The Harsh Welcome of an Industrial City: Immigrant Women in Montreal, 1880–1900

Over the span 1880 to 1900, Montreal was a city of newcomers, a majority of them women, and most of them arrived before age 30 from Britain, Europe, the United States, or rural counties of Quebec and Ontario. Young people aged 15 to 29 accounted for a third of the population and half of the recorded labour force. The authors’ analyses of 1881 census data and a 5 per cent sample for 1901 uncover a wide range of factors affecting life transitions. A substantial increase in participation of young unmarried women in the waged labour force was made possible by shifts in the timing of life transitions: the ages at which girls left school, left home, entered the work force, and married. The schedule was affected by migration, and it differed among the three principal cultural communities — French-speaking Catholic, English-speaking Catholic, and Anglo-Protestant. All three groups of women increased their rates of participation in the labour force, but the distinctions based on cultural affiliation persisted in both the scheduling of life transitions and the kinds of work in which they engaged.