The Farm Family

There was considerable Canadian demand for British child immigrants throughout the 50 years after Confederation, and it remained at a high level even during periods of economic recession. In order to appreciate why these demands were so insistent it is necessary to explore the nature of the Canadian farm family economy.

Most British immigrant children were placed in rural areas and overwhelmingly on farms. This is explained by the persistent shortages of farm labour that were endlessly reported by the immigration agents stationed across the country. What most farmers wanted was a ready supply of cheap casual labour that could be hired and fired according to the tempo of the year's work. Short growing seasons made it uneconomical to retain people on a permanent footing, especially on small farms. Indeed, the relatively small size of Canadian farms was a major factor that shaped this demand for casual labour. In its turn the size of farms was much influenced by the land grant systems. While the overriding aim was to encourage settlement, there were limits to what an individual settler family could be expected to do, especially those with little or no capital. The size of allocations was fixed accordingly – typically less than 200 acres. Families were granted what they could manage by dint of hard work and some occasional help. Additional land was acquired when farms prospered and other plots were bought and sold, but the initial and pervasive influence on the size of farms in the older provinces was the point of physical exhaustion of the family unit.

Table 1 shows the percentage distribution of farm sizes between 1871 and 1921. Not until the 1911 Census were more than half of Canadian farms recorded as being larger than 100 acres. In the earlier years there was little difference in the size of holdings in the various provinces but, as the west was developed, pronounced differences began to emerge. In the prairies farms were significantly larger and became larger still, whereas in the more established areas they generally remained small. The enlarged scale of western farming was facilitated by mechanisation and also by the importation of more capital and by various forms of co-operative enterprise. Table 2 illustrates these differences and changes.