In 1932 a total of 365 children of the Doukhobor sect known
as Sons of Freedom were taken into custodial care by the provincial
government of British Columbia while their parents were undergoing penal
servitude. This thesis is a study of that episode in the history of
child care in British Columbia. It deals primarily with the problems
that were met in administering this emergency child welfare programme.
These children were admitted to non-ward care by the Superintendent
of Neglected Children and placed in Vancouver, New Westminster
and Victoria for a period of one year. The Children's Aid Society of
Vancouver cared for 119 children ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years.
These children were all placed in approved foster homes by that agency.
The Alexandra Orphanage, Vancouver, the Loyal Protestant Home, New Westminster,
and the B.C. Protestant Orphans Home, Victoria, cared for a
total of 75 children in the age group of 3 to 9 years, within their
institutional facilities. The Provincial Industrial School for Girls
and the Provincial Industrial School for Boys accepted 75 and 92 children
respectively. These children ranged in age from 7 to 18 years and were
segregated from the regular inmates who were committed to the industrial
schools on authority of the juvenile court.
The agency and institutions undertook the immediate responsibility
of caring for these children. Physical and emotional well-being
were maintained, and the customs and beliefs of the Sons of Freedom were
respected wherever possible. Thus, when the children were returned to the Doukhobor colonies no serious problems of re-adjustment were encountered.
The parents had been penalized for their refusal to recognize
man-made laws, and the provincial authorities hoped that these placements
would serve to instruct the children in the rights and obligations of
Canadian citizenship. In this the experiment was ineffective. If the
agency and institutions had seriously endearoured to re-educate the
children, emotional conflicts would have arisen when the Doukhobor
families were re-united. The children would have been torn between their
desire to conform to the wishes and beliefs of their parents and to their
newly acquired ideologies. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/41493 |
| Date | January 1947 |
| Creators | Hooper, Ronald Henry Clarke |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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