World Refugee Day Thursday brings to mind a rather unlikely champion of refugees: Cairine Wilson, Canada’s first female senator.
This wealthy pillar of the Canadian establishment was the daughter of a Scottish-Canadian senator, Robert Mackay, and a conscientious worker for numerous community and national organizations before she was appointed Canada’s first woman senator by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Her unexpected elevation to the red chamber on Feb. 15, 1930 catapulted her onto the national stage and provided her with a forum for her left-of-centre views on social issues of the day, such as divorce and family allowances. This placed her firmly in the progressive ranks of her party, the Liberal Party, and sometimes even led her to oppose the views of her friend Mackenzie King and other influential Liberals.
However, it was by embracing the cause of refugees, many of whom were Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, that Wilson distanced herself from the values of the Canadian establishment and other élites. This mother of eight children had been president of the League of Nations Society in Canada for a year when she embarked on the most important campaign of her life: the fight to open Canada’s doors to throngs of desperate refugees seeking to escape the Nazi tide and build a a new life in Canada.
To help pry open these doors, Wilson spearheaded the establishment of the Canadian National Committee on Refugees (CNCR), which she headed for 10 years (1938-1948) as its first and only president. Through this organization, she waged a tireless struggle against isolationism and shortsightedness, carrying the battle into the halls of Parliament and the offices of government bureaucrats.
Unfortunately for the cause, this country in 1938 was mired in the Great Depression. As a result, both Canadians and their federal government strongly opposed large-scale immigration. With unemployment rampant, they took the view that immigration threatened scarce jobs. Coupled with this was a widespread reluctance to become involved in Europe’s quarrels and problems. Moreover, like their neighbours across the border, Canadians and their government did not wish to act as custodians of the world’s conscience. Although they could bring badly needed skills and talents, refugees were definitely not welcome.
It was against this background that Cairine Wilson first took up the cause of refugee immigration, no doubt partly motivated by the eviction of Mackays from their Sutherland crofts in 1818-19 during the infamous Scottish Clearances. There were, of course, other vocal proponents of a more liberal immigration policy. These included leading spokesmen for the Jewish community, newspaper editors and commentators in English-speaking Canada, prominent members of Protestant churches, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, particularly its leader M.J. Coldwell, and various pro-refugee organizations. The Canadian government and the population as a whole, though, were resolutely opposed to a liberal immigration policy that would have permitted the entry of significant numbers of refugees.
By the senator’s own account, she became deeply involved with refugees after the Munich Agreement (October 1938) and the subsequent arrival of the first group of Czechoslovakian refugees in Canada. There is no doubt that she was deeply affected by the plight of these newcomers because two years after their arrival she remarked in an address in Halifax, “Their lives have been very difficult and lonely, but they have been very courageous.”
Despite the formidable obstacles they faced, Wilson and the CNCR worked diligently to educate Canadians about the contributions that refugees could make to Canadian society and to bring about a liberalization of Canada’s highly restrictive immigration laws. She also lobbied hard to have individual refugees admitted to this country, often succeeding in this while losing the battle to bring about a more humane immigration policy.
Among the refugees whom she helped to bring to Canada were a Jewish, Viennese pediatrician and his wife. Catherine Mackenzie, then principal of Montreal’s High School for Girls, alerted the Senator to the couple’s plight. Immediately Cairine Wilson pulled the necessary strings and used her influence on behalf of the Gottliebs. Her efforts were not in vain because on Dec. 18, 1938, a jubilant Catherine Mackenzie wrote to the senator to thank her for her efforts.
Mackenzie then continued, “I admire your stand on the refugee question and deplore Dr. Manion’s (the leader of the federal Conservative party 1938-1940) even if it appears a popular vote-getter in the province of Quebec. It is easy to resent Germany’s treatment of the Jews when we do not open our doors to them, very cheap sympathy that!”
Among the countless refugees Cairine Wilson aided were anti-Nazi German, Austrian and Italian men and boys transported across the submarine-infested Atlantic to Canada during the Second World War and then interned in Canadian camps. Along with CNCR colleagues and representatives of the United Jewish Refugee and War Relief Agencies, she interviewed internees in the camps, helped to bring about an improvement in camp conditions and obtained the release of individual internees.
After the war, many of these highly educated refugees became Canadian citizens, thereby providing this country with one of its most remarkable pools of foreign-born talent.
Senator Wilson died on March 3, 1962. Today, she is usually remembered as Canada’s first female senator. But there is another title that she earned and was proud to carry. To thousands of those she helped to build a new life in Canada, Cairine Wilson was “Mother of the Refugees.”
Valerie Knowles i s an Ottawa freelance writer who has written a biography of Senator Cairine Wilson, First Person; a best-selling survey history of Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, now in its fourth edition (2016); and an award-winning biography of Sir William Van Horne, From Telegrapher to Titan .
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