”101 Trends in child welfare that had promoted a “normal” home environment while simultaneously excavating the ills of congregate care made these placements unlikely; the mere fact that this was a black institution was no longer sufficient proof, for the province at least, that it could meet the needs of black children. Moreover, according to Timothy Daley, a social

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worker with the provincial office who was asked to comment on the draft policy, the home’s staff were to have as little say in placement matters as was possible and practicable. Responding to the draft’s suggestion that admissions and discharges at the home be “determined by an Admissions Committee composed of representatives of the [home] and officials of the Department of Public Welfare,” he wondered “if the problems related to an Admissions Committee … will not interfere with the best interests of the child, and hence should [not] be used at all.”102 The financial strains brought about by dropping populations and increasing costs (particularly the costs of hiring qualified staff) were surely directly responsible for the fact that, only a few years after this exchange with the provincial office, the NSHCC ended its program of congregate care for dependent and neglected children. But although Sullivan had attempted to assure them, in 1971, that their lot was not unusual and that their financial problems had “implications over and beyond the points that you raise about black children in white foster homes,”103 it is clear that, for the folks at the NSHCC, the issue of segregation remained central and imperative to their view of child welfare’s role within their community. Thus, although the facilities in Preston closed and the managers turned their attention to providing group care in Halifax according to the then-current demand of social work professionals, they maintained a keen awareness of how their program had to respond to, and work within, a black community. In a detailed report from the committee that had been tasked with setting priorities for the new programs of the NSHCC, members outlined how the home’s service was intended to provide residential and counselling facilities for black children who were unsuited to foster care and required the particular advantages that group living provided. They would find a nonthreatening environment where they could develop “good human relationships with other people, both adult and peers … a realistic sense of security, identity and worth,” and a sense of their own rights and responsibilities as contributing members of the community, with a prominent emphasis upon religious education. However, in assessing how the traditional program at the NSHCC could be adapted and what elements could be altered and transferred to the new facilities, the committee members noted, in a section titled “Black Culture,” that “[o]ne of the most obvious deficiencies in the Home at the present time is the lack of emphasis on black culture.” Perhaps reacting to

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the fact that the most prominent image hanging on the walls of the home at the time was a portrait of Henry Bauld, the home’s white benefactor, it was noted particularly that “[t]here is need of pictures, posters and literature that will contribute to the children’s sense of black identity. These need to be presented in an interesting and stimulating way so as to strengthen a healthy respect, understanding and appreciation of their heritage.”104 The NSHCC was the longest-lived of the congregate facilities covered by this study.105 By contrast, the Halifax Infants’ Home was the earliest to close (not including the College Street Home for Girls, which shut its doors in 1921, and the boys’ reformatories). The circumstances surrounding the closure of the Infants’ Home were, as MacKinnon described them, “difficult and contentious.” However, they also show a number of parallels with the NSHCC, notably that board members at each home were determined to continue offering these homes’ traditional services, certain that their historic place in the city remained, if not unchallenged by poor finances, then certainly inviolable in the face of community need. MacKinnon recognized the source and power of this claim. As he explained to the provincial minister of public welfare, the Infants’ Home “was an old institution having faithfully served the cause of child welfare in the city for many years” – in fact, it was fifteen years shy of a full century. “Understandably,” he stated, “the institution is loath to give up its name and its traditional role in the community.”106 The struggle to keep this name and this traditional role after World War Two was a difficult one – and was exacerbated by serious financial challenges. Grants from the Community Chest and per diem maintenance fees from the CAS and the provincial office rarely covered the true cost of operating the Infants’ Home. Additionally, there were a high number of private cases accepted, at least some of whom could not afford to pay hefty boarding fees. Thus, in April 1959, MacKinnon was informed by members of the board that the home was “going behind at a rate of $800 per month,” and they projected a “deficit of at least $10,000 at the end of the year.”107 The administrators also fought an uphill battle (as all local institutions did) against the home’s aging facilities. In this undertaking, however, they were more successful. Over the late 1940s and 1950s, the home’s interior spaces were renovated both to improve the atmosphere for the mothers and children and to meet the

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recommendations of provincial medical and welfare inspectors, who were particularly concerned with sanitation and bathing facilities.108 The home’s administrators also adjusted their policies in a few areas to meet the demands of placement agencies like the CAS and the provincial office. Thus, following criticisms levelled at their lengthy residency requirements for unmarried mothers in the late 1940s, the board took steps to alter this practice; by the mid-1950s, at least, the required six-month stay had been shifted to “a period of up to six weeks,” only long enough for “plans [to be] made for their children.”109 The home had also drafted – although not without prodding – careful policies intended to minimize, wherever possible, the length of time that children were kept at the home. In 1955 the board informed the provincial office that adoptable children “should be placed within a three (3) month period after admittance” and that the process should be started no later than two months after the child was placed in the home’s care. No more than two weeks could elapse “before court proceedings [were] started” for nonwards left at the home without financial support, and wards of societies “shall not remain in our Institution for a longer period than one year.”110 The results of these efforts were often noted in the reports of visitors to and inspectors of the Halifax Infants’ Home; within these reports, the longstanding emphasis on appearance is noticeable (and noticeably different from the descriptions of the NSHCC), both as it applied to the home and as it applied to the children themselves. Notwithstanding the recurring worries that the home was overcrowded, understaffed, and in need of improvement and redecoration (one gets the impression that it was virtually impossible to get approval of interior decorations), official inspections also noted that “good service” was rendered by a “clean and efficient” home. Children were given adequate care, nutritious food, “and as much individual attention as possible to give them.” Visitors from the provincial office noted “consistent improvement” in the home’s management by 1950, and in 1951 Allan Morton, the city’s commissioner of public health and welfare, described it as “a worthwhile project” that “deserves commendation.” A few years later, provincial inspectors J.R. Langin and J.R. Casey declared that the home lacked the “‘Spartan Neatness’ of many Institutions” and was bright, attractive, and comfortable. Moreover, the children were “healthy and strong [and] appear to spend a minimum amount of time in their cribs [i.e., in isolation] as they all have well-shaped heads and seem

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strong and alert … They respond to visitors with the usual gestures of happy babies.” In 1958 Casey repeated this praise, noting that the children “look sturdy and well and do not have the characteristics of institutionalized children.” And although some visitors were critical of the home’s practice of having the unmarried mothers work as nurses’ aides or nursery attendants, Casey wrote that “[t]his complaint is a common one in the institutions and I do not think that there is much to worry about. It is certainly better for these girls to be occupied than to be idle and have their minds constantly on their troubles.” Overall, Casey (among others) would likely have agreed with the conclusion of the city’s welfare advisor, H. Bond Jones, that “there is nothing seriously wrong with the Halifax Infants’ Home that a little more money and more trained staff would not correct and thus place it among … the finest institutions.”111 For every word of praise, however, there were several more of criticism and concern – some subtle, some damning, but all persistent. In 1955, for example, Peter Stanne of the CWC paid a visit to the Infants’ Home, where he observed what he believed to be a deeply troubling attitude verging on complacency among the home’s administrators. The institution’s longstanding position as the city’s only Protestant home for infants and unmarried mothers, it would seem, had imbued them with a sense of singular purpose and inspired what might have been regarded as arrogance and dogged independence from the rest of the child welfare community. After meeting with the board and superintendent, Stanne was given a tour of the facilities, where he was “shock[ed] … to learn that the adoptable children were being allowed to remain in this institution … some of them graduating into the Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home.”112 Although the inmates, many of whom were nonwards, received “good physical care,” they could not possibly, in his opinion, be receiving “the kind of personal care that would begin to approach what Dr. Bowlby refers to as ‘maternal care.’”113 The fact remained – the proverbial elephant in the room – that the institution was caring for the one class of children for whom congregate or group care was deemed harmful (not to mention expensive). And despite the home’s efforts to prevent it, throughout the 1950s there was persistent concern about the length of institutional stays for many of the children cared for within its walls.114 Responsibility for these lengthy stays, in the 1950s, did not rest entirely with the home’s administrators. As had been revealed by the

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dispute with Gwendolen Lantz, members of the Case Committee and the home’s superintendent frequently found themselves with “forgotten” CAS wards for whom they could not make placements. At the end of the decade, although there were very few provincial or CAS wards in the home, the managers were still burdened – in MacKinnon’s opinion – by their working relationship with the CAS and the province. However, this new burden had apparently emerged not from poor casework on the part of the CAS or the provincial office but from poor recognition of the apparent need for each dependent child to be taken on as a public ward. Indeed, MacKinnon voiced the opinion to Thomas Blue and D.H. Johnson (his replacement as the director of child welfare) that he could not “help but feel that the Infants’ Home is being used.” The large number of private cases at the home were a serious financial burden, and he wondered why these children were “not automatically the responsibility of an agency unless the mother is prepared to pay for the maintenance.” Otherwise, the home itself was “required to carry a financial responsibility … which seems to me unfair and unjust.”115 Clearly, for MacKinnon, the home’s function was a purely service-oriented one, insomuch as it serviced the provincial office and the CAS. It could not exist any longer, by this formula, because of its own desire to be a useful, charitable helper of poor, unmarried mothers. MacKinnon’s memorandum to Blue and Johnson on this subject admitted that “[u]ndoubtedly, there is another side to the story.”116 This other side was told by the home’s intake policies and the attitudes of its managers. Theoretically, the Case Committee at the Halifax Infants’ Home, which made most of the pertinent decisions about intake and discharge, was supposed to apply to the CAS or the province for casework services. However, this was not done with any consistency, partly because of a shortage of personnel to provide this casework (thus affirming the home’s right to continue this aspect of its vocation)117 and partly because the Case Committee voluntarily, even eagerly, accepted private “charity cases.” Although the Board of Management had claimed in 1951 that “it had been decided some years ago that no private cases should be taken,” this rule was not rigidly enforced. At the time of Smit’s review, for example, approximately half of the women and children in the home were classed as private clients.118 MacKinnon implied, two years later, that the majority of them were. It is possible that the managers may have taken private cases to improve the home’s budgets; they could

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demand maintenance fees from these unmarried mothers and were not restricted to caring for those placed by an outside agency. However, the serious financial stress on the home suggests another motive. The managers retained the home’s historic self-identification as a Protestant charity and believed that many women in need were simply more comfortable dealing directly with the staff at the home. A casework investigation by a social worker from the CAS or some other agency was, for some, an unnecessary and uncomfortable intrusion into a woman’s privacy.119 The Board of Management was not only aware of this attitude among the women whose infants the home cared for but also took a measure of pride in the board’s ability to cater to such requests; acceptance of private clients was a means of remaining true to the ideal of charitable benevolence, which was central to the home’s earliest constitution. The “intermediaries” of the CAS, namley casework and legal wardship, were not things that the Infants’ Home believed necessary for all of its clients. As the home had been in the business of caring for the infants of unmarried mothers for decades, it was thus uniquely placed (if not professionally sanctioned) to make these judgments. In 1953 the superintendent noted with pride, in fact, that she was “quite sure that this Home is the only charitable one in the City of Halifax, because the Protestant Orphanage will not take a child from here unless he or she is a ward of a Society.”120 By the end of the decade, however, and particularly following Smit’s 1957 review of city services, the management of the Infants’ Home was under increasing pressure to halt these longstanding practices in order to better suit the needs of other agencies in the city and to answer concerns about the effect of congregate care on normal children and infants. These pressures included financial coercion from the Community Chest, as well as what might be called professional coercion, resulting from the widely accepted expertise of Smit’s survey findings. In the case of the former, Gwendolyn Shand of the CsA reported in 1955 that the Community Chest was “worrying” about the “high cost of operation” at the home. This concern was, indeed, one of the motivating factors in the earliest efforts to secure a broad review of the city’s services. It may also explain why, in contrast to the Home of the Guardian Angel, where the closure of beds in the 1950s was creating worry about placing Catholic unmarried mothers, no similar objections were noted with regard to the Protestant Infants’ Home: the latter institution was

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simply more expensive to manage. According to MacKinnon, the chest did “not want to continue making this grant if the Infants’ Home is not needed.” With backing from other social workers (including MacKinnon, who deftly played both sides of this conflict, supporting closure while simultaneously praising the home), the chest’s concern shifted quickly into a species of blackmail; chest administrators were, according to Shand, “bringing strong pressure on the Board of the Infants’ Home to follow the recommendations of the Child Welfare Survey. Caseworkers might deplore the pressure, but some of our local workers believe that otherwise, there will be no changes made.” Members of the chest had even suggested to the home’s management that financial support “might not be continued indefinitely on the present basis.”121 Smit’s report drew attention to several options for the home that might have satisfied the concerns of the Community Chest and those of childcare workers who were “strongly opposed” to infant care in institutional settings.122 None of them included a plan for the continuation of the home’s traditional service to unmarried mothers. Instead, the recommendations were based in part upon Smit’s own opinion of the gaps and weaknesses in Halifax’s system and upon the opinions of other agencies, as expressed through the survey returns. As a result, Smit’s report not only carried the weight of the CWC’s executive secretary of family and child welfare but was also a measurement of the consensus of opinion among Halifax’s childcare workers. The suggestions themselves included the options of operating a homemaker service, a daycare centre, or a boarding home for unmarried mothers before and after confinement (without, it is presumed, any program for infant care). The report also recommended that the board might “start studying the possibility of setting up as a home for emotionally disturbed children” or of joining forces with other institutions – like St Paul’s Home for Girls – to expand services to other specific groups of children in need of group care, notably adolescent boys.123 Despite the threats of funding withdrawal and pressure from the child welfare community, and despite these recommendations (which seemed, on the whole, well suited to local needs as they were perceived by others in the field), managers of the Infants’ Home persistently denied that radical changes in their policies or practices were necessary. Indeed, both the seeming contradiction of their participation during the 1951 review and their position on this later

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survey suggest that their earlier support and promotion of modern methods was calculated to maintain the home’s historic mandate rather than to position it for a new, more specialized role in the community.124 By decade’s end, the management at the home was not unaware that conditions bearing directly on the home’s services had changed – including lower numbers resulting from the drop in placements by the CAS and the provincial office, the federal family allowance, and the reopening of the Salvation Army Hospital. However, operationally and rhetorically, the management attempted to lessen the impact of these changes and to minimize the potential alteration of the home’s work. In 1954 or 1955, for example, the home had begun to take convalescent cases from the local children’s hospital. Board members, possibly under the influence of the home’s physician and its new president, Dr Alice Kitz, began “emphasizing the value of the Home as a convalescent Centre” for “mongoloids … [the] severely mentally retarded, or even … chronically ill children.”125 However, this option had no appeal for other agencies (as was made clear in Smit’s report), probably because it did nothing to address immediate concerns about child welfare (i.e., the care of dependent children, particularly those who were emotionally disturbed, as opposed to those whose needs were strictly physical or medical). Smit himself argued that outpatient care of the type suggested by the board “requires considerable knowledge and skill both on the part of the hospital and of the agency providing the services if it is not to be used merely as a convenience rather than in the interests of a child.” His report clearly implied that staff members of this quality were not available at the Infants’ Home, and he further questioned “whether an institutional setting [was] the best way to provide convalescent care as the child has already had an institutional experience in the hospital and he may not respond well to another institutional period.”126 A more subtle but nonetheless ultimately unsuccessful attempt to defend the longstanding community role of the Infants’ Home involved its board members and the superintendent in an emotional campaign to promote the fundamental necessity of the home’s service for the most unfortunate members of the adult community – unmarried mothers. Drawing direct comparison with the restrictive intake policy at the Home of the Guardian Angel, the board members attempted to emphasize the practical and humanely charitable necessity of the home’s work. They noted several cases of abandonment

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and eviction of single mothers, for example, including one case of a “Common Law wife with two young children and a new baby due, literally on the street … evicted at night. Because no one else will handle these cases, we do. What good is hard and fast ‘Policy’ when the need is urgent and is referred by Social Workers to our door.” Echoing their frustrations with Lantz of nearly a decade earlier, the managers also expressed a degree of bitterness over the difficulty of getting case histories for the mothers and children in the home: “We should not have to argue our need for them, or, our right to them. Neither should we need to wait weeks, before receiving half answers. We notice that we are expected to tell all and give full cooperation.”127 Several months after the release of Smit’s report, amid increasing pressure for change, the board of the Halifax Infants’ Home also claimed to possess “information ‘on competent authority’ that a number of poor commercial and unlicensed homes have sprung up.” If the Infants’ Home no longer functioned in its traditional capacity, many unmarried mothers would be left to the mercy of these unscrupulous baby farmers.128 Although the number of mothers in the home was high at the time these claims were made, seeming to support the arguments about the necessity of the service (indeed, MacKinnon acknowledged that the robust population suggested a continued need for the home), Shand suggested that the elevated number was due “to their very definite effort, through letters and other publicity, to persuade girls to enter from other parts of Nova Scotia.”129 As these arguments and numbers failed to convince other local child welfare folk, the managers of the Infants’ Home appear instead to have adopted a “wait and see” approach to their problems. Shand, Smit, and MacKinnon interpreted this approach as a troublingly stubborn resistance. Dr Kitz, who was initially believed to be a potential force for positive change, displayed to Smit “a certain complacency that was regrettable.” She apparently had argued that “social workers in Halifax [were] behind a continuation of the existing function” of the home, and Smit did not “know just how this [could] be tackled.”130 Meetings held with Shand and MacKinnon were equally fruitless. By February 1959 the home’s representatives had apparently become “resentful” of the intrusion of other agencies into their internal affairs, and “[i]t was evident [that they] wished to continue on the same basis rather indefinitely.”131

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When, late in 1959, the acting minister of public welfare, Stephen Pyke, informed the home that no additional funds would be granted from the province to cover its mounting – indeed, almost crippling – debt, continuance was no longer an option. Pyke informed Dr Kitz that although the province was “most appreciative of the good work done” by the home, it would be inappropriate to approve its request for funds in light of the fact that the CWC (through Smit) had recommended, with the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau agreeing, that the home discontinue “the services now provided.”132 Pyke did not mention that his deputy minister, MacKinnon, was also of this opinion, but correspondence between Pyke and MacKinnon suggests that the former’s decision was heavily influenced by the latter (if not by the easing of the province’s own financial obligations that would result). In a lengthy letter of June 1959, which was inspired by “the approach that the Halifax Infants’ Home is making to the Government for financial assistance,” MacKinnon detailed the findings of Smit’s report and stated the opinion of the Welfare Bureau and the Community Chest. He did not agree, he wrote, that the home should be immediately closed because there remained nine mothers and thirty-four children for whom provisions had yet to be made. However, he was clear on the fact that he believed closure was the best option for the home, the city, the province, the children, the CAS, and his office. He suggested, in fact, that “if the Community Chest is prepared to make all or a portion of the money that is now going to the Infants’ Home available to the Children’s Aid,” the latter could hire more staff and “provide a better service.” With similar support from the government to his own office for expanded staff and operating funds, “we can jointly with the [CAS] provide services which would take the place of the Infants’ Home.” His opinion was supported by reference to the work of the Catholics at the Home of the Guardian Angel. There, he wrote, in response to “the trend all across North America [that] was against institutional care of infants and toward adoption and boarding homes … additional social service staff and facilities … emptied the institution.”133 From the perspective of local social workers, emptying the Halifax Infants’ Home did not necessarily mean that closure was the ultimate goal. Rather, transformation was the objective, as the need for group care, particularly, made the presence of this institution a potential boon to the city’s overall child welfare network. From the perspective of the managers of the Infants’ Home, however, whether

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they pursued change or continuity was of less importance than maintaining their right to decide for themselves what future course would be taken. Unable to make a convincing argument to continue the home’s services, and surely unable to function under threats of the withdrawal of financial support from the Community Chest and the province, the home’s administrators decided that they would close permanently in February 1960, after eighty-five years of operation. When they officially announced their decision to the provincial superintendent in December 1959, the home’s corresponding secretary managed to convey a degree of surprise that their position had not been more widely championed. “As you know from press reports,” she wrote, “[t]he Infants’ Home is regretfully facing the fact that, apparently, the Home as such has no further use in the community – at present.” In expressing the board’s desire that “good homes and adequate care may be provided for the babies,” she added (belying the concerted effort of the home’s managers to stay open) that “where these infants are cared for is not the point – but how they are cared for is our real concern.”134 Ironically, in a letter to Smit describing this decision, Gwendolyn Shand wrote, “[t]here has been much quiet work (both direct and indirect) done on this problem since last spring. Besides our Council, the United Appeal, and the Provincial Dept of Child Welfare have played their part. It has come about quietly and without any ultimatums and only indirect ‘pressure.’ We are so glad the Board came to their own decision without any real struggle.”135 In what might also be characterized as ironic, MacKinnon stated that the decision to close – made not without a “pang of regret” – was the right one for the sake of “efficiency” given that “we are part of a very large community which is growing and developing at a very rapid pace. If it has any one outstanding characteristic, it is change and progress.”136 The closure of the Halifax Infants’ Home powerfully demonstrates the diminished power of the institutions in the city. Once independent and powerful enough to direct their own programs, control the direction of local welfare efforts, and make independent decisions about the care and adoptive placement of their inmates, they now lacked even the smallest influence over decisions affecting their own work. The closure also highlights the ways that the denominational imperatives of the institutions’ earliest identity constrained their ability to recognize their limitations or adapt to new circumstances. The closure should not, however, be taken as

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evidence that the institutions’ religious principles were considered to be problematic or to require change or modernization. There is no evidence, for example, that local caregivers objected to the Catholic institutions’ insistence upon the need to direct their services to Roman Catholic clientele or vice versa, and the legal requirements for religious sorting remained intact. Similarly, the NSHCC, whose claims for a continuation of the status quo were arguably less compelling than those of the Infants’ Home, was granted provincial funding to expand and improve its facilities, and it maintained its congregate service well into the 1970s. On the one hand, the claims of the Infants’ Home for continuance were based upon a particular type of service for which there continued to be a demand, however diminished and however beleaguered by professional opinion on institutional care for the very young. It might well be argued, moreover, that there were great benefits to be gained from such a service, particularly for the unmarried mothers themselves. The professional social work methods in use at the Home of the Guardian Angel may have been, as the Infants’ Home claimed, inflexible, and they were certainly more intrusive than the admittance rules at the Protestant Infants’ Home. The latter’s continued acceptance of private cases likely provided an appealing option for young women “in trouble,” as there were regularly upward of ten or twenty mothers in residence throughout the 1950s. On the other hand, the NSHCC’s claims were based, in part, upon an unwillingness to integrate with the institutional system and, in part, upon the home’s continued pride of place within the black community. The legacy of sectarian and racial segregation was thus uneven and highly circumstantial. Importantly, institutional managers and boards acted and reacted as independent agents in the community – not always with success but never as passive elements whose conduct was forced by an impersonal application of professional methods. Decisions about child welfare were political and often personal, driven by differing perceptions of community need, and regulated sharply by financial constraint, but they were never predictable.

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Conclusion

Seventy-seven years after the Halifax Citizen broke the story of abuse at the Halifax Industrial School, which served to introduce this study, allegations surfaced about serious trouble at another boy’s home in Canada. In the late 1990s several teachers were accused (and later convicted) of indecent assault against boys who had been in their care during the 1970s and 1980s. In both cases, the abuse allegations presented disquieting revelations of exploitation and cruelty to a shocked public. However, the comparison between these two cases appears, in many ways, to be inappropriate – not because of the chronological distance between them, not because of the different nature of the abuses committed, and not because the more recent case resulted in convictions, whereas no one was ever held legally accountable for the violence at the Industrial School.1 Instead, the comparison is negated by the fact that the site on which the more recent incidents occurred was Upper Canada College (UCC) in Toronto, “this country’s most elite and storied private school.”2 Its “inmates” were neither delinquents sentenced by a Juvenile Court nor homeless, friendless boys found wandering city streets; they were the privileged sons of wealthy businessmen, lawyers, politicians, and diplomats. Nor were they expected to enter the world as carpenters, or labourers, or shoemakers but as captains of industry, civic leaders, and professionals.3 They were not the children of the poor. The contrast between these two schools exposes the enormous chasm between different sorts of children’s institutions – those for educating the rich and those for containing the poor – a contrast that is otherwise belied by a cursory comparison of their structures. Both UCC and the Industrial School were products of the nineteenth

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century, housing around 100 boys of various ages in grandly imposing buildings (with respect to their exteriors, at least), and both had onsite schooling and congregate dining halls and living facilities. Their directors hoped their charges would be educated, disciplined, and made morally aware and thus enter the world to become useful, contributing citizens within their communities. But whereas the Industrial School was part of a cluster of institutions, like orphans’ asylums, that were gradually deemed inappropriate places for “normal” children, places like UCC were (and are) considered appropriate – even beneficial – for their charges.4 The difference that money makes is sharply apparent. If there was one thing that both constrained and defined the programs developed and deployed at children’s homes across Halifax (and that set them apart from private boarding schools), it was their status as welfare institutions for the children of the poor.5 Their religious and ethnic affiliations were fundamental to the architecture of child welfare in the city, fundamental to their original inspiration, and equally fundamental to the sorts of programs and solutions pursued for dependency and neglect. These affiliations also provided unique challenges (and arguably some benefits) for both managers and children in care. But how – or even whether – children’s homes could provide their services depended on the willingness of local citizens and the government to help fund and administer the effort. Moreover, these homes did not intend to train future leaders but to train useful workers and servants and to prevent social decay through the spread of delinquency, poverty, and more particularly, continued dependency. A potentially unruly, disruptive, and expensive population was therefore governed (not always effectively) through the provision of welfare services that, although undoubtedly assisting and improving the lives of countless children, still expressed deeply (sometimes unconsciously) selfinterested motives and fears. The landscape of child welfare services in Halifax was part of this widespread project of welfare governance; it was also a product of its local context, of a particular, denominationally ordered (and often competitive) vision of Christian service, and of its administrators’ and leaders’ engagement with (and occasional rejection of) trends in child welfare and child development theories. As I have demonstrated here, institutions did not sit mutely amid the creation and dissemination of these theories. The sorts of programs they

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attempted to pursue were not antiquated by virtue of their charitable, private, or religious affiliations, nor were they opposed to, or disengaged from, this professional discourse. Indeed, not only were Halifax institutions deeply implicated in the transformation of welfare services in their city, but there are also striking continuities between nineteenth-century child welfare methods and those that came to dominate in the post–World War Two years. These continuities are often masked by the blunt critique offered up of the romanticism associated with child rescue efforts of the nineteenth century. For example, as Eric Smit wrote to Ross Kinney at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC) in 1961, “[t]he idealized concept of the appealing waif standing desolate and deserted on the street corner – probably in the bitter cold of winter with a wind whipping through threadbare clothes driving the snow deep into his tattered garments – is no longer valid if it ever was.” What modern child welfare work attempted, by contrast, was not “rescue” of these appealing waifs but therapeutic intervention. Backed by modern social work theory, casework, and intensive medical and psychological testing, child welfare looked not merely to protect but also to treat children with dysfunctional families and emotional disturbances. “Few institutions for children,” Smit argued, “if they are to continue to play a useful part in the whole child welfare program, can escape the necessity of abandoning [older methods] and accepting elements of a treatment oriented place.”6 The distinction Smit imposed between the past and present objects of child welfare, between the Dickensian waif in need of philanthropic rescue and the troubled youth in need of treatment, was well suited to defending the necessity of professionalism and perhaps even to explaining the growing cost of services. But it also hides much of the deeper intent of these early child rescue efforts. In Halifax institutional managers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did indeed romanticize the “little ones” who entered their care. However, they were not concerned merely with the physical protection and rescue of these children. If this had been the case, the effort to segregate children denominationally and racially would not have been considered necessary. Nor would it have been deemed important to attempt to educate them, train them, and inculcate the values of obedience, thrift, hard work, Christian faith, and the like. The methods chosen to do this certainly became more elaborate, the text of professional methods grew thicker and more detailed – and

