1. Subscription to a daily mainstream national newspaper. I recommend The Globe and Mail and/or the National Post. Both often feature items related to immigration and both are well written and present clear points of view on issues of immigration and settlement.
2. Subscription to a local newspaper. Depending on where the newcomer settles, the local paper offers, often painfully accurately, the local environment: it is important for the newcomer to know where they have landed, how they are welcomed (or not) and avenues for settling, integrating, opportunities for employment and recreation, etc in their chosen community.
3. “100 Photos that Changed Canada” is a beautiful ‘coffee-table’ book that illustrates and documents the journey and history of immigration to Canada. Both heartening and heart-breaking stories and histories are included, everything from the “Girl from Canada”, a living exhibit of a young woman on a bicycle outfitted with all the bells and whistles that ostensibly depicted life in Canada as an incentive to British, to the injustice of the Komagata Maru incident, documenting the history of the “one continuous voyage” policy in immigration policy, to the repatriation of Japanese Canadians after internment during WWII, to Canada’s disgrace in refusing Jewish children’s emigration, 100 Photos is an illustrated history of Canada.
4. Rudyard Griffith’s Who We Are: The Citizen’s Manifesto is a current examination of the state of the nation and the place of the newcomer in it.
5. Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is a beautiful, timeless and ageless picture book that illustrates beautifully the immigrant experience. Children and adults alike will marvel at the empathic depictions of what it is like to land on new shores. Readers will find comfort in this volume, which lovingly and accurately depicts the typical newcomer journey: leaving family, reconciling, being a stranger in a strange land.
6. Library cards to the local public and local university libraries. Many Canadian university libraries offer a “research reader” or “community member” card for non-students. Local public libraries have agreements with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and offer Library Settlement Service programs, a support to newcomers.
This list is reading-heavy: What are your suggestions for other/additional best gifts for newcomers?
Category: History
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Holiday gifts for newcomers
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Britain apologizes to home children
Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, The Honourable Jason Kenney, continues to get positive responses from media and, as translated by an Environics poll, average Canadians, for his revamped citizenship guide, released last week. The new guide, Discover Canada, outlines the rights and responsibilities of new immigrants to Canada, and provides a more in-depth look at Canadian history than the previous editions, including, much to Kenney’s (and his advisor’s) credit, some of the shameful ways immigrants have been treated in this country.
For example, the guide acknowledges that Chinese immigrants were welcome to build the national railway, but afterwards, “were subject to discrimination including the Head Tax, a race-based entry fee; the Government of Canada apologized in 2006 for this discriminatory policy” (p.20). The guide also acknowledges the “relocation of West Coast Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government, and the forcible sale of their property (during WWII)…The Government of Canada apologized for wartime wrongs inflicted on Japanese Canadians” (p. 23).
immigrantchildren.ca welcomed the release of the new revised guide last week and hoped that it would include acknowledgment of the treatment of the “home children” – the approximately 100,000 children who were sent to Canada in a child emigration scheme and who were, as history tells us, routinely neglected, abused and often worked to their deaths. The new citizenship guide did not include mention of these littlest immigrants.
immigrantchildren.ca was delighted to read that the British government has apologized to the home children it sent away (see, for example, this piece in the National Post). A spokesperson from the organization Home Children Canada welcomed the news and demands such an apology from the Canadian government. The apology is not forthcoming.
The “home children” represent another shameful period in Canada’s history and also merits acknowledgment – in the next edition of Discover Canada, in the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, in a permanent display at Pier 21, in history text books and in an apology.
In two days, Canada will celebrate National Child Day and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. To keep moving forward on child rights, Canada needs to admit to its historic wrongs. -
New citizenship guide for new Canadians
The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism today released an updated guide to Canadian Citizenship. Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship.
The launch of the “study guide” (last published in 1997) was held at the Terry Fox Centre, where Minister Kenney talked about inspiration, fortune and his vision for modern Canada. The announcement – and guide – provide a generous nod to Canada’s military history and major events (the 1997 edition skipped quite a bit of this, including Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, Dieppe). The guide also does not shy away from some shameful periods in Canada’s past, such as the residential schools for Aboriginal children, the Internment of Japanese Canadians and the Chinese Exclusion Act, but I was disappointed to not see mention of the home children.
Canadian history must acknowledge the home children – some 100,000 children taken from their homeland and brought to our shores to serve labour needs that Canadians could not or would not take on (sound familiar?). A great many of these children were younger than 10 years old and lived lives of brutality. These children were not adopted in the sense of how we use the word today, but taken, often bought and treated as chattel. I’ll be lobbying the Canadian Museum of Human Rights to include an exhibit on the home children. Who’s with me? -
$15 million for Pier 21
At Pier 21, Canada’s Immigration Museum, Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced a cash infusion of $15 million to make the museum a national one. Pier 21 was the gateway to immigrants from 1928-1971. Pier 21 is also where the home children landed.
