The Montreal Council of Social Agencies: A Legitimizing Force for Working Women in the Great Depression

The Montreal Council of Social Agencies (M.C.S.A.), an umbrella relief co-ordinating organization for English-speaking Protestant and non-sectarian working class families in the 1930s, was formed in 1921 by John Howard Toynbee Falk, head of McGill University's Department of Social Studies, later to be known as the McGill University School of Social Workers. The author explores the positive impacts that the M.C.S.A had on Anglophone Montreal women during the Great Depression by legitimizing working women's role in society, which coincided with the concurrent credibility of social work as a profession. She points out that the M.C.S.A exposed and legitimized previously hidden aspects of working-class Anglo-Protestant women's lives in Montreal, particularly the economic role of young working women, the importance of paid domestic labour in the household economy, and the dependence of elderly women on kinship networks.

Historical Discourses: The McGill History Undergraduate Journal

Vol. 28

163-171

2013-2014

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