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eventually wrote congregate care almost entirely out of its content – but the central purpose was the same: protecting a child’s “best interests” in order to protect those of the community. And although early institutional managers believed that a congregate facility could provide the protection and training necessary to serving these “best interests,” they also recognized that children belonged with families (of the right sort, of course). Adoption and rudimentary foster placements (like apprenticeships) had always been parts of institutional programs. Foster care, although altered by the trappings of modern social work, was not the invention of professional social workers; it was an outgrowth of much older practices aimed both at protecting children and at preparing them for a useful future. This is not to say that there were no conflicts between those who promoted foster care and those who managed institutions. The history of child welfare in Halifax is rife with conflict, some of it characterized by acidic interagency rivalries and some of it encompassing far more fundamental disagreements about what should be done for dependent children and how it should be done. The alteration of programs, the shift from an emphasis on congregate care to an emphasis on group homes and fostering was neither simple, harmonious, nor foregone. Again, however, local institutions cannot be uniformly associated with old-fashioned methodologies. Children’s homes in the city were not closed because modern child welfare unanimously decreed them outdated or unnecessary. Several of them closed because decades of underfunding had left them with finances that were indequate to meet the desire of their managers to offer group home services. The Roman Catholic St Joseph’s Orphanage and Home of the Guardian Angel closed because their own administrators willingly, even aggressively, employed casework and placement methods that emptied their dormitories. Closure came from within, not from without. The Halifax Infants’ Home faced a combination of intractable challenges, both financial and professional, but it is not entirely clear that the latter were more significant than the former. Even in the months leading up to its closure, the need for such a maternity home for Protestant mothers in the city (with a rigorous system for avoiding institutionalization of infants, of course) was obvious to many. The NSHCC, the last orphanage to offer congregate care for dependent children that might be considered “traditional,” persisted through a combination of community need, community pride, complacency, and racism on the part of some elements of the white community. These institutions were,

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Conclusion

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overall, flexible places, just as congregate care and professional status were flexible concepts. There were no hard and fast rules that applied uniformly to each home or to each agency (or even to the same agency under different leadership). Standards were altered, even manipulated, to accommodate community need, political demand, and personal interest. The alterations wrought within the child welfare field as a whole were not the results of a process but were the sometimes unpredictable and often unintended outcomes of the choices made, the adaptations attempted, and the city contexts imposed and experienced. Equally flexible was the line between public and private welfare service. This history of institutions in Halifax has not only sought to eliminate the perception of a definitive fracture between institutional and foster care (while necessarily recognizing their differences) but has also attempted to blur the familiar line often drawn between nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century charities and the “birth” of the modern public welfare state. Nineteenth-century children’s homes were privately managed and funded enterprises. Through legal measures, however, the provincial government officially recognized and supported these enterprises and gave their managers the leeway to take charge of poor children, even against the claims of these children’s parents. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, some of these institutions received public money to do so; by the end of World War One, all of them did. Occasional grants-in-aid and per diem maintenance fees for public wards may have been paltry, but these sources of revenue and the elaboration of child welfare legislation governing these institutions’ efforts challenge any notion that programs that predated the welfare state were wholly private, charitable affairs. The continuing operation of private institutions and the continuing private status of many agencies after the implementation of state-centred welfare initiatives in the mid-twentieth century also challenge the idea of an exclusively public welfare state. Fred MacKinnon, whose early career was characterized by a strong preference for state-centred and controlled services, had decided by 1960 that this blending of private and public administration was a necessary feature of any healthy welfare program. Although still firm on the principles of unity in purpose and standards and certain that some centralized organization was necessary to ensure this unity, he appeared less certain that the provincial government should manage, for example, the work done by the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) on an entirely public basis. Instead, it

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

was far more practical and efficient (not to mention less expensive) for the government to “purchase” public service from a private agency that, by engaging the local citizenry, could continue “trailblazing” in the welfare field. In part, he claimed to have reached this conclusion because he did not believe that there was sufficient public sympathy for welfare (as opposed to health and education), which would be required to support the attendant costs. But as he told the delegates at a 1960 conference of the Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies, he was also wary of creating a government “monolith.” The private, citizen-driven nature of the activity of the CAS (whose methods and priorities were nevertheless defined and regulated by the state) brought a “system of checks and balances,” creating the necessary “give and take” that allowed child welfare programs to respond effectively to local needs. Although government funding – and in some cases government provision – of welfare services does occasionally mask a degree of private initiative, so too can the continuance of private initiative provide an effective camouflage for the extent of government control. Indeed, as others have demonstrated, the elaboration of government regulations and the growing dependence of charities on government support undermine any real sense that these agencies were effectively or functionally private.7 At times, however, praise for private initiative like that put forth by MacKinnon can also be used to argue for the curtailment of public monies spent on welfare programs and for the reinvigoration of privately funded charities. Some scholars and politicians have even advocated a return to private orphanage care for poor children as a means of curtailing the expenses of public welfare administration. The proposal has also been articulated as a means of preventing what are perceived to be growing numbers of children suffering emotional trauma caused by a constant shuffling through foster home after foster home. According to this latter argument, whereas foster care too often results in instability and constant change, a well-run institution can provide a stable home in which children can learn to trust others, to have confidence in themselves, and to feel secure in their environment.8 An institutional history such as this one cannot pretend to offer a determination of whether institutions or foster homes are preferable – except to say that the differences between these two modes of care are not nearly as distinct as they might appear. Moreover, neither of them are likely to succeed if the systemic causes of child dependency

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and neglect remain unaddressed. The chronic challenges of providing child welfare in Halifax provide a clear indication that no amount of good intent or desire to protect the “best interests” of children is an adequate substitute for robust – or even adequate – financial support, both for families in need and for welfare programs. Equally important is that policymakers and child welfare workers interrogate very carefully who is making decisions in the “best interests” of these children. The vast scholarship on child welfare’s history casts an enormous shadow of doubt that there has ever been anything resembling a consensus on what these interests might be. Indeed, with historical hindsight, it might be tempting to argue that the sectarianism and racism that influenced early decisions about institutional organization in Halifax were a cause of much strife, dislocation, and weakness and that such concerns are therefore best left out of any consideration of what is best for a dependent child. It is not clear, however, that any other approach would have been acceptable in the city, given the historic involvement of churches and religious organizations in the provision of charity and given the powerful sense of community identity that was so often derived from denominational or ethnic association. The effect of such religiously inspired identity politics on the provision of welfare in other Canadian cities (whether for children or other groups) is largely unstudied – but it is a significant issue, one that demands much more careful research. This is particularly so given that not everyone today finds a denominationally or ethnically blind approach desirable. For example, when provincial governments undertook deliberately integrationist approaches to the fostering and adoption of Aboriginal children in the 1960s, they did so with the belief that differences of religion and race must not override a child’s “best interests.” Between 1960 and 1990, an estimated 11,000 Aboriginal children were thus adopted, and over 90 per cent of them were placed with white families, away from their Native reserves and communities. Activists within the Aboriginal community refer to this as the “Big Scoop” and see it as one in a series of deliberate attempts by governments to perpetrate cultural genocide. Although the project was halted after protests in the late 1980s, campaigns to repatriate these children continue. This is a controversial effort but one that Aboriginal leaders believe is necessary for the promotion and protection of their culture, as children are the most important source of cultural promise and survival.9 They would, perhaps, agree with the concerns

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The Guardianship of Best Interests

expressed in a 1971 report by the NSHCC. In September of that year, the home’s administrators expressed concern over the ability of provincial welfare programs to uphold the principles of ethnically inspired foster and adoptive placements for black wards. “[I]n order to counteract any psychological deprivation a child might experience while being in white foster or adoption homes,” the report stated, it was paramount that black children be placed with black families.10 Deciding the “best interests” of a child was clearly as much about deciding the best interests of the community of Halifax, whose religious, ethnic, class, and gender identities lacked even a facade of symmetry and cohesion but were instead fractured, polymorphous, and changeable. As a result, it can be difficult to apprehend who or what made the fundamental choices about welfare services, such as who required them or how they should be managed. In Halifax these choices – rarely, if ever, made by (or in consultation with) the children themselves – were sometimes inspired by the religious and social conscience of community groups and churches. Sometimes, they were the result of a combined effort between agencies that were attempting to respond to specific concerns about their own community, such as the wars or the 1917 Halifax Explosion. Sometimes, they were dictated by government requirements that, importantly, were themselves at least partly the product of community expectations. They were also dictated by broader influences from child welfare experts that worked like peer pressure; ultimately, resisting these influences was a greater challenge than accepting them, particularly when these experts could claim superior abilities in the realm of child protection. But the claim of superior abilities did not always result in improvements. As Linda Gordon has argued, and as the situation in Halifax demonstrates, attempts to “put children first” do not always – or even usually – fix the systemic problems from which neglect, dependency, poverty, and delinquency often result.11 An easy solution is elusive, but given the labyrinthine weave of interests involved in the guardianship of dependent children across Canada, it is probably undesirable, too.

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appendices

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appendix one Population of the province of Nova Scotia and the city of Halifax, 1851–1961 Increase over previous census (%)

Year

Province

City

1851

276,854

20,749

–

1861

330,857

25,145

17

1871

387,800

29,528

15

1881

440,572

36,100

18

1891

450,396

38,437

6

1901

459,574

40,832

6

1911

492,338

46,619

12

1921

523,837

58,372

20

1931

512,846

59,275

2

1941

577,962

70,488

16

1951

642,584

85,589

18

1956

694,717

93,301

8

1961

737,007

92,511

7

Sources: Canada, Census of Canada, 1861–1951; Canada, Census of Canada, 1956; Canada, Census of Canada, 1961: Population – Incorporated Cities, Towns and Villages; Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 17.

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2012-11-16 10:52:21

39.2

40.7

40.7

40.9

41.5

39.6

40.7

41.2

41.7

43.1

1871

1881

1891

1901

1911

1921

1931

1941

1951

1961

22.7

25.9

27.7

28.7

28.0

28.3

26.6

25.9

25.9

25.6

Anglican

3.1

3.1

3.7

4.4

11.4

11.0

11.9

12.7

13.8

12.4

Presbyterian

7.8

7.5

7.0

7.3

7.8

7.2

7.6

7.4

7.5

8.5

Baptist

–

–

0.0

0.0

9.7

9.8

11.0

10.4

10.3

13.3

Methodist

1.0

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.2

0.1

0.3

0.2

0.2

Lutheran

0.6

0.6

0.5

0.5

0.6

0.3

0.4

0.4

0.0

0.0

Salvation Army

18.5

17.9

16.1

15.0

–

–

–

–

–

–

United

2.1

1.4

2.1

1.9

2.0

1.2

1.1

2.3

1.5

0.9

Other*

1.2

1.1

1.1

1.0

1.0

0.5

0.3

0.0

0.0

0.0

Jewish

* “Other” refers to a multitude of smaller denominations whose membership accounted for less than 1 per cent of the city’s population (i.e., Mormon, Brethren, Confucian, Spiritualist, Greek Orthodox, “unspecified,” etc.). Sources: Canada, Census of Canada, 1871–1951; Canada, Census of Canada, 1961: General Review, Vol. 7 – Religious Denominations in Canada.

Roman Catholic

Year

Religious affiliation of the inhabitants of Halifax, as a percentage of the total urban population, c. 1871–1961

appendix two

appendix three Halifax institutions: Years of operation and estimated capacity Children’s homes

Years of operation

Est. capacity

College Street Home for Girls

1891–1921 (year of last report)

10–12

Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (Preston)

1921–present (no longer functions as a residential facility)

50–60

Protestant Orphans’ Home

1857–1970 (converted to the Veith Street Community Centre)

40–50

St Paul’s Home for Girls

1867–1969/70 (became a residence for female students of the Halifax School for the Blind)

30

St Joseph’s Orphanage

1868–1967 (replaced St Mary’s Convent Orphanage, which operated from 1849 to 1868)

175

Halifax Infants’ Home

1875–1960

60

Home of the Guardian Angel

1888–1967 (closed with St Joseph’s Orphanage)

170

Salvation Army Home (for unwed mothers)

1893–c. 1922 (reopened in 1955)

25–30

Monastery of the Good Shepherd (after 1951/52, name was changed to St Euphrasia’s Training School)

1890–1971

250 (including adult women and religious)

Halifax Industrial School

1864–1947 (moved to Shelburne, Nova Scotia)

60–100

St Patrick’s Home for Boys

1885–1955

95

Reformatories

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Home of the Guardian Angel

Halifax Infants’ Home

Number of children in care at local infants’ homes, 1913–1959

Source: Compiled from AR, jha (1914–60), passim.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Number of children in care at Halifax institutions, 1913–1959

appendix four

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St Joseph’s

Protestant Orphans’ Home

Source: Compiled from AR, jha (1914–60), passim.

0

50

100

150

200

250

St Paul’s Home for Girls

Number of children in care at local orphanages, 1913–1959

NS Home for Colored Children

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Halifax Industrial School

Source: Compiled from AR, jha (1914–60), passim.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

St Patrick’s Home for Boys

Number of boys in care at local reformatories, 1913–1955

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Total in care

Source: Compiled from AR, jha (1914–60), passim.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Reported capacities

Number of children in care compared to reported capacities of Halifax children’s homes, 1913–1959

appendix five

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Notes

introduction 1 “Fiendish Cruelty Practised upon the Inmates of the Halifax Industrial School,” Halifax Citizen, 17 October 1924, 1–2. This was not the first time that the paper had run an exposé on conditions at the school, but it was the first time one of its reports generated a noticeable public reaction. See also, for example, “Horrible Disclosures Brought to Light Regarding Youthful Inmates at the Halifax Industrial School,” Halifax Citizen, 3 October 1924, 1. 2 “Horrible Disclosures Brought to Light,” Halifax Citizen, 3 October 1924, 1. General descriptions of the home can be found in the Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha ); these reports contain the superintendent’s observations, as well as occasional reports from the institution’s superintendent. 3 “Fiendish Cruelty Practised,” Halifax Citizen, 17 October 1924, 1–2. The Nova Scotia Hospital was the provincial psychiatric institution. 4 The speedy sequence of events leading up to this inquiry is recounted in “Findings of E.H. Blois Re Industrial School Inquiry!” Halifax Citizen, 12 December 1924, 1, 6. Blois, a native of Hant’s County, Nova Scotia, was educated at Dalhousie University in Halifax and began teaching at the Halifax Industrial School in 1901. He was appointed superintendent of the institution in 1906 and held that post until his appointment as provincial superintendent of neglected and dependent children in 1912. See MacKinnon, “Life and Times of Ernest H. Blois.” 5 “Boys Leave the Industrial School Just as Bad Morally as When They Enter It!” Halifax Citizen, 31 October 1924, 4.

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262

Notes to pages 4–5

6 The Halifax Citizen and other city papers published the full names of several of the inmates, former inmates, and those whose situations were particularly shocking (such as the boy “Inkus”). There was an attempt to protect the identities of younger boys at the home, but they were often referred to by name during testimony by their co–residents, and the transcripts were published verbatim in the Citizen. I have opted to identify them by initials only. 7 E.S. was twenty–one at the time of his testimony and had been sentenced by Judge J.J. Hunt of the Halifax Juvenile Court for an “indefinite period” in the Halifax Industrial School, although he rightfully refused to state why he had been sentenced. After being released from hospital, he was sent back to the school for nine months. He was given financial compensation by the board of directors, and his father also sought damages. His testimony was published verbatim in “Probe into Industrial School Management,” Halifax Citizen, 7 November 1924, 6; and “Inquiry into Management of Halifax Industrial School,” Halifax Citizen, 14 November 1924, 3. See also “Former Boy of School Says Was Manacled and Beaten with Handcuffs,” Halifax Evening Mail, 28 October 1924, 3, 12; and “Boy Who Lost Arm at School Alleges Cruel Treatment,” Halifax Evening Echo, 28 October 1924, 1. 8 Testimony of John Wilson, former employee of the Halifax Industrial School, in “The Second Day of Industrial School Investigation Brings Startling Evidence of the Ill-Treatment of Helpless Boys,” Halifax Citizen, 31 October 1924, 2. 9 “Probe into the Industrial School Management,” Halifax Citizen, 7 November 1924, 6. 10 “Instead of a Reformatory –– Industrial School Has Been a Prison and Torture House Where Criminals Have Developed,” Halifax Citizen, 21 November 1924, 1. 11 A number of academic studies of institutional abuse in Canada have centred particularly on Aboriginal residential schools. See, for example, Barman, “Separate and Unequal”; Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision; Milloy, National Crime; and Knockwood, Out of the Depths. Other studies of institutional abuse and scandal include Balcom, “Scandal and Social Policy”; Harris, Unholy Orders; and Hartlen, Butterbox Survivors. At the time of writing, the federal government had established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for those affected by abuses at Aboriginal residential schools; see http://www.trc–cvr.ca/index_e.html (accessed 30 March 2012). And several thorough reports on the issue have been produced by and for the Law Commission of Canada; see, for example,

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Notes to pages 6–7

12

13 14

15

263

Law Commission of Canada, “Restoring Dignity” and Institute for Human Resource Development, “Final Report: Review of the Needs of Victims of Institutional Abuse.” See also Kaufman, Searching for Justice. The most influential of such studies were those produced in the mid– twentieth century by Anna Freud and John Bowlby. See Burlingham and Freud, War and Children; Freud, Infants without Families and Research at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic; and Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health. See also chapter 5 herein. Key, Century of the Child. The only comprehensive study of institutional care for children in Canada is Rooke and Schnell’s excellent text Discarding the Asylum, which considers the role of professionals, the emergence of the welfare state, and a shift in the cultural wisdom surrounding childhood. The subject of children’s institutions is also addressed by Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society. See also Ballem, “Lacombe Home”; Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys’ of the ‘Dangerous Class,’” and “Turning ‘Bad Boys’ into ‘Good Citizens’”; Chard, “Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home”; Gossage, “Les Enfants Abandonnés à Montréal au 19e Siècle”; Neff, “Use of Apprenticeship and Adoption”; René, “L’Orphelinat de Nicolet”; Rooke and Schnell, “From Binding to Boarding Out” and “Rise and Decline of British North American Protestant Orphans Homes as Woman’s Domain”; and Saunders, Share and Care. For a comparative perspective, see Ashby, Endangered Children and Saving the Waifs; Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage; Friedman, These Are Our Children; Hacsi, Second Home; Hendrick, Child Welfare; Holt, Indian Orphanages; and Murdoch, Imagined Orphans. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood. See also DeMause, ed., History of Childhood; Plumb, “New World of Children in Eighteenth–Century England”; Shorter, Making of the Modern Family; and Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage in England. Although several of the conclusions offered by Ariès and those who followed him have been refuted (see especially Pollock, Forgotten Children; and Wilson, “Infancy of the History of Childhood”), the basic notion of childhood’s “cultural construction” has been explored to great effect in several subsequent studies; see, for example, Cunningham, Children of the Poor; Gillis, Youth and History; Higgonet, Pictures of Innocence; Kett, Rites of Passage; Steedman, Childhood, Culture and Class in Britain; and Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child. A good historiographical introduction to the subject of the “cultural construction” of childhood can be found in Bellingham, “History of Childhood.”

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264

Notes to pages 7–8

16 Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; Schnell, “Childhood as Ideology”; Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 3–36, 124– 51; Peikoff and Brickey, “Creating Precious Children and Glorified Mothers”; McIntosh, Boys in the Pits, 14–41. 17 This same image of the ideal citizen (as white, Anglo–Celtic, and most often Protestant) informed much of Canada’s federal immigration policy in this period, influenced other social and legal reforms, and inspired the country’s eugenics movement. See particularly Backhouse, Color Coded; Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates; McLaren, Our Own Master Race; Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water; and Winks, Blacks in Canada, 298–313. For a comparative perspective on the manner in which racial metaphors informed Western understandings of social organization, see particularly Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; and McClintock, Imperial Leather. 18 On the mobilization of this description (as both a cultural marker and a term with socio–political implications) within child saving circles, see particularly Cunningham, Children of the Poor. 19 Davin, Growing Up Poor; Gandal, Virtues of the Vicious; Golden, “Iconography of Child Public Health”; Gutman, Lewis Hine and the American Social Conscience; Hales, Silver Cities; Kemp, Lewis Hine; McHoul, “Taking the Children”; Murdoch, Imagined Orphans. Similar images (and video) of poor children, either in situ or as part of a “before–and– after” narrative, are used by present–day children’s charities such as Foster Parents Plan (now known as Plan Canada), UNICEF, and the Christian Children’s Fund, among others. That the majority of children pictured in these advertisements are nonwhites presents an interesting parallel to late-nineteenth-century welfare efforts, which employed similar visual language. These early images depicted white children whose poverty and endangerment were exemplified by the darkness (dirtiness) of their skin. Most modern children’s agencies in the West, however, would demure from publishing photographs of children in need within their own communities because of privacy concerns. 20 For a description of class and gender mediation of curricula in Canada, see, for example, Barman, “‘Knowledge Is Essential for Universal Progress but Fatal to Class Privilege’”; Houston and Prentice, Schooling and Scholars; Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; Sutherland, Growing Up and Children in English Canadian Society, 155–224. 21 This theme is also explored in Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship; Cunningham, Children of the Poor, esp. 3–5; Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; and Houston, “Victorian Origins of Juvenile Delinquency.”

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Notes to pages 9–10

265

22 Testimony published in “Boys Leave the Industrial School Just as Bad Morally as When They Enter It,” Halifax Citizen, 31 October 1924, 4–5. A similar ambivalence can be detected in the coverage of this inquiry in other local papers. Whereas the Citizen was quick to downplay contradictions in the boys’ testimonies and highlight the most reprehensible stories of abuse, other papers maintained a very different tone (and occasionally accused the Citizen of sensationalism and undue bias). See, for example, “Inquiry Held This Morning at School Itself,” Halifax Evening Echo, 29 October 1924, 1; “Superintendent of School Denies That He Ill-Treated Boys,” Halifax Evening Echo, 31 October 1924, 1; “R.H. Murray Explains Why S.P.C. Withdrew Prosecution against Alfred Johns, of Industrial School,” Halifax Evening Echo, 22 November 1924, 9; and “Many of Boys at School Subnormal,” Halifax Evening Echo, 1 November 1924, 1. For other local coverage of this nature, see, for example, “Superintendent Johns Denies Charges of Cruelty,” Halifax Evening Mail, 31 October 1924, 3; and “These Industrial School Boys Confess Cruelty Charge Untrue,” Halifax Evening Mail, 22 November 1924, 1. 23 Testimony of W. Johns, in “Evidence Taken at the Investigation into Management of Industrial School,” Halifax Citizen, 28 November 1924, 3. 24 “Inquiry Held This Morning at School Itself,” Halifax Evening Echo, 29 October 1924, 1. 25 See, for example, testimony of J.J. Mackinnon, in “Boys Leave the Industrial School Just as Bad Morally as When They Enter It,” Halifax Citizen, 31 October 1924, 4; testimony of John Wilson, in “Evidence of Mr. Wilson Thur. Oct. 30,” Halifax Citizen, 14 November 1924, 2, 5; and testimony of Havelock Douglas (former teacher and then principal of the Chebucto School), in “The Second Day of Industrial School Investigation Brings Startling Evidence,” Halifax Citizen, 31 October 1924, 2, 7. See also Blois’s final report, “Findings of E.H. Blois Re Industrial School Inquiry!” Halifax Citizen, 12 December 1924, 1, 6. The defence of corporal punishment as a corrective force was usually restricted to the environment of reform schools like the Halifax Industrial School but was not generally considered appropriate for other (nondelinquent) children; see Comacchio, Nations Are Built of Babies, 126; and StrongBoag, “Intruders in the Nursery.” For a comparative discussion of the use of corporal punishment in boys’ industrial homes, see Maguire and Cinnéide, “‘A Good Beating Never Hurt Anyone’”; and Mahood, “‘Give Him a Doing.’” 26 Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship, 10. 27 “Horrible Disclosures Brought to Light,” Halifax Citizen, 3 October 1924, 1.

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266

Notes to pages 10–13

28 See “Evidence Taken at the Investigation into Management of Industrial School,” Halifax Citizen, 28 November 1924, 3; “Boy Who Lost Arm at School,” Halifax Evening Echo, 28 October 1924, 1; and “Serious Charge against Inmate [of] Industrial Home,” Halifax Evening Mail, 2 December 1924, 3. Disturbingly, belief in a child’s potential criminality and immorality was also implicated in diagnoses of venereal disease among children; see Evans, “Physician Denial and Child Sexual Abuse”; and Sangster, “Masking and Unmasking the Sexual Abuse of Children.” 29 Susan Houston and others have articulated this understanding of boys, particularly, as being the difference between “delinquent” and “pre– delinquent”; see Houston, “Victorian Origins of Juvenile Delinquency”; Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys’ of the ‘Dangerous Class’” and “Turning ‘Bad Boys’ into ‘Good Citizens’”; Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society, 90–151; and Trépanier, “Origins of the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908.” For a comparative perspective, see Cunningham, Children of the Poor, esp. 101–22; and Gillis, “Evolution of Juvenile Delinquency in England.” 30 The origin of this ideal (as distinct from the medieval belief that an adult’s character was predetermined and that childhood offered only an indication of what that adult personality would be) is explored by Ariès, Centuries of Childhood; and Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500. See also Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship, 19–22; Cunningham, “Histories of Childhood”; and Schultz, Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle Ages. 31 Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship, 3. 32 This approach to child welfare as both emblematic of and influenced by other problems of governance (both within the state and within extragovernmental social welfare agencies) is derived from the notion of governmentality as explored by Michel Foucault and others. See, particularly, Foucault, “Governmentality”; Dean, Governmentality; Rose, Powers of Freedom; and Rose and Miller, “Political Power beyond the State.” 33 Curtis, Politics of Population. On Canadian state formation from the mid to late nineteenth century, see Greer and Radforth, eds, Colonial Leviathan; and Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water. 34 This was not unique to child welfare advocates in Canada. See Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500, 137–70. 35 There were no other similar accusations of abuse or neglect levelled at any other children’s home in the city during the period covered by this study, and very few of the homes used (or admitted to using) corporal

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punishment to discipline their charges. An accusation of maltreatment at the Protestant Orphans’ Home in 1964 was investigated, but the results of this investigation concluded that the accusation was unfounded, the product of a former staff member who had “considerable personality difficulties.” See Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), RG 72, vol. 17, file 18, “Report of a Visit to Halifax Protestant Orphanage by Miss Lillian Romkey, Miss Pauline MacDonald and Joseph Grandy, September 14, 1964.” At the time of writing (April 2012), allegations of physical and sexual abuse committed at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children in the 1970s and 1980s (and perhaps as early as the 1950s) were under investigation by the Halifax Regional Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Excluding the province’s residential school for Aboriginal children (Shubenacadie), the only other institutions whose staff members were accused of serious physical and sexual abuse were the Shelburne School for Boys, a provincial reformatory that replaced the Halifax Industrial School after the latter closed its doors in 1947, and the Nova Scotia Home for Girls (formerly the Maritime Home for Girls, Truro). In all of these cases, staff members were found guilty of various abuses; see Kaufman, Searching for Justice. 36 See Rose, “Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies”; and Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water, 20. 37 Scott, Seeing Like a State, 29–30, 47–52. On the intervention of experts in Canadian childrearing and child welfare circles, see, for example, Arnup, Education for Motherhood; Arnup, Lévesque, and Pierson, eds, Delivering Motherhood; Bullen, “J.J. Kelso and the ‘New’ Child Savers”; Comacchio, Nations Are Built of Babies and “‘Living Symptoms’”; Dodd, “Advice to Parents”; Mitchinson, Giving Birth in Canada; Raymond, Nursery World of Dr. Blatz; Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; Strong-Boag, “Intruders in the Nursery”; and Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society. 38 As other histories of professionalization have shown, this redefinition of rules involved alterations in the gender of the system’s leadership (from female to male) and usually employed invocations of professionalism that were highly gender-specific. Whereas untrained workers and child savers (particularly those in institutions) were usually women, praised for their supposed feminine instincts in “mothering” the poor and unfortunate, the professional leadership that emerged in the twentieth century was usually led by men and praised for its supposed masculine qualities, such as strong leadership, innovation, and a rational, systematic approach to

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39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46

47 48

49 50 51

Notes to pages 15–18

managing complex public services. See Rooke and Schnell, “Rise and Decline of British North American Protestant Orphans Homes as Woman’s Domain”; Struthers, “‘Lord, Give Us Men’”; and Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society.” For a comparative perspective, see Muncy, Creating a Female Domain in American Reform. Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum, 274. Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship, 5. See also Bullen, “J.J. Kelso and the ‘New’ Child Savers”; Jones and Rutman, In the Children’s Aid. Valverde, “Mixed Social Economy as a Canadian Tradition.” Ibid., 36–7, emphasis added. See also Murray, “Upsetting the Public– Private Divide.” Neff, “Government Approaches to Child Neglect,” 168. Neff, “Government Approaches to Child Neglect,” “Use of Apprenticeship and Adoption,” and “Role of Protestant Children’s Homes in Nineteenth–Century Ontario.” Gouett, “Halifax Orphan House.” “An Act to Amend the Act to Incorporate the Nova Scotia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” Statutes of Nova Scotia (sns ), 1880, c. 68; “An Act to Prevent and Punish Wrongs to Children,” sns , 1882, c. 18. As Judith Fingard has pointed out, that these earlier laws – and the pioneering efforts of the Halifax SPC – are overlooked in the overall national picture of Canadian child welfare is a clear indication of the much more robust budgets with which Toronto’s Children’s Aid Society worked in comparison to Halifax. Whereaas Kelso had the funds to travel and proselytize across the country, Halifax’s Victorian SPC struggled to pay the modest salary of its only agent, who was frequently left to cover his own expenses, not to mention the expenses of the society as a whole; see Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 172. See Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; and Jones and Rutman, In the Children’s Aid. This mode of understanding historical change draws explicitly from Michel Foucault’s notion of genealogy; see Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” See also Dean, “Genealogy of the Government of Poverty”; Foucault, “Questions of Method”; and Rose, “Authority and the Genealogy of Subjectivity.” Paula Maurutto’s excellent study Governing Charities is one clear example of this for the Toronto context. Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype and Maritime Rights Movement. Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 8.

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52 Ibid., 12–13; Scott, Seeing Like a State, 25–36. 53 On the Black Loyalists and early black settlement in the province, see Grant, “Black Immigrants into Nova Scotia”; Pachai, Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land; Phillips, “Early Years of the Black Loyalists”; Walker, Black Loyalists; and Winks, Blacks in Canada, 24–60. 54 The “drop” in 1961 was to approximately 72 per cent. The numbers of Austrian, German, Czechoslovakian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Scandinavian, Ukrainian, and Hungarian citizens (as well as those classified as “European Other”) appear to have made up most of the difference, as the city itself expanded from 85,589 persons to 92,511. The city’s population peaked at just over 93,000 in 1956. See Canada, Census of Canada, 1861–1951; Canada, Census of Canada, 1956; Canada, Census of Canada, 1961: Population – Incorporated Cities, Towns and Villages; and appendix 1 herein. 55 According to the census for this entire period, there was also a small number of other visible minorities in the city and the province (although these were severely limited or nonexistent before 1901), including Aboriginal, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and “Hindo” citizens. These populations were, comparative to the blacks, quite small. Indeed, Nova Scotia frequently boasted the largest population of black Canadians in the country. The largest ethnic groups after those from the British Isles were identified, consistently, as French, German, and Dutch. However, the local and provincial population of Germans declined sharply after World War One (from nearly 39,000 to 27,000) and did not recover until the 1950s: in that decade, the number jumped from just under 29,000 to just over 45,000. All data on these ethnic origins were obtained from Canada, Census of Canada, 1871–1961. 56 According to the census, the provincial numbers were never far behind those within the city through much of the period 1901–61. The number of Catholics in the province peaked in 1961 at just over 35 per cent. They were the largest single denomination in the city, followed by the Church of England. Provincially, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists (and later the United Church) provided stiff, and often commanding, competition for Protestant souls. See Canada, Census of Canada, 1861–1961. 57 In 1961 the census recorded almost 21,000 Anglicans in the city, who made up just under 23 per cent of the population; see Canada, Census of Canada, 1961: General Review – Religious Denominations in Canada. Before 1925 (the year of church union between Methodists, Unitarians, and Presbyterians), the largest protestant sect was the Presbyterian Church, followed closely by the Methodists. For example, in 1921 there

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58

59

60 61

62

Notes to pages 21–2

were just over 6,600 Presbyterians and just over 5,600 Methodists within the city; see Canada, Census of Canada, 1921, vol. 1, 756–7. This is particularly true, if regrettable, for Rooke and Schnell’s excellent text Discarding the Asylum, which deliberately sets Roman Catholic homes outside of the scope of the investigation – and, therefore, outside of the norm. By arguing for the importance of religious influences in the imagining and provision of child welfare, I am not arguing against the notion that welfare services were becoming increasingly secular, but neither am I arguing the case for religious persistence; to do either would be to accept that religion itself (whether substantively or functionally defined) is something with an essence that exists separately from human history and thus separately from the specifics of time and place in which religious utterances are made. Therefore, religion is treated throughout this study as I treat ethnicity – as a feature of the cultural context that affected how and why decisions were made and as something that can be understood only within this specific context itself. For a fuller explanation of this particular approach to religion and history, see Asad, Genealogies of Religion. The major theorists debating secularization (many of whose works were formative to the research undertaken for this text) are included in the Bibliography; however, for an exceptionally well–researched and theorized alternative to this now rather stale debate between secularization and religious persistence, see Taylor, Secular Age. See Thomas, “Administration of the Poor Law”; and Guildford, “End of the Poor Law.” On the challenges of introducing and generating support for large–scale government intervention into the country’s economic and social environment, see, for example, Boychuk, Patchworks of Purpose; Finkel, Social Policy and Practice in Canada; Guest, Emergence of Social Security in Canada; and Struthers, No Fault of Their Own. This was a central (but not the exclusive) component of the Social Gospel Movement’s moral and social reform rhetoric, philosophy, and practice in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canada. On the content of this moral and social reform, see, for example, Airhart and Hutchinson, eds, Christianizing the Social Order; Allen, Social Passion; Allen, ed., Social Gospel in Canada; Burke, Seeking the Highest Good; Christie and Gauvreau, Full–Orbed Christianity; Cook, Regenerators; Cook, Through Sunshine and Shadow; Fraser, Social Uplifters and “Theology and the Social Gospel”; Marshall, Secularizing the Faith; and Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water.

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63 Finkel, Social Policy and Practice in Canada, 47–51. 64 Curtis, Politics of Population, 24–44; Scott, Seeing Like a State, 11–22. 65 This point is also emphasized by Sutherland, “When You Listen to the Winds of Childhood, How Much Can You Believe?”; and McIntosh, Boys in the Pits, 10. 66 Beatty and Grant, “Entering into the Fray,” 114–15. 67 One study that attempts to combine consideration of a variety of social welfare programs in Canada is Christie, Engendering the State. 68 The term “inmate,” although usually used in reference to the residents of jails and prisons, was frequently applied to the residents of children’s homes, whether they were reformatories or orphanages. The term is used with similar flexibility throughout this book.

chapter one 1 “The Cause of Poverty in City of Halifax,” Halifax Citizen, 20 February 1925, 1, 4. The author was particularly critical of Dalhousie University, where, ironically, my study of child welfare (including many social surveys) was begun: “The University as an instrument in bettering social conditions has failed. Usually nothing of a practical nature has come from this source. About all we get from them is theory.” Touché. 2 See Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship, 9. 3 Scott, Seeing Like a State. See also Chunn, From Punishment to Doing Good; Donzelot, Policing of Families; Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water, esp. 20–2. 4 When this office was first created, its head was referred to as the superintendent of neglected and dependent children. Perhaps reflecting the close work of this office with the Juvenile Court system and the fact that the superintendent was a de facto officer of this court, the title was changed to superintendent of neglected and delinquent children at the time of the office’s fifth report in 1918. The latter title (or, simply, “the superintendent”) is employed throughout the present work. 5 Peikoff and Brickey, “Creating Precious Children and Glorified Mothers,” 53. 6 Fingard, Dark Side of Life, esp. 193–4. 7 Runaways were a persistent feature of life for the superintendents of the boys’ reformatories. See chapter 3, n102. 8 Judith Fingard notes similar behaviour among the “underclass” of Halifax throughout the Victorian period. She describes the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty (SPC), for example, as “an integral part of lower-class life and an

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9

10

11

12 13

14

15 16 17

18

19

Notes to pages 33–5

oft-used and trusted resource” that gave those in need options for dealing with family discord and “a sense of control over their own lives.” See Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 186. See, for example, “Halifax Trade Is Flourishing!” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 2 January 1900, 1; “Industries Growing Apace,” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 3 January 1900, 1. See also Dunlop, “Levee and Other New Year’s Festivities.” Front-page news in virtually every newspaper in the city was concerned with the events of the Boer War. See, for example, Halifax Morning Chronicle, 2 and 3 January 1900; Halifax Evening Mail, 30 December 1899 and 2 January 1900; and Halifax Daily Echo, 2 and 3 January 1900. In 1901 the population of the city was recorded at 40,832, up from 38,437 in 1891. See Canada, Census of Canada, 1921, vol. 1, 17; appendix 1 herein; and Raddall, Halifax, 233. Raddall, Halifax, 227–30. See, for example, Blakeley, Glimpses of Halifax, 80–4; Erickson, “Yellow Fever in Halifax”; Fingard, Dark Side of Life; Sutherland, “Violence, Sex, and Politics in Mid-Victorian Halifax”; and Wright, “Halifax Riot of April, 1863.” From The Nova Scotian, 17 October 1885, as quoted in Blakeley, Glimpses of Halifax, 66. For a more critical presentation of visitor accounts prior to Confederation, see McNairn, “‘Everything Was New, Yet Familiar.’” Blakeley, Glimpses of Halifax, 212. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 13, 16. Ibid., 15–16. See also Blakely, Glimpses of Halifax; Buggey, “Building Halifax”; Cuthbertson, “History of the Grand Parade”; Hopkins, “Memories of Hillside Hall”; March, “Newspaper Competition in Halifax”; and Roper, “Aspects of the History of a Loyalist College.” Fingard, “Winter’s Tale.” On the nineteenth-century condition of the city’s poor and unemployed, see especially Fingard, Dark Side of Life; and Thomas, “Administration of the Poor Law.” The history of Halifax labour in the Victorian period is also addressed in McKay, “Capital and Labour in the Halifax Baking and Confectionary Industry,” Craft Transformed, and “Class Struggle and Merchant Capital.” On Victorian-era reform in Halifax, see Fingard, Dark Side of Life, “Race and Respectability,” and “North End City Mission”; Girard, “Rise and Fall of Urban Justice in Halifax”; Guildford, “Edith Jessie Archibald”; Hood, “Some Fiscal Realities of School Reform”; Miller, “Legal Profession in Late Victorian Nova Scotia”; and Sutherland, “Voluntary Societies and

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21

22

23 24 25

273

the Process of Middle-Class Formation” and “Race Relations in Halifax.” The literature on turn-of-the-century social reform in other parts of Canada is extensive. See, for example, Allen, Social Passion; Burke, Seeking the Highest Good; Christie and Gauvreau, Full-Orbed Christianity; Cook, Regenerators; Cook, Through Sunshine and Shadow; Kealey, ed., Not Unreasonable Claim; Marshall, Secularizing the Faith; Mitchinson, “Early Women’s Organizations and Social Reform”; Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society; and Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water. For a fairly extensive list of sources on this topic outside of Canada, see Varty, “Career in Christian Charity,” 254–5n2. Gauvreau, “Protestantism Transformed,” 61. See also Cunningham, “Introduction”; Grant, Profusion of Spires; Rawlyk, Canadian Protestant Experience; Smith-Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City; and VanDie, Evangelical Mind. The argument that reform efforts were a form of social control is pervasive, although not without its necessary critics, particularly those who rightly emphasize how this idea can obscure the agency of a given reform’s targets. For an excellent study utilizing this latter approach, see Fingard, Dark Side of Life. On other approaches to social control in Canada, see Burke, Seeking the Highest Good; Hill, “Politicizing Canadian Childhood”; and Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water. A broad critique of the idea is provided by Chunn and Gavignan, “Social Control.” This attitude is particularly evident in the work of prohibition activists. See, for example, Cook, Through Sunshine and Shadow; Dick, “From Temperance to Prohibition”; Forbes, “Prohibition and the Social Gospel”; Heron, Booze, 51–77; and Krasnick Warsh, ed., Drink in Canada. Harvey, “Black Beans, Banners and Banquets.” See Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 129–31, 153–67, and “North End City Mission.” Fingard, Guildford, and Sutherland, Halifax; Forbes, “Prohibition and the Social Gospel” and “Battles in Another War”; Roper, “Halifax Board of Control.” On the Halifax Local Council of Women, see Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), MG 20, vol. 204; on the Society for Mental Hygiene, see NSarM, Microfilm 14,757; on the Charitable Irish Society, see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 63:9, and MG 20, vol. 70; on the Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 504C and Microfilm 3,799; on the Community Chest, see NSarM, MG 20, vols 1,713–26. Records for the Catholic Women’s League are in the Catholic Pastoral Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter CPC), and holdings for the Anglican division of the

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26 27 28 29

30 31

32 33 34

35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

Notes to pages 37–42

Social Service Council are in the Anglican Diocesan Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter ADC), MG 8, ser. 12. See, for example, ADC, MG 8, ser. 9, vol. 1, no. 1, Minutes of the General Board of Religious Education, Diocese of Nova Scotia. See ADC, MG 3, ser. 8, vol. 4, St Paul’s Parish Yearbook, 1924. See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 359. See also Cook, Through Sunshine and Shadow, 77. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 288, History and Correspondence of the Canadian Girls in Training (Nova Scotia). See also Marr, “Church Teen Clubs, Feminized Organizations?”; and Prang, “The Girl God Would Have Me Be.” Neff, “Government Approaches to Child Neglect,” 168. Annual Report of the North End City Mission, 1882, quoted in Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 130. See also Peikoff and Brickey, “Creating Precious Children and Glorified Mothers,” 54; Burke, Seeking the Highest Good; Jones and Rutman, In the Children’s Aid; and Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum. A similar practice existed in Ontario. See Neff, “Government Approaches to Child Neglect” and “Use of Apprenticeship and Adoption.” Sister Maura Power, Sisters of Charity, Halifax, 3, 21–2. Halifax Infants’ Home, “Constitution and Rules,” in Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha ) (1914), pt. 2, app. 28, 48. This was the Jost Mission Day Nursery. See Lafferty, “‘Very Special Service’”; and Simmons, “Helping the Poorer Sisters.” Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 11; James Struthers, “How Much Is Enough?” quoted in Valverde, “Mixed Social Economy as a Canadian Tradition,” 57n16. “For the Care and Uplifting of Children,” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 27 November 1905, 1–2. See also Jacobson, “Better Deal for Children,” 6. “An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children,” Statutes of Nova Scotia (sns ), 1906, c. 54. Jacobson, “Better Deal for Children,” 5–6. See “An Act to Amend the Act to Incorporate the Nova Scotia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” sns , 1880, c. 68. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 34–6. On the perception of local regulations as dissonant and confusing to outsiders and state officials (and historians), see Asad, Genealogies of

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43 44 45

46 47

48

49 50

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Religion, 9; Scott, Seeing Like a State; and Valverde, “Mixed Social Economy as a Canadian Tradition,” esp. 57n16. “For the Care and Uplifting of Children,” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 27 November 1905, 2. “With the Children of the Church,” Church Work, 28 March 1912, 4. The city’s earliest charity school was established by the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1751. The school closed in 1785, and there were several intervening decades before the successful reestablishment of charitable schools for white children in the city. In the 1810s several such institutions were opened, including the Royal Acadian School (Protestant), the National School (Anglican), and St Patrick’s and St Mary’s Schools (Roman Catholic). The city’s first school intended expressly for black children, the African School, which operated under the auspices of the Church of England, was opened in 1785. See Fingard, “Attitudes toward the Education of the Poor in Colonial Halifax” and “Race and Respectability”; Guildford, “Public School Reform and the Halifax Middle Class”; and Balcom, “From Recruitment to Retirement.” Cunningham, Children of the Poor, 136. See especially Fingard, Dark Side of Life. On anti-Catholic sentiment in other parts of Canada, see Kenny, “Prejudice that Rarely Utters Its Name”; Miller, “Anti-Catholic Thought in Victorian Canada,” “Bigotry in the North Atlantic Triangle,” and “Anti-Catholicism in Canada”; and See, Riots in New Brunswick. One notable study that examines the cooperative interaction between Roman Catholics and Protestants is Tillotson, “Race Question in Federation.” “An Act to Empower the Police Court in the City of Halifax to Sentence Juvenile Offenders to Be Detained in the Halifax Industrial School,” Statutes of Canada, 1870, c. 32. Fingard, Dark Side of Life, 127. Halifax Infants’ Home, “Constitution and Rules,” ar, jha (1914), pt. 2, app. 28, 48. Another local institution that claimed to accept children regardless of religious affiliation was the Jost Mission Day Nursery. Case records kept by the matron for the interwar period, however, indicate that religious affiliation and ethnic background were noted as part of the application process, particularly when children were members of the Church of England, members of the Roman Catholic Church, or black. In one instance in the mid-1920s, a Catholic family was refused service because “Romans” were to “take care of their own”; see Lafferty, “‘Very Special Service,’” 83.

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Notes to pages 44–8

51 CPC, Vault 2 Archives, acc. 995-50-90-7, “An Appeal to the Charity of Catholics in Behalf of the Foundling Asylum … in Halifax,” n.d. 52 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,326, no. 2, Minute Book of St Paul’s Home for Girls, 1898–1910; ibid., Annual Report (Rev. L. Donaldson), 29 May 1900. 53 ADC, MG 8, ser. 9, vol. 1:1, “Report of the Board of Religious Education, Diocese of Nova Scotia,” in Minutes of the General Board of Religious Education, April 1925. In the late 1920s, the GBRE also launched a campaign to have a textbook (W.M. West’s Modern Progress) removed from the curriculum of local high schools because of its apparently objectionable characterization of the history of the Church of England. The Canadian Veterans’ Association and the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire were also involved in this campaign. 54 ADC, MG 8, ser. 12, vol. 2, Minutes of the Council of Social Services (Anglican) for Nova Scotia, 25 March 1925, 18 and 25 February 1930, 8 March 1932, 14 November 1932, 21 February 1933. 55 “Feminine Offenders in Nova Scotia Bill: Second Reading,” in Canada, Debates of the Senate of the Dominion of Canada, 200. 56 On the Manitoba Schools Act of 1890 and the subsequent controversy and strife between Protestants and Roman Catholics, see Clark, ed., Manitoba Schools Question; Comeault, “La Question des Écoles du Manitoba”; Crunican, Priests and Politicians; McLaughlin, “‘Riding the Protestant Horse’”; and Miller, “D’Alton McCarthy, Equal Rights, and the Origins of the Manitoba School Question.” 57 “Feminine Offenders in Nova Scotia Bill: Second Reading,” in Canada, Debates of the Senate of the Dominion of Canada, 194–6. 58 Ibid., 197, 198 59 Ibid., 198–9. 60 Ibid., 197. 61 Ibid., 200. 62 “An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children,” sns , 1906, s. 11. 63 See “An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Law Relating to Juvenile Offenders and the Protection of Children,” sns , 1912, c. 4, s. 27, s. 53; “An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Law Relating to Juvenile Delinquents and the Protection of Children,” sns , 1917, c. 2, s. 30; “Of Juvenile Delinquents and the Protection of Children,” Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia (rsns ), 1923, c. 166, s. 30; “An Act to Amend and Consolidate Chapter 166 of the Revised Statutes, 1923, the Children’s Protection Act,” sns , 1950, c. 2, s. 44; and “Child Welfare Act,” rsns , 1967, c. 35, s. 6.

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64 W.B. Wallace, “Six Years in a Juvenile Court,” in ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 57–8. 65 ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 7. 66 ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 7–8. 67 Neff, “Government Approaches to Child Neglect,” 168. 68 The meaning of the word “cippi” has puzzled both the author and the very kind people who edit the Oxford English Dictionary. As far as can be surmised from a very brief diary entry from Dougald Robert Boyle, a resident of the Arichat region of Isle Madame, Nova Scotia, it refers to a type of game: “August 25, 1878: Hart made things lively playing Cippi with us at Marman’s last night when gas was turned out.” This reference can be found at http://ns1758.ca/quote/quotes.html (accessed 13 April 2012). 69 “An Act to Prevent and Punish Wrongs to Children,” sns , 1882, c. 18. 70 “An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children,” sns , 1906. 71 See Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 18–21; Houston, “Victorian Origins of Juvenile Delinquency” and “‘Waifs and Strays’ of a Late Victorian City.” 72 “An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children,” sns , 1906, s. 9(1). 73 Ibid., 1912. 74 Ibid., 1917, s. 24. 75 NSARM, V/F, vol. 204, no. 12, R.H. Murray (secretary of the Nova Scotia SPC) and E.H. Blois, “Report and Recommendation Regarding the Establishing of a Children’s Department or Bureau at Ottawa,” 1914. This report was commissioned by the Department of Justice and was written after Murray and Blois had visited the Children’s Bureau and the Russell Sage Foundation in Washington. Their recommendation for the creation of a bureau in Ottawa (as opposed to Halifax or elsewhere) was based largely on their belief that Ottawa had greater resources for the creation of stronger and more comprehensive protective legislation and greater influence for the regulation of this legislation across the country. 76 Neff, “Government Approaches to Child Neglect,” 168; Peikoff and Brickey, “Creating Precious Children and Glorified Mothers,” 54. 77 National Archives of Canada (NAC), MG 28, I 10, vol. 349, “Organization” (brief history of the founding of the Council of Social Agencies), c. 1917–18. 78 The Local Council of Women and members of the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charities were instrumental in organizing

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79 80

81 82 83

84

85

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Notes to pages 53–7

the Social Service Bureau. According to Lois Yorke, however, it was initiated on the urging of Edna May Best (Sexton), wife of the provincial director of technical education, a tireless advocate of women’s rights, and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See Yorke, “Edna Best.” NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 349, “Organization.” MacKinnon, “Life and Times of Ernest H. Blois.” Advocates for the office’s creation included Blois, the then Juvenile Court judge W.B. Wallace, Bessie Egan (an agent with the SPC), Benjamin Russel (a Supreme Court judge), and Alexander MacLean (a federal and provincial politician who would eventually become a judge in the Exchequer Court); see MacKinnon, “Life and Times of Ernest H. Blois” and Reflections. For a brief discussion of MacLean, see Bushnell, Federal Court of Canada, 104–23. ar, jha (1915), pt. 2, app. 28, 7; ar, jha (1917), pt. 2, app. 28, 8; ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 5. “An Act to Amend the Public Service Act, Chapter 10, Revised Statutes, 1900,” sns , 1911, c. 15. Congregate institutions housed children in dormitory-style living quarters, whereas the “cottage system” divided children into smaller groups and housed them together in individual “cottages” that were thought to more closely mimic a family home. At this time, all institutions in Halifax were categorized as “congregate,” but there was no clear professional consensus that the cottage setup was an improvement. See Murdoch, “From Barrack Schools to Family Cottages.” The inconsistent publication of institutional reports with the statistical returns may indicate either that the homes had not written them (having perhaps met with Blois in person) or that the cost of reproducing them was prohibitive. One very notable exception is the annual report for 1919, which covered the work during the year of the Halifax Explosion. This particular report, in fact, replete with photographs and lengthy essays from Blois, is as much a memorial document as it is an official government account of the year’s activities. See ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28. Compare, for example, the annual report of 1921 with that of 1941, the latter of which contains no information on the institutions (excluding the reformatories), excepting the statistical tables. See, for example, ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 58–9, where Blois recommended that the Halifax Infants’ Home improve its garden, both to give children a place to play and to “make the Home very much more attractive.” He also noted that extensive renovations to the Orphans’ Home in

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Truro – which comprised a new addition “beautifully finished and furnished” – were “a credit to its Board of Management.” See also ar, jha (1915), pt. 2, app. 28, 44–7. These statistical returns were, in effect and purpose, very much like the cadastral maps Scott describes as central to a state’s control over territory and population; see Scott, Seeing Like a State, 24, 44–5. See also Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 7 (“when quantitative data are aggregated, analyzed, and manipulated, the results can be used to inform particular kinds of systematic practice directed at that population”); and Curtis, Politics of Population, 15–17. Scott notes that it was “generally in the interest of local officials to misrepresent their situation” in order to minimize the impact of state demands; see Scott, Seeing Like a State, 38. And although I have no evidence that any of the institutions altered or withheld data in their statistical returns, this remains a possibility, particularly for those parts of the return that might have raised serious questions about the treatment of children (such as methods of corporal punishment). See, for example, ar, jha (1915), pt. 2, app. 28, 46–7; (1918), 7–8; (1919), passim. Blois was particularly harsh in his assessment of the Halifax Industrial School and, on occasion, St Patrick’s Home for Boys. See ar, jha (1914– 24), pt. 2, app. 28. See also ar, jha (1916), 8–9, where he complains about the incompleteness of statistical tables from some of the province’s children’s aid societies while praising the “neatness and correctness” of others. The dual nature of institutional inspection is well expressed by Brown, “Rethinking Early Nineteenth Century Asylum Reform,” 443–4. Jacobson, “Better Deal for Children,” 6. See Morton, Fight or Pay. W.B. Wallace, “Six Years in a Juvenile Court,” in ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 60. ar, jha (1917), pt. 2, app. 28, 7. ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 5. On the Halifax Explosion, see Armstrong, Halifax Explosion; Kitz, Shattered City; MacDonald, Curse of the Narrows; Mahar and Mahar, Too Many to Mourn; and Metson, Halifax Explosion. “Appendix A: Report of the Children’s Committee,” ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 108. Ibid., 111. Ibid., 110. See also Kitz, Survivors; and Morton, “To Take an Orphan.”

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Notes to pages 61–6

101 The orphanage found a temporary building for these children, and although it was not considered “suitable either in situation or accommodation,” the work resumed in April 1918. It was many months before the home was rebuilt and fully operational on its original site. See ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 91. 102 See the reports of the institutions in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28; and Kempster, “St. Paul’s Alms House of Industry for Girls,” 212–13. 103 Jacobson, “Better Deal for Children,” 6–8. 104 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1928), “Annual Report of the Halifax CAS for the Year Ending 1928.”

chapter two 1 “3000 Attend Opening of Colored Home,” Halifax Herald, 7 June 1921, 1. See also Saunders, Share and Care, 39–44. 2 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1, Annual Report of the African United Baptist Association (AUBA), 1921, and “Official History of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” n.d.; “Home for Colored Children to Open.” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 28 May 1921, 12. 3 J.J. Kelso, Opening Address to the Social Service Congress of Canada, 3-5 March 1914, quoted in Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha ) (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 87. 4 ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 7–8. 5 ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 57. 6 ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 7–8. 7 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Sister Ambrosia (Home of the Guardian Angel) to Ernest Blois, 3 March 1917; Sister de Paul (St Joseph’s Orphanage) to Blois, 3 March 1917; and M. Scott (Protestant Orphans’ Home) to Blois, 8 March 1917. As Blois solicited this information long before the explosion of December 1917, it is likely that the Protestant Orphans’ Home objected for reasons similar to those expressed by Sister de Paul, namely that the physical arrangement of the home did not allow for the sort of segregation that it believed necessary when dealing with mixed-raced populations. 8 Ibid., “Home for Colored Children,” two-page rationale for the NSHCC, c. 1917, emphasis added. 9 Ibid., Ernest Blois to Martha Harris, 14 February 1921.

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10 The assumption that all provincial institutions refused admittance of blacks was (and is) generally accepted as fact. See, for example, Saunders, Share and Care, 23. 11 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Charlotte McInnes (Halifax Infants’ Home) to Ernest Blois, 5 March 1917. Evidence for racial mixing at the Salvation Army Home is based in part on a photograph published with their 1919 annual report, which depicts a black infant and a (possibly) black nurse among the photograph’s subjects; see “Report of the Salvation Army Home,” ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 99. Operating under the province’s legal system and the Juvenile Court, the city reformatories also accepted black children, as did the Jost Mission Day Nursery; see Lafferty, “‘Very Special Service.’” 12 Fingard, “Race and Respectability,” 171. 13 These minutes indicate that at least one member conducted an extensive round of visits every year as part of her duties within the auxiliary itself. It is not clear when this practice began, but it continued well into the Depression years. 14 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), “Suggestions to be Considered by Board of Trustees of Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” letter from Blois to George Murray (provincial secretary), 27 September 1918. 15 Support from the black Baptist Church did not preclude support (both moral and financial) from other black denominations in the province, evidenced in part by the presence of at least one prominent black Methodist minister at the home’s opening. 16 Esther Clarke Wright Archives, Acadia University (hereafter ECWA), Minutes of the African Baptist Association, 65th Session, 1918. 17 Winks, Blacks in Canada, 346–7. See also Fingard, “Race and Respectability”; and Oliver, Brief History of the Coloured Baptists of Nova Scotia. 18 See especially Fingard, “Race and Respectability.” 19 ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 65th Session, 1918. 20 Ibid., 78th Session, Report of the Social Service Committee, 1931. 21 Ibid., 67th Session, 1920. 22 ECWA, Kinney, “The Negro and His Accomplishments,” printed in the Report of the 65th Annual Meeting of the African Baptist Association, 1918, 8. 23 ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 65th Session, 1918. For other articulations of these sorts of views, see Winks, Blacks in Canada, 289–313.

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Notes to pages 70–2

24 “Ideal Home for Colored Children,” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 7 June 1921, 3. 25 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Bauld to Blois, 8 January 1922. 26 “Ideal Home for Colored Children,” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 7 June 1921, 3, emphasis added. 27 Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 25. Many of these ideas are explored in McClintock, Imperial Leather; McLaren, Our Own Master Race; and Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution. 28 The historical study of the intertwining of race theories and ideas about gender is extensive and growing. See, for example, Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 10–41, 121–69; Higginbotham, “African-American Women’s History”; Lerner, “Reconceptualizing Differences among Women”; and McClintock, Imperial Leather, passim. 29 Hall’s most influential work was the two-volume Adolescence, published in 1904. See also Comacchio, “‘Living Symptoms,’” 357–8; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 77–120; and Miller, “Psychology and the Child.” For an excellent description of the influence that recapitulation/ evolutionary ideas had on nineteenth-century fiction and culture, see Beer, Darwin’s Plots, esp. 97–135, 185–91. 30 As Hugh Cunningham has demonstrated for England, the representation of street children as savages was possible largely because the understanding of “savage” was no longer associated with “a classical desire for a state of natural perfection.” It was instead characterized as a state from which someone needed to be saved and civilized. See Cunningham, Children of the Poor, 97–8. 31 Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 93. 32 W.B. Wallace, Annual Report of the Juvenile Court Judge for the City of Halifax, in ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 45, emphasis added. 33 ar, jha (1917), pt. 2, app. 28, 13. Similar tales of transformation from black to white and from endangered (morally and physically) to rescued are found in many children’s stories of this era, including, most prominently, the Reverend Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (1863). See also Cunningham, Children of the Poor. 34 On the development of this conception of (white) childhood as requiring protection and separation from the concerns of adult society, see Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; and Sutherland, Children in EnglishCanadian Society. On the racial contrasts implicit in this ideal, see especially Cunningham, Children of the Poor; and Higgonet, Pictures of Innocence. Valverde’s Age of Light, Soap, and Water is an excellent exposition of the

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37

38

39 40 41 42 43

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powerful, rhetorical links made between whiteness and purity. On Canada’s well-baby programs, see Arnup, Education for Motherhood; Comacchio, Nations are Built of Babies; and Dodd, “Advice to Parents.” ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 18–19. Images of children such as this one were prominent in several of Blois’s reports before 1925; see especially ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, passim. Child welfare advocates also occasionally manipulated images to demonstrate the darker side of childhood (i.e., the consequences facing those who were not saved); see, for example, Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship; and Cunningham, Children of the Poor. In Halifax the only prominent examples of this alternate, darker imagery were found in a report on the Jost Mission published in the Halifax Evening Mail, 31 March 1924. The children in this particular photograph are pictured in heavy, dark garments, their faces are serious and unsmiling, and they are gazing directly into the camera lens. The article accompanying the image was intended to generate public support for the institution; see Lafferty, “‘Very Special Service,’” 79. The photograph was published in ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 45. The moral corruption of children in Halifax was often differentiated by sex, most obviously in the reports of the Juvenile Court judges. For young boys, the fall into corruption or delinquency meant petty crime, begging, truancy, or theft. For young girls, the threat of the street was a corporeal one, believed to inspire irreparable sexual immortality among girls; see Alexander, ‘Girl Problem’; Knupfer, Reform and Resistance; Odem, Delinquent Daughters; Sangster, Girl Trouble; and Schlossman and Wallach, “Crime of Precocious Sexuality.” The photographs were published in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 67–8. See also Parr, Labouring Children. A similar belief in the purity of the rural environment inspired child savers in the United States to send hundreds of poor children from urban centres into the rural states aboard socalled “orphan trains”; see Gordon, Great Arizona Orphan Abduction; Holt, Orphan Trains; and O’Connor, Orphan Trains. Higgonet, Pictures of Innocence, 8. ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 6–7. Similar narratives are described in Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water. See also Cunningham, Children of the Poor, 106–8; Davin, Growing Up Poor, 162–4; and Houston, “Victorian Origins of Juvenile Delinquency.” ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 7. ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 7–8. See also ar, jha (1924), pt. 2, app. 28, 34, wherein Blois highlighted the case of a feeble-minded delinquent girl

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44

45 46

47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55

56

Notes to pages 76–9

whose lifestyle was “unclean … indolent and immoral” as well as being very unlikely to improve, as she had “[l]eft institution to live with her sister who was living with a Chinaman.” NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), fundraising pamphlet, 1928, emphasis added. The author of this pamphlet was most likely James Kinney, who managed the fundraising efforts of the home for most of his tenure as secretary of the board of governors. On the flexibility of the term “civilization” in early-twentiethcentury racial rhetoric, see Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, esp. 23–31. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931. ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 24th Session, 1877. McKerrow (1841–1906) was born in Antigua, emigrated to Canada as a young man, and worked in the ranks of the AUBA for over thirty years; see Oliver, Brief History of the Coloured Baptists. ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 70th Session, 1923, “Report on Education.” NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), copy of a report from the executive committee of the AUBA, 1917. Johnston, James Robinson Johnston; Saunders, Share and Care, 18–19; Oliver, Brief History of the Coloured Baptists, 38. On the significance of the Tuskegee and Hampton institutes in the United States, see Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South; Washington, Up from Slavery; Weber, “Influence of the Hampton-Tuskegee Model”; Wells, “Up from Savagery”; and Wintz, African American Political Thought. ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 59th Session, 1912, “Report of the Education Committee.” Ibid., 60th Session, 1913. “An Act to Incorporate the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” Statutes of Nova Scotia (sns ), 1915, c. 107. Saunders, Share and Care, 24. For the details of Johnston’s death, see Johnston, James Robinson Johnston, 38–48. Letter from Kinney to Washington, in Harlan and Smock, eds, Booker T. Washington Papers, 371. See also Washington, “Rights and Duties of the Negro.” NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), “Suggestions to be Considered by Board of Trustees of Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” letter from Blois to George Murray (provincial secretary), 27 September 1918.

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57 The first proposed board consisted of three “Colored people” (i.e., Puryear, Kinney, and Thomas Johnson) and eight (white) “Others” (i.e., Bauld, Murray, Blois, C.C. Blackadar, C.S.N. Strickline, C.H. Mitchell, George R. Hart, and J.F. Fraser). Although the members of the board changed fairly regularly in these early years, the number of whites consistently outnumbered the blacks. See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Blois to Daniels (attorney general), 15 September 1917. 58 “An Act to Incorporate the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” sns , 1915, s. 3. 59 ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 62nd Session, 1915, “Report on Education.” Puryear was chairman of this committee. 60 See, for example, NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Blois to George Murray (provincial secretary), 27 September 1918. In this letter, Blois details at some length the differences between the two proposals and makes clear that no decision had yet been made on which direction the home’s management would take. 61 Ibid., “Home for Colored Children,” two-page rationale for the NSHCC, c. 1917. 62 Ibid., G. Murray to Blois, 16 August 1917. 63 Ibid., Blois to Murray, 10 August 1917. 64 Ibid., Blois to Samuel Brookfied, 6 August 1917. 65 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 1918, “Conservation of Child Life.” The site of this original building was used for a short time by the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (IODE) to house “unclaimed children” from the Halifax Explosion. Fingard, Guildford, and Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years, 124–5, note in their reference to the IODE’s activities in the city that the NSHCC was “a project which does not seem to have held much interest for the Halifax feminists.” See also chapter 3, n62, herein. 66 “Appendix A: Report of the Children’s Committee,” in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 107–11. 67 NSARM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 1918, “Conservation of Child Life,” emphasis added. See also Saunders, Share and Care; and Kitz, Shattered City. 68 Saunders, Share and Care, 30. 69 See ibid. for descriptions of the home and regarding the inspired choice of the property. In some later reports on the institution, it is clear that the

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72

73 74

75

Notes to pages 82–3

location had become a greater burden than boon because of the cost of running the farm; see especially NSARM, RG 72, vol. 53, file 27, E.J. Dick, “Report on the Operation of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 1962, and Minutes of a Special General Meeting, 14 June 1962. ar, jha (1924), pt. 2, app. 28, 41–2, original emphasis. Curiously, when writing to the Preston home’s first matron (who was hired out of New York), Blois stated that the place was only six miles from Halifax and that the road between it and Dartmouth was “very good.” See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Blois to Martha Harris, 14 February 1921. Ibid., “Suggestions to be Considered by Board of Trustees of Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” letter from Blois to George Murray (provincial secretary), 27 September 1918. Black infants were an important exception, as the NSHCC did not accept children under two years of age. See chapter 3, n129, herein. See, for example, NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), “Financial Statement to May 1 [1921], the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children.” In 1921, one of the wealthiest years for the home because of the publicity (and hence the increase in donations) surrounding the home’s opening, Kinney noted an operating deficit of $25 per month and nearly $3,000 in unpaid bills (most of them from outfitting and furnishing the home). However, if he received all of the monies promised by government and donors (including the $1,000 pledged by the province), the home might have entered 1922 without this debt load. Kinney’s “racial bilingualism” may have been assisted by the fact that his skin was rather pale, although my evidence for this is circumstantial. When the Halifax Morning Chronicle listed the names of the men involved in the opening ceremony for the NSHCC, Kinney was the only individual to be designated as “colored” despite the presence of several other prominent officials from the black community. It may be surmised that the paper felt compelled to identify Kinney’s race to avoid confusion; see “Ideal Home for Colored Children,” Halifax Morning Chronicle, 7 June 1921. There is a fairly extensive literature on the importance of colour and appearance within black-white and Native-white relations, particularly in the United States, which suggests that Kinney’s skin tone may have helped his position; see, for example, Basson, White Enough to be American?; Degler, Neither Black nor White; Frederickson, Black Image in the White Mind and Arrogance of Race; Jordan, White Man’s Burden and White over Black; Miles, Ties that Bind; and Saunt, Black, White, and Indian.

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76 ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 67th Session, 1920, “Report of the Executive Committee on the NSHCC.” 77 Ibid., 68th Session, 1921, “Official History of the NSHCC.” This particular message was printed beneath a portrait of Kinney that commanded an entire page of the report. 78 Ibid., 77th Session, 1930, sermon delivered by Rev. J.R. Rodney; 68th Session, 1921, “Report of the Executive.” 79 This poster is reproduced in Saunders, Share and Care, 37. 80 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), “What They Say about Us,” original emphasis. 81 Ibid., tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931. 82 ECWA, Minutes of the African United Baptist Association, 68th Session, 1921, “Official History of the NSHCC.” Black colleges in the southern United States – including Tuskegee – often suffered financially and structurally because of their status as black institutions. They received smaller grants and were often set on marginal and isolated land. As K.I. Grandison has argued, even the architectural design of black colleges was affected by race prejudice in the South; see Grandison, “Negotiated Space.” 83 The appeal was dated 22 August 1919, quoted in Saunders, Share and Care, 35. 84 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), W.H. Dennis to Parker, 24 November 1919 (this letter was copied into correspondence from Parker to Blois, 28 November 1919). White supporters of segregated institutions like Tuskegee and Hampton (many of whom were also white supremacists) expressed a similar concern about black education in the United States and envisioned the work of these schools as an integral part of sustaining black subservience and docility; see Finkenbine, “‘Our Little Circle.’” 85 Razack, Looking White People in the Eye, 24.

chapter three 1 As noted in chapter 1, this sort of pressure to close institutions seems to have been particularly prevalent in Ontario. See Jones and Rutman, In the Children’s Aid; and Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum. 2 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931. 3 See, for example, NSarM, MG 20, vols 417–19, Minutes of the Ladies’ Committee of the Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home (1953–71), passim;

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4

5

6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13

Notes to pages 90–3

NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, Minutes of the Ladies’ Managing Committee of the Halifax Infants’ Home (1875–79, 1918–20, 1941–54), passim; and NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,325, ser. A, Directors of Management Minute Book of St Paul’s Home for Girls (1867–86, 1887–1918, 1918–54, 1954–73), passim. The number of orphaned literary characters is astonishingly vast, ranging from Annie, Jane, and Oliver, to Daniel Deronda, Heathcliff, Anne of Green Gables, Frodo Baggins, and Harry Potter. Surprisingly, there has been little in-depth examination of the obvious appeal and cultural meaning of these characters in Western English literature. Notable exceptions include Auerbach, “Incarnations of the Orphan”; Cunningham, Children of the Poor; and Peters, Orphan Texts. The blueprints of the NSHCC were printed in Blois’s annual report for 1921, marking the home’s official opening. See Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha ) (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 78–80. “An Act to Provide for the Reform of Juvenile Offenders,” Statutes of Nova Scotia (sns ), 1890, c. 23, s. 1. “An Act Respecting the Maintenance and Reform of Juvenile Offenders,” sns , 1902, c. 20; “An Act to Amend Chapter 54, Acts of 1906, Entitled ‘An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children’ and Acts in Amendment Thereof,” sns , 1909, c. 44, s. 3–6; “An Act to Amend and Consolidate the Act Respecting the Maintenance and Reform of Juvenile Offenders,” sns , 1910, c. 9. The endowment at the Halifax Industrial School was first reported in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, and St Patrick’s reported its smaller amount in 1924. However, by 1928 the Catholic reformatory claimed not to be endowed, although there is no indication how the money was spent; see ar, jha (1929), pt. 2, app. 28, 50. As with all financial data described in this chapter, the date of the published reports followed a year after the expenditures and budgets themselves (thus data for 1920 are recorded in the 1921 reports). The amount of the endowment at the Protestant Orphans’ Home was never given. See ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 86. Sister Maura Power, Sisters of Charity, 5. ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 80, 85. See Gouett, “Halifax Orphan House.” See especially Fingard, Dark Side of Life; and Guildford, “End of the Poor Law,” 54–8.

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14 “An Act for the Protection and Reformation of Neglected Children,” sns , 1906, s. 5; ibid., 1909, s. 4(3). 15 National Archives of Canada (NAC), MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1929), G. Lantz to C. Whitton, 30 January 1929. 16 ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 54–5, original emphasis. 17 ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 81, 85. By the late 1920s, the Roman Catholic home was receiving substantially more in public support than the Protestant home, and there is no evidence that anti-Catholic religious prejudice was a factor in the determination of early public funding. For a discussion of sectarian influences on charitable funding in Toronto, see Maurutto, Governing Charities. 18 Data used are found in the annual reports submitted to the provincial superintendent’s office. The percentages of public funding recorded for the Monastery of the Good Shepherd are not included in graph 4, as the institution did not consistently distinguish between funding for adult and juvenile females. 19 For 1933–34, 1936–41, 1945, and 1946, the estimated percentage of public money given to the Protestant Orphans’ Home was determined using the financial returns of the provincial office and the CAS. For these years, the Orphans’ Home reported receiving no public funds or did not report the amount received. 20 St Joseph’s Orphanage received higher amounts of public funding between 1935 and 1937. The only other provincial institutions to receive similarly high levels of public money were Bairncroft, a charitable Protestant orphanage in Sydney, Cape Breton (established in 1918), and the Lay Memorial Home in Amherst (established in 1920). The latter was a small receiving home with a capacity of about fifteen children and was managed by the local CAS; thus virtually all of its inmates were public wards. Statistical returns and reports for these two institutions are found in ar, jha (1919– 60), pt. 2, apps 23, 24, and 28, passim. 21 ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 72. 22 See NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1929), Kinney to Whitton, 14 August 1929. Whitton had requested information on the basic admission policies of the home, and Kinney had assured her that it took children, under stated conditions, from across Canada. Whitton was seeking placement of a child from New Brunswick. Nova Scotian children at the home had come from Halifax, Preston, Hammonds Plains, Africville, industrial Cape Breton (especially Whitney Pier), and areas around Antigonish, Guysborough, and Shelburne.

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Notes to pages 99–101

23 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Bauld to Blois, 8 January 1927. 24 Ibid., “Facts Concerning the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” c. 1926. This document provided the rationale for Kinney’s tour and was used to request letters of introduction and support “from our Businessmen’s Clubs, the heads of Civic and Provincial Government, and influential sources.” 25 Ibid., Blois to Bauld, 30 December 1926. 26 This latter case occurred, for example, at the NSHCC, both at the time of initial construction and after World War Two. See chapters 2 and 6 herein and, for example, NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), M.S. Leonard (minister of public welfare) to M.M. Cumming (president of the NSHCC), 17 April 1957, which gives notice of a $20,000 grant for the renovation and expansion of the home. 27 NSarM, RG 35-102, ser. 1A, Halifax City Council Minutes, Charlotte McInnes (president of the Halifax Infants’ Home Board of Management) to City Council, 6 March 1924, 504. A similar fair was held in August 1924. 28 Catholic Pastoral Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter CPC), McCarthy Papers, vol. 5, no. 353, circulars, 10 February 1927. On the influence of sectarian politics in charitable and Community Chest funding, see also Tillotson, “Race Question in Federation; and Maurutto, Governing Charities. 29 ar, jha (1917), pt. 2, app. 28, 12. Similar sentiments were used to describe the “deserving efforts” of the institutions throughout the 1920s. 30 See CPC, McCarthy Papers, vol. 3, no. 269, “Worried” to McCarthy, 10 July 1928. 31 NSarM, RG 35-102, ser. 1A, Halifax City Council Minutes, 18 March 1924, 569–77, including Mayor John Murphy to City Council, 3 March 1924. The proposed tax on the children’s homes was calculated at 5 per cent of the assessed value of their property, whereas for churches and other “Miscellaneous” charities, such as the Oddfellows, the Freemasons, and the Church of England Society, it was set at 20 per cent. Rates for old-age homes and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) were set at 10 per cent. It is possible that part of the inspiration for the initial setup of this tax committee occurred in the fall of 1923, after the Salvation Army Maternity Home wrote to the City Council requesting an extension of the church’s tax exemption to their hospital and rescue home on Tower Road. See

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32

33

34

35 36 37 38

39

40

291

NSarM, RG 35-102, ser. 1A, Halifax City Council Minutes, 10 January 1924, 391–2, A.M. Jennings (property secretary of the Salvation Army Home) to City Council, 24 September 1923. Canada, Census of Canada, 1931, vol. 13, monographs, J.E. Robbins, “Dependency of Youth,” 398. Robbins’s calculations were based mainly upon the bare minimum requirements for healthy development. Housing and shelter accounted for 35.66 per cent of the total cost, followed by food at 26.95 per cent, clothing at 13.81 per cent, schooling at 13.14 per cent, and health, recreation, and “Social Costs” at 10.44 per cent. See ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 56–7. At a rate of $2 per week per neglected child, the provincial government paid a maximum of $104 per annum. Along with the $3 per week from the municipalities, institutions for neglected children could expect a maximum of $260 per annum for children in their care. NSarM, RG 35-102, ser. 1A, Halifax City Council Minutes, 13 April 1921, 937–8; 23 June 1921, 170–2; 14 July 1921, 229; 10 November 1921, 543–4. The account in dispute dated from 1 October 1920 to 30 June 1921. Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500, 154. “Conditions under Which Government Grants Are Paid for Maintenance of Children,” in ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 93–4. See chapter 1, n45. See, for example, Anglican Diocesan Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter ADC), MG 3, ser. 8, vol. 3, no. 12, Parish of St. Paul’s Halifax N.S. Year Book, 1910. A report on the home in this yearbook noted that “[t]he passing back and forth between the Home and the school, although the distance is short[,] is a pleasant change for the children. This, together with larger and more airy school-rooms and better opportunities for classification must accrue to their benefit.” To its credit, the onsite school was highly praised by even the most critical of visitors to the home; see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 195, file 6, report from L.T. Hancock (Department of Public Welfare), 8 July 1947; and ibid., notes from Lillian Romkey (social worker with the provincial office), 13 September 1948. By the mid-1960s, although the school (known as the Henry Bauld Memorial School) was still in operation, at least some of the children were attending community schools; see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, no. 27, Rosemary Rippon, “A Study of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 16 May 1966, 4. See report of Sister Agnes Carmel, in ar, jha (1931), pt. 2, app. 23, 125.

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Notes to pages 104–6

41 NSarM, HV N85 C43, First Report of the Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children for the Province of Nova Scotia, 10–11. 42 Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, in ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 35–6; Annual Report of St Joseph’s Orphanage, in ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 75. 43 This idea is explored, for Nova Scotia, in Fingard, Dark Side of Life. Similar arguments were made by charitable workers across Canada. See, for example, Burke, Seeking the Highest Good; Chen, Tending the Gardens of Citizenship; Jones and Rutman, In the Children’s Aid; Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum; and Sutherland, Children in EnglishCanadian Society. 44 CPC, McCarthy Papers, vol. 5, no. 352 (Pastoral Letters, 1918–29), “Pastoral Letter Addressed to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Halifax [hereafter ‘Pastoral Letter’],” 1924, 6. See also NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 8 (Protestant Orphans’ Home), Mildred Doane to F.R. MacKinnon, 23 January 1947. Doane was pressing for the establishment of a new training school for children over the age of twelve whose measured IQ was too low to make them suited to foster care but too high to grant them entrance to the Nova Scotia Training School. She wrote, “[s]urely the answer is a … school where the boys can learn a trade and the girls may be taught to be trained domestics.” 45 See particularly the annual reports of the Halifax Industrial School, in ar, jha (1914–47), pt. 2, apps 24 and 28, passim. After Johns left the school in 1925, providing carpentry training and other practical skills was a particular project undertaken by the new superintendent, Howard O. Eamon; see his reports to Blois, in ar, jha (1927–29), pt. 2, app. 28. 46 Annual Report of the NSHCC, in ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 73. 47 CPC, McCarthy Papers, vol. 5, no. 352 (Pastoral Letters, 1918–29), “Pastoral Letter,” 1927, 2. See also Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 77–120. 48 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4, H. Atkinson, “Report on the Nova Scotia Boys’ Industrial Schools,” 1929. In 1936 the superintendent of the Halifax Industrial School echoed these views on agriculture, perhaps with a little hyperbole, when he reported that the boys who were engaged in farming at the school “watch the results, and then help to reap the harvest, and are struck with wonder and amazement at what has been accomplished, very largely through their efforts and works”; see Annual Report of the Halifax Industrial School, in ar, jha (1936), pt. 2, app. 28, 107. 49 ar, jha (1914), pt. 2, app. 28, 11. In the early 1920s, the Monastery of the Good Shepherd offered limited courses on shoemaking and

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50

51

52 53

54

55

56 57 58

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bookbinding for its female inmates, particularly those considered feebleminded. See its annual report to Blois, in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 39–41. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931; ar, jha (1914), pt. 2, app. 28, 43. Blois’s comments referred to the domestic training at the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, and he continued to praise this undertaking and similar institutional programs throughout the 1920s. Annual Report of the Girls’ Home, College Street, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 93–5. Vocational and academic training within the institutions, both for boys and girls, was also supplemented by recreational activities, occasional outings, and parties sponsored by board members and community groups. “Conditions under Which Government Grants Are Paid for Maintenance of Children,” ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 93–4. See, for example, ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 37. Here, Blois implied that the superintendent of the school, William Johns, had lied about supplying the boys with adequate clothing, particularly during the winter months. “We have seen a good many of these inmates discharged in the winter,” he wrote, “but have never seen one with an overcoat.” On criticism of the boys’ appearance during the hearings, see the transcripts published in Halifax Citizen, 24 and 31 October and 7, 14, 21, and 28 November 1924. At least one of the city’s institutions, the Protestant Orphans’ Home, also provided long-term care for chronically ill adults. The home’s secretary reported that a young woman by the name of Mable Lake, “a deformed girl,” had spent twenty-eight years at the home, before passing away in 1914. See M. Scott, Annual Report of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, 1914, in ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 77. See the early annual reports of the Halifax Infants’ Home, in NSarM, HV IN 3, and the early minutes and reports of St Paul’s Home for Girls, in NSarM, MG 20, vols 1,326–7. Both of these homes had doctors on retainer. Annual Report of the Home of the Guardian Angel, in ar, jha (1927), pt. 2, app. 28, 103. Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 61. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931. In 1937 the home published another fundraising pamphlet, “What They Say about Us,” which took a similar approach to describing its success, focusing on

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59 60 61 62

63

64 65 66

67 68

Notes to pages 108–10

social health: “The records of the children who have left the Home speak highly for the instruction and care given. No young man or woman who has left the Home has ever been brought to court on a serious charge – a record that rivals the much publicized ‘Boys’ Town’ in the United States”; see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78). See, for example, Brother Francis, Annual Report of St Patrick’s Home for Boys, in ar, jha (1932), pt. 2, app. 23, 118. See especially the annual reports of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd and the Halifax Infants’ Home, published in Blois’s annual reports. Jacobson, “Better Deal for Children,” 12–13. Following its work with unclaimed children from the Halifax Explosion, this institution’s managers (the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire) quickly shifted their attention to the “subnormal” children of the city and intended, as long as funds remained, “to carry on this experiment in training.” Their first report emphasized that they considered themselves “merely pioneers” and the home itself “merely a starting point” for what they hoped would develop into a provincial institution for the “subnormal.” See Annual Report of the Daughter’s of the Empire Home, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 79–81. On the mental health movement in Nova Scotia, see Fingard, Protect, Befriend, Respect. ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 53. Regular medical examinations likely required rudimentary recordkeeping and casework in these institutions, although these records are not available. St Paul’s Home for Girls and St Joseph’s Orphanage maintained relatively detailed records on admissions and discharges as well, which are available in NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,329, and upon request from the CPC. William Johns, Superintendent’s Annual Report for the Halifax Industrial School, in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 52. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931. See, for example, Blatz and McMurchie-Bott, Management of Young Children; Miller, “Psychology and the Child”; Arnup, Education for Motherhood; Comacchio, Nations Are Built of Babies; and Raymond, Nursery World of Dr. Blatz. “Conditions under Which Government Grants Are Paid for Maintenance of Children,” ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 93–4. NSarM, RG 72 vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), annual report of Ross Kinney, 7 October 1954.

