Day Care in Edmonton: 1908-1930, by Anne Lightfoot

Anne Lightfoot investigates the history of day care in our city.
\r\nDate: 1908-1930

People in Edmonton took the aroma of manure and mill smoke for granted in 1908. (i) Horses and mills were everywhere with the occasional car, a smoky curiosity. The leap from a population of 700 people in 1892 to 18,500 in 1908 brought sawmills, flourmills, coalmines and brickyards into production with hundreds of stables for teams of two horses or strings of twenty or thirty packhorses.


These people, most under 40, looking for economic success, had responded to the Canadian Government's ads for settlers. A decade of depression was ending. Good land for homesteading in the U.S. had been taken. Manitoba, B.C. and even Saskatchewan had seen their first settlers 100 years earlier. Families came on steamships from Europe and on one of the two transcontinental railroads running to Edmonton, with possessions and money. These newcomers expected the institutions, services and public works they had enjoyed before they came. They soon discovered that they had to provide them.


At the same time that roads, telephone lines, houses, hotels, churches, stores were being built, trade unions, clubs, societies, sport teams and social events were organized. When Alberta became a province September 1, 1905, and the University of Alberta opened in 1908, Edmonton had truly expanded. At the first sitting of the Alberta legislature, March 15, 1906, acts ere passed which incorporated 6 Alberta railroad companies and 7 societies (iii) and clubs.


Most families needed help to keep furnaces and stoves stoked, ashes emptied, the washing, ironing, cleaning and cooking done. Unmarried girls, usually from farms outside the city, could find these jobs in respectable homes and many supplemented the family income in this way. Poor married women who also needed work usually had small children. This could be very inconvenient for them on the job.


Experienced and energetic wives of prominent business and political men in Edmonton who had been involved in philanthropic volunteer organizations before coming to Alberta organized an opened a Day Care Centre in 1908 to care for these children while their mothers worked. It only took them 3 months.


The local branch of the National Council of Women formed a sub-committee of 9 in October 1908. Three were members of the local Council of Women executive and 6 were from the community. They wanted to establish a crèche"...where the children of working women are properly cared for from 7:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., leaving heir mothers free to work with an easy mind knowing that their little ones will be warm, well fed and happy during their absence," (iv)


the Edmonton Bulletin reported.


On December 5, 1908, 3 months after this committee was formed, the Edmonton Crèche Association announced in the Edmonton Daily Bulletin that, "It has been decided to open the Crèche by a kitchen and pound shower. At 4:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon the Crèche will be formally opened by Mrs. Bulyea. A very cordial invitation to attend the opening and bring a 'pound' is extended to everyone interested in the happiness and comfort of little children...pans, kitchen utensils, dishes and donation of flour, sugar, tea, meal, butter etc." were suggested. The Bulleting concludes, "Will not every one who has ever felt a touch of tenderness towards a little child volunteer to subscribe?"


With a budget of $900.00 for this first year, the fee was 10¢ a day. Food, equipment and funding came from voluntary donations. A matron had been hired and the wife of Alberta's Lieutenant Governor, Mrs. Bulyea, opened this Crèche. They had secured help from the City of Edmonton, from the Chief Justice of Alberta, Mr. Sifton (iv) , from First Presbyterian Church and from the Edmonton Daily bulletin. A house had been leased at 840 McDougall Avenue, now 101 Street, near the Immigration Hall where it was thought many of the needy parents were living.


Since the Crèche had been established to provide care for children of women who worked outside their own homes, employment for these mothers was also important and the Crèche offered a free employment bureau. Correspondence shows that pressure to keep children overnight soon came from medical and other workers. Neglected children were also brought to the Crèche so this committee found itself responsible for overnight, residential care as well as day care. Lack of space and overcrowding were problems. By April 1909 the Crèche was "...full and overflowing and children have already been turned away," (iv) according to the Bulletin.


Adoptions were also being arranged. "There are at present several pretty, healthy little girl babies in the Crèche who will be given in adoption to responsible people who can be trusted to care for them properly," (iv) the Bulletin reported, and later commented," It is a hackneyed saying, but an indisputably true one, that it is a much lighter task for the State to care for its orphaned and destitute little ones than to provide asylums and penitentiaries, policemen and guards to protect itself from the criminals who began life as helpless babies to be made or marred by circumstances and environment, and 'as the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined.'"


However the Alberta Legislature passed an act in 1908 to establish an Industrial School for Boys, described as a "reform prison." (ii)


Another stop towards caring for children was taken by Alberta with the enactment of The Children's Protection Act of Alberta on February 25, 1909 in the Alberta Legislature. This Act laid down the procedures required to establish Children's Aid Societies (iii) , to set up children's shelters and to select foster homes. A Superintendent of neglected and dependent children was appointed by the government with responsibilities to encourage and assist with the establishment of Children's Aid Societies.



