Canada recruited 3,000 Caribbean domestic workers, 1955-67

For 12 years, Canada ran an immigration program that opened a door to Caribbean women on one condition: they had to work in other people’s homes. The West Indian Domestic Scheme, which began in 1955, brought roughly 3,000 women from the Caribbean to Canada, according to Parks Canada and Ingenium, the national museums corporation.

It was a narrow door, and it was built against a backdrop of exclusion. Canada had tried to bar Black immigrants outright in 1911, as our earlier reporting on the never-enacted order-in-council documented. Ingenium notes that immigration of Caribbean domestic workers “did not resume until 1955,” after an earlier episode in which a precursor recruitment in 1911 brought 100 women from Guadeloupe to work in Quebec and was cancelled.

Who qualified

The scheme was set up between the Canadian government and governments in the English-speaking Caribbean, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Ingenium reports that the Caribbean governments took over the cost and responsibility of recruiting, training, medically testing and transporting the workers.

The criteria were strict. Ingenium says women had to be unmarried, between the ages of 18 and 35, and have an eighth-grade education. Parks Canada says applicants also had to pass a medical examination, which it describes as “a higher level of scrutiny compared to other immigration programs at the time.” The Canadian Encyclopedia reports that a yearly quota applied and that the first year brought 100 women, mostly from Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad. Ingenium lists Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago among the main source countries.

What the work was like

In exchange, the women received a path to permanent residence. Parks Canada says they were granted landed immigrant status after a year of domestic work and could sponsor family members. Ingenium says they were required to work for a year before leaving domestic service. Parks Canada reports that most chose Toronto or Montréal as their destination.

The conditions were often harder than promised. Parks Canada says the women faced “difficult work conditions, cultural differences, isolation, and racial discrimination,” and that they often worked longer hours for lower pay than they had been promised. Ingenium says women feared deportation if they reported their working conditions. The Canadian Encyclopedia, in a Historica Canada podcast episode produced in 2022, reports that a sponsorship letter in one account promised $200 a month while some women were paid $100.

The sources agree on the broad shape of the program but differ on some details. Parks Canada says “around 3,000” women took part, while Ingenium says “more than 3,000.” The Canadian Encyclopedia podcast says the scheme ran from 1955 to 1967 and ended with the immigration policy overhaul of 1967. Parks Canada, in a news release issued Feb. 8, 2025, says it was discontinued in 1968 as Canada moved to a points-based system. This article uses 1955 to 1967 where the sources agree and flags the gap here.

After the scheme

Ingenium reports that the government later stopped granting permanent residency to many domestic workers from the region and issued temporary visas instead. The Canadian Encyclopedia podcast describes a 1970s program that issued temporary visas with no promise of permanent residence. That shift ended the bargain the original scheme had offered.

The women themselves went on to shape the country. Jean Augustine, who migrated from Grenada to Canada in 1960 according to Parks Canada, became the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, as Ingenium notes. Her motion later made February Black History Month in Canada.

Ottawa has since recognized the program. On Feb. 8, 2025, Parks Canada announced a plaque at the Blackhurst Cultural Centre in Toronto commemorating the scheme as a national historic event. The release also says nearly 750,000 Canadians had Caribbean origins in the 2016 census.

The scheme sits within a longer record of Black Canadians pressing Ottawa to change who could enter the country. We reported on the 1954 Black delegation to Ottawa on immigration, a year before the scheme began. What the domestic scheme shows is that Canada’s opening to Caribbean women came with limits on their work and on their rights, even as it brought thousands of them to Canadian cities.

Pictured: File photo of Toronto City Hall. The photo does not depict the women of the scheme. Photo by Jerry Wei, Unsplash.

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Sources: Parks Canada news release, Feb. 8, 2025 (canada.ca); Ingenium, “It is all up to you! The West Indian Domestic Scheme in Canada (1955-1967)” (ingeniumcanada.org); The Canadian Encyclopedia / Historica Canada, “West Indian Domestic Scheme: Nurturing a Nation,” Jan. 18, 2022 (thecanadianencyclopedia.ca).