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69 Report of the Committee on Religious Education for the Maritime Home for Girls, n.d., in ADC, MG 8, ser. 9, vol. 2, Diocesan Records, no. 4. This report most likely dates from the late 1920s or early 1930s, as this committee was established to respond to the problem of ensuring Anglican religious education for the Anglican girls at this institution; see chapter 1 herein. 70 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 750, no. 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), tenth anniversary pamphlet, c. March 1931. This home was the only local institution whose religious training was explicitly interdenominational, involving both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Although most religious education occurred in the home under the guidance of Baptist ministers, the children also received visits from Anglican and Roman Catholic priests, as well as from members of the Sisters of Charity; see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), annual report of Ross Kinney, 7 October 1954. 71 CPC, McCarthy Papers, vol. 5, no. 352 (Pastoral Letters, 1918–29), “Pastoral Letter” 1925, n.p. 72 Ibid., 1929, 5. 73 Ibid., 1927, 3. 74 Brother Francis, Annual Report of St Patrick’s Home for Boys, in ar, jha (1932), pt. 2, app. 23, 119. 75 W.O. Wilson, Annual Report of the Halifax Industrial School, in ar, jha (1932), pt. 2, app. 28, 109; and ibid., in ar, jha (1933), pt. 2, app. 28, 106. 76 Annual Report of the Juvenile Court Judge, in ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 53–4. 77 Ibid., in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 23–4. 78 ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 67. 79 Brother Stanislaus, Annual Report of St Patrick’s Home for Boys, in ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 55. Similar complaints about the condition of the institution’s buildings were made on a regular basis, either by Blois himself or within the superintendent’s annual report. 80 ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 44. The provincial superintendent dealt with the Halifax Industrial School in a similar manner; grants were never withheld because of poor conditions or performance of the staff, but his annual reports throughout the interwar years were filled with admonitions and calls for increased funding. 81 ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 95. Blois’s successor, F.R. MacKinnon, had to cope with the negative consequences of Blois’s generous approach to

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82 83 84

85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92

93

94 95

Notes to pages 114–18

boarding homes, as evidenced by his struggle with the Ideal Maternity Home; see particularly Balcom, “Scandal and Social Policy.” See especially Annual Reports of the Halifax Infants’ Home, in ar, jha (1919, 1921, 1924), pt. 2 app. 28, 73–7, 65–9, 70, respectively. Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2 app. 28, 60. The Canadian Welfare Council, founded in 1920, was initially known as the Canadian Council on Child Welfare. The name changed in 1930 to the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare, and in 1935 it became the Canadian Welfare Council, a moniker it retained until 1969, when it was once more rechristened as the Canadian Council on Social Development. It is referred to as the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC) throughout this text, the title it maintained for the longest time under study. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 25:123, CWC, Section on the Spiritual and Ethical Development of the Child, 1925–26. See, for example, ar, jha (1940), pt. 2, app. 23, 14. ar, jha (1921), pt. 2 app. 28, 36. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4, H. Atkinson, “Report on the Nova Scotia Boys’ Industrial Schools,” 1929. Atkinson was recommended for this review by Charlotte Whitton, and his report was made to the provincial attorney general. Howard Eamon, superintendent, Annual Report of the Halifax Industrial School, in ar, jha (1927), pt. 2, app. 28, 95. See particularly Annual Reports of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, in ar, jha (1919, 1920, 1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 91, 65, 63, respectively. ar, jha (1922), pt. 2, app. 28, 58. See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,327, no. 1, Minutes of the Managing Committee of St Paul’s Home for Girls, passim and especially 30 May 1922. See also chapter 2, note 37. Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2., app. 28, 60. The staff at this institution made annual complaints about the number of “defectives” in the home and joined a growing movement for the establishment of a separate institution for the feeble-minded (the Nova Scotia Training School) in the late 1920s. ar, jha (1922), pt. 2, app. 28, 47; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4, H. Atkinson, “Report on the Nova Scotia Boys’ Industrial Schools,” 1929. ar, jha (1930), pt. 2, app. 24, 88–92. Although the statistical returns for these institutions do not distinguish between children placed by the courts and those placed by parents, family members, or others, there is anecdotal

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evidence to suggest that the practice continued at least until 1930; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1930), Blois to Whitton, 31 January 1930. 96 As noted in chapter 6, the Home of the Guardian Angel began refusing placement of CAS wards in the 1950s and did so with a particularly childcentred rationale. In this earlier period, however, local institutions were extraordinarily unlikely to refuse such requests. 97 Both the Protestant Orphanage in Truro (established in 1910) and Bairncroft Asylum in Sydney were organized on the cottage system. 98 Annual Report of St Joseph’s Orphanage, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 87. This report noted that many of the children in the orphanage were “half-orphans,” or the children of single parents. However, “[i]n nearly every case the needs of the half orphan are as urgent as those of the whole orphan and call for the same consideration.” 99 Annual Report of St Joseph’s Orphanage, ar, jha (1924), pt. 2, app. 28, 42. 100 This understanding of the institution’s protective abilities lay at the root of much institution building in North America and western Europe. From the 1830s, the number of these institutions grew exponentially. By 1880 there were over 600 located across the United States, with nearly 500 more opened before the turn of the century. See Bremner, Children and Youth in America, vol. 2, 283–4; Dekker, Will to Change the Child; Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, 206–36; and Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 12–13. The emphasis that local child welfare people placed on familial sources of neglect and delinquency was particularly pronounced in the reports of Judge J.J. Hunt of the Juvenile Court, as published in his annual reports to Blois. 101 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,329, no. 2, admissions form, c. 1920. For a discussion of the disciplinary mechanism inherent to architectural structures, see Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 170–1. 102 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4, H. Atkinson, “Report on the Nova Scotia Boys’ Industrial Schools,” 1929. Escapes were a relatively common event at the city’s boys’ reformatories and may indicate periods of particular unrest and dissatisfaction among the children. During the 1920s, the number of escapes at the Halifax Industrial School peaked in 1922, just a few years before the scandal broke in the local papers, at 25 per cent of the population (eighteen escapes in a population of seventy-two). Blois attributed the high number of escapes in late 1924 to the disruptive nature of the inquiry at the home; see “Industrial School Investigation Should

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103

104

105 106

107 108 109

110

111

Notes to pages 121–123

Come to a Conclusion,” Halifax Evening Mail, 30 October 1924, 3. The years 1931 and 1933 also saw a high percentage of escapes (25 and 27 per cent, respectively). The number of escapes at St Patrick’s Home for Boys was slightly lower in the 1920s, generally staying below 10 per cent of the population, except in 1926 and 1929 (15 and 14.5 per cent, respectively). The Monastery of the Good Shepherd experienced significantly fewer escapes; indeed, excepting two escapes in 1923 and one in 1936, none were reported. Data on these escapes were compiled from the statistical information collected by Ernest Blois for his annual reports. The authors of the province’s Children’s Protection Acts felt compelled to attempt a definition of the street to avoid limiting the application of the law to roadways or thoroughfares. The “Street,” according to a 1923 act, “includes any highway or public place, whether a thoroughfare or not.” See “Of Juvenile Delinquents and the Protection of Children,” Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia (rsns ), 1923, c. 166, s. 18(h), emphasis added. See especially Houston, “Victorian Origins of Juvenile Delinquency”; and Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum, 88–96. For a discussion of street children in Europe (particularly the supposed threat posed thereby), see especially Cunningham, Children of the Poor, 106–12; Shore, Artful Dodgers; Berlanstein, “Vagrants, Beggars, and Thieves”; and Pinchbeck and Hewitt, Children in English Society, vol. 2, 431–78. An excellent study of children’s street labour is provided by Zucchi, Little Slaves of the Harp. “Death’s Playground,” cartoon, Halifax Herald, 10 June 1921, 6. ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 30; ar, jha (1927), pt. 2, app. 28, 73. The threat of the street loomed large throughout the interwar period and was mentioned in virtually every annual report Blois submitted. “The Gospel of Social Service: St. Paul’s Mission,” Church Work, 14 November 1912, 1. Sister M. Teresa, superior, Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, in ar, jha (1936), pt. 2, app. 23, 115. ar, jha (1924), pt. 2, app. 28, 1. See also NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1930), Blois to Charlotte Whitton, 31 January 1930; and Annual Report of the Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 18. The Halifax Orphan House was the first such institution to place children out in the community; see Gouett, “Halifax Orphan House.” See also Fingard, Dark Side of Life; and NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, Minutes of the Ladies’ Managing Committee of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 1875–79. Annual Report of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 63.

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112 Annie Elford, matron, Annual Report of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, in ar, jha (1926), pt. 2, app. 28, 83, emphasis added. 113 Annual Report of the Salvation Army Maternity Hospital and Children’s Home, in ar, jha (1915), pt. 1, app. 3 (B), Public Charities, 26–7. 114 Annual Report of the Halifax Industrial School, in NSarM, HV N85 C43, First Report of the Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children for the Province of Nova Scotia, 59. 115 M. Scott, Annual Report of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, 1914, in ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 77. 116 Annual Report of St Joseph’s Orphanage, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 86. 117 Woodward also conducted casework for the Protestant Orphans’ Home. See Annual Report of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, in ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 65. 118 See Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, in ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 75–6. 119 See Annual Reports of the Halifax Infants’ Home, in ar, jha (1919, 1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 73–7, 68–70, respectively. The claim that requiring mothers to stay with their babies led to better health for the infants was both plausible and scientifically supported. In the nineteenth century, high mortality rates in infants’ homes were often linked to inadequate nutrition, particularly because of the lack of alternatives to breast milk. By the early 1920s, attention to the benefits of proper nutrition (particularly clean milk) was ubiquitous among childcare experts and physicians; see especially MacMurchy, Handbook of Child Welfare Work in Canada. Historical study of the link between reduced infant mortality and nutrition, particularly clean milk campaigns, is a growing field in Canada and elsewhere; see, for example, Ostry, “Early Developments in Nutrition Policy in Canada”; and Baumslag and Michels, Milk, Money and Madness. 120 ar, jha (1919), pt. 2, app. 28, 18, original emphasis. Blois repeated this praise in ar, jha (1923), pt. 2, app. 28, 16. 121 Indeed, for the first several years of his tenure as provincial superintendent, Blois attempted to visit, personally, the home of each foster child placed by his office. In the period 1912–15, this amounted to just over 100 visits per year across the province. 122 ar, jha (1923), pt. 2, app. 28, 16. St Paul’s Home for Girls, whose records for the pre-1920 period are relatively complete, made use of letters of recommendation, usually from parish priests, in selecting adoptive homes for many of its girls throughout the province; see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,326, nos 1–2.

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Notes to pages 125–29

123 ar, jha (1919, 1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 18, 90, respectively. 124 ar, jha (1917), pt. 2, app. 28, 10–11. 125 ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 8–9. On the dangers presumed to lurk for placements made by people outside of institutional staffs and the CAS (i.e., by “private persons” or county homes), see ar, jha (1928), pt. 2, app. 28, 75. 126 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1929), G. Lantz, “Report of the Children’s Aid Society for the Year Ending September 30, 1928.” 127 ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 9. 128 J.A.R. Kinney, Annual Report of the the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, in ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 73. 129 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1929), G. Lantz, “Report of the Children’s Aid Society for the Year Ending September 30, 1928.” This claim seems contrary to the policy of the Halifax Infants’ Home (as stated in 1918), but it is possible that this latter institution informally refused entry of blacks or that the CAS secretary exaggerated the problem. 130 ar, jha (1928), pt. 2, app. 28, 76. 131 President’s Report, Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 23, emphasis added. 132 ar, jha (1918), pt. 2, app. 28, 8, original emphasis. 133 See Gouette, “Halifax Orphan’s House”; and Neff, “Use of Apprenticeship and Adoption” and “Government Approaches to Child Neglect.” A similar fate was employed effectively by L.M. Montgomery in her depiction of fictional East Coast orphan Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables (1908), particularly in chapters 5 and 6. 134 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,326, no. 2, Minutes of the Managing Committee of St Paul’s Home for Girls, 12 December 1905. The Managing Committee had frequently refused applications for girls before this time, although the reasons were not generally indicated. 135 ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 60–1. It is possible that some of the potential demand for child labourers was met by the Middlemore Home, which housed emigrant children from England. In his annual report to Blois for 1916, the director of the home wrote that although applications for younger children had dropped off considerably, “no doubt … the result of conditions existing in consequence of this terrible war,” the home had received “applications for the elder children, from twelve years of age and upward … in excess of last year”; see Annual Report of the Middlemore Home, in ar, jha (1916), pt. 2, app. 28, 60-1. On British emigrant children, see especially Parr, Labouring Children.

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Notes to pages 129–34

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136 Sister M. Wilfred, Annual Report of St Joseph’s Orphanage, in ar, jha (1931), pt. 2, app. 23, 129. 137 ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 90. 138 ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 47. 139 Blois also referred in this letter to a study conducted by Lord Brantford, home secretary of the British government, on institutional stays in the English school system. Brantford argued in favour of long-term institutional care. See NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1930), Blois to Whitton, 31 January 1930. 140 Sister Teresa, Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, in ar, jha (1938), pt. 2, app. 23, 125. See also Sister Mary of St Joachim Killorn, Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd (St Euphrasia’s Training School), in ar, jha (1945), pt. 2, app. 23, 177–9. 141 See NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4, H. Atkinson, “Report on the Nova Scotia Boys’ Industrial Schools,” 1929. 142 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1929), G. Lantz, “Report of the Children’s Aid Society for the Year Ending September 30, 1928.”

chapter four 1 See Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), MG 20, vols 414 and 416. 2 See Thornton, “Problem of Out-Migration from Atlantic Canada.” 3 Brym and Sacouman, eds, Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada; Forbes, “Origins of the Maritime Rights Movement” and Maritime Rights Movement; Frank, “Contested Terrain”; Macgillivray, “Military Aid to the Civil Power”; Penfold, “‘Have You No Manhood in You?’”; Saunders, Economic History of the Maritime Provinces, 37–44, 61–8. 4 The workforce at Halifax Shipyards declined from a 1918 high of nearly 2,000 to only 100 in 1922. See Fingard, Guildford, and Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years, 140. 5 NSarM, RG 35-102, ser. 1A, Halifax City Council Minutes, 2 August 1921, 294–7; 4 August 1921, 298–301. 6 Although the city’s population had jumped by 25 per cent between 1911 and 1921 (from 46,619 to 58,372), over the next decade it remained stagnant at just under 60,000 people; see Canada, Census of Canada, 1931, vol. 2, table 12. See also Thornton, “Problem of Out-Migration from Atlantic Canada.”

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Notes to pages 134–7

7 “Family of Seven Are Huddled in a Room on Cornwallis Street,” Halifax Evening Mail, 8 January 1925, 1. See also nsarm, mg 20, vol. 532, no. 1, Halifax Relief Commission Scrapbook, 1922–29; Wallace, Housing Problem in Nova Scotia; Prince, Catastrophe and Social Change; Weaver, “Halifax Relief Commission”; and Morton, Ideal Surroundings. 8 Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha ) (1928), pt. 2, app. 28, 73–4. 9 ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 5-6. 10 Ibid. On the general concern of governments with the mobility of populations, see Scott, Seeing Like a State. 11 President’s Report, Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1925), pt. 2, app. 28, 22. 12 Laura Dean, Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, in ar, jha (1939), pt. 2, app. 28, 137. 13 ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 6. 14 “Justice Must Prevail,” Halifax Citizen, 12 December 1924, 6. 15 Boudreau, “Crime and Society in a City of Order”; Fingard, Guildford, and Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years, 139. The latter authors note that “[o]utbursts of racism and xenophobia were frequent in Halifax in the inter-war years; attacks against African Nova Scotians and Chinese citizens occurred almost every year; however, police and city officials showed little interest in addressing the problem.” 16 National Archives of Canada (NAC), MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1928), Blois to Whitton, January 1928. According to Marjorie Bradford of the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC), Blois’s efforts at establishing a curfew law may not have been misplaced. Writing in 1937, Bradford reflected on her visit to Halifax almost ten years earlier. In 1928, she wrote, “one of the conditions of which I was extremely conscious and which I had never seen in any other Canadian city, was that of young urchins on the street at night – little boys only a few years old, with about one newspaper under their arms as a subterfuge, were virtually begging all over the downtown area”; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:14, Bradford to Blois, 13 February 1937. 17 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Nova Scotia Department of Neglected and Dependent Children, 1927), Whitton to Blois, 10 January 1927. 18 Ibid., Blois to Whitton, 13 January 1927. 19 Ibid., Blois to Whitton, 6 April 1927. 20 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 381:8 (Field Reports – Maritimes, 1935–49), Field Report, March 1935. The Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor also administered outdoor relief in the city; see

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Notes to pages 137–9

21

22 23

24

25 26 27

28

29

30

303

NSarM, MG 20, vol. 504C; and MG 20, vol. 1,290, no. 5, A General History of the Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 1981. See “Of Juvenile Delinquents and the Protection of Children,” Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia (rsns ), 1923, c. 166, s. 18(g). As many children continued to be housed in county poorhouses (in contravention of this act), it is difficult to say how many families found themselves separated as a result of financial need. See Guildford, “End of the Poor Law.” Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Chidlren’s Aid Society,” 80, 100n18. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:24 (Halifax – Department of Public Health and Welfare, Correspondence, 1937–51), “Halifax Direct Relief Committee: Salient Facts Concerning Relief Administration.” According to the comparative relief scales published with this document, Halifax’s rate was lower than those of several cities in western Canada, including Edmonton and Ottawa, and was also below the rates given in several places in Atlantic Canada, including Saint John, Moncton, Glace Bay, and Springhill. For a family of five, for example, the rate of relief in Halifax was $2.75 per week. The closest rate to this was given in Saint John at $3.80, and the highest was in Windsor at approximately $7.34. As of 1 September 1937, the weekly rate in Halifax was raised to $4. See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Minutes of the Child Welfare Division (A) of the Council of Social Agencies (hereafter Division A Minutes), 22 September 1936. Agent’s Report, Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1936), pt. 2, app. 23, 56–7. ar, jha (1933), pt. 2, app. 23, 8; ar, jha (1937), pt. 2, app. 28, 7–8. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:22 (Halifax Welfare Council – 1957–62), G.V. Shand, “A Brief History of the Welfare Council of Halifax, Nova Scotia,” c. 1960. Kimber, Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs, 15–22. See also ar, jha (1940), pt. 2, app. 28, 15, where Blois notes that social welfare workers would be dealing with a “multitude of social problems” as a result of “the struggle on which our country has entered.” However, he intrepidly proclaimed that the lessons of World War One had been well learned, that social services had improved, and that “we should face the future confidently.” Kimber, Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:22, Shand, “Brief History,” 9–12. See also Ling, “Servicewives in Wartime Halifax”; and White, “Conscripted City.” NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:16 (Halifax Community Chest, 1938–49), Gwladys Kennedy to George Davidson (executive director of the CWC), 29 July 1942.

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Notes to pages 139–40

31 Farley, “Halifax Diphtheria Epidemic (1940–1944)”; Kimber, Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs, 218–20; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:22, Shand, “Brief History,” 9–10. 32 Anglican Diocesan Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter ADC), MG 8, ser. 12, vol. 2, Minute Book of the Anglican Board for the Council for Social Service, 20 February 1940. 33 The Halifax Junior League – a local branch of this voluntary international women’s organization, which “engaged in a wide array of community social and cultural work” – was incorporated in the city in 1935 and was instrumental in funding Halifax’s Welfare Council and its Social Service Index. The organization gave each of its members rudimentary training in social work problems, and as Shirley Tillotson notes, the members consequently prided themselves on their professionalism, although they were, technically, amateurs. See Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society,” 84–5. 34 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax – General Correspondence, 1943– 59), Gwynedd Monroe (Community Service Department of the Association of the Junior Leagues of America) to Nora Lea (CWC), 1 April 1943. Although not noted in Monroe’s somewhat dramatic letter, recreational activities for some children were slightly more tangible: Guides, Brownies, and Scouts were active in the city, as were groups of the Canadian Girls in Training. Most children in institutions were provided with organized recreation as well, particularly at the reformatories. See their annual reports in ar, jha , passim. 35 This was the Council of Social Agencies, later called the Welfare Council, an organization formed in 1930 and discussed later in this chapter. 36 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:22, Shand, “Brief History,” 9–10. Shand, a native of Windsor, Nova Scotia, was a trained social worker with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Acadia University. She taught at the Halifax School for the Deaf and Dumb for several years before undertaking to study social work at McGill University and the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. She worked in Montreal and Pittsburgh and then studied at the London School of Economics (in anthropology) before taking on the position at the Welfare Council, which she held until 1958. On retirement, she turned her interests and energies to historical pursuits and wrote Historic Hants County. 37 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:24 (Halifax – Family Services Bureau and Halifax Children’s Aid Society [1], 1942–67), Helen Burgess, Annual Report of the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau, 1945; NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, no. 3, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax

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Notes to pages 140–6

38 39

40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52

53

305

Infants’ Home, 18 July 1948, 17 October 1945, 16 October 1946. On the V.E. Day riots, See Kimber, Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, no. 3, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 15 November 1945. J.J. Hunt, Annual Report of Juvenile Court for the City of Halifax, in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 89. This parable was drawn from the work of St Ambrose, a fourth-century bishop of Milan who told the story of St Lawrence the Martyr, who was asked to gather the treasures of the church; in the case of the latter, however, St Lawrence gathered all of the poor, not simply the children. See de Romestin, trans., Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 10, bk 2, 65, s. 140. On Lantz’s attitude and approach to social work, see Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society,” 78–9. See Lantz, Executive Secretary’s Report, Halifax cas, in ar, jha (1928), pt. 2, app. 28, 40. Lantz quoted (with minor errors in transcription) from Bernard Glueck’s article “The Significance of Mental Hygiene in Child Guidance” (1925). For more on Glueck, see his obituary in the American Journal of Psychiatry 130 (March 1973): 326. “Fiendish Cruelty,” Halifax Citizen, 17 October 1924, 2; “Investigation into Conditions,” Halifax Citizen, 24 October 1924, 1. Letter to the editor, Halifax Citizen, 21 November 1924, 2. ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 44. ar, jha (1914), pt. 2, app. 28, 42. “Findings of E.H. Blois Re Industrial School Inquiry!” Halifax Citizen, 12 December 1924, 1. ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28. 5. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1932), Blois to Whitton, 14 December 1932. See also ar, jha (1940), pt. 2, app. 28, 10, where Blois worries over the implications of increasing public money for the CAS. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Halifax Industrial School, Blois Report), C.A. Baragar to Thorburn, 9 December 1924. “An Act to Incorporate the Halifax Industrial School,” Statutes of Canada, 1865, c. 51. “Findings of E.H. Blois Re Industrial School Inquiry!” Halifax Citizen, 12 December 1924, 1, 6. For example, the president of the women’s committee for the Halifax Infants’ Home had a seat on the board of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, and vice versa. ar, jha (1920), pt. 2, app. 28, 8.

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Notes to pages 146–52

54 ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 92; ar, jha (1923), pt. 2, app. 23, 1. 55 ar, jha (1927), pt. 2, app. 28, 100, emphasis added. 56 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1930), Blois to Whitton, 31 January 1929. See also ibid., Blois to Whitton, 10 October 1929. 57 Ibid., Whitton to Blois, 24 February 1930. Whitton ended her letter with an apology: “if we [the CWC] have failed you, for I do like your province and am intensely interested in its fine progress in social work … I think perhaps you often growl at me, only in a friendly fashion, or like the Duchess’s boy in Alice who ‘only did it to annoy / Because he knows it teases – / If so, Charlotte / Can thoroughly enjoy, / The pepper, when she pleases.’” 58 ar, jha (1940), pt. 2, app. 28, 8–9. 59 ar, jha (1931), pt. 2, app. 23, 9. 60 For the expression of this attitude throughout Canada in the interwar period, see particularly Christie and Gauvreau, Full-Orbed Christianity. 61 Sister M. Wilfred, Annual Report of St Joseph’s Orphanage, in ar, jha (1931), pt. 2, app. 23, 129. 62 Esther Clarke Wright Archives, Acadia University (hereafter ECWA), “Report of the Social Service Board,” Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, Yearbooks 1928, 1930, 171, 173–4, respectively. 63 ECWA, Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, Yearbook 1927, 171. 64 See, for example, ADC, MG 8, ser. 12, Diocesan Branch of the Social Service Council of Canada; Catholic Pastoral Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter CPC), Catholic Women’s League Records (not accessioned); CPC, Vault 2 Archives, drawer 4, Catholic Social Action; ECWA, African United Baptist Association, Yearbooks, and Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, Yearbooks; and NSarM, MG 20, vol. 535, Local Council of Women. See also Christie and Gauvreau, Full-Orbed Christianity; and Hatfield, Sammy the Prince. 65 See Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society,” 78–9. 66 Agent’s Report, Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1926), pt. 2, apps 28–33; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1929), Lantz, “Report of the Children’s Aid Society … 1928.” 67 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the the NSACAS), copy of news article “Of Welfare Workers Organized Yesterday,” 46. See also “Nova Scotia Society of Welfare Workers,” Halifax Evening Echo, 28 October 1926, 13. 68 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), 46–7, 50–2. 69 Whitton’s visit also exposed Blois’s somewhat competitive and occasionally acidic spirit and hinted at the low popularity that CAS work had in

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Notes to pages 152–155

70

71

72 73 74 75 76 77

78 79

307

some communities. “Miss Whitton is one of the high potentates in the I.O.D.E. [Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire],” he wrote, “and they are arranging in the various towns to give her a grand hailing sign of distress accompanied by a bun feed … while I want the C.A.S. to get as much credit as possible for the meeting, I realize that we must cooperate with the I.O.D.E. if we are to get a full house.” See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), 52–3, copy of a letter from Blois to A.J. MacKay (Sydney CAS), 20 September 1927. “Rotary Hears Miss Whitton,” Halifax Evening Mail, 28 September 1927, 18. See also “Splended Address by Miss Whitton Last Evening,” Halifax Evening Mail, 28 September 1927, 20. “Conference Deals with Many Things Vital to Success,” Halifax Evening Mail, 27 September 1927, 5. The reporter noted that “one wished” this discussion “might have been longer, since it is one with which many earnest people, interested deeply in the work of our reformatory institutions, are much concerned.” See also “Conference Closes Today after Reviewing Work of Societies,” Halifax Evening Echo, 27 October 1926, 3. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), 56. Harkness, quoted in NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:22, Shand, “Brief History,” 5–6. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1930), Morrow to Whitton, 3 February 1930. Ibid., Whitton to Morrow, 8 February 1930. See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408. See ADC, MG 8, ser. 12, vol. 2, Minute Book of the Council for Social Services (Anglican), 8 March 1932, 14 November 1932, 21 February 1933. Ibid., 13 November 1935, 10 March 1936, 17 November 1936, 22 February 1938. CPC, O’Donnell Papers, vol. 2, file 93, Rev. C.F. Curran to Archbishop Thomas O’Donnell, 3 October 1932. Charles F. Curran was a native of Halifax born 22 October 1888. Ordained in 1911, he served in the Archdiocese of Halifax for his entire priestly career; at the time of his death in 1954, he was parish priest at St Joseph’s Church, where he had been assigned since 1926. He also taught at St Mary’s College (now St Mary’s University) and was the director of Catholic Action. He was the chancellor to the archdiocese and was Archbishop McCarthy’s secretary from 1920 to 1926, and he is credited with having written most of McCarthy’s pastoral letters during this period. My thanks to Karen White of the CPC for providing this biographical information.

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Notes to pages 156–60

80 CPC, O’Donnell Papers, vol. 2, file 93, Rev. C.F. Curran to Archbishop Thomas O’Donnell, 3 October 1932. 81 See ibid., files 93–4, Walter Black (Community Chest president), open letter to the Protestant ministers of the city, 8 October 1934. 82 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 216:13 (Nova Scotia Department of Public Welfare, 1936–54), MacKinnon to Lea, 3 July 1943. 83 See NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Halifax Industrial School, Blois Report), E.H. Murray to Thorburn, 12 December 1924, emphasis added. 84 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1931), Hattie Ogden to Whitton, 15 May 1931. 85 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1930), Blois to Whitton, 31 January 1930. Whitton expressed some degree of sympathy for Blois’s position on the issue of language. “We are in a period in social work in Canada,” she wrote, “when we are constantly establishing precedents and making interpretations. We are trying, in the office, gradually to work out a vocabulary of definitions and phrases, which will give us a common language in our work. But because we are all making history in social work in Canada today, we are like Dr. Johnson and his first dictionary – our meanings, etc. are subject yet to the controversy of private judgement”; see ibid., Whitton to Blois, 24 February 1930. 86 Ibid., Blois to Whitton, 31 January 1930. 87 Ibid., Blois to Whitton, 27 February 1930. In an early report from the secretary-treasurer of the Springhill CAS, Daniel McLeod, a similar hesitancy about public involvement was expressed: “The public[,] usually indifferent, sometimes become erratic and would have us act without consideration of all the circumstances. Societies should guard against being influenced to act hastily”; see Annual Report of the Springhill CAS, in ar, jha (1914), pt. 2, app. 28, 13. 88 Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum. 89 The NSACAS was formed in 1943–44 and has been described as a sequel to the earlier organization of social workers formed in 1926. See NSarM RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), 57–8. 90 Ibid., 70. 91 Copy of news article “Social Worker Assails Blois,” 24 April 1946, in ibid., 70–1, emphasis added. 92 Ibid., 74. Here, MacKinnon further diminished Torrey in his reflections on this conference, describing her as a “theorist who loved to talk and who preferred talk to action while all the time avowing her love for action.” 93 Ibid., 66.

