Kingdom maintained its colonial rule
over a significant number of Caribbean
islands. Black people whose ancestors
had been stolen by the British and
forced into slavery in the Caribbean
had so little opportunity on the islands
that they had to consider labouring
in Canada, yet another outpost of the
so-called Commonwealth.
The thousands of Black Caribbean
women who served as domestic work-
ers in Canada after World War II paved
the way for many other Black people
to land here. These Black women also
made it possible for white women in
postwar Canada to improve their skills
and education, and in some cases to
join the workforce. In the words of Bee
Quammie, a journalist whose mother
immigrated from Jamaica for work in
the 1980s, “The disregarded work of
women like Black Caribbean domes-
tics enabled previous and current gen-
erations of white Canadian women to
progress and be included.”
The late Dr. Agnes Calliste, a profes-
sor of sociology and anthropology,
observed that Canada’s immigration
policy for Caribbean Blacks from 1950
to 1962 was based upon “a demand
for cheap labour, a desire to exclude
blacks as permanent settlers and a
need to appease Caribbean people in
order to further Canada’s trade and
investments in the British Caribbean.”
British and French subjects from the
Caribbean and other “non-white”
countries “could only enter under spe-
cial arrangement or if they satisfied the
immigration minister that they were
suitable immigrants.”
White women who wanted to
partici pate in Canada’s growing econ-
omy—in factories, hospitals, offices
and schools—drove the demand forBlack immigrant domestic workers.
These white women needed someone
to look after their children as they joined
the workforce. Black women admitted
as domestic workers confronted racist
rules that kept them out of more lucra-
tive professions like nursing. Many of
these rules had been in existence before
their arrival, as documented by Joan
Lesmond, a former president of the Reg-
istered Nurses’ Association of Ontario
and herself an immigrant from St. Lucia.
Take, for instance, Toronto-born Ber-
nice Redmon, who wanted to become
a nurse but was refused entry to nursingBUT BLACK WOMEN CONFRONTED RACIST
RULES THAT KEPT THEM OUT OF MORE
LUCRATIVE PROFESSIONS LIKE NURSING.
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