That same year the Edmonton and Strathcona Children's Aid Society was formed with responsibility for helping children in the 2 cities of Edmonton and Strathcona. The list of officers includes many of the former Crèche committee's names. Day care was combined with other kinds of care and the Crèche became the Edmonton Crèche and Children's Home, a residential and day home receiving a grant of $85.00 from the City of Edmonton. Both kinds of care were provided in one building. (iv) They moved several times because of inadequate space to the extent that the Bulletin reported that I was necessary during the summer of 1911, "...to erect a large tent in the back yard...to provide sleeping accommodation for the older boys." The deaths of nine infants from gastro-intestinal infections that year gave momentum to finding new space and this was done before the end of the year. (iv)


Edmonton had been proclaimed a city in 1904 with 8,350 citizens and a charter, which expanded the city to take in 2,400 more acres of land on the north side of the North Saskatchewan River. (i) Strathcona on the south side of the river had been incorporated as a city in 1899. When Strathcona finally decided to amalgamate with Edmonton on February 1, 1912, it brought prosperous businesses and the University of Alberta. Soon people were crossing the river on the High Level Bridge. There were 32 Real Estate brokers, 135 financial agencies and 336 Real Estate agents in Edmonton because people were pouring into Edmonton. Curling clubs and schools on both sides of the river were opened for temporary accommodation but still over 2,000 people camped in tents on the river flats or the city outskirts.


Memories were all that remained of Edmonton's boom by 1913. The city had over expanded. When the building boom collapsed, tradesmen moved on. Crops failed. Building lots reverted to the city for unpaid taxes. The Canadian Northern, the Grand Trunk Pacific and later the Canadian National Railway all went bankrupt, putting more men out of work. New gas wells were not developed and their promoters were owed money. There were marches and riots to protest unemployment. (i)


When war came in 1914, men left for Britain and France to join the armies of their homelands. As soon as the Alberta battalions formed, men enlisted, 45,136 from Alberta. The populations of Edmonton and Calgary each diminished by 20,000 in 3 years.


The effect on this barely established province was enormous. Social institutions and services were disrupted, families broken, labor was scarce; women were forced into new roles. By 1916 women in Alberta could vote and in the 1917 election two women were elected as M.L.A.'s.


By 1917 the children of soldiers were needing care and a Day Nursery separate from the Children's Home had been established in the Caledonian Hotel on 98 Street, but even there some of the children were monthly boarders. Charges were set to meet the individual families' ability to pay. The usual rate was 10¢ a day as it had been in 1908, $5.00 to $10.00 a month with meals and free medical care for all, included. Hospitals had begun admitting sick children in 1911 and a trained nurse was part of the staff. (iv)


The pandemic of Spanish 'flu contributed its terrible effect. (i) In a month and a half in the fall of 1918 there were 30,000 cases in Alberta. One in 10 ill people died, 3,259 in Alberta, mostly young adults. More children were in need of care. In 1919 and 1920 both the Children's Shelter and the Children's Home were asking for donations.


The Children's Shelter provided residential care for children, some of whom had been apprehended, and was supported by the Provincial Government. The children's Home on the north side of the river provided day care and some overnight accommodation. The Children's Home on the south side had finally been located in the sough Side Immigration Hall, supported by a $100.00 grant from the city, public contributions and membership fees. (iv) All three were under the jurisdiction of the Children's Aid Society. Crowding and poor heating were problems but Henderson's Directory lists them through the years to 1930 so they survived. The care was not monitored except by nurses and doctors.


By this time, Chevs, Buicks, Hupmobiles crowded Edmonton's streets, airplanes were expanding Edmonton's transportation possibilities, news was coming to home on the new CJCA radio station, new schools had opened, neon signs glowed on Jasper Avenue. People felt secure. (i)


The notion that children's rights were important became part of International Law in 1924 in the League of Nations Universal Charter of Children's Rights. Charlotte Whitton was one of the people at the League of Nations who worked for this legislation. Her influence on Day Care in Edmonton is part of this story.


References:


James G. MacGregor - A History of Alberta, (Hurtig Publishers, 1972) is the source of information noted (i)


Statute Book of the Province of Alberta 1908 is the source of information noted (ii) .

Statute Book of the Province of Alberta 1909 is the source of information noted (iii) .


City of Edmonton Archives Files were the sources for information noted (iv) on the following pages:


Page 1 Edmonton Daily Bulletin - no date;

Page 2 file from the Edmonton Crèche

Page 2 from the newspaper Edmonton Daily bulletin - 5/1/08;

Page 2 Edmonton Daily Bulletin - 17/4/09;

Page 3 Edmonton Daily Bulletin - 4/04/09;

Page 3 Edmonton Daily Bulletin - 4/04/09;

Page 3 Edmonton Daily Bulletin - 4/04/09;

Page 4 Edmonton Daily Bulletin - 16/09/10.

Kathleen Gallagher Ross - good Day Care: Fighting For It, Getting It, Keeping It was used as a general source.