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309

94 Ibid., 66–7. MacKinnon attributed at least some of his predecessor’s lack of enthusiasm for government direction to a sort of sour-grapes response: Blois’s efforts to organize children’s aid societies in 1926 had “failed,” and Mackinnon supposed that “[h]uman nature being what it is he was probably not overly anxious to see a new effort successful under other leadership.” 95 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Halifax Industrial School, Blois Report), R.H. Murray to Thorburn, 12 December 1924. 96 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, Minutes of the Advisory Board, Halifax Infants’ Home, 22 January 1920.

chapter five 1 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), MG 20, vol. 407, file 1.28, Council of Social Agencies (CSA), Minutes of Annual Meeting, 21 February 1944. The social agencies were careful to promote their own usefulness in these circumstances, concluding that to address all of these problems, organizations “like the Welfare Bureau and the Children’s Aid [were] especially needed.” 2 National Archives of Canada (NAC), MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:24 (Halifax – Family Services Bureau and Halifax Children’s Aid Society [1], 1942–67), Burgess to K.M. Jackson, 18 February 1947. 3 Ibid., K.M. Jackson of the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC), Memorandum, 1 April 1948; NSarM, MG 20, vol. 407, file 2.56, Council of Social Agencies, President’s Address, 9 March 1950. On “normalcy” and the postwar family, see, for example, Adams, Trouble with Normal; Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal; Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams”; and Sutherland, Growing Up. 4 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 407, file 1.15, Council of Social Agencies, President’s Address, 1941. For more information on Prince, a vocal and active social reformer in Halifax, see Hatfield, Sammy the Prince. 5 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1 (Halifax Study of Children’s Aid Society and Its Relationship to Other Agencies), “The Welfare Council of Halifax: The Children’s Aid Society and Other Agencies, 1946–1952,” 30 May 1952. 6 Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha ) (1940), pt. 2, app. 28, 8. 7 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Minutes of the Child Welfare Division (A) of the Council of Social Agencies (hereafter Division A Minutes), 28 May 1935.

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Notes to pages 166–8

8 Ibid., 26 March 1935. 9 See Anglican Diocesan Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter ADC), MG 8 ser. 12, vol. 2, Minutes of the Council for Social Service (Anglican), 15 November 1938, 17 October 1939. 10 NSarM, HV IN 3, newspaper clipping, “Homes for Infants Required,” 26 January 1950, in the Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 1949. In October 1949 the CWC reported that there was a shortage of about 1,000 foster homes across the country. In Halifax the CAS reported a need for 140 homes; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 59:491 (Foster Homes), Radio Release, 24 October 1949. The Child Welfare League of America also considered the shortage of foster homes a serious problem; in the 1940s the high cost of living and increased employment opportunities for women in war industries were cited as major causes. The issue of payments to foster homes was thus challenging, as caregivers and social workers wished to avoid the ethical dilemma of appearing to support baby farming; see Gordon, Study of Board Rates. 11 ar, jha (1940), pt. 2, app. 23, 10. 12 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 17 November 1947. In 1948 the Halifax Infants’ Home calculated the weekly cost per child at $8.61. Not surprisingly, the home reported heavy deficits each month in the postwar period; see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, files 3 and 4, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home. 13 The number of days of care was calculated using the number of children housed and the number of days each child lived in the institution. If the home had ten children for ten days, the total days of care would be listed as 100. 14 The number of private placements at the Orphans’ Home and other instutions in 1948 interfered with the ability of the provincial superintendent to find beds for some of his wards. See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 8 (Protestant Orphans’ Home), MacKinnon to H.M. Stairs (president), 30 January 1948. 15 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 9 April and 7 May 1948. 16 NSarM, HV IN 3, newspaper clipping, “Homes for Infants Required,” 26 January 1950, in the Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 1949. 17 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 216:3 (Department of Public Welfare, 1936–54), E. Govan, “Field Trip to Nova Scotia, Feb 16–18, 1950.” 18 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), K.M. Jackson, “Memorandum Re. St. Patrick’s Reformatory,” 8 April 1948. 19 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to M.L. Peers (superintendent of the Infants’ Home), 12 March 1954.

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Notes to pages 168–70

20

21

22 23

24

25

26 27 28

29

311

MacKinnon was reiterating comments made at a meeting of Division A the previous day. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 8 (Protestant Orphans’ Home), MacKinnon to H.M. Stairs (president), 30 January 1948 (MacKinnon was praising recent renovations to the children’s dormitories and the nursery). See also ibid., MacKinnon to Stairs, 17 January 1947; “Halifax Protestant Orphanage: Report of Inspection,” 16 February 1950; and G.E. Hart and P. MacDougall, “Report of Inspection,” 18 June 1950. Sister Mary of St Joachim Killorn, Annual Report of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd (St Euphrasia’s Training School), in ar, jha (1945), pt. 2, app. 23, 179. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 8 (Protestant Orphans’ Home), MacKinnon to H.M. Stairs (president), 17 January 1947. Ibid., MacKinnon to Stairs, 30 January 1948. By April of that year, Jean MacDonald, secretary of the home’s board, informed MacKinnon that “the sign has been removed from the Building” and that “we have ceased to use the term Protestant Orphanage”; see ibid., MacDonald to MacKinnon, 27 April 1948. Despite this change, however, the institution continued to refer to itself, and was called by others in the community, by its historic title. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, file 3, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 10 December 1947; ibid., file 4, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 14 September 1949. Esther Clarke Wright Archives, Acadia University (hereafter ECWA), “Report of the Social Service Board,” Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, Yearbook 1947, 183. These yearbooks contain almost yearly condemnations of racial prejudice and present anecdotal evidence of the impact of racism; see, for example, “Report of the Social Service Board,” Yearbook 1951, 175–6, which recounts two instances where blacks were refused service in hotels and restaurants in Nova Scotia. See also Backhouse, “Racial Segregation in Canadian Legal History.” NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 381:8 (Field Reports – Maritimes, 1935–49), “Maritime Provinces,” Miss Tucker, Field Report, February 1935. See NAC, MG 28 I10, vol. 227:24, Nora Lea, Memorandum, February 1944. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 381:8 (Field Reports – Maritimes, 1935–49), no author, Field Report, March 1935. For attendance lists of Division A, see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 1. See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 1, Annual Reports of Division A, 1934– 35, 1937, 1938, 1939–40; ibid., Division A Minutes, 27 October 1936.

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Notes to pages 171–3

30 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1 (Halifax Study of Children’s Aid Society and Its Relationship to Other Agencies), “The Welfare Council of Halifax: The Children’s Aid Society and Other Agencies, 1946–1952.” See also Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society.” 31 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 3, Greenhill to Prince, 16 February 1948. See also NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, January and February 1948. One of the major points of disagreement between the two acts was over the NSACAS’s suggestion that a court of appeal be established to deal with such disputes as might arise between unmarried mothers and putative fathers. Members of Division A, despite seeing the value in such a court, were concerned about the potential breach of the woman’s confidentiality; see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 13 February 1947. 32 NSarM, MG 20, vol 407, file 1.15, Annual Meeting of the Council of Social Agencies, President’s Address, 1941. 33 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:14 (Halifax Welfare Council, 1937–50), Nora Lea, Memorandum, February 1944. 34 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax – General Correspondence, 1943– 59), Lea to Pierpont, 10 March 1944. 35 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 1:4 (Child Welfare in Nova Scotia, 1933), Blois to Whitton, 15 December 1933. 36 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax – General Correspondence, 1943– 59), Lea to Pierpont, 10 March 1944. 37 Ibid., Monroe to Lea, 1 April 1943. 38 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:24 (Halifax – Family Services Bureau and Halifax Children’s Aid Society [1], 1942–67), K.M. Jackson, Memorandum, April 1946. 39 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax – General Correspondence, 1943– 59), Lea to Pierpont, 10 March 1944. Until 1949 the CSA did not have representation on the board of the Community Chest, a point that caused considerable resentment, as the members of the executive claimed that they were better acquainted with the varied needs of the agencies and institutions in the city. This representation was finally granted when the chest’s constitution was rewritten in 1949. 40 As of 1948 the Protestant Orphans’ Home was the only institution not to claim membership in the Community Chest. In the 1950s the home was criticized for maintaining a surplus (instead of spending it on something like a professional social worker), so its membership status may not have affected its financial position too severely.

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Notes to pages 173–5

313

41 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.3, Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Roundtable Conference, 8 March 1951. During this meeting, Lantz reported that she had received $10,600 from the Community Chest, despite requesting nearly three times this amount ($30,608). 42 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.15, F.R. MacKinnon, “Report for Committee of the Welfare Council of Halifax,” 14 June 1951; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:14 (Halifax Welfare Council, 1937–50), Nora Lea, Memorandum, February 1944. 43 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), K.M. Jackson, Memorandum, 8 April 1948; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:24 (Halifax – Family Services Bureau and Halifax Children’s Aid Society [1], 1942–67), K.M. Jackson, Memorandum, April 1946. 44 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1 (Halifax Study of Children’s Aid Society and Its Relationship to Other Agencies), “The Welfare Council of Halifax: The Children’s Aid Society and Other Agencies, 1946–1952,” 30 May 1952; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), Nora Lea, Memorandum, February 1944. 45 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347 (Halifax – General Correspondence, 1943–59), E. Govan, Memorandum, February 1950. 46 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1 (Halifax Study of Children’s Aid Society and Its Relationship to Other Agencies), “The Welfare Council of Halifax: The Children’s Aid Society and Other Agencies, 1946–1952,” 30 May 1952. 47 Ibid., “The Welfare Council of Halifax: Committee Report on Relationship between the CAS and Other Agencies,” September 1951. 48 Ibid., “The Welfare Council of Halifax: The Children’s Aid Society and Other Agencies, 1946–1952,” 30 May 1952. 49 Ibid., MacKinnon to Col. S.R. Balcom (president of the CSA), 17 April 1949. See also NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), K.E. Jones (secretary of the Infants’ Home) to S. Roy (Halifax CAS), 5 November 1947. 50 See MacKinnon, “Life and Times of Ernest H. Blois.” 51 Balcom, “Scandal and Social Policy,” 6. See also Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society,” 85. 52 MacKinnon, Reflections, 23. 53 MacKinnon also claimed, perhaps disingenuously, that in the late 1930s the number of professional social workers in Nova Scotia “in the public and private sectors could be counted on the fingers of one hand.” See ibid., 16.

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Notes to pages 175–9

54 See Comacchio, Nations Are Built of Babies; Struthers, “‘Lord Give Us Men’”; Moscovitch and Albert, eds, Benevolent State, 126–43; and Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society.” 55 The Government of Nova Scotia established this new department following the recommendations of the 1944 Royal Commission on Provincial Development and Rehabilitation (also known as the Dawson Commission, after its chair, R. MacGregor Dawson). The then executive director of the CWC, George F. Davidson, was invited particularly to make recommendations on provincial health and welfare arrangements, an investigation that Davidson carried out in the autumn of 1943. See Davidson, Report on Public Welfare Services in Nova Scotia. 56 MacKinnon, Reflections, 28. 57 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 19, file 26, “Address to Executive Directors and Regional Administrators, with Directors and Supervisors, Child Welfare Division,” 13 December 1966. 58 ar, jha (1945), pt. 2, app. 23, 13. 59 ar, jha (1946), pt. 2, app. 23, 10. 60 Ibid., 8–9. In 1948 B. Beaumont, director of child welfare in Ontario, was a guest speaker at the annual conference of the NSACAS, where he expressed the opinion that not even provincial-level centralization went far enough. According to a report in the Halifax Herald, “It was only when activities were carried out on a national scope, he felt, could Child Welfare services be standardized to a high level of efficiency, warmth, and understanding right across the Dominion. ‘The children of the future will not only be citizens of our community, but will be citizens of the world,’ he concluded”; see copy of the article in NSarM, RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), 78. 61 ar, jha (1946), pt. 2, app. 28, 13. 62 The Ideal Maternity Home, a private institution located in East Chester, Nova Scotia, operated between the late 1920s and 1940s. The owners, William and Lila Young, were accused of performing illegal adoptions, of neglecting the children in their care, and of committing manslaughter in the deaths of several infants. See Cahill, Butterbox Babies; Balcom, “Scandal and Social Policy”; and Hartlen, Butterbox Survivors. 63 ar, jha (1946), pt. 2, app. 23, 10–11. 64 ar, jha (1948), pt. 2, app. 23, 132. 65 Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society,” 86. For a description of a “rift” caused by Lantz’s “bad manners” at the NSACAS conference in 1949, see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), 83–5.

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Notes to pages 179–83

315

66 See “An Act to Amend and Consolidate Chapter 166 of the Revised Statutes, 1923, the Children’s Protection Act,” Statutes of Nova Scotia (sns ), 1950, c. 2; ar, jha (1948), pt. 2., app. 28, 7; ar jha (1952), pt. 2, app. 28, 8. 67 On the broader political implications of the effort to remove Lantz from the Halifax CAS, see Tillotson’s excellent analysis in “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society.” 68 See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, file 3, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home. 69 See particularly NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to P.A. Wilson (president of the Infants’ Home) and D.K. McDermaid (president of the Halifax CAS), 8 April 1947. 70 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 407, file 2.48, “Report: Survey Committee,” 21 February 1949; ar, jha (1949), pt. 2, app. 23, 8. 71 By 1956, MacKinnon suggested, the early promise of this association had faded. “Problems had been encountered,” he wrote, “in finding common interests for the different institutions … and in getting staff to work on committees because of their involvement in the institutions.” See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 81, file 10 (the NSACCI), “Draft: The Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions,” 4, 13. 72 See, for example, NSarM, MG 20, vol. 1,326, file 2, Directors of Management Minute Book of St Paul’s Home for Girls, Report of the Annual Meeting, 1900. In this report, the secretary of the home, L.J. Donaldson, declared, “[w]e rejoice over the increased number of children in the home and we look for even greater numbers in the coming year.” See also the Annual Report of the Protestant Orphans’ Home, in ar, jha (1933), pt. 2, app. 28, 134–5. 73 Goldfarb, “Effects of Early Institutional Care on Adolescent Personality.” Goldfarb’s work in this field was extensive and influential; see also Goldfarb, “Effects of Psychological Deprivation in Infancy,” “Infant Rearing as a Factor in Foster Home Placement,” and “Variations in Adolescent Adjustment of Institutionally Reared Children.” 74 See Burlingham and Freud, War and Children; and Freud, Infants without Families and Research at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic. 75 Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health, 58, 110. Bowlby did recognize the importance of “group care” for particular groups of emotionally disturbed children, an argument that was adopted by many local institutions in the later 1950s (see chapter 6 herein). Early critiques of the theories and implications of maternal deprivation are provided by Casler, “Maternal Deprivation”; Ainsworth, Deprivation of Maternal Care; and

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76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84

85

86

87

Notes to pages 183–8

Skard, “Maternal Deprivation.” On the effect of these ideas of child health and rearing on the expectations of mothers, see Pottisham Weiss, “Mother, the Invention of Necessity.” Other prominent studies of institutionalization in this period include Bender, “Infants Reared in Institutions” and “There Is No Substitute for Family Life”; Flint, Child and the Institution; Sommer and Osmond, “Symptoms of Institutional Care”; Spitz, “Hospitalism”; and Williams, “Some Effects of Institutional Living on Personality Development.” NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), J.C. Harding, “Inspection Report,” 13 February 1941. NSarM, HV IN 3, Seventy-Fifth Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948, “Report of the Superintendent.” NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.15, F.R. MacKinnon, “Report for Committee of the Welfare Council of Halifax,” 14 June 1951. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.3, Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Roundtable Conference, 8 March 1951. ar, jha (1946), pt. 2, app. 23, 19–20. See especially NSarM, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to Hart and McDermaid, 8 April 1947. See NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:12 (St Joseph’s Orphanage, 1952-57), Sister Anita Vincent to Lantz, correspondence dated 1951–52. These letters were submitted to the CWC in order to facilitate its review of the findings of the CSA survey and roundtable discussions. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, files 3 and 4, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 17 March 1943, 21 June 1944, 18 April 1947, 8 October 1947, 5 November 1947, 11 February 1948, 9 November 1949, 8 March 1950, 14 June 1950, 10 October 1951. Records of this board are in existence only from September 1941; the tone of this 1943 complaint seems to indicate that Lantz had been contacted about CAS wards before this date. See also, for example, NSarM RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to Hart, 22 May 1947. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to Wilson (president of the Infants’ Home) and McDermaid (president of the Halifax CAS), 8 April 1947. Lantz, Annual Report of the Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1951), pt. 2 app. 23, 64. See also Lantz, Annual Report of the Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1931), pt. 2, app. 23, 46–50. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.5, Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Roundtable Discussion, 28 March 1951. Lantz’s

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Notes to pages 188–90

88 89

90

91

92 93 94 95

96 97

317

concern about relying on the opinions of “local” people was, ironically, an echo of Ernest Blois’s attitude prior to World War Two, as noted in chapter 3. Agent’s Report, Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1932), pt. 2., app. 23, 39–40. The standardization of casework formats was one of the first resolutions undertaken by delegates at the NSACAS conference in 1926 (which included representatives from the institutions). The resolution undoubtedly increased the stationary budgets of any participating agency or institution; see ar, jha (1927), pt. 2, app. 28, 150. On casework, see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 51, 458C (Constitutions: Family Agencies, 1941–63), “What Is Family Case Work?”; and Finkel, Social Policy and Practice in Canada, 86–7. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.6, Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Roundtable Conference, 18 April 1951; NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 5.27, brief prepared by the president of the CAS, R.A. Donahoe, for the roundtable conferences. Institutional representatives claimed that there was restricted access to case histories within their respective homes and asylums in order to assuage fears about the possibility of breaches in confidentiality. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1 (Halifax Study of Children’s Aid Society and Its Relationship to Other Agencies), “The Welfare Council of Halifax: Committee Report on Relationship between the CAS and Other Agencies,” September 1951; NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.6, Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Roundtable Conference, 18 April 1951. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.6., Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Roundtable Conference, 18 April 1951. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.15, F.R. MacKinnon, “Report for Committee of the Welfare Council of Halifax,” 14 June 1951. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.12, Council of Social Agencies, Child Welfare Division, Survey Report, 14 February 1951. See, for example, NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:12 (St Joseph’s Orphanage, 1952–57). This file contains a lengthy list of the names of and basic information on several nonwards cared for at this institution, some of whom had been institutionalized for over ten years. The religious wanted Lantz to take over wardship of these children in order to facilitate their placement, but the outcomes of these cases are not known. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 216:3 (Department of Public Welfare, 1936–54), E. Govan, “Field Trip to Nova Scotia, Feb 16–18, 1950.” NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.12, Halifax Welfare Council, Child Welfare Division, Survey Report, 14 February 1951.

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318

Notes to pages 191–7

98 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), M. Evans (chairman, Case Committee of the Infants’ Home) to R.A. Donahoe (Halifax CAS), 15 February 1951. 99 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.15, F.R. MacKinnon, “Report for Committee of the Welfare Council of Halifax,” 14 June 1951. 100 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1, “The Welfare Council of Halifax: Committee Report on Relationship between the CAS and Other Agencies,” September 1951.

chapter six 1 Annual Reports of the Provincial Superintendent of Neglected and Delinquent Children (hereafter ar), Journal of the House of Assembly (jha) (1955), vol. 1, app. 23, 9–10. MacKinnon did not directly disparage the work of female social workers but noted their unreliability as permanent staff members, as many of them left work upon marriage. See also Struthers, “‘Lord Give Us Men,’” and “Profession in Crisis”; and Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society,” 85. 2 Report on the Conference on Social Work (Sydney), 1945, in ar, jha (1946), pt. 3, app. 23, 18. 3 ar, jha (1953), pt. 3, app. 23, 7–8. 4 ar, jha (1958), vol. 3, app. 21, 10. Importantly, the practice of screening potential adoptees continued. Mental testing was compulsory, and extensive background checks were made to ensure that the characters, religions, and temperaments of the child and adoptive parents matched; see, for example, the Report of the Provincial Psychologist, in ar, jha (1955), vol. 1, app. 4, 149. 5 Interestingly, the social worker depicted in the first of these reports (1951) was male; by the mid-1950s it was female. In the late 1950s, perhaps reflecting increased family sizes, the pictograph of the adopted family increased from two children to three. By 1952 statistics on institutional populations and juvenile delinquency were also illustrated but without the same degree of detail as the information on adoption. Curiously, delinquents were not represented by male or female stick figures but by simple dark blocks. This choice, in retrospect, subtly depersonalized young offenders, as though their crimes had altered their status as children altogether. 6 “Child Welfare Act,” Revised Statutes of Nova Scotia (rsns ), 1955, c. 4. See also ar, jha (1958), vol. 3, app. 21, 10. 7 ar, jha (1960), pt. 2, app. 21, 9.

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Notes to pages 197–9

319

8 Ibid. 9 National Archives of Canada (NAC), MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), M.T. Blue, “Children’s Aid Society of Halifax, Annual Report of the Executive Director, Fiscal Year April 1, 1956 – March 31, 1957.” 10 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), RG 72, vol. 197, file 4, Blue to Cramm, “Re: Negro Adoption Applicants,” 8 February 1956. 11 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 1.6, Gwendolyn Shand to Bessie Touzel (Canadian Welfare Council), 24 March 1953. The meeting to which Shand refers was most likely the regular monthly session of the Children’s Division of the Council of Social Agencies (Division A). 12 M.T. Blue, Annual Report of the Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1954), pt. 3, app. 23, 54. As late as 1958, the difficulties of administration and community relations continued, to some degree, to be blamed on Lantz. In 1958 Eric Smit of the Canadian Welfare Council (CWC) reported that the board of the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), because it had “failed to keep pace with the growth of the City of Halifax and with new skills and knowledge in casework and child welfare[, was] struggl[ing] against inertia and indifference in the community [to] win the place in the welfare services of Halifax that the Society had failed to achieve” under Lantz’s tenure; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Eric Smit, “Report of the Survey of Child Welfare Services Having Membership in the Welfare Council of Halifax,” November 1958, 12. 13 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 381:11 (Field Reports – Maritimes, 1953–56), Peter Stanne, Field Visit Report (on the CAS), 7 June 1955. 14 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), Article Three of the CAS Constitution, amended 1954. 15 See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 81, file 10 (Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions), MacKinnon, “The Nova Scotia Society of ChildCaring Institutions,” 11. 16 See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 5.21; Dummit, “Better Left Unsaid”; and Gregor, “Home Nursing Has Continued to Present Problems.” 17 See Lafferty, “‘Very Special Service’”; and Simmons, “‘Helping the Poorer Sisters.’” There was at least one nursery school (administered by the Halifax Ladies’ College), which may have attracted children from lowincome families, and it is possible that the Home of the Guardian Angel also provided this service in the late 1940s; see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 14, R.G. Rice (director of maternal and child health, City of Halifax) to MacKinnon, 9 November 1949. St Joseph’s Orphanage opened a

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18 19

20

21 22

23

24

25

26

Notes to pages 200–3

Children’s Centre in 1968 to provide daycare as well; see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 29, file 19 (St Joseph’s Orphanage, Correspondence). NSarM, MG 20, vol. 407, file 1.26, Council of Social Agencies, Annual Report of the Executive Secretary, 15 February 1943. ar, jha (1952), pt. 2, app. 23, 8. In 1955 an organized effort on behalf of the provincial CAS was undertaken to expand eligibility for this allowance; see NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, file 10.29. See also Guildford, “End of the Poor Law”; and Fay, “‘Right Kind’ of Single Mothers.” NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 4, Minutes of the Child Welfare Division (A) of the CSA (hereafter Division A Minutes), 11 January 1949. For more on the family allowance, see Guest, Emergence of Social Security in Canada; and Kitchen, “Introduction of Family Allowances.” NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 6 December 1943, 11 January 1949. Ibid., 6 December 1943 (findings of the committee struck to examine the allowances and to provide alternate suggestions). Along with MacKinnon, there were three other members of the committee, including representatives from each of the Roman Catholic and Protestant institutions. Ibid., 11 January 1949. Food was excluded from the list of permissible purchases because it was considered an item shared by all children and staff at the institution. In 1950 it appears that Lantz was using some “creative” – and complicated – accounting methods to overcome the limitations placed on use of this fund; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 381:9 (Field Reports, Maritimes, 1950–51), Elisabeth Govan, Report on the Halifax CAS, October 1950. See also NSarM, RG 72, vol. 8, file 17 (National Health and Welfare), Department of National Health and Welfare, “Family Allowances Directive re. Payment of Family Allowances to Child Placing Agencies,” 13 July 1949. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), Council of Social Agencies, Report to the Civic Planning Commission, n.d., original emphasis. See also NSarM, MG 20, vol. 407, file 2.15, Council of Social Agencies, Report of the President at the Annual Meeting, 26 March 1947. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:1 (Halifax Study of Children’s Aid Society and Its Relationship to Other Agencies). The report tabled by the CWC was titled “Public-Private Relationships in Child Welfare”; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 79:591 (Ottawa: Canadian Welfare Council, 1950). Alongside the superintendent at the Home of the Guardian Angel were ten other sisters, three of whom (in 1949) were registered nurses. The

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Notes to pages 203–4

27

28

29

30

31

321

home also employed a lay nurse, a social worker to assist with adoptions, and domestic staff. See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408 (Council of Social Agencies), Report, 17 May 1949. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:11 (Home of the Guardian Angel), excerpt from field report of C. McAllister, 29 March 1962. See also NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), Peter Stanne, Field Visit Report, 7 June 1955; NAC, MG 28 I10, vol. 228:12 (Halifax, St Joseph’s Orphanage, 1952–57), Completed Survey Schedule, 1958; and NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 33, 51. Catholic Pastoral Centre Archives, Halifax (hereafter CPC), acc. 995-50-90-11, “Home of the Guardian Angel Act of Incorporation … Policy Statement.” Linda Gordon’s examination of the work of Catholic religious in the United States prior to World War One suggests that orders like the Sisters of Charity offered a far more flexible and understanding service to unmarried mothers than did many Protestants because they did not envision motherhood and marriage as a woman’s highest achievement. Gordon’s findings are contradicted by Andrée Lévesque’s history of Montreal’s Sisters of Miséricorde, and they also appear inaccurate for Halifax (although for different reasons) in light of the reactions and concerns of the staff at the Halifax Infants’ Home (see below) to the changes wrought by the Sisters of Charity’s efforts. See Gordon, Great Arizona Orphan Abduction; and Lévesque, “Deviants Anonymous.” NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 50. These services and programs were extended to St Joseph’s Orphanage later in the decade when the two institutions were combined, with the Sisters of Charity taking control of casework for both homes. In 1961 Lillian Romkey, then coordinator of adoption services for the Department of Public Welfare in Nova Scotia, reported that children placed outside of the province were the “so called hard-to-place children,” and this included “some young Roman Catholic children. We in Nova Scotia have a great scarcity of Roman Catholic Adoption homes”; see NAC, MG 28 I10, vol. 216:15 (Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, 1936–54), Romkey to Marian Murphy (CWC), 19 April 1961. CPC, acc. 995-50-90-9 (Correspondence of the Home of the Guardian Angel, 1952–75), Archbishop J.G. Berry to Sister Mary Clare Flanigan, 21 January 1959. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, file 4, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, May 1949 to January 1954, Superintendent’s

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32

33 34 35 36

37

38 39

40 41 42 43 44

Notes to pages 204–9

Report, August 1953. This was not the first time that the Infants’ Home had housed Roman Catholic clients; see Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, in ar, jha (1921), pt. 2, app. 28, 66. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), Survey Schedule Return of the CAS, 1958; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), E. Govan, Field Work Report, 2 December 1954. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), Survey Schedule Return of the CAS, 1958. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 35. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:4, L.T. Hancock, Memorandum, May 1957. It is not entirely clear why the decision was made to close St Patrick’s Home for Boys, but both the increasing use of the Shelburne School for Boys and serious financial troubles at the home were influential in the decision. See ar, jha (1956), vol. 1, app. 4, 15; and NSarM, RG 72, vol. 14, file 12 (Maritime Home for Girls), D.H. Johnson to W.S. Kennedy Jones (minister of public welfare), 16 July 1963. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:10 (Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home, 1947– 59), Survey Schedule Return, 1958; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), E. Govan, Field Work Report, 2 December 1954; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 67 (Children, Working Boys and Working Girls Homes, 1960–61), Mrs Ruth H. Blue (interim executive director of the CSA) to Mr Réal Rouleau (Family and Child Welfare Division, CWC), 17 March 1960. See also NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 2 (St Joseph’s Orphanage), Sister Mary Grace to MacKinnon, September 1957. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1.7, Shand to R.E.G. Davis (CWC), 20 February 1956. NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 25 June 1948. The superintendents in question were Mrs Bridgeford of the Halifax Infants’ Home and Sister Miriam de Lourdes of the Home of the Guardian Angel. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 17, emphasis added. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), Survey Schedule Return of the CAS, 1958. NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 26. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 24, 32. Smit’s review noted this board “control” as being a problem in the Protestant Orphans’ Home and the Halifax Infants’ Home, particularly.

