The Winnipeg Jewish Orphanage only existed for thirty five years, but it deeply affected the lives of numerous children, parents, staff and volunteers, and helped shape perceptions of Western Canadian Jews in early twentieth century Canada. At the time of its closure in 1948 the Winnipeg Jewish Orphanage had housed Jewish children who had been assembled from a territory that stretched from northwestern Ontario to British Columbia, and had acted as an orphanage for parent-less children, a boarding school for rural middle-class children, and as a temporary shelter for children whose families were experiencing a short-term crisis. In this dissertation, I argue that the Orphanage was founded in order to ensure that Jewish children were not placed in Christian missionizing childcare institutions, but also to achieve the secondary goal of making the Jewish community a modern participