Blazing the Trail and Setting the Pace: Central Neighborhood House and its Outreach to Italian Immigrants in Toronto: 1911-1929

The importance of immigrants in the outreach programmes of North American settlements 1s well known.The activities of Hull House in Chicago or of the Henry Street Settlement in New York have been described and their immigrant programmes detailed in contemporary and historical studies."Less known, however, is the response of the immigrants themselves to the settlements' outreach in the pre-World War II period.This paper will address this issue in an examination of Toronto's Central Neighborhood House (CNH), a non-denominational settlement located in the core of the city's "foreign quarter", the downtown "Ward".The House was among the first Canadian social settlements established and the first organized explicitly for the use and "uplift" of non-English speaking immigrants.Two broad questions will be treated in turn:(1) What function did CNH serve in the Ward?What were its aims and objectives with special reference to the Italian immigrants of the district?(11) What did the immigrants themselves make of the settlement?How did the Italian first generation, and the Italian young in particular, respond?To what extent did the settlement actually succeed in its "outreach" programme as outlined in its aims and objectives?Beginning in the summer of 1909 and concluding the following summer, an extensive survey of the spiritual, social and economic conditions of the Ward was conducted by students of Victoria College at the University of Toronto.Anticipating the results of the more famous Hastings Report of 1911, the survey statistically reaffirmed the already well known picture of the 1911, Kelso, Bryce and Burnett in association with members of the Toronto Playgrounds Association, the National Council of Women, concerned philanthropic businessmen and a Jewish and Catholic representative gathered formally in Toronto's City Hall to draw up a statement of intent and to chart the future course of the fledgling settlement.As a point of priority, the non-denominational character of the settlement was very early affirmed.The new institution, Kelso explained, was neither a mission nor a charity; rather --in a concerted effort to distance the settlement from the variety of proselytizing agencies in the district--he stressed that workers "emphasize matters of common agreement instead of making prominent the points of greatest difference."*Agreed as to what the settlement was not, the organizers proceeded to define what it was.Organized as a community social centre, Central Neighborhood House was to serve --first and foremost--as a "neighborhood force" where, in Kelso's words, "the varying social needs of all are catered to in a spirit of comradeship and goodwill and with an entire absence of the charity and patronizing spirit."Much like Hull House, on which it was modelled, the settlement was to be a "democratic meeting-place", a place where "[p]eople of all races, creeds and stages of culture could get together and come to a better understanding [of each other]."°Underlying these sentiments was the expressed belief in the "oneness" or "kinship of humanity"; as Alice Chown, an early exponent of social settlements and CNH resident explained, "the essential likeness

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