Canada and the British immigrantWeaver, Emily P. (Emily Poynton)
History
Canada and the British immigrant
Weaver, Emily P. (Emily Poynton)
Canada -- Description and travel; Canada -- Economic conditions
An interesting fact in connection with all Canadian universities is that
a large proportion of their students are drawn from classes by no means
wealthy; and numbers of the undergraduates are “putting themselves
through,” as it is sometimes called. Many of these, having been engaged
as teachers or in some business, have saved a sum of money for the
payment of the expenses of part of their course. To eke this out, they
seek employment in the long summer vacation, which, happily for them,
coincides with the busy season, when men are in demand for every form of
work; and a resolute student usually finds something to do. If he is not
of the physique to go into the harvest fields, he may find employment as
a timekeeper over a gang of foreign labourers, a waiter in a summer
hotel, or a teacher in some scattered settlement which can only aspire
as yet to a summer school. Given reasonably good health, a determined
man will usually find or make a way to earn something in the summer; and
such are the men who make the most of what can be gained from their
hard-won courses of instruction in the winter.
At intervals people lift up their voices in protest over the readiness
with which poor men’s sons can rise into the professional classes, and
imagine that it accounts, in part at least, for the continuous movement
townward from the country districts; but there would surely be more loss
than gain to Canadian life in general if any class of young people could
be shut up by lack of wealth or other disability to the vocation of
their fathers. Canada, though it has a growing wealthy class, and, alas,
a growing submerged one, is a long way yet from the fixed “caste” idea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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