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From:
Subject: 'Assisted immigrant'
Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 20:39:57 -0600


Greetings all.

I'm researching the family history of my grandmother. Her Form 30
document (arrivals in Canada between 1919 and 1925) states that she
was an 'assisted immigrant'.

I had assumed that this meant she had entered Canada from England
under one of the programs meant to subsidise passage of immigrants
in order to populate the Prairies.

However, in discussing this on the Manitoba Rootsweb forum, it appears
that she may instead have been a war bride, and that her passage was
subsidised or paid for in its entirety by the War Department.

She had married my grandfather in London in 1919. He was originally from
England but had first arrived in Canada about 1906 as a young man of 18.
He enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1915 and was sent
overseas to France as a member of the Vancouver Regiment, or Tobin's
Tigers as they were known.

At the end of WWI, he was demobilised in England and returned to his
parent's home in London. My grandmother was working there as a domestic
servant as my great-grandparents were elderly by 1919. They were married
in the late summer of 1919 and continued living in London. In July 1920,
they boarded the C.P. Ocean Navigation ship S.S. Scotian and embarked
for Quebec, with their ultimate destination being Bowsman River, Manitoba.
My grandmother on embarkation was 8 months pregnant with my eldest uncle,
so it must have been quite the ocean voyage and train ride.

This would have been my grandfather's repatriation voyage back to Canada,
so is it possible that in this context the term 'assisted immigrant' would
mean my grandmother's passage was assisted because she was now the wife of
a WWI veteran?

If that is indeed the case, would there be an archive of case files for
this
assistance program? I'd like to find out as much as possible about the
assistance my grandmother received because her life before her marriage to
my grandfather is a big mystery and I'm hoping the details of an assistance
case file might give me some clues.

Thanks very much for any pointers.

Kind regards,
Brian Grainger
Fort McMurray, AB
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