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Notes to pages 210–15

323

45 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:26 (Halifax Children’s Aid Society, 1936–58), Survey Schedule Return of the CAS, 1958. 46 Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal. 47 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 3–4. 48 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Survey Schedule Return, 1958. 49 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 29 January 1947, emphasis added. 50 ar, jha (1960), pt. 2, app. 21, 11. 51 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 81, file 10 (Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions), report on the Fifth Annual Conference (1952) in draft of the NSACCI’s history (1971), 5–6; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 60:491 (Institutional Care for Children … 1949–53), Phyllis Burns (secretary of the Child Welfare Division of the CWC) to the Department of National Health and Welfare, Memo, 14 December 1951. The contents of this memo are repeated in a revised memo dated 1954; see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 66 (Children – Institutional Care of Children – Misc Matters, 1954–56), “Research Division Memo, Institutional Care for Children in Canada.” 52 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 23–4. 53 Ibid., 38–9. 54 ar, jha (1954), pt. 3, app. 23, 144. 55 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 190:11 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1958–68), Smit to Kinney, 9 September 1960. This Kinney was the son of the home’s founder, James Kinney, who died in 1940. 56 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:12 (Halifax, St Joseph’s Orphanage, 1952–57), Survey Schedule Return, 1958. This excerpt was taken from a brief description of the home’s “Aims and Objectives.” 57 ar, jha (1954), pt. 3, app. 23, 9. See also NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 4, 9–10. 58 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 25, file 17 (St Paul’s Home for Girls), Rosemary Rippon (secretary of the Admissions Committee of St Paul’s Home for Girls) to MacKinnon, 15 February 1967; ibid., William F. Palmer to MacKinnon, 21 July 1966. 59 See Annual Report of the Halifax CAS, in ar, jha (1956), vol. 1, app. 4, 11. 60 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:10 (Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home, 1947–59), Survey Schedule Return, 1958. 61 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Shand to Smit, 4 February 1959.

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Notes to pages 215–19

62 NSarM, HV IN 3, Halifax Infants’ Home Annual Reports, newspaper clipping, “Homes for Infants Required,” 26 January 1950, in the Annual Report of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 1949. 63 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 190:11 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1958–68), Smit to Kinney, 9 September 1960. 64 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 216:15 (Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, 1936–54), Nova Scotia Department of Public Welfare, “Workshop on Public Assistance,” Halifax, 5–8 January 1960. In 1961 the Jewish population in Halifax accounted for just over 1 per cent of the population, with 1,089 individuals. 65 See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 9, file 14 (Salvation Army, 1946–59); and Morton, “Managing the Unmarried Mother Problem,” 122–5. 66 A copy of the Canadian Children’s Charter of 1943 can be found in NSarM, MG 20, vol. 408, no. 1, Division A Minutes, 1943. 67 See Hatfield, Sammy the Prince. Brief biographical notes on Burgess are in NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347:15 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), G. Monroe to Nora Lea, 1 April 1943. Burgess had served as the matron of St Paul’s Home for Girls for a number of years and had worked under Hattie Ogden, former secretary of the Halifax Family Welfare Bureau, before being asked to take on this position. Although she was not a trained social worker, Junior League representatives in the city believed that she was well suited for the job, as she was “progressive, with courage, understands Halifax, and will move at a speed they can take.” 68 On the continued participation of other clergymen in the executive of the Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies (NSACAS) throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, see RG 72, vol. 142, file 3 (draft history of the NSACAS), passim. 69 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 407, file 2.20, Council of Social Agencies, Minutes of the Annual Meeting, 26 March 1947. 70 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 227:24 (Halifax – Family Services Bureau and Halifax Children’s Aid Society [1], 1942–67), Annual Report of the Halifax Welfare Bureau, 1945. 71 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 38. 72 Ibid., 24–5. 73 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 51, file 458C (Constitutions – Family Agencies, 1941–63), “What Is Family Case Work?” 74 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 66 (Children – Institutional Care of Children – Misc. Matters, 1954–56), newspaper clipping, “Better Financial Aid for Child– Care Centre Needed,” containing text of the address of Bishop MacDonald.

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Notes to pages 219–22

325

75 “An Act to Amend and Consolidate Chapter 166 of the Revised Statutes, 1923, the Children’s Protection Act,” Statutes of Nova Scotia (sns ), 1950, c. 2, s. 44, 116; “Child Welfare Act,” rsns , 1967, c. 31, ss. 36.6 and 35.7, 51, 115, respectively. 76 See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 46, file 17, D.H. Johnson (director of Department of Child Welfare) to Percy Guam (minister of Department of Public Welfare), 8 November 1968; ibid., Johnson to Harding (minister of public welfare), 3 and 14 June 1968. 77 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 15, file 10, MacKinnon to Harding and D.H. Johnson (director of Department of Child Welfare), 14 May 1965; ibid., F.A. Marrocco, Memorandum, 25 March 1965. 78 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 46, file 17, Rev. Vincent Ihasz (Halifax Presbytery, United Church of Canada) to R.A. Donahoe (chairman of Law Amendments Committee), 28 March 1969; ibid., Thomas J. Bullpitt to James Harding, 26 March 1968. 79 The provisions in the 1967 act were actually expanded in a later amendment in order to provide for children who were neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant; see “Child Welfare Act,” sns , 1967, c. 29, s. 21(1). The provisions in section 51 (requiring sorting into denominationally appropriate institutions) were loosened in 1972, from “shall be placed in” to “where applicable”; see “Child Welfare Act,” sns , 1972, c. 24, s. 5. This change was required because of the closure of so many of the province’s denominationally run institutions during the 1960s. See also “Child Services Act,” sns , 1990, c. 5. 80 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:12 (Halifax, St Joseph’s Orphanage, 1952–57), Survey Schedule Return, 1958. 81 CPC, acc. 995-50-90-9 (Correspondence of the Home of the Guardian Angel, 1952–75), Sister Mary Clare Flanigan to Berry (archbishop of Nova Scotia), 26 November 1956. 82 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 190:11 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1958–68), Kinney to Smit, 22 July 1959. The province assumed $20,000 of the cost of the renovations. 83 Ibid; NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, no. 27, Rosemary Rippon, “A Study of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 16 May 1966. For more on the renovation of the home, see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, Kinney to MacKinnon, 5 January 1959; Minister of Public Welfare to Cumming (president of the NSHCC), 17 April 1959; and Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the NSHCC, 8 June 1960. 84 See, for example, NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, “The NSHCC,” report of visit from Lawrence Hancock (Department of Public Welfare), 8 July 1947.

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326

Notes to pages 223–6

85 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, “Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children, Preston, N.S.,” notes on visits from Lillian Romkey, 13 September 1948, 28 October 1948, 2 November 1948, 8 November 1948, 25 November 1948. See also ibid., MacKinnon, “Visit to Nova Scotia Colored Home,” 4 February 1948. 86 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, “Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children, Preston, N.S.,” notes on visits from Lillian Romkey, 13 September 1948, 28 October 1948, 2 November 1948, 8 November 1948, 25 November 1948. 87 See, for example, NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, file 27, F.A. Kenney to Timothy Daley (assistant director of Department of Child Welfare), “Re: Program of Foster Home Finding for Coloured Children,” 4 April 1966. On the adoption of Chinese children, see NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 216:15 (Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, 1936–54), George Caldwell to Mildred Flanigan, Memorandum, 1 February 1965; and Romkey to Flanigan, 12 February 1965. These documents note that a Chinese couple in Halifax was seeking a “full blooded Chinese baby” for adoption. 88 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, no. 27, Rosemary Rippon, “A Study of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 16 May 1966, 2, 5. Despite her concerns about intake and discharge practices, Rippon appears to have been far less concerned than Romkey about the quality of care received by inmates, reporting that they were happy and well cared for and that the staff members were “doing their best to make provisions” for them. 89 The availability of community resources and relative inexpensiveness of obtaining supplies and staff were all cited by MacKinnon as reasons why the Protestant Orphans’ Home should not consider relocating outside of the city. See RG 72, vol. 199, file 8 (Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home), M. Rankin (corresponding secretary of the Protestant Orphans’ Home) to Mackinnon, 29 May 1951; and MacKinnon to Rankin, 6 June 1951. 90 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 190:11 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1958–68) Clare McAllister, Field Report, 31 March 1962. 91 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, no. 27, Rosemary Rippon, “A Study of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 16 May 1966, 2. 92 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, J.R. Casey, “Visit to Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 12 December 1956; and Casey to F.R. MacKinnon, Memorandum, 15 January 1958. 93 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, file 27, MacKinnon to Kenney, 18 March 1966. 94 Ibid., Kenney to MacKinnon, 4 April 1966; and Kenny to M. Cumming (president of the board of directors of the NSHCC), 13 October 1965.

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Notes to pages 227–31

95

96

97 98 99 100

101

102

103

104

105

327

Kenney concluded the letter by informing MacKinnon that the arrangement would be terminated and that the Queen’s County CAS would “assume responsibility for the children concerned.” NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, MacKinnon to Mary Jennison, 17 November 1960. Jennison had requested background information on the home as part of her research into its history for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 53, file 27, E.J. Dick, “Report re Operation of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children,” 1962. Interestingly, this report reflected a similar trend in the reports of the provincial superintendent’s office, in which concern for workers was accentuated, whereas concern for the children was correspondingly diluted. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, J.A. Ross Kinney to J. Casey (secretary of the Department of Child Welfare), 12 July 1954. NSarM, RG 72, vol. 84, file 5, Alice K. Croft to Allan Sullivan (minister of public welfare), 26 June 1971. Ibid., Sullivan to Croft, 29 June 1971. On the Africville relocation, see Africville Genealogical Society, Spirit of Africville; Clairmont and Magill, Africville; Nelson, Razing Africville; and Walker, “Allegories and Orientations.” NSarM, RG 72, vol. 84, file 5, Memorandum, “Department of Public Welfare Policy on the Admission of Black Children to the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured [sic] Children,” 1 September 1971. Ibid., Timothy Daley to Kevin Burns, 20 September 1971. Daley was also curious as to whether children of mixed race (“mulatto”) were to be covered by the same policy. Ibid., Sullivan to Croft, 29 June 1971. As Sullivan noted in this letter, by 1971 the NSHCC was one of only two congregate institutions still operating in the province; all of the Halifax institutions had closed or were performing different functions, and Bairncroft Orphanage in Cape Breton remained only because it was “rather heavily endowed.” NSarM, RG 72, vol. 120, file 14, Report of Program Committee, 7 March 1975, app. 2, 5. The members of the committee included Bradford Barton, Josephine Johnson, Dr P.A. Johnson, and the Reverend D.D. Skeir of the African United Baptist Association. In her 1948 report on the home, Lillian Romkey noted that the portrait of Bauld was “huge” and “hits one in the eye when entering”; see NSarM, RG 72, vol. 198, file 6, Field Notes, 13 September 1948. Indeed, it continues to function under its historic name. See http://www. nshcc.ca (accessed 27 March 2012).

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Notes to pages 231–4

106 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), Mackinnon to Stephen Pyke (acting minister of the Department of Public Welfare), 10 June 1959. 107 Ibid., memorandum to D.H. Johnson (provincial director of the Department of Child Welfare) and M.T. Blue, 2 April 1959. 108 Sanitation and washing-up facilities at the home came under particular scrutiny in 1954, after an epidemic of Shigella sonnei spread throughout the home. Although many of the infants and toddlers were gravely ill, it does not appear that any of them died. Allan Morton, the commissioner of health and welfare in the city, noted that the outbreak was “regrettable” but “always a possibility … in an institution caring for this type of personnel.” See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), Morton to Robertson (deputy minister of the Department of Health), 17 December 1954. See also ibid., R.G. Cooper (sanitary engineer), Memorandum re “Dishwashing,” 2 December 1954; and Drs Colford and Fogo, Memorandum, 16 December 1954. 109 Ibid., D.H. Johnson (assistant director of the Infants’ Home), “Report on Halifax Infants’ Home, Department of Public Welfare,” 5 April 1956. 110 Ibid., Alice Croft (president of the Infants’ Home) to MacKinnon, 22 June 1955. 111 Ibid., G.E. Hart and P. MacDougall, “Inspection Visit, the Halifax Infants’ Home,” 2 February 1950; Isabelle McLellan, “Report on Visit Made to the Halifax Infants’ Home,” 8 July 1949; F.R. MacKinnon to Lillian McGeoch (president of the Infants’ Home), 13 April 1950; Allan Morton to MacKinnon, 12 June 1951; J.R. Langin and J.R. Casey, “Halifax Infants’ Home,” 5 November 1954; J.R. Casey, “Report on a Visit to the Halifax Infants’ Home, Halifax,” 31 January 1958; and H. Bond Jones to Allan Morton, 25 November 1954. 112 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 347 (Halifax, General Correspondence, 1943–59), Peter Stanne, Field Visit Report, 8 June 1955, emphasis added. 113 Ibid., Stanne to Shand, 15 August 1955. 114 It appears that in 1952 MacKinnon attempted to impress the importance of foster care on the superintendent of the Halifax Infants’ Home through the use of a recorded program called “The Foster Care Story.” The superintendent, M.L. Peers, informed him when she returned the recording, unused, that “I am sorry that we do not have a recording machine to use this size record.” See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), Peers to MacKinnon, 20 November 1952. 115 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to Blue and Johnson, 2 April 1959.

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Notes to pages 234–8

329

116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., MacKinnon to P.A. Wilson (president of the Halifax Infants’ Home), 26 June 1948. 118 See NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, file 4, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, 10 October 1951; NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Survey Schedule Return, 1958. 119 That single mothers were more comfortable with private placements was also suggested by MacKinnon in 1947, when he wrote at length to the presidents of the CAS and the Infants’ Home, attempting to resolve problems with intake and discharge between these two agencies. Many girls, he claimed, “were discouraged or frightened away from social agencies because of the restrictions and rules with which the care offered to them was surrounded.” See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199, file 7 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to P.A. Wilson (president of the Halifax Infants’ Home) and D.K. McDermaid (president of the Halifax CAS), 8 April 1947. On the negative impact of social work on single mothers, see Little, No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit; and Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls. 120 NSarM, MG 20, vol. 177, file 4, Minutes of the Board of Management of the Halifax Infants’ Home, Superintendent’s Report, October 1953. 121 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199 (Halifax Infants’ Home), MacKinnon to Pyke, 10 June 1959; NAC, MG 28 I10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948– 59), Shand to Smit, 4 February 1959. 122 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 47. 123 Ibid., 48–9. 124 Significantly, at the first meeting of Division A set to discuss the findings of Smit’s survey, there was no representation from the Halifax Infants’ Home. 125 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:4 (Halifax Child Welfare Services [Survey], 1956–61), Shand to Smit, 25 April 1958. 126 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228.2, Smit, “Report of the Survey,” November 1958, 47. 127 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Survey Schedule Return, 1958. 128 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:4 (Halifax Child Welfare Services [Survey], 1956–61), Smit to Shand, 14 May 1959. 129 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Shand to Smit, 4 February 1959. 130 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:4 (Halifax Child Welfare Services [Survey], 1956–61), Smit to Shand, 8 October 1958.

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Notes to pages 238–44

131 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Shand to Smit, 18 February 1959. 132 NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199 (Halifax Infants’ Home), Pyke to Kitz, 26 October 1959. See also ibid., Eloise Thurston (treasurer of the Halifax Infants’ Home) to the Halifax-Dartmouth United Appeal (i.e., the Community Chest), 15 July 1959. 133 Ibid., MacKinnon to Pyke, 10 June 1959. 134 Ibid., Eleanor Fader to Johnson, 12 December 1959. 135 NAC, MG 28, I 10, vol. 228:8 (Halifax Infants’ Home, 1948–59), Shand to Smit, 11 December 1959. 136 MacKinnon’s remarks were made during a meeting between the executives of the Halifax Infants’ Home and the city’s Children’s Hospital, the latter of which was exploring the possibility of using the facilities. See NSarM, RG 72, vol. 199 (Halifax Infants’ Home), “Memo for the Meeting of the Executive Committees of the Halifax Infants’ Home and the Children’s Hospital,” 14 January 1960. The building was eventually put to use by the Salvation Army’s maternity service.

conclusion 1 The Halifax Citizen reported in December 1924 that Johns had been previously convicted of assault and had spent two weeks in jail before being released and allowed to return to his work at the Halifax Industrial School. Although it was argued that this previous assault was a “precedent” and that “Every Similar Case of Beatings … Constituted An Assault, For Which the Officers were Criminally Liable,” the only charge of abuse laid against Johns was later dropped, when two of the boys recanted their stories. See “Just What Was Proved by the Indust. School Evidence,” Halifax Citizen, 12 December 1924, 1; “R.H. Murray Explains Why S.P.C. Withdrew Prosecution against Alfred Johns of Industrial School,” Halifax Evening Echo, 22 November 1924, 9. 2 P. Cheney, “Secrecy Kept Allegations at UCC Hidden for Decades,” Globe and Mail, 4 August 2001, A2. 3 Cheney provided further detailed coverage of these allegations in “What Would You Say …?” Globe and Mail, 25 August 2001, F4-5. On the history and influence of UCC, see Howard, Upper Canada College, 1829– 1979; and Fitzgerald, Old Boys. 4 In 2007, although claiming the decision was not influenced by the recent abuse scandals, UCC announced that it was going to end its boarding school program. See “Upper Canada College to End Boarding School

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Notes to pages 244–50

5

6

7 8

9

10

11

331

Program,” MacLean’s, 5 October 2007, http://www.macleans.ca/education/ universities/article.jsp?content=20071005_155932_5392 (accessed 10 April 2012). I suggest a similar contrast between Halifax’s charity daycare for working mothers (the Jost Mission) and other organizations that provided nursery care programs for children of more affluent backgrounds. See Lafferty, “Very Special Service.” National Archives of Canada (NAC), MG 28, I 10, vol. 190:11 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children), Smit to Kinney, 25 August 1961. Smit might have been inspired to such poetics by the stationary employed by the NSHCC; it featured a photograph of two small, barefoot children looking upward into the camera, beneath which was the caption “We Need Help, Too!” See, particularly, Valverde, “Mixed Social Economy as a Canadian Tradition,” 34. The argument for a return to institutional care as a means of cost cutting was taken up most visibly in the United States in 1994, when Congressman and Republican House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” recommended state-subsidized, privately administered (and partially charitably supported) orphanages as a means of cutting the number of parents receiving federal assistance. The proposal was vigorously attacked – particularly by First Lady Hillary Clinton, whom Gingrich then famously instructed to “go to Blockbuster and rent the movie Boys Town” – and was eventually dropped. However, several scholars and writers have since speculated on the possible benefits of institutional care by focusing on such concepts as stability. See, particularly, Carr, Place to Call Home; McKenzie, The Home; and McKenzie, ed., Home Away from Home and Rethinking Orphanages. On Gingrich’s proposal, see Beatty and Grant, “Entering Into the Fray,” 107–8. On the controversy over the “Big Scoop,” see Margaret Wente, “The Best Interests of the Child?” Globe and Mail, 22 February 2003, A19; and Fournier and Crey, Stolen from our Embrace. On 9 July 2003 CBC Radio’s The Current also aired a short documentary on the issue of repatriation. Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSarM), MG 20, vol. 705, file 1 (Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, 1917–78), Untitled Report, September 1971. Gordon, “Perils of Innocence.”

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primary sources Anglican Diocesan Centre Archives, Halifax (adc ) MG 3, ser. 8, Parish Records, St Paul’s MG 8, ser. 9, Diocesan Board of Religious Education MG 8, ser. 12, Diocesan Branch of the Social Service Council of Canada Catholic Pastoral Centre Archives, Halifax (cpc ) Archbishop Edward McCarthy Papers (1906–31) Archbishop Thomas O’Donnell Papers (1931–36) Catholic Women’s League Records (not accessioned) St Joseph’s Orphanage Records (not accessioned) Vault 2 Archives, acc. 995–50–90 and 91, Home of the Guardian Angel; drawer 1, Sacred Congregation for Religion and Secular Institutions; drawer 4, Catholic Social Action; drawer 5, Education (995–50); drawer 10, Diocesan Institutions Esther Clarke Wright Archives, Acadia University (ecwa ) African United Baptist Association, Yearbooks, 1900–65 Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, Yearbooks, 1900–65 National Archives of Canada (nac ) mg 28, I 10, Records of the Canadian Council on Social Development, Child Welfare and of the Canadian Council on Child and Family Welfare

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Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (nsarm ) hv IN 3, Annual Reports of the Halifax Infants’ Home hv N85 C43, First Report of the Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children for the Province of Nova Scotia, 1914. Microfilm 14,757, Nova Scotia Society for Mental Hygiene, Minutes, 1908–39; Report of the Royal Commission Concerning Mentally Deficient Persons in Nova Scotia (1927); Bill 174 (1927), “An Act to Establish a Nova Scotia Training School for the Treatment, Care and Education of Mentally Defective Children” mg 20, vol. 63:9, Halifax Charitable Irish Society mg 20, vol. 70, Halifax Charitable Irish Society, Minute Book, 1884–1944 mg 20, vol. 177, Halifax Infants’ Home, Minutes, 1875–79, 1918–20, 1941–54; Annual Report, 1956 mg 20, vol. 204, Halifax Local Council of Women mg 20, vols 288–90, Canadian Girls in Training mg 20, vol. 359, Halifax Little White Ribboners (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) mg 20, vols 407, 408, 411–16, Welfare Council of Halifax-Dartmouth (Council of Social Agencies) mg 20, vols 417–19, Halifax Protestant Orphans’ Home, Minutes of Ladies’ Managing Committee; Reports mg 20, vol. 504C, Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Minutes, 1923–54; Microfilm 3,799, Reports and Minutes mg 20, vol. 515, file 3, Halifax Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, Casebook for Men, Women, and Children, 1908–10 mg 20, vols 517, 519, Halifax Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, Minutes and Scrapbook, 1888–1926 mg 20, vol. 532, no. 1, Halifax Relief Commission Scrapbook, 1922–29 mg 20, vols 204, 535, 1,054, Local Council of Women, Halifax mg 20, vol. 750, Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, Minutes, Reports, and Programs, 1917–78 mg 20, vol. 1,290, no. 5, A General History of the Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 1981 mg 20, vols 1,325–30, St Paul’s Alms House of Industry for Girls, ser. A, Directors of Management Minute Books, 1867–86, 1887–1918, 1918– 54, 1954–73; Registry Notebooks mg 20, vol. 1,480, Social Agencies (Canadian Mental Health Association) mg 20, vol. 1,495, file 24, Training and Treatment in Child Psychology (Canadian Mental Health Association) mg 20, vols 1,713–26, Halifax Community Chest

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Index

abuse, institutional, 3–6, 9–10, 243, 262n11, 266n35 acts. See child protection legislation adoption, 89, 214; through CAS, 184–6, 197–8, 206; children unsuited for, 128, 192, 194; expansion of, 193, 195–7; through institutions, 16–17, 39–40, 113– 14, 123–4, 127, 184–6, 203, 232, 240, 246; nineteenth-century practice, 16–17, 38; through provincial department, xxv, 125–6, 195–6, 206; religious and racial segregation in, 44, 126–7, 204, 219–20, 249–50; shortage of homes, 165–6 Adoption Clearance Service, 195–6, 197 African Baptists, 67, 83–4 African Canadians / Nova Scotians, 34, 43, 61, 63–4, 65–9, 98–9, 136, 226–7; importance of education to, 76–7, 126 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 63 African United Baptist Association: on education, 76–7, 77–8; on racial segregation, 68–9; support

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for NSHCC, 63, 70, 83, 86; women’s auxiliary, 67 Africville, 67, 229 Allan, George, 47 Ambrose, Saint, 141 Ambrosia, Sister, 66 Anglican Boys’ Mission, 37 Anglican Church, 20–1, 44–5, 154– 5, 218, 254; Font Roll, 42. See also Council for Social Service (Anglican) Anglican Young People’s Association, 37 anti-Catholicism. See denominationalism apprenticeships, 16–17, 23, 38, 39, 84, 128, 246 Ariès, Philippe, 6 Atkinson, Henry, 106, 115–16, 118, 121, 129–30, 157–8 Balcom, Karen, 175 Ball, Rev. C.L., 42, 211 Band of Hope (Anglican), 37 Baptist Association of Nova Scotia, 149, 150; Social Service Board of, 149, 169 Baragar, C.A., 144

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362

Index

Bauld, Henry, 70, 79, 81, 84, 85, 99–100, 231 Best, Edna, 277n78 Black Loyalists, 19 Blakeley, Phyllis, 34 Blois, Ernest, 41, 102, 172, 176; background, 261n4; on CAS, 148; on causes of child endangerment, 52, 59, 74, 121–2; on childhood ideal, 72–5; on cooperative effort, 145–8, 152; duties as provincial superintendent, 53– 8, 62, 145–8, 157–60, 174–5; on foster care and adoption, 125–9, 166; on institutional staff, 114– 15; on institutional care, 48–9, 64–5, 72, 94–5, 112–13, 120, 127–30, 165, 168; investigation of Industrial School, 4–5, 8–11, 143–4, 145; on mental testing; 108–9; on NSHCC, 66, 79, 81, 82, 98, 99–100; on reformatories, 106, 112–13, 118, 157–8; on social conditions in Nova Scotia, 134–7, 138; on vocational training, 104; work on Children’s Committee (1917), 60. See also Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children, Office of Blue, M. Thomas, 193, 197–8, 205, 214, 219, 234; on institutions, 208–10 Blue, Ruth, 206 Board of Trade, 37, 85 boarding homes (private), 64, 113, 124, 166, 239 Boer War, 33 Bowlby, Dr John, 182–3, 233 Boy Scouts, 63 Breen, A.L., 3–4, 9

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 362

Bridgeford, Mildred, 183–4 Brison, Dr Eliza, 108 British guest children, 139 Bullpitt, Thomas, 220 Burgess, Helen, 172, 216–17, 324n67 Canada Temperance Act, 45 Canadian Children’s Charter, 216 Canadian Council on Social Development. See Canadian Welfare Council Canadian Girls in Training, 37 Canadian Mental Hygiene Society, 136 Canadian Veterans’ Association, 276n53 Canadian Welfare Council (CWC): on family welfare bureaus, 218; and Industrial School scandal, 144; opinion of CAS, 173; reports on Halifax agencies, 137, 167–8, 170, 171–2, 204, 224–5, 233; Section on the Spiritual and Ethical Development of the Child, 114; study of publicprivate welfare, 202. See also Smit, Eric; Whitton, Charlotte casework: CAS services for, 151; denominationalism in, 218; disputes over, 188–9, 238; problems with, 235; as professional practice, 53, 188–9, 221, 204–5, 245, 246 Casey, J.R., 225, 232–3 catechism, Roman Catholic, 110–11 Catholic Women’s League, 37 Charitable Irish Society, 36 charity schools, 35, 42–3, 103, 275n45 Chen, Xiaobei, 9, 11

