Document Details

This thesis examines the legal regulation of domestic workers in Canada from 1867 to 1940 with reference to immigration law and policy and labour law. In the thesis, domestic work serves as a site for an analysis of the role of law in regulating human activity. Domestics were protected in transit by criminal sanctions prohibiting the seduction of female passengers on ships sailing to Canada; as such, the law concerned itself with the virtue of domestics as potential mothers. Under labour law, however, the working conditions of domestics were not regulated. When new legislation was enacted at the end of World War I offering further protection to workers, especially working women, domestics were explicitly excluded on the grounds that they were "safe" within the family. In an attempt to improve their conditions of work, domestics unionized and lobbied the provincial governments for coverage under the minimum wage statutes, but legislators were unwilling to enact laws which would encroach on the private domain of the employing classes. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)