How domestic labour from the West Indies reshaped Canada

Jordan We often tell stories of immigrants to Canada, and what they’ve done to help build this country. Those stories are wonderful. They are personal and poignant tales of individual courage and bravery, and strength. But a keyword there is individual. When we consider immigration to Canada, we almost always personalize it, using anecdotes of notable Canadians or their parents who came to this country to give their families a better life. And you know, the rest of those stories. What we don’t often talk about are the policies and the systems that were put in place to get them here. We don’t often talk about how their arrival en-masse reshaped the country we know. And we don’t often talk about their place in Canadian history. This is especially true if the immigrants we are discussing are Black. And if the reason they came to Canada was to perform domestic labor for White people, those stories tend to be relegated to personal family histories. But they really shouldn’t be.

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Garvia Bailey is one of the creators of strong and free, a six-part podcast from Historica Canada, produced by Media Girlfriends. The podcast traces stories from the earliest Black settlers to recently arrived Canadians, including in one episode, Garvia’s own family. Hey Garvia,

Garvia Bailey Hey, how are you doing?

Jordan I’m doing really well. Thanks for joining us today.

Garvia Bailey Well, thanks for having me. Jordan I’m really glad because we get to talk about a personal story, which is always fun and makes for good conversation. And you’ve got a fascinating story. Why don’t you begin by just tell me about your mom, Eva, and how she came to Canada.

Garvia Bailey Eva is amazing. She, is in her 80s Now, but she did come to Canada on her own, she left her family, which is me as a baby. And she was in Jamaica with my father. I had just been born. And she had experienced in this little tiny village in Jamaica in the 60s and into the 70s that there was this real push that was being made for, you know, young Jamaican women moving to Canada as domestic workers. And it was something that she dreamed about. And when she became pregnant with me, it became impossible for her to do that. But as soon as she had me she was she was off to Canada in hopes of making a life for us there and setting the table for our family to be able to immigrate there. So I was maybe pushing up on a year or so when she left and stayed in Canada for a good couple years and then sent for us. So her story has always been one of real strength and real resilience and real entrepreneurial kind of zest. And it made sense that, you know, as a young girl, when she saw that little ad, in a newspaper saying, you know, we’re accepting young women to come to Canada to work as domestic workers that she held that close to her and never forgot when she saw it. And then years later, when she was able to go herself she did exactly that.

Jordan We’re gonna talk about the big picture of that kind of domestic labor immigration in just a second because it’s a fascinating part of our history. First of all, though, as somebody who was just being a single parent for one long weekend with one toddler, shout out to your dad.

Garvia Bailey Yes. Well, you know, it does take a village and my dad has he had a lot of people around him that we’re helping with all the Yeah, just a bunch of toddlers, right?

Jordan So your mom’s story? How usual or unusual is that story tell me about that wave of Caribbean immigration to Canada for domestic work.

Garvia Bailey Her story is it’s remarkable. And it’s unremarkable at the same time because that story is very common for those of us who came to Canada in the 70s or in the 60s, over 3000 women came from the West Indies to Canada between 1955 in 1967. And then there was that whole wave that came like my mother right after that sort of on the wave of the West Indian domestic scheme. 3000 tons. seemed like a lot, but many of them settled right here around the Ontario area around Toronto. So you had all of these women’s that helped kind of set the table so that white women, Canadian women, were able to re-enter the workforce or to enter the workforce. The Honorable Jean Augustine, she was a domestic worker, she came to Canada on the domestic scheme. There’s just so many stories of women that have, you know, entered into politics become builders of our economy that came on the scheme. So it was remarkable that my mother did it as on an individual sort of basis, but it’s unremarkable because there were so many women that were doing it that they actually formed their sort of groups and support groups and, and cliques and kind of, you know, knew each other in that way. So, man, it’s a part of Canadian history that I feel was just so under reported at that, like, we just had to talk about it, because there were so many women.