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Index

child labour, 4, 7, 38, 51, 126, 128– 9, 138; providing financial support for institutions, 92, 100, 106–7. See also vocational training child protection legislation, 17, 41, 49–52; denominationalism and, 48, 219–21; funding for dependants, 91–2, 93–4; importance of local control in, 22; and poorhouse, 137, 166; regulations affecting institutions, 103–4, 107, 109, 112–13, 177; and wardship, 190, 197 Child Welfare League of America, 186, 188 childhood: concepts of, 6–11, 26–7, 49–52, 72–4, 122–3, 128–9; historical study of, 26–7; and race, 64, 71–3, 76, 282n30. See also recapitulation theory childrearing, cost of, 102, 167 children, powerlessness of, 25–6, 250 Children of Mary, 36 Children’s Aid Society (CAS), 120, 135, 138, 142, 153, 159–60, 193, 198–9; complaints about, 164, 176; conflict with institutions, 28, 164–5, 181–2, 184–92; creation of, 41, 61–2; foster care and adoption through, 125–7, 130, 184–6, 187–8, 197–8, 229; funding of, 130, 173, 178–9, 198, 239; as independent agency, 148, 176–7, 247–8; legal powers of, 51–2, 189; maintenance funds paid by, 93–5, 97, 167, 231; mental testing through, 108; as “modern” method, 17, 40–1, 239; NSHCC acting as, 79; province

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 363

363

acting as, 54; provincial oversight of, 55, 56–7; public opinion of, 159, 173, 174; staff of, 125, 173– 4, 198; wardship, 137, 189–91, 197, 234; work with institutions, 150–1, 174, 187, 194, 204–5, 208–10, 226 Children’s Bureau, 186 children’s library, 139 Chinese Canadians, 136, 326n87 Christian reform, 22 Christina, Sister M., 107–8 Church of England. See Anglican Church citizenship building: as goal of welfare, 11–12, 80, 88–9, 122, 140–1, 210–11, 244–6; and Christianity, 110–11, 112, 149; and gender, 105–7; and race, 76; through schooling, 104. See also governance Civic Improvement League, 37 Civic Planning Commission, 201 class difference, 7–8, 26, 30–1, 35– 6, 53, 75, 89, 104–6, 169–70, 243–4 classification of children. See segregation of types cleanliness, importance of, 72–4, 82, 107, 109, 115–16, 222, 232 College Street Home for Girls, 39, 93, 255; closure, 231; laundry work in, 106–7 Community Chest (United Way), 37, 100, 198; denominationalism and, 100, 155–7; grants to CAS, 173; grants for institutions, 167, 173; and Halifax Infants’ Home, 231, 235–6, 239, 240; weaknesses of, 172–3 conservatism, 18, 38, 176, 171–2

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Index

cooperation, interagency, 58–9, 150–4, 161–2, 198, 250; Blois’s opinion of, 145–8, 152; challenges to, 33, 164, 169–72, 178, 183–92, 209–10; as Christian effort, 149–50, 218–19; through Social Service Index, 132–3 Cornwallis Street Baptist Church, 67, 68, 69, 76, 77–8, 169 corporal punishment, 3–5, 9–10, 56, 265n25, 266n35, 279n88 cottage system, 55, 118, 119–20, 144, 278n83 Council for Social Service (Anglican), 45, 139, 154–5, 166 Council of Social Agencies (csa) (Welfare Council): CWC survey (1958), 205–10, 235–6, 238, 239; Children’s Division of, 138, 153–4, 170–1, 174, 211–12, 214; friction within, 169–70; on housing conditions, 163–4; on public welfare, 199–200; self-survey (1951), 180, 184–92; religious influence within, 216–17; weaknesses in, 171–2 crime, 34–6; causes of, 8–9, 51; prevention of, 11, 38, 43. See also delinquency Croft, Alice, 228–9 Cunningham, Hugh, 43 curfew, 121–2, 136–7, 154 Curran, Rev. C.F., 155–6, 307n79 Daley, Timothy, 229–30 Dalhousie Public Health Clinic, 107 Dartmouth, 79, 82 Daughters of the Empire Home for Feeble-Minded Girls, 108, 117, 294n62

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 364

daycare services, 40, 199, 236. See also Jost Mission Dean, Laura, 135–6 delinquency, 8, 52, 129–30; causes of, 47, 51–2, 59, 71–2, 121–2, 135, 138–9, 150, 164; corporal punishment for, 9; gender and conceptions of, 73, 266n29; institutions for, 39, 91–2, 158, 244; religious reformation and, 45–8. See also Halifax Industrial School; Monastery of the Good Shepherd; St Patrick’s Home for Boys Dennis, W.H., 85–6 denominationalism: conflict inspired by, 154–7; and delinquency reform, 45–8; and education, 42–3, 275n45 and n50; effect on welfare efforts, 10, 31–2, 92, 170, 216, 244; as necessity for child welfare, 21, 42–5, 219–21, 244, 249–50; organizing principle of charity / welfare, 36–7, 100, 217–18. See also segregation, religious dental care, 108, 56, 201 Dick, E.J., 227–8 discipline: and habit formation, 109; in institutions, 56, 88–9, 113, 182, 212–13, 244; legal requirements for, 49–50; necessity for citizenship, 71–2, 109–10, 111–12, 212–13. See also corporal punishment Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 102 Donahoe, R.A., 188–9 duplication, as challenge of social welfare, 53, 133, 140, 154, 172, 176, 191. See also poor families, suspicion of

2012-11-16 10:52:28

Index

Eamon, H.O., 152 economic conditions, 19, 33–5, 53, 58–9, 133–40, 150, 163–4. See also housing conditions; labour unrest; unemployment education, institutional, 8, 103–5, 113 efficiency, as governing concept of welfare, 27, 52–4, 57, 62, 132–3, 140, 142, 154, 159–60, 162, 164, 176, 178, 196, 240, 247–8 emotional disturbance, 193–4 England, child welfare in, 43 environment: importance for child welfare, 76, 91, 107, 120–1; in institutions, 55–7, 89–9, 113, 115–17, 167–9; and moral reform, 36, 150; and segregation, 88–9; threats imposed by, 10, 50–2, 59, 60–1, 74–5, 121–2; urban-rural contrasts, 73, 81–2, 218. See also institutionalization escapes, 297n102 Evening Mail, 101, 134 family allowances, 200–1, 237 Family Welfare Bureau, 153, 157, 172, 176, 216, 218, 239 feeble-mindedness, 5, 55, 61, 108, 117–18, 135, 150 Fingard, Judith, 34, 44, 67 First Nations, 7, 34, 75, 249–50 Flanigan, Sister Mary Clare, 203–5, 207, 221 Forrest, Rev. Dr, 161 foster care: through CAS, 126–8, 184–8, 191, 197–8, 206; children unfit for, 64–5, 128–30, 192, 194–5, 211–12, 230; early practice, 16–17, 38, 128; as extension

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 365

365

of institutional practice, 23–4, 88–9, 130–1, 246–7; institutional administration of, 55, 113–14, 119, 123–4, 127–8, 165–6, 184–6, 203–4, 208–9, 224–7, 229–30; mental testing for, 108– 9; as “modern” method, 6, 15– 16, 40–1, 182; and physically disabled children, 219; through provincial department, 125–6, 146; religious and racial segregation in, 44–5, 47–8, 66, 82, 126– 7, 219–21, 223–4, 227–30, 249–50; shortage of homes, 64, 98, 126–8, 165–6, 187–8, 223–4, 227, 310n10; as threat to wellbeing, 248; for victims of Halifax Explosion, 60–1 Fowler, Elizabeth, 222–3 Freud, Anna, 182–3 funding: charitable, 92–3, 94, 98– 101; through child labour, 92– 107; church appeals for, 100–1, 156–7; City of Halifax, 102–3; Community Chest, 100, 155–7, 173; endowments, 82, 92, 95, 173; fundraising, 81, 82–6, 92–3, 98–101, 134; government / public, 16–17, 24, 58, 80, 89, 91–2, 93–8, 100, 102, 107, 132, 166–7, 177–8, 190, 201, 239, 241, 244, 247; as marker of state control, 16, 103–4, 107, 109, 159, 177, 179, 247–8; private fees, 92, 95, 167, 190; and public interest, 141–4, 177; for public wards, 166–7, 228–9; reporting of, 55; restrictions caused by, 91, 101–2, 105, 127, 130, 140–1, 161–2, 167–8, 183, 236–7, 246, 166–7;

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Index

from Roman Catholic Church/ religious orders, 92, 100, 156–7. See also tax exemptions gender, 8, 59, 73, 105–7, 121–2, 212–13; and childhood ideals, 283n37; and social work, 175, 193, 267n38 General Board of Religious Education (Anglican), 45 Girl Guides, 63 Glimpses of Halifax, 34 Glueck, Bernard, 141 Goldfarb, Dr William, 182 Govan, Elisabeth, 167–8, 173–4, 204 governance, 11–13, 19, 27, 31, 49, 54, 175–7, 195, 199–201, 244–5; importance of local context to, 18–19, 30–2, 41–2 Great Depression, 95, 166, 137–8, 163, 201–11. See also poor relief Greenhill, Ada, 171, 211 group care, as strategy of child welfare, 28, 194, 203–4, 210–15, 218, 221–2, 233, 236, 245, 246; and gender, 212–13; and race, 230–1 Guysborough County, 187 Halifax Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 36, 170 Halifax Children’s Aid Society. See Children’s Aid Society Halifax Citizen, 30, 136; reports on Industrial School scandal, 3–5, 9–10, 142–3, 144, 243 Halifax City Council, 100, 139–40; financial strains, 35, 101; funding of dependants, 102–3; and unemployment, 134

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 366

Halifax City Home (poorhouse), 21–2, 23, 35, 36; children housed in, 38–9, 166; unmarried mothers housed in, 186. See also poorhouse Halifax Explosion, 27, 59–62, 100, 119, 134, 250; damages to children’s homes, 61, 93, 116, 140; effect on NSHCC plans, 81 Halifax Industrial School: abuse scandal, 3–5, 8–9, 107, 141–5, 157–8, 162, 243–4; closure, 168; conditions in, 13, 107, 118, 168; discharge and fostering, 17, 123; fife and drum corps, 63; funding, 17, 91–2, 97; inmates of, 7–10, 39, 129–30, 152; physical plant, xxi, 80–1, 90, 115–16, 168; population of, 258; private/charity placements, 118; programs for boys, 3, 104, 105–6, 109; religious education in, 111–12; sectarianism and, 44, 46; staff, 115 Halifax Infants’ Home, 39, 135–6, 206, 211, 231–41, 246; admittance of blacks to, 66, 126–7, 169; admittance of Roman Catholics to, 44, 204–5; Advisory Board of, 161; child training in, 109, 113, 167, 183– 4; closure, 231, 235–41; environment at, 183–4, 231–3; fostering and adoption practices, 39–40, 113–14, 124–5, 185–7; funding, 92–6, 98, 100, 231, 239; inmates of, 124, 167, 183–4; Ladies’ Managing Committee of, 39–40, 124, 161; physical plant, xxiii, 91, 140; population of, 256; private placements, 231, 234–5,

2012-11-16 10:52:28

Index

241; staff, 113–14, 183–4, 215; work with CAS, 151, 174, 179– 80, 181–92 Halifax Orphan House, 16, 93, 128 Halifax Relief Commission, 61, 81, 151; Children’s Committee of, 60–1 Halifax School for the Blind, 214 Hall, G. Stanley, 71 Hampton Institute, 77–8, 287n84 Hancock, L.T., 205–7 Harding, Dr J.C., 183 Harding, James, 220 Harkness, Judge, 153 heredity, 52, 74–5, 122 Home of the Guardian Angel, 39, 170, 207, 235, 237; admittance of Protestants, 186; casework at, 202–5, 239, 241, 246; funding, 92–6, 98, 100, 155–6; inmates of, 61, 140, 167; management of, 202–3; medical care in, 107–8; physical plant, xxiv, 61, 90; population of, 256; kindergarten in, 104; racial segregation in, 66; sectarianism and, 44, 155–7; work with CAS, 151, 174, 181– 92, 205 Hospital for Mental Diseases, Brandon, Manitoba, 144 housing conditions, 35, 59, 75, 134–5, 138–40, 153, 163–4 Hunt, J.J., 103, 112, 141, 161 Ideal Maternity Home, 177 illegitimacy, 124, 136–7, 139; as symptom of poverty, 135 illness, 9–10, 107–9, 139. See also medical care immigration, 34

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 367

367

Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, 152, 276n53, 285n65, 294n62 incorporation, significance of, 16, 39 institutionalization: as consequence of congregate care, 5–6, 64–5, 89– 90, 184–5, 191, 194, 207, 213; at Halifax homes, 124, 167–8, 183– 4, 211, 223–4, 232–3, 235; professional opinion of, 181–3 institutions: for adolescent boys, 206; annual reports of, 55–6; autonomy of, 54, 57–8, 118–19, 127–8, 146–7, 155–6, 177–8, 179–80, 192, 194, 196, 208–9, 239–41, 244–5; capacities of, 255, 259; CAS wards in, 184–6; charitable support for, 92–3; closures, 5–6, 17–18, 88; population levels in, 194–5, 199, 237, 256–9; as private charities, 247– 8; private placements in, 190; relationship with CAS, 179–80, 181, 184–92; staff, 113–15, 123– 5, 130, 209–10, 214–15; as strategies for child protection, 10–11, 23–4, 38–9, 113, 120–2, 130, 181, 184–5, 206, 207, 210–14, 244–8; years of operation, 255. See also College Street Home for Girls; funding; Halifax Industrial Schoo; Halifax Infants’ Home; Home of the Guardian Angel; Monastery of the Good Shepherd; Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children; Protestant Orphans’ Home; St Joseph’s Orphanage; St Patrick’s Home for Boys; St Paul’s Home for Girls; Salvation Army Home

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368

Index

Jackson, K.M., 168 Johns, William, 4–5, 9, 157 Johnson, D.H., 234 Johnson, James R., 77–9 Jones, H. Bond, 233 Jost Mission, 199, 275n50, 283n36. See also daycare services Junior League, 139, 172, 304n33 Juvenile Court, 3, 25, 39, 48, 49, 62, 71, 108, 243 juvenile delinquency. See delinquency Kelso, J.J., 15, 16–17, 23, 64; visit to Halifax, 40–1, 211 Kennedy, Gwladys, 139, 155–6, 172, 173 Kenney, Alfred, 226 Key, Ellen, 33 Kimber, Stephen, 138 King, Rev. E.D., 69 Kinney, J.A. Ross, 222, 224–6, 228, 245 Kinney, James, 63, 78–9; campaign for NSHCC, 70, 79, 81; as fundraiser, 82–4, 86, 99, 286n75; on race pride, 65, 68; as superintendent of NSHCC, 105, 108, 109 Kitz, Dr Alice, 237, 238, 239 Knox Church, 220 labour unrest, 133–4 Langin, J.R., 232 Lantz, Gwendolen, 62, 138, 141, 193, 197, 198, 210, 238; background, 151; on casework, 188– 9, 209; complaints about, 171, 173–4, 179–80, 183–7, 190–2; on foster care, 187–8; opinion of Blois, 159–60; resignation, 192,

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 368

202, 205; on wardship, 190; work with institutions, 28, 151, 164–5, 171, 175, 179–81, 183–7, 208, 233–4 Laurier, Wilfrid, 33 Lea, Nora, 157, 171–2 legislation. See child protection legislation Little White Ribboners, 37 Local Council of Women, 37, 40 local interest, 18–19 MacDonald, William, 47 MacKinnon, Fred, 216, 219; on adoption, 195–6, 197; background, 174–5; on CAS, 176–9, 181–2, 184, 197; on casework, 189; on family allowances, 200; on government control, 160, 175–8, 179, 247–8; on Halifax Infants’ Home, 213, 215, 231, 234, 236, 238–40; on institutional care, 180–1, 185, 186–7, 191– 2, 212–16; on NSHCC, 225–7, 229; opinion of Maritimes, 157; on social work, 193 MacKinnon, J.J., 8–9 Manitoba Schools Act, 46 Maritime Home for Girls (Truro), 45, 154–5; religious education in, 110 Maritime Rights Movement, 133 Maritime School of Social Work, 171, 203, 205, 211 Marrocco, Rev. F.A., 219–20 maternal deprivation. See institutionalization McAllister, Clare, 224, 227 McCarthy, Archbishop Edward, 105–6, 110–11

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Index

369

McInnes, Charlotte, 66 McKerrow, P.E., 76–7 medical care, institutional, 107–8, 116 mental assessments, 108. See also feeble-mindedness Middlemore Home, 300n135 Miller, William, 46, 47 Monastery of the Good Shepherd, 39, 122, 130, 155–6; funding, 92, 95, 101, 155–6; inmates of, 73, 130; medical care in, 108; private/charity placements, 118, 167; public opinion of, 101; sectarianism and, 54–8; segregation of types in, 117–18; staff training, 114, 117–18 Monroe, Gwynedd, 139–40 moral and social reform, 22–4, 26– 7, 35–54, 147–50; limits of, 7–8, 37; programs in Halifax, 35–9, 40–2, 132–3; resistance to, 30–1, 32–3. See also citizenship building; governance Morning Chronicle, 63–4, 69–70 Morrow, Mrs Geoffrey, 153 mortality, 89, 124, 299n119 Morton, Allan, 232 mothers’ allowances, 147, 158, 174, 200 Murray, George, 40, 79 Murray, R.H., 60, 78, 79, 81, 157, 160–1

Nova Scotia Association of Child Caring Institutions, 180–1, 188, 214 Nova Scotia Association of Children’s Aid Societies, 159–60, 170–1, 188, 195, 248 Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (NSHCC), 39, 62, 88, 194, 213, 215, 246; education in, 104–6, 109, 169, 170; fostering and adoption through, 224–6, 230; funding for, 80, 82–6, 93–5, 97–9, 228–30, 241; and group care, 230–1; incorporation of, 78; inmates of, 69–70, 86–7; medical care in, 108; as normal school, 77–81; opening of, 63–4, 69–70; physical plant, 81–2, 90, 93, 221–4; population of, 257; private placements in, 225–6; promotion of black culture in, 230–1, 250; religious training in, 110; significance for black community, 65, 69–70, 86–7, 241, 250; as welfare institution, 78– 81; white support for, 84–6 Nova Scotia Society for Welfare Workers, 151–2 Nova Scotia Training School, 227, 296n93 Nova Scotia, Department of Public Health and Welfare, 175, 220, 232

naval magazine explosion (1945), 140 Neff, Charlotte, 16, 49 New York Juvenile Asylum, 104 North End City Mission, 16–17, 37, 38

O’Donnell, Archbishop Thomas, 157 Ogden, Hattie, 157 old age pensions, 152, 174 Oliver, Rev. W.P., 169 orphans, fictional, 90, 288n4, 300n133

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 369

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370

Index

Owen, William, 123 Palmer, William, 214 parental rights: assumed by institutions, 16, 39, 247; erosions of, 35–6, 38, 52, 74–5; legal regulation of, 17, 50; and restricted visitation, 120–1, 129; and Roman Catholic Church, 110–11 Parker, J.S., 85 Paul, Sister de, 66 Pentecostal Church, 216 play: on city streets, 121–2; importance to childhood, 10, 91, 183, 216; in institutions, 65, 109, 113, 115–16, 168, 216, 121–2 poor families: suspicion of, 53, 132–3, 140, 154; as users of social services, 32–3, 138, 167–8, 190, 199–200, 211–12 poor law, 21, 91, 146, 200; influence on child welfare, 22 poor relief, 21–3, 36–7, 53, 132–3, 137–8. See also family allowances poorhouse, 75, 93, 137, 146. See also Halifax City Home poverty, 7–8, 35; as cause of crime, 51; as threat to morality, 135–6 Power, Sister Maura, 93 Preston, Nova Scotia, 63, 67, 81–2, 230 Prince, Rev. Samuel, 154–5, 164, 171–2, 216–17 professionalism, 13–16; criticism of methods, 64–5; and Gwendolen Lantz, 141, 164–5, 187–91; promotion by institutions, 28, 181–6, 188–9; and staff training, 113–15, 125, 209–10; versus amateurism,

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 370

17–18, 28–9, 164–5, 171–2, 244–7. See also governance; social work prostitution, 139–40 Protestant Orphans’ Home, 39, 168–9, 206, 233; destruction in Halifax Explosion, 61; fostering and adoption policies of, 122–3; funding, 92–8; inmates of, 167, 168–9, 206, 235; physical plant, xxii, 90, 116; population of, 257; racial segregation in, 66, 280n7; staff, 209–10, 214–15; work with CAS, 151, 174, 181–92 Provincial Superintendent of Dependent and Delinquent Children, Office of, 27, 32, 53–5, 71–2, 95, 108, 278n80; centralization through, 145–7, 159–60; foster care through, 125–7; reports of, 11, 48, 55–7, 73, 143, 178, 196, 278n84, 318n5; roles and duties of, 54, 55. See also Blois, Ernest; MacKinnon, Fred Prowse, Samuel, 47 public interest, 141–5, 148, 156, 158, 194 Puryear, Rev. Moses, 78, 79–80, 81, 83 Pyke, Stephen, 239 race uplift, 65, 221, 227; and Christianity, 67–8, 76–9, 82–4, 86 racial discrimination, 61, 70–1, 75– 7, 84–7, 136, 169, 194, 227, 246, 249; and childhood, 7, 43, 69– 71, 71–5, 126–7, 223–4; and community segregation, 20. See also Africville; recapitulation theory; segregation, racial

2012-11-16 10:52:28

Index

Razack, Sherene, 87 recapitulation theory, 70–2, 74, 76– 7, 87 recreational services, 37, 139–40, 153, 201. See also play Red Cross homemaker service, 199 religious training, institutional, 109–12, 215 Roman Catholic Church, 20–1, 92, 101 Romkey, Lillian, 222–3 Rooke, Patricia, and R.L. Schnell, 7, 15, 159 Rotary Club, 85, 152 Royal Commission on Public Welfare (Ontario), 148 runaways, 32, 297n102 Russell, Benjamin, 41 St Joseph’s Orphanage, 39, 119–20, 170, 221; fostering and adoption through, 123–4, 129, 165–6; funding of, 93–8; and group care, 213; inmates of, 167–8, 185; management of, 202–3, 205, 246; physical plant, xxii, 90, 119–20, 167–8; population of, 257; racial segregation in, 66; work with CAS, 151, 174, 181–92 St Patrick’s Home for Boys, 39, 129, 143; closure, 206, 322n36; education in, 105–6; funding, 91–2, 97–8; inmates of, 73, 115, 129–30, 152; overcrowding, 118; physical plant, xxi, 90–1, 112– 13, 168; population of, 258; private/charity placements, 118; religious training in, 111; sectarianism and, 44–6; staff, 115

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 371

371

St Paul’s (Anglican) Church Mission, 121–2 St Paul’s Home for Girls, 39, 128; admission policy, 121; funding, 92–5, 97, 100; and group care, 212–14, 236; inmates of, 184–5, 167; overcrowding, 206; physical plant, 90; population of, 257; sectarianism and, 44–5; segregation of types in, 116–17 St Theresa’s Retreat, 155 St Vincent de Paul Society, 36 Salvation Army Home (for unwed mothers), 39, 186, 206, 237; admittance of blacks to, 66, 281n11; adoption practice in, 123; nondenominational practice, 43; physical plant, 90; sectarianism and, 215–16 Salvation Army marching band, 63 Saunders, Charles, 81 savagery. See childhood, concepts of Scott, James, 41, 57 Scott, M., 61 Scott, Richard William, 45, 46, 47, 48 sectarianism. See denominationalism secularization, 270n59 segregation, racial, 64, 65–9, 72, 81, 84–5, 117, 169, 178–9, 219, 221–4, 226–31 241, 245, 249– 50; strategy of black community, 75–9, 83–4, 86. See also racial discrimination segregation, religious, 42–8, 72, 84, 86, 88–9, 116–17, 154, 204–5, 215, 219–21, 235–6, 240–1, 245, 249. See also denominationalism

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372

Index

segregation of types, 23–4, 88–9, 116–20, 122–3, 128, 144, 145, 157–8, 211 Senate of Canada, 45–6 sexual abuse, 9–10, 243 Shand, Gwendolyn, 140, 171–2, 198, 235–6, 238, 240 Shelburne Home for Boys, 168 single mothers, 171, 186; anonymity for, 124, 235, 241; at Halifax City Home, 186; at Halifax Infants’ Home, 92, 113–14, 186, 231–4, 237–8; at Home of the Guardian Angel, 203–5; public opinion of, 101; at Salvation Army Home, 123, 186; sectarianism and, 44–3, 204–5. See also Unmarried Parents’ Act Sisters of Charity, 39, 93, 203, 205 Smit, Eric, 205, 238, 240, 245; review of child welfare in Halifax, 208–11, 213, 214–15, 217, 221, 234, 235–9 social control, 12–13, 23, 30–2, 36, 38, 273n21 Social Gospel, 42, 209. See also moral and social reform social reform. See moral and social reform Social Service Bureau, 53, 57–8, 277n78 Social Service Council of Canada, 37, 150 Social Service Index, 132–3, 154 social survey, 30–1 social work: at Catholic homes, 202–6; criticism of, 30–1, 48; and gender, 175, 193, 267n38; limits of, 24–5, 146–7, 207, 221;

24997_LAFFERTY.indb 372

modern methods, 41–2, 193–4, 245; as religious practice, 215–19, 125–6. See also professionalism; governance; group care Society for Mental Hygiene, 37 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty: as a CAS, 16–17, 37, 41, 61–2; and child rescue, 38; as resource for the poor, 271n8; work for the CAS, 127 Spanish Influenza, 119 Stanislaus, Brother, 112, 145, 152 Stanne, Peter, 233 street children/street “Arabs,” 71–2, 74–5, 282n30; endangerment of, 50, 121–2, 138; and gender, 283n37; as object for reform, 41, 243, 245. See also curfew Sullivan, Allan, 228–9, 230 Sunday schools, 101; and institutional care, 56, 110, 168; sectarianism and, 42, 44–5; and social reform, 37 tax exemptions, 35, 101, 290n31 temperance, 37, 68, 150 Teresa, Sister, 130 Tillotson, Shirley, 179 Torrey, Elizabeth, 159–60 truancy, 71–2; corporal punishment for, 9; inspired by street, 121; reformation of, 120–2, 129–30; as symptom of poverty, 8 Tuskegee, 77, 78, 287n82, 287n84 unemployment, 32–3, 35, 133–8, 163–4 United Church, 45, 154–5, 220 United Farmers Party, 133

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Index

United Way. See Community Chest Universalist Church of the Redeemer, 42 Unmarried Parents’ Act, 171 Upper Canada College, 243–4 Valverde, Mariana, 16, 17 V.E. Day riots, 140 vocational training, 104–7, 128–9; and black community, 77–80, 82; and delinquency reform, 3–4; and gender, 8; legal requirement for, 51, 104; as social control, 23 Walker, J.A., 127 Wallace, W.B., 48, 59, 60, 71 Washington, Booker T., 77, 78–9 Welfare Council. See Council of Social Agencies welfare state, emergence of, 15–17, 22, 247–8

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373

White, Rev. W.A., 68 Whitton, Charlotte: assistance to CSA, 153–4; correspondence with Blois, 129, 136–7, 144, 158, 172; on institutions, 152; opinion of government control, 147, 159, 160 Wilfred, Sister M., 129 Winks, Robin, 67 Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 37 Woodward, Elizabeth, 124 World Health Organization, 182 World War One, 53, 58–60, 139 World War Two, 53, 138–40, 163 Young Women’s Christian Association, 139

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24997_LAFFERTY.indb 374

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