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Meet Rebecca: A Russian-Jewish immigrant doll
The American Girl series of historical fiction for young adults has been a big success in the US. A similar series runs in Canada, and includes a story about the home children: Orphan at My Door: The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope, written by Jean Little. The Canadian series is called Our Canadian Girl.
The American Girl series also has accompanying dolls. Launching this weekend, to great anticipation, will be Rebecca, the Russian-Jewish immigrant doll to go along with Jacqueline Dembar Greene’s Meet Rebecca.
According to the May 23rd edition of the Sunday New York Times, a great deal of research went into what a Russian-Jewish immigrant doll should look like, with early comments favourable (Previous American Girl dolls stirred up controversies). -
The early years study ~ 10 years later
The landmark Early Years Study, subtitled The Real Brain Drain, was released on April 20, 1999.
See also a “very brief history” of the Early Years Study posted on the Health Nexus Santé (formerly the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse) blog in March 2005, including links to the follow-up report The Early Years Study: Three Years Later, recounting how the early years initiative was rolled out in Ontario via the Ontario Early Years Centres.
Fraser Mustard and the Council on Early Child Development continue to work to raise awareness of and support for an early childhood learning and care program for all children and their families across Canada as the first tier to the formal school system.
See the upcoming conference sponsored by the Council on Early Child Development May 13-15 in New Brunswick, Putting Science into Action: Equity from the Start Through Early Child Development.
How responsive have the Ontario Early Years Centres been to immigrant and refugee families and young children? -
Children of a new world, by Paula S. Fass
Excerpts from: Nihal Ahioglu. Review of Fass, Paula S. Children of a new world: Society, culture and globalization. H-Childhood, N-Net Reviews. April 2009. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Works).
Children of a New World is an impressive book consisting of essays that the author has previously published on children in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Two underlying themes connect these essays. The first suggest that childhood has become a significant working area in social history. Though these essays are profoundly informed by social history and carry a deep concern about large-scale shifts in the experience of children, Paula S. Fass also provides sharp pieces of cultural analysis. She relates her evidence to political history, and to other disciplines, such as literature, education and psychology.
From the interpretation of children and childhood using a broadly conceived historical approach, Fass reveals her second main theme: the influence of a “new world” or “globalization” on children and the meanings of childhood.
In the first part of the book, Fass emphasizes historical change regarding children and the meanings of childhood in terms of schooling and migration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Schooling was critical in a pluralistic society accommodating a great number of immigrants. Integrating different cultures into the same values and thus the idea of establishing “a mutual national identity” become one of the most important aims in these years. In spite of the existence of such a political objective, to protect and maintain their own cultures, immigrants preferred alternative or religious schools for their children. Nevertheless, changing economical conditions and the rise of specialized clerks increased the significance of public schooling. In this context, intelligence tests were invented to predict what an individual could accomplish with education or training. Testing served as a tool for solving social and cultural problems by sorting children and (purportedly) allowing the educational and child welfare systems to meet the psychological needs of individuals. According to Fass, it caused a kind of segregation in education to the disadvantage of immigrant youths because the tests were culturally biased. Complementing the intelligence testing movement in the interwar period, American educators attempted to develop a comprehensive and uniform curriculum. The new curriculum included “extracurricular activities”, through which students found opportunities to prove their self-direction in social, citizenship, athletic and academic subjects. This was aimed to improve the citizenship and advance assimilation of diverse cultural groups. But the results were not always so straightforward….
The last two centuries have been a period in which significant changes have occurred in childhood. Children of a New World presents this change strikingly to readers by using different social, cultural, and economic incidents, events, and experiences. In addition to presenting different examples about the social history of children and the cultural history of childhood in a systematic and analytical way, this book encourages us to ask new questions about how these distinctive stories fit into a larger modern transformation of childhood. -
Role of race and ethnicity in the lives of children in history
The US-based Society for the History of Children and Youth is holding an online discussion through their listserv, H-Childhood. Responses will help shape the next Society for the History of Children and Youth newsletter.
Facilitators have posted two general questions that they hope will spark a good discussion. Here are the questions:- What role did race and ethnicity in particular (along with class, gender, age, and region) play in the lives of children and youth of color in history? More pointedly, did race and ethnicity make for or lead to fundamentally different experiences of childhood for children and youth of color as compared to their white counterparts?
- Why is it important (if you think it is) to study children and youth of color in history? Will this work change our understanding of the history of childhood and youth in fundamental ways? If so, how so?
Discussion ends April 3rd.