Jordan That’s what fascinates me about it. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you about this podcast, because we hear so many of these stories as anecdotes, or as like personal family history. But what your show did was give us a look at, you know, the actual policies, the domestic scheme that brought all these people here, and, and why do we tend to hear these as you know, my mom came here, as opposed to there was a real push from government to bring people here.

Garvia Bailey Well, it’s just, it just has to do with with the narratives, and who’s teaching history and whose history gets to be a part of our grand history as Canadians and I have to tell you something like this whole series, there were stories in there that I had not heard, and I’m a learned person, you know, I, you know, been practicing journalism for all this time. And there were stories where I was like, I had no idea about the Black History of the prairies. And I tried to be kind of up on things. So it feels as if, you know, it was said many times by the historians that we talked to in the series, by the individuals that we talked to, that, these histories, unless there’s a concerted effort to bring them to the forefront, seems to be, you know, an afterthought for for us as Canadians. And I think the goal for many of us doing this kind of work and wanting to make these kind of stories, or create these kinds of stories, is to change that. Because, you know, as we say, as our tagline of Black history is Canadian history, it’s sad to me in a way that many, like yourself, Jordan would not have heard this story growing up, you know, and that, to me is a, it’s such a, it’s such a disappointment. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t change it. And that’s, that’s what we’re here to do.

Jordan I want to keep talking about the domestic scheme for a little bit just because there I’d like people to come away from this episode, with an understanding of that, and then they can go get the full story on your podcast and many other stories as well. So you touched on this a minute ago. But why was there such a demand for domestic labor in Canada at that time? What was happening?

Garvia Bailey Well, you know, I’m not the historian, I had a great historian and Karen Flynn, who, who came in and talked about it, but there was a shortage of domestic labor throughout the country. And so it was around 1955, that the Department of citizenship and immigration was just like, we need to somehow fill these labor gaps. You know, there was there was a war prior to that there was just like, everything was kind of in flux. But what Canada saw, or the Government of Canada saw was that they needed to start making sure that women especially could start entering the labor force. And that meant that you had to get domestic laborers in and the other thing is that there was a bit of a desire to have women come from these West Indian islands, as opposed to men and that was a big part of it as well. But there was some, there’s something a little bit more safe in having these young and they’re all often very young women come to your country in numbers and settle and you know, make of that what you will but that was very much a part of this. And so it started out with a quota of about 100 women came, but it became so popular that it became V way for Caribbean women, too. Hopefully come to Canada and hopefully settle in Canada on a permanent basis.

But one of the things that they insisted on was that these women be single childless, because what the Canadian government did not want was an influx of families. And that part of the scheme shifted later on, with the help of those same West Indian women who push the government and said that that is just not, that’s just not fair. You can’t just have us leave our families or just make it only, you know, young women that are childless, that are able to make lives here. We talk about it in me podcast, we talk about it as a feminist movement, really, for Canadian women, because Canadian women were this was the beginning of that movement, they wanted to make money for themselves, they wanted to get out of the house and, you know, be their own. And so it made sense to have this scheme, and it helped with Canada’s general economy. You know, the more people working, the more the economy is turning, it was really quite a time before for Canada. And these women were part of building the Canadian economy at that time.

Jordan What kind of assumptions, do stories like your mom’s and people like hers challenge about our notion of domestic labor, immigration. And I asked that because, again, this is not something that’s been taught, at least not in my school, and I don’t think in many, and on the surface, you can look at it as exploitative. Right. It also did help diversify the country and bring in bring in families that would go on to make great contributions, as you kind of pointed out right off the top. How do you reconcile those two things?

Garvia Bailey Well, you know, I think that one of the things that is really important about this story is that these women weren’t being forced into coming to Canada, these women had their own sort of, they had their own reasons for coming, they had their own autonomy, there were women that were looking for, not just work in a way to get to Canada, they were looking for adventure, they were looking for new lives are looking for economic stability in their lives. And so one of the things that the researcher that we used, Karen Flynn mentioned, and it just stuck with me that the way to not look at these women is as these, you know, shrinking violets who came to this country just, you know, quiet and docile. They became because they were the kind of women that had the strength and the resilience and the and the wherewithal to do something that I think is quite courageous. Yeah, thank goodness, I think I’ve just partially answered your question. Yeah, they came here. And they did the the work that no one else wanted to do, obviously, because the Canadian government wouldn’t have put the call out if there were other quote unquote, Canadian women, that were ready to do this kind of work. And this same sort of thing is happening today, we still see women coming from countries, domestic workers, coming from countries like the Philippines, of the Caribbean, that still come to this day to act as nannies as domestic workers, they’re still doing that the same work that, you know, in the 50s, was so necessary to build up our economy.

