The Social Origins of the Welfare State: Québec Families, Compulsory Education, and Family Allowances, 1940–1955

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the former editor of the journal, Ontario History. He is the author
of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality, Canadian History to
1967, and Marriage of Minds: Isabel and Osc

The French language, more than English, manages to convey one of the key
departures of the 20th century in clearer manner. In English we speak of
the development of the “welfare state,” but the expression “état
providence” in French suggests the way in which state activities grew
to support more people in the years following World War I. This vital
departure in government activities lay at the root of Carleton history
professor Dominique Marshall’s 1998 book that brought together a study
of compulsory education and family allowances in Quebec since they
arrived almost simultaneously in 1943 and 1944. Because the
methodological sophistication and archival completeness of Marshall’s
work made it an exemplar of the ways in which family history has come to
be written, it is fitting that it should reappear in an excellent
translation created by McGill University’s Nicola Danby.

It is astounding to think that little more than a half-century ago
Quebec still had not required compulsory education—something that came
to Ontario, in contrast, in 1872. The decision to require all children
to attend school beginning in 1943 held important implications for
attitudes toward childhood, the family, and the labour force. The
arrival of family allowances the next year reinforced these essential
changes. Since the allowances were paid to mothers to assist them in
rearing children, the role of women in society also began to alter
dramatically. These developments are handled expertly by Dominique
Marshall, although it is hard to see why she ended her study in 1955
even while arguing that these changes prefaced the Quiet Revolution of
the 1960s.

The Social Origins of the Welfare State makes a fine contribution to
our understanding of an important juncture in Canada’s history and
makes us think about how the past is truly a foreign country.