Plaque unveiled to commemorate historic West Indian Domestic Scheme

TORONTO:

The Canadian government has commemorated the national historic significance of the West Indian Domestic Scheme, 1955-1967, at a special plaque unveiling ceremony at Blackhurst Cultural Centre in Toronto.

The event brought out many, including women who worked under the scheme which ended in 1968. The nearby Bathurst subway station will be the permanent home of the plaque, which, for now, will be housed at the cultural centre.

Between 1955 and 1967, 3,000 women from Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, came to Canada through the targeted immigration programme as domestic workers.

Marci Ien, minister for women and gender equality and youth and member of parliament for Toronto Centre, said the scheme began at a time when Canada’s immigration policies limited opportunities for non-white people yet there was a growing demand for domestic workers.

It offered the women the opportunity to become landed immigrants after a year of domestic work and they could pursue educational and employment opportunities in other fields. They were also able to sponsor family members’ permanent residency in Canada.

Once accepted, the women had the opportunity to select their preferred destination, with most choosing Toronto or Montreal. Upon arrival in Canada, they experienced difficult work conditions, cultural differences, isolation, and racial discrimination. They often worked longer hours while receiving lower pay than had been promised.

Minister Ien noted that it was not just about government policy but the advocacy of individuals like the late community stalwart Donald Moore, founder of the Negro Citizenship Association in the early 50s, who fought for change and opportunities like this.

It is because of that work that the programme began with 100 women (75 from Jamaica, 25 from Barbados) and, by the time it ended in 1968, had welcomed about 3,000. Some were already trained as teachers, nurses, clerks in their homeland but in Canada they were tasked with being domestic workers.

“Can you imagine what it felt like to be so far away from home, the loneliness, but also to know that you’re carrying the hopes and dreams of other family members on your back because, if you made it here in this new country called Canada so many others, would too.

They didn’t stop, though. After completing their year of domestic work, many transitioned to other fields and they began reshaping the communities they lived in, because that’s what black women do.”

She said the plaque is more than a marker of history, “it’s a commitment to telling the truth — sometimes the hard truth —about the challenges these women faced, the injustices they overcame and the future they helped create”.

FRACTION OF BLACK EXPERIENCES

Jean Augustine, a teacher who migrated from Grenada to Canada in 1960 and in 1993 became the first black Canadian woman elected to the House of Commons, shared her experience under the scheme.

As a young woman with her Oxford and Cambridge overseas school certificate A-level, Augustine was ready for the world but did not have the means to fly anywhere. The avenues that were opened to her in Grenada, she recalls, included “being a public servant, nurse, teacher, working in the home with family or staying home and have babies”.

Under the scheme, there were quotas given to each island; for Grenada it was nine. Augustine applied in 1959 but did not make the list until a year later.

Women met in Barbados and flew from there to Montreal where they slept overnight at the YWCA. The next morning, they were brought “into a big boardroom with a big map of Canada” and they were told to pick where they wanted to go in Canada.

“Some people were picking on the sexiness of the name, Saskatchewan,” Augustine said. She picked Toronto because some of the women who left Grenada in 1958 and 1959 chose Toronto and she knew she would have some contacts there.

“We became a team as we came off the train; the Department of Manpower Canada officials and the families met us, and they matched us to families.

“Our salary was anything from $90 to $100 a month. We were given a half a day off per week and we were employed for the rest of the week. Some of us found ourselves in very difficult situations, families with six children, five children. I was lucky. I ended up with a family with one baby and a mother who loved television, so she and I watched a lot of television. I learnt a lot about Canadian society through television,” Augustine said, noting that she sent money home to Grenada from her $90.

Lois Patterson – mother of Adaoma Patterson, a past president of the Jamaican Canadian Association – came from Jamaica to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1962 under the scheme. She still lives there and was featured in the CBC docuseries Black Life: Untold Stories about migrations in 2023.

Jamaican-Canadian poet Nadine Williams, proponent of the designation, said she stumbled upon the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC) while working on an art installation project in celebration of the International Decade for People of African Descent.

When she examined its list of over 2,000 designations, she realised that there was only a “tiny fraction of black experiences” and, having become aware of the scheme through Augustine, Williams nominated it.

Her mother came to Canada from Jamaica and left herself and her brother with relatives before sending for them. Williams’ mother worked at the Regal Constellation Hotel in Toronto for 28 years and, when it closed, went to work at a nursing home in Brampton until she died.

“I am just so ticked that the West Indian Domestic Scheme is being recognised,” said Williams, who noted that it took six years from her nomination letter to the plaque unveiling. To date, she has been the proponent of six designations, and there are five pending.