Jordan I don’t know what our COVID response would have looked like, without workers from overseas.

Garvia Bailey Exactly, exactly. So you know, the assumptions that we make about about who these women are, it’s very interesting with my mother’s story, a lot of these women that she knew about as a young girl that were taking off to Canada, they were being helped by organizations like the church, other church groups that were, you know, in Canada, like, these were not rich women. But the village would, you know, come together to help them make passage to Canada. So a lot of affluent women, women that were doing really well in the middle class, were easily able to come to Canada to make even a better life for themselves. So I think maybe the assumptions that we would have here is that these are like super poor women that don’t have a lot going for them back home and all that. I don’t think that that was really the case. I think that this was some of the brighter, women that made the trip, the ones that that had supports that were able to do that.

Jordan And I want to thank you for sharing your story with us and and on the podcast. But before we wrap up, I want to ask you about the other histories that your show looks to address. And they’re not the kind that there are a ton of like detailed records kept or as we mentioned already, that’s been written down on the history books like you’re, you’re combing through anecdotes looking for a bigger picture, right?

Garvia Bailey Yeah. But the thing is, I think that’s the that’s the, that’s the misconception. The records are there. It’s just a matter of having the will to look for them. You know, all of the be experts that we use a wonderful Karina Vernon, who is a professor at University of Toronto, Scarborough. She’s from the prairies as well. And she, she has found so much writing from the the previously enslaved folks that settled the prairies, these writings that are we’re right there, if you’re looking for them. And I don’t think that it’s a matter of the the information is not there. It’s just the desire to unearth the information and present it as a part of our history, our collective history as a country. Once you start looking, it’s all there. The stories of you know, Mary Ann Shadd Cary the first black newspaper woman, the first woman that had her own newspaper in this country, it’s all there.

Like, you know, she was a newspaper woman, the writing is there. It’s there if you’re looking forward. And the most important thing to us was that we weren’t just digging through dusty pages to bring you these stories. We were linking these stories to right now. Our history is a living history. I am the the child of not just my mother, but I’m also the child of Mary Ann Shadd Cary me doing the work that I’m doing now is in direct lineage to who she was as a newspaper woman as someone that brought the stories that needed to be told that weren’t being told to the masses. So I feel like this is just a continuation. The most important thing for us as media girlfriends, our company was to make sure these histories were tied to now that they are living histories that if you’re a child, and you’re listening to this right now, you can look and see how these histories reverberate through you. Right now.

Jordan I’m so glad that you’re doing it. I know. already. I’ve learned a lot from your podcast, and I hope everybody gets a chance to check it out. Thank you Garvia. Yeah. Well,

Garvia Bailey Thank you so much for your interest. Jordan. Thanks so much.

Jordan Garvia Bailey, one of the creators of Strong and Free, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. That was the big story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca Talk to us on Twitter @TheBigStoryFPN. And as always, you can find us via email, click here!. I told you that I would read out some of the comments we get from Twitter, from email from anywhere, really. And since we’re going to make this a thing. I’m going to pick ones that make us feel good. So a shout out to Paul who wrote I love your podcasts. I discovered your podcast about three weeks ago. And since then, have listened to every one. I learned something from each one. And I’ve shared several to my family and friends. Keep up the great work. You see what Paul did there. He shared this podcast with family and friends. Paul clearly listens to this outro and does what I am begging you to do. If you like this podcast, tap somebody you know on the shoulder say hey, give me your phone and subscribe them and wait a few days for them to thank you. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Thanks for listening. And we’ll talk tomorrow