Perspective: Single Women

Throughout Canada's immigration history, single women have made up a sizeable proportion of immigrants. Single women chose to immigrate to better their occupational status, avoid marriages at home or find new opportunities abroad, or take advantage of the travel opportunities presented with domestic work. Indeed, some women signed on with companies to become domestic servants in order to gain the generous travel subsidies, and sometimes free return passage, to Canada. During the periods of restriction in the 1920s, single women from the "non-preferred" areas of Europe took advantage of allowances made to domestic servants to come to Canada.

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