{"id":1356,"date":"2015-11-01T00:22:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T00:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/?post_type=chapter&p=1356"},"modified":"2019-07-16T17:53:45","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T17:53:45","slug":"10-9-historicizing-childhood-the-changing-fortunes-of-children-and-youth-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/chapter\/10-9-historicizing-childhood-the-changing-fortunes-of-children-and-youth-in-canada\/","title":{"raw":"10.9 Historicizing Childhood: The Changing Fortunes of Children and Youth in Canada","rendered":"10.9 Historicizing Childhood: The Changing Fortunes of Children and Youth in Canada"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_2364\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"637\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 10.18 A boy, one of the Home Children, ploughs a field at Dr. Barnardo's Industrial Farm, ca. 1900.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe experiences of children and youth underwent profound change from the 19th century to the end of the 20th century.\r\n\r\nIn the 19th century, children and youth were important contributors to the family economy. Most children learned by working alongside adults. Children\u2019s work, both paid and unpaid, was crucial to their own and to their families\u2019 well-being and survival. Only in the postwar (post World War II) era did mothers replace children as their families\u2019 secondary earners.\r\n\r\nAt the beginning of the 21st\u00a0century, everyday life for most children in Canada revolved around school. This way of life, which made schooling the central organizing principle of children\u2019s lives, has its roots in the first Canadian compulsory education legislation enacted in 1870 and mandated children to attend school for four months of the year. Even then, work, family responsibilities, and other considerations meant that attendance for most children remained irregular, despite families\u2019 hopes for their children\u2019s education and future.\r\n\r\nThe idea of childhood as a time in which children did not work took over a century to put into everyday practice. The first Canadian legislation to regulate child labour, the Ontario Factory Acts<\/em> of 1884, legislated boys, 12 years and over, and girls, 14 years and older, to work no more than 10 hours a day, six days a week. Despite the protective <\/i>legislation, families\u2019 needs and individuals\u2019 survival meant that in practice boys and girls continued to work. Well into the 20th century, reform efforts and even child protection organizations expected children and youth to work. Work was considered a necessary part of their training in the habits of thrift and industry as well as responsible citizenship.\r\n
In the images and voices of children and youth, captured in the oral history video series Growing Up Canadian<\/a>, <\/i>we are reminded that they were proud to work, to bring home an income, and to make a contribution to their families.[footnote]Growing Up Canadian<\/i><\/a>, directed by Sheila Petzold and Susan Terrill, produced by Hoda Elatawi (Montreal: National Film Board, 2003) <\/i>http:\/\/onf-nfb.gc.ca\/en\/our-collection\/series\/?ids=516825&nom=Growing%20Up%20Canadian<\/a>[\/footnote] In their stories, sometimes in fragments in the written record, and in surviving photographic evidence, we can see that children and youth were capable, sometimes enterprising, heroes of their own lives.<\/div>\r\nHistorian Dorothy Chunn suggests that we should interpret education, labour, and other legislation as the codification of childhood and youth as a time of dependence.[footnote]Dorothy Chunn. \u201cBoys Will Be Men, Girls Will be Mothers: The Legal Regulation of Childhood in Toronto and Vancouver.\u201d In\u00a0Histories of Canadian Children and Youth,\u00a0<\/i>ed. by Joy Parr and Nancy Janovicek (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2003): 188-206.[\/footnote] In Dominion of Youth<\/i>, Cynthia Comacchio demonstrates that by the 1920s, children and youth were growing up very differently from their parents.[footnote]Cynthia Comacchio, Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada, 1920-1950<\/i> (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2008).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nAlongside these historic shifts, children and youth continue to appear in the most unlikely places in the 20th century. Between 1880-1930, over 80,000 Home Children immigrated to Canada without their families.[footnote]Joy Parr. Labouring<\/i> Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869-1924<\/i> (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).[\/footnote] At least 20,000 underage soldiers enlisted and served in World War I.[footnote]Tim Cook, \u201c\u2018He was Determined to Go\u2019: Underage Soldiers in the Canadian Expeditionary Force,\u201d Histoire <\/i>Sociale<\/i>, Social History <\/i>41.81 (2008): 41-74.[\/footnote] One of the eight On to Ottawa Trek leaders to meet with Prime Minister Robert Bennett in 1935 was 14 years old. Children and youth across Canada held a chocolate bar strike in 1947 when, to their horror and disgust, the price of chocolate bars went from five to eight cents. From the spectacular to the ordinary, children and youth made history.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2366\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"727\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 10.19 Children in Edmonton protest rising prices in 1947.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWork continued to be a factor in most children's lives. In the 1940s, some youth were self-supporting by the age of 14. Neil Sutherland\u2019s work on the history of children and youth in British Columbia shows that as late as the 1960s, youth recall, \u201cwe always had things to do.\u201d[footnote]Neil Sutherland, \u201c\u2018We always had things to do\u2019: The Paid and Unpaid Work of Anglophone Children Between the 1920s and the 1960s.\u201d Labour \/ Le Travail<\/i> <\/i>25 (Spring 1990): 105-141.[\/footnote] Indigenous children and youth in residential school always worked more than they studied.\r\n\r\nIt is a painful irony, and it should not be ignored, that the century that invented childhood as a time of innocence and dependence also endangered children and youth in unprecedented ways. Institutions that were established in the name of protection, as Steven Maynard demonstrates, often locked danger in.[footnote]Steven Maynard, \u201c\u2018Horrible Temptations\u2019: Sex, Men and Working-Class Male Youth in Urban Ontario, 1890-1935,\u201d Canadian Historical Review <\/i>78. 2 (June 1997): 191-235.[\/footnote] Revelations about the brutal and genocidal conditions in Residential schools were made as early as 1907 by the Indian Affairs medical officer P.H. Bryce, and disturbing disclosures continue to unfold in our own day.[footnote]Cindy Blackstock, Wanted: Moral Courage in Canadian Child Welfare,\u201d First Peoples Child & Family Review,<\/i> 6.2 (2011): 35-46.[\/footnote] Richard Cardinal\u2019s 1984\u00a0Dia<\/i>ry<\/i> of a <\/i>M\u00e9tis<\/i> Child<\/i> is a testament in a youth\u2019s own words: policies and practices established for the protection of children created suffering and have resulted in deadly harm.[footnote]Richard Cardinal: Cry From the Diary of a M\u00e9tis Child<\/i>, Directed by Alanis Obamsowin (Montreal: National Film Board, 1986).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nThe lives of children and youth were transformed over the course of the 20th century and not always in a good way.\r\n
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Questions for Discussion<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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What is the age of the historical subject in your head? Is adult the default historical subject?<\/p>\r\n

What do children and youth gain over the course of the 20th century? What do children and youth lose?<\/p>\r\n

In what ways did children and youth gain and lose power over the course of the 20th century?<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Key Points<\/h2>\r\n