Child Labour In Canada During The 19th Century

In a modern society that views childhood as not only an important part of one’s life but as a fundamental growing stage, the idea of child labour has taken on a severely negative connotation; so much so that as consumers we attempt to remove ourselves from any countries that associate with this practice. However Canada during the late 19th and early 20th century used child labour as a major workforce and had 80’000 immigrant child workers migrating to Canada largely from Great Britain. The development and use of child labour during the 19th and early 20th century was a manifestation of the need for children to economically support their families, however it was the availability of children from mass rises in British immigration, supplemented

This was of course a transitionary measure and at the age of eight they would be gradually introduced to work in paper routes or farm tasks. These represented some of the smaller task which children took part in, as Boys In The Pits by McIntosh discovers, however numerous children were also being used in coal mines especially in regions such as Nova Scotia, These boys were exposed to numerous hazards such as collapsing mine shafts or dangerous gases, essentially the same dangers that any adult coal miner would face, this philosophy of treating children like adults was a common societal view they were even referred to by School Board Inspectors as “There were no children among the poor, only labour” and by visitors as “Labouring boys and girls… were treated like men” . This trade was particularly popular as it allowed for mines to cut costs by using a younger labour force, which they could pay drastically less than an adult worker. Moreover these children could be trained from a very young age and then transitioned directly into the adult labour force without the need for further training. Adults bringing their sons to the pits as a type of apprenticeship accomplished this process and allowed for the family to

During this time period several government policies were put in place to attempt to remove children from the workforce, these included removing children from position such as mining or dangerous manufacturing, these acts were very weak and were rarely enforced. This lack of control lead to a continuation of the use of children as a form of labour and had relatively little to no effect as children as young as 7 years old were still working in different capacities. It was not until 1933 that new laws come into existence that have any effect, these were mostly laws involving age, preventing children under the age of 14 – 16 depending on the province to take part in any form work. Further laws preventing certain types of work for different ages also became prevalent such as mine workers having to be a minimum of 18 years old and any work involving machinery had to be at least 16. Unfortunately these laws did not prevent the constant loss of lives and injuries during this time period. These injuries based on periodicals and government surveys seem to have been very frequent and seemingly unresolved after the effect. The Royal Commissions Survey displays these numbers with nearly all the cases they encounter