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At the intersection of the history of women’s movements, history of civil society, migration policy and social work, this article examines the approach that the women of the Canadian Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) took toward the issue of immigration and the work they undertook with migrants during the 1920s and 1930s. Following an initial time (from the 1870s to the post-war period), when the legal reform and the nationalization of immigration policies were predominant, a transnational approach to assisting immigrants emerged within the YWCA. In the context of the post-war period, when the federal state intervened in the reception of migrants and called for the closure of borders, the YWCA forged close ties with major international organizations rising in Europe. Transcending the imperial and national spheres, and orienting itself toward a less sectarian and no longer women-oriented action, throughout the 1930s the Canadian YWCA contributed to the emergence of a new humanitarian and transnational approach to assisting migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how religious and cultural stereotypes of India and Pakistan affected the perceptions and attitudes of Canadian policy-makers and the Diefenbaker government from 1957 to 1963. Canadian policy-makers initially believed that India's elites shared numerous commonalities with the West that were rooted in a shared language and a similar judicial and democratic parliamentary system. Through these 'commonalities' officials believed that India would align with the West as the Cold War intensified. Such assumptions proved to be ill-considered. The Indian government practised a doctrine of non-alignment in the 1950s, and senior Canadian officials regarded this as hypocritical and even anti-Western. By contrast, Pakistan aligned with the West and raised its anticommunist rhetoric. A growing pool of Canadian officials looked to Islam, Hinduism, and cultural stereotypes to explain why Pakistan differed from India and perceived the threat of communism in the same way as the West. These officials also re-evaluated the importance Ottawa placed on ties with New Delhi. The election of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in June 1957 hastened this trend. Diefenbaker viewed communism in binary terms and concluded that, unlike India, Pakistan was on the 'right side' in the Cold War. The Diefenbaker era saw Ottawa relegate India to the periphery of its foreign policy interests and bilateral relations with Pakistan at their apogee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1971, following a protracted and tumultuous debate, the Toronto Board of Education formally abolished the use of corporal punishment in its schools – the first Ontario board to do so. Corporal punishment continued to be employed elsewhere in Ontario and throughout Canada well into the 1980s, and the use of physical discipline was prohibited in all Canadian schools only in 2004, following a ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada. Why did educators and legislators defend corporal punishment for so long, and why did the tide turn in the last part of the twentieth century? Concentrating on legal and political dynamics, this article explores the ways in which the Toronto Board of Education grappled with the issue of corporal punishment in the three decades before its abolition. It seeks to situate the story of Toronto's approach to school discipline on the broader social landscape on which the battle over corporal punishment was conducted. It concludes that the particular configuration of the Toronto Board of Education following trustee elections in 1969 strongly affected the shape and outcome of the corporal punishment debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1958, the Canadian government has used the celebration of 1 July to promote particular models of national identity and to foster national unity. Commemorating the anniversary of Confederation, these Dominion Day and Canada Day (as renamed in 1982) observances changed over the decades to reflect changing government public policy objectives and new conceptions of the nation. From a celebration rooted in military pageantry stressing Canada's British heritage, these events were modified to promote a vision of a multicultural, bilingual country with a strong Aboriginal component. Moreover, Canada Day messages increasingly stressed the themes of individual achievement and respect for diversity. Although politicians played roles in determining the form and content of these events, and public response influenced which components were maintained, bureaucrats working in the Secretary of State department exercised a particularly strong influence on these celebrations, providing institutional continuity and expertise to planning efforts. These celebrations provide a key window into understanding the Canadian government's evolving cultural and national identity policies in the post–Second World War era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]