Frontier Workers

Some of the most harshly exploited labourers were those in isolated frontier work camps in mining, lumbering and railway construction. Historians Robert Craig Brown and Ramsay Cook describe those working in railway construction as:

the navies, "foreign" and "white", who worked in clearing bush, mucking and laying the road beds for the railway builders. These workers, or bunkhouse men, often lived like indentured labourers. Their wages were low; their dependence on the contractor or sub-contractor for transportation, food, clothing and accommodation was nearly total and their ability to obtain redress of grievances was almost non-existent.11

Reacting to the harsh conditions in the work camps and to the neglect of frontier workers by governments, various private organizations began offering services, including educational ones, in northern areas. One of the most prominent was a pioneer adult education organization, the Reading Camp Association, later renamed Frontier College. The Rev. Alfred Fitzpatrick founded the Reading Camp Association in 1899 as a means of supplying reading materials, and later, basic literacy instruction and academic upgrading for workers in the isolated work camps in mining, lumbering and railway construction.12 Prominent in the membership of the organization were a number of the northern employers who maintained such camps. 13 They contributed a large share of the private donations that sustained it. Various churches and church members also contributed heavily to its work. 14 Early in the history of organization, the role of "laborer-teacher" was developed, by which university students and others worked at the same full-time jobs as the campmen during the day and provided instruction for them in off hours. 15

New Perspectives

The leaders of the organization, including Fitzpatrick and E.W. Bradwin (an early employee and later its head after the departure of Fitzpatrick in the 1920's), were influential through their work and writings in contributing to the development of two new perspectives on illiteracy. Other educators contributed to them, particularly in the decade of the 1920's, but no one else wrote as extensively as they.

The perspectives were developed in two distinct periods. The first emerged in the years from the founding of the Reading Camp Association in 1899 to about 1907, a period in which Canadian-born workers and British immigrants still outnumbered non-English speaking immigrants in the camps. Some important themes emerged in Fitzpatrick's and Bradwin's views during this time, relatively uninfluenced by the "immigrant question". The second perspective on illiteracy--in which the question of foreign labourers was central--emerged after Canadian immigration policies shifted, leading to the massive influx of Southern European workers in to the camps. We will now explore the first perspective on illiteracy.