“to take a normal place in the business and social world”: The Work of Women’s Voluntary and Service Associations in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals

Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner

This essay is part of a series. See the other entries here.

In late 2019, we were awarded a contract to produce a report about the role played by YWCA Canada in the Residential School and Indian Hospital systems in Canada. As we previously noted, the report is available on request (reconciliation@ywcacanada.ca). We were excited by the opportunity because we saw it as a chance to further our understanding of the ways the settler colonial project was enacted across Canadian social, political, and economic institutions including, in this instance, through women’s voluntary and service associations and social welfare agencies. Given the operating restrictions to Library and Archives Canada during the Covid 19 global pandemic, our access to the archives was very limited. As such, we understand our work to be very preliminary.

Nevertheless, we were fortunate to uncover a particularly rich source that offered a glimpse into YWCA Canada’s post-WWII service work in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals across Canada. In 1968, YWCA Canada’s Intercultural Coordinator issued a call to member associations seeking examples of work carried out with Indigenous Peoples and communities. The request was made with the hope that the “exchange of program ideas and social action w[ould] stimulate many more creative activities,”[1] and reflected a growing interest within YWCA Canada to extend its work more formally to Indigenous Peoples and communities. Member Associations across Canada responded by outlining activities that primarily covered the 1960s, with some references to the 1940s and 1950s, with the most detailed response coming from the Edmonton YWCA branch. In response, they submitted a report from February 1964 that was originally prepared for Indian Affairs, which, at the time, was housed in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI). The focus on preparing Indigenous Peoples for off-reserve employment and Indigenous women for European-Canadian domesticity was a cornerstone of Indian policy after WWII. Heidi Bohaker’s and Franca Iacovetta’s examination of citizenship programs showed that across the 1950s and 1960s, the DCI “sponsor[ed], fund[ed], monitor[ed] the activities of voluntary groups (such as church organizations) and volunteer agencies and academic experts dealing with [Indigenous] Peoples in urban settings.” [2] The YWCA was well situated to support the DCI’s efforts.

The responses of the YWCA branches to the Intercultural Coordinator illustrated important connections existed between the YWCA and Canada’s Residential School and Indian Hospital systems, the nature of which need further excavation. To date research has largely focused on the roles played by the church and state inside Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals. This overlooks the material and ideological systems that supported and perpetuated these institutions. Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals did not exist in isolation. Sean Carleton’s work Lessons in Legitimacy illustrates how state supported schooling both justified and fuelled Indigenous land dispossession by adapting Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to settler capitalism. The work undertaken by organizations like the YWCA made Indigenous land dispossession possible through programs that familiarized Indigenous youth and adults with capitalist labour regimes in urban spaces distant from homes and communities. In turn, philanthropic and social welfare agencies were rewarded financially through state and public support.

Like other service and government-led initiatives after WWII, the aim of the state and its partner agencies was not to make urban spaces more compatible with Indigenous ways of life, but to assimilate Indigenous People. In a November 1962 issue of YWCA Canada’s national newsletter The Journal, for example, YWCA Canada’s executive director Agnes Roy reported on a recent trip to the Arctic, commenting:

It may be that through the YWCA we can create an enthusiasm among our members for the North, so that they will be interested in taking up positions as nurses, teachers or church workers. It may be possible that a YWCA staff person with recreational and group work skills, spending short periods in the northern communities, could help to enrich the lives of girls and women, developing their skills and interests, and giving them a link with girls and women around the world.[3]

In this way, the organization positioned itself as a service provider and a cultural intermediary wherein they assisted Indigenous women and girls with finding their place (read: assimilating) in European-Canadian society.[4]

Activities supported by YWCA Canada and its member associations

After the Second World War, the creation of rehabilitation divisions within provincial tuberculosis sanitariums became commonplace and included a range of activities like vocational counselling and training, placement guidance, aftercare supervision, and employment services.[5] Given their wealth of experience with employment counselling and job placement services, YWCA Canada and its member associations were well positioned to participate and their expertise was regularly drawn upon. A primary goal of rehabilitation programs was to “train patients to take a normal place in the business and social world.”[6]

According to a presentation made by Indian Affairs to the Canadian Tuberculosis Association in 1956, the goal of residences for Indigenous patients was to “give [them] the chance to learn trades that their physical condition will allow them to undertake. It is further recognized that the kind of work they will be able to do is found for the most part in industrial centres…. It is also essential to introduce them to life in the non-Indian community and help them to adjust to it.”[7] In other words, one of the primary functions of rehabilitation programs in Indian hospitals was to help Indigenous Peoples assimilate into the European-Canadian community and to prevent them from returning home.

The Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton started its rehabilitation division in 1955.[8] In April 1956, Camsell purchased a small bus to transport patients to programming like picnics, cooking lessons, and tour the city to visit “a few of the industries.” [9] Indian Affairs approached the Edmonton YWCA in the early 1950s to start working with Indigenous girls recently discharged from the hospital.

According to a report prepared for Indian Affairs by the Edmonton YWCA Youth Program Director in October 1955:

There is a group of nine girls now that we have set up a project for. We will not be able to do any activities with them in the line of sports for some time because the majority of the girls are not yet strong enough to participate. The girls are meeting at the Y on Wednesday afternoons and are doing copper pictures for their first project. [10]

The YWCA provided space and crafting supplies for girls from the hospital and school, and the Camsell Hospital sold the artwork in its gift shop. The proceeds from these sales were then “donated” to the hospital auxiliary. The Edmonton YWCA coordinated with other women’s service organizations in the city to support crafting activities for the patients at Camsell. In one instance, the IODE offered to serve tea for the girls from the hospital at the YWCA on Friday afternoons. The Edmonton YWCA suggested that instead of serving tea for the girls, the money could be donated to offset the cost of crafting materials.

The rehabilitation program at the Camsell also worked with girls discharged from the hospital, which typically included a long convalesce period lasting anywhere from three to six months in a rehabilitation home (also referred to as convalescent homes) under the supervision of Indian Affairs.[11] The Camsell operated two convalescent homes – one for women and one for men. Described as “leading the way,” the Camsell’s pilot project offered training in areas like barbering, hairdressing, lab and x-ray work, office skills, carpentry, and cabinet making. Younger patients were returned to residential schools following their discharge.

The Edmonton YWCA report also listed organizations, departments, and facilities that had requested their services:

• Indian Affairs Branch
• Charles Camsell Hospital
• Regional Office
• Dept. of City Welfare
• Family Service Bureau
• Fineview Home
• Dept. of Northern Affairs
• Edmonton Indian Agency
• Canadian Native Friendship Centre
• Catholic Indian and Metis Service

This list illustrates the many connections between voluntary organizations, service providers and organizations and the state, Indian Hospitals, and Residential Schools.

Why do these preliminary findings matter?

The kinds of assimilatory activities run by the YWCA, and other volunteer associations, were about providing material and ideological support for the Residential School and Indian Hospital system in Canada. The goal was to assimilate Indigenous patients and youth to European-Canadian life outside of Indian Hospitals and Residential Schools, including potential places of employment. We see this in a January 1964 report that reads “The girls from the Upgrading Class and the University girls somehow got into a chat session. It was wonderful to see the young ones who are just starting out gain encouragement and hope from just watching and talking with the ones who have obviously ‘made it’.”[12] The measure of Indigenous Peoples’ “making it” became assimilation through integration requiring the removal and disconnection of Indigenous Peoples from their culture, communities, and land. As in the Habkirk and Ferguson blog, our research implicates the everyday work of service organizations and their volunteers in supporting the colonial project. Where there were shortfalls of money or goods, we see women’s philanthropic work filling gaps. Knowing these histories and acknowledging these connections is integral to enacting Reconciliation because the “burden of truth-telling should not be placed on the shoulders of survivors. Reconciliation requires institutions, governments, and individuals to live up to their own responsibilities and complete and fulfill the TRC’s 94 calls to action. We must all learn the true history of Residential Schools, listen to Survivors and take a stand against those who would deny, distort and minimalize this history.”[13]

Kristin Burnett is a Professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University.

Shannon Stettner is a historian who works in the federal civil service.

Authors’ note: This research was supported by Project Grant from AMS Healthcare. 

---

[1] “Reports from Y.W.C.A. s and Y.M.C.A.-Y.W.C.A.s re: programs involving their Eskimo, Indian and Metis Membership and Communities across Canada,” January 1969, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs across Canada (1962-9), YWCA of Canada fonds, LAC.

[2] Heidi Bohaker and Franca Iacovetta, “Making Aboriginal People ‘Immigrants Too’: A Comparison of Citizenship Programs for Newcomers and Indigenous Peoples in Postwar Canada, 1940s-1960s,” The Canadian Historical Review, 90/2 (2009): 451-52.

[3] Agnes Roy, “Arctic Adventure,” The Journal (November 1962), 9.

[4] Mary Jane McCallum, Indigenous Women, Work, and History, 1940-1980 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2014). See also Mary Jane McCallum, To Make Good Canadians: Girl Guiding in Residential Schools, MA Thesis, Native Studies, Trent University, 2001.

[5] Katherine McCuaig, The Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret: The Campaign against Tuberculosis in Canada, 1900-1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 201. For a discussion of rehabilitation and disability more broadly see: Leah Morton, “‘It has impacted our lives in great measure’: Families, Patients, and Health Care during Manitoba’s Polio Era, 1929-1953,” (PhD Diss., University of Manitoba, 2013).

[6] McCuaig, The Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret, 201.

[7] Ottawa, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Claims and Historical Research Centre, fil L. 14, p.2, “Indian Rehabilitation and Integration Services that are being promoted by the Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration,” presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Tuberculosis Association at Niagara Falls, 16 May 1956. Cited in Drees, Healing Histories, 94.

[8] Drees, Healing Histories, 47-50. See also: Shawn Selway, Nobody Here Will Harm You: Mass Medical Evacuation From the Eastern Arctic, 1950-1965 (Hamilton: James Street North Books, 2016), 151-52.

[9] Report titled “Edmonton YWCA report on programming for Indian Young People,” February 1964, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs across Canada (1962-9), YWCA, LAC. 

[10] Report titled “Edmonton YWCA report on programming for Indian Young People,” February 1964, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs across Canada (1962-9), YWCA, LAC. 5

[11] “Rehabilitation Program Expands as Former Patients Prove Its Worth,” The Indian News (March 1957), 2.

[12] Report titled “Edmonton YWCA report on programming for Indian Young People,” February 1964, MG28-I198, Vol. 23, file 19 Indians and YWCAs across Canada (1962-9), YWCA, LAC. 

[13] NCTR, “Reconciliation Begins with a Commitment to Truth-Telling,” (29 September 2023): https://nctr.ca/research/reconciliation-begins-with-a-commitment-to-truth-telling/. [last accessed 17 November 2025].