Gender, class and ethnicity in the organization of neighbourhood and nation, the role of Toronto's settlement houses in the formation of the Canadian state, 1902 to 1914

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis explores the development of Toronto's settlement movement from the turn of the century to the advent of World War One. The movement in Toronto originally evolved out of the desire of some citizens, most of whom were well educated young women, to help improve the lives of the poor. Settlement organizers and their staffs wanted to reconnect the 'masses' with the 'classes,' and to (re)create a cooperative community in which individuals worked to benefit their neighbours and to develop themselves. The movement was founded on the belief that charity only sustained and perhaps even augmented inter-class fears and misunderstandings. Far better, settlement workers maintained, for educated middle-class women and men to help the poor and the immigrant by offering leadership, practical services, and inspiring models--in short, by providing what were considered to be the tools of self-help in the early twentieth century. Settlement work was focused on citizenship training. Through their clubs and classes, and through the services they extended to their neighbourhoods, settlement workers sought to inculcate their clientele with democratic ideals and the norms of class and gender relations in a capitalist state. But the settlements were also intent on implanting within the middle class an ideal of cooperative citizenship, which demanded that those who possessed wealth and education should act, in a very personal way, as leaders in their communities. The essence of the movement was a belief in the interdependence of all members of a community. The thesis argues that Toronto's settlement movement influenced the formation of the Canadian state in two important ways: it helped to create prototypical approaches to poverty and to the assimilation of non-Anglo-Celtic immigrants - many of which were later institutionalized within the state system; and it provided both settlement workers and their clients with the opportunity to modify relations of class, gender and ethnicity. Through these means settlement workers, benefactors and clients contributed to Canadian state formation at both the institutional and the ideological levels. Ultimately, the thesis presents Toronto's settlement house movement as a crucible for a developing ideology of citizenship.Ph.D