Dossier f23 - Ferguson, Edith

File consists of a recording of Edith Ferguson. Topics of the conversation include application for highschool teaching positions,1932-41; unhappy employment at lower salary in public schools. Teaching career seen in rural Ontario childhood as least of three possible evils (nursing, stenography); decision to quit and enter social work (inspired by women professionals' programme of talks to women students, arranged by Queen's Dean of Women Hilda Laird). Attendance at School of Social Work, Univ. of Toronto; temporary employment in Hamilton community centre. 'Bitty' employment, Toronto, 1938-41 (supply-teaching, clerical work, reading to blind person); job-hunting, extensive reading. Employment in munitions plant (1941-43) as personnel interviewer, as factory worker till contraction of dermatitis (occupational hazard). YMCA employment as assistant organiser, armed services recreation programmes; transfer to Scotland; details of services. Application, eager for adventure, to United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration programme (London); clerical posting to British Zone, Germany, duties as welfare officer in displaced persons camps. Poor housing in camps; multinational population, administration; multilingual atmosphere; social life and travel commitments of administrators. Return to Canada, 1947; two months' residence with mother; undesirable, uneconomical employment as caseworker, Toronto Children's Aid Society. Transfer to Columbia Univ. for MA in Adult Education; completion of degree by two summers' fulltime study, one-year's part­ time coursework combined with overload of menial employment (I don't think I've ever worked so hard before or since'). Return to Canada, renewed unemployment, residence with mother; cornering of community organisation and adult education jobs, seen as new fields in Canada, by men; postwar job priority accorded to men. Seasonal employment with Ontario Farm Radio Forum; summer employment with Canadian Association for Adult Education; temporary employment with Canadian Citizenship Council, as Canadian immigration counsellor in International Refugee Organisation camps, Germany. Improvement in camp conditions since previous employment. Employment as assistant to Director, Windsor Social Planning Council, 1952-60; enjoyment of community service committee activities (housing, mental health, immigration, unemployment), widespread conference participation. //Resignation from WSPC; recognition of personal restlessness, disinclination to stagnate, tendency to succession of short-term jobs combined with assiduous job-hunting. One-year employment as Director of community centre for established 'Black' community and newcomer West Indians (Toronto), problems integrating downtrodden 'Blacks' with self-confident West Indians. Fifteen-month stint as committee worker on Metropolitan Toronto Social Planning Council; pursuit of interest in immigration, despite expectation of remaining with SPC till retirement. Previous inability to find work in self-acknowledged field of immigration because of Canadian lack of understanding of immigrant problems, consequent lack of services. Sacrifice of job security for two-year appointment as special project supervisor, International Institute of Metropolitan Toronto; challenge of reorienting post-WWII immigrant services to accommodate new wave of Mediterranean rural immigrants. Widely publicized report Newcomers in Transition, leading to second two-year project (male-oriented) to convert unskilled immigrant people into semi-skilled workers; summary report Newcomers and New Learning. Two years' work with eight temporary employers: YMCA national headquarters, St. Christopher House (settlement house), Canadian Council on Social Development, Canadian Association of Social Workers, Toronto City Planning Dept., Cradleship Crèche day-nursery, Board of Education truancy department, Royal Commission on Status of Women. Brief return to Metropolitan Toronto Social Planning Council; five months' temporary survey work with Dept. of Manpower and Immigration. Critical report Immigrant Integration (directed at Ontario government), prepared for independent Ontario Economic Council; subject's pride in extra funds allotted to provincial immigration dept. as result of her recommendations. Employment since 1971: preparation of handbook for immigrants (Ministry of Community and Social Services); report on migrants, People on the Move (Canadian Council on Social Development); task force survey, Secretary of State dept.; seasonal employment, Ministry of Culture and Recreation; as organiser of intercultural seminars in ten Toronto cultural neighbourhoods, helping community workers and immigrants to understand each other; preparing publications for Guidance Section, Faculty of Education, Univ. of Toronto. Subject's 'outstanding woman' award, Province of Ontario (International Women's Year), election to Order of Canada. Precariousness, financial uncertainty of subject's career; motto 'I'd rather be dead than be bored', readiness to quit work which proved unsatisfactory. Mushrooming of immigration services in subject's time; dismay at lack of interest shown in beginning stages, social workers' insensitivity to immigrant problems. Smooth sailing of subject's career following Toronto professional recognition. Quebec separatist issue seen in light of larger multiculturalism issue; Canada as a country still in process of building, assimilating. Changes in Canadian social life since Depression era: self-reliance, resourcefulness of earlier social gatherings (subject's organ accompaniment to brother's fiddle numbers at Depression barn dances); greater sociabiIity, inexpensive fun, 'just plain visiting' of recently bygone Canadian era.