The CIHS marks International Women’s Day
We offer some material on our website that speaks to the role and place of women in Canadian immigration history.
In 2014, we published an article in the CIHS Bulletin No. 70 (page 1) which discussed the entry of women to the overseas and domestic immigration operations of the Canadian government. One of those officers, Elsa Amadio, replied to the article (Bulletin 71, page 8).
Ellen Fairclough was the first woman to be named as a cabinet minister in Canada and served as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration from 1958 to 1962. Among the developments that took place under her direction was the introduction of regulations to reduce racial discrimination in Canada’s immigration program.
Jean Edmonds was another trailblazer, being the first woman to be appointed to a senior rank in the federal public service. She joined Manpower and Immigration in 1966 and then returned to that department in 1973 as the Assistant Deputy Minister, Immigration. She later served as the head of the Task Force on Barriers to Women in the Public Service.
The Jean Edmonds Tower, the current Ottawa headquarters of IRCC, is named in her honour.
A biography on display in the foyer of “JETS” (Jean Edmonds Tower South), on Laurier Avenue West, reads in part: “Jean Edmonds, who died in 1994, changed the face of the Public Service forever.”
Dr. Sheena Trimble, whose doctoral thesis was entitled, “Femmes et politiques d’immigration au Canada (1945-1967): au-delà des assignations de genre?” (“Women and Canadian Immigration Policy (1945-1967): Beyond Assigned Gender Roles?”), also contributed a two-part article about women in Canada’s foreign service, summarized in Bulletin 100 (page 10).
The original articles (in French) can be found in Bulletin 74 (page 3) and Bulletin 75 (page 4).
As noted in a recent post, Ms. Elvire Westley wrote in 2017 of her experiences working at the Canadian embassy in Paris.
Finally, the winner of the 2023 Gunn Prize, Alexandros Balasis, in his essay “Voices of Migration: Exploring Agency within Canadian Immigration Policy and Greek Emigration Framework“, wrote:
“Furthermore, Greek women played the role of migration initiators, typically attributed to men.
This role was a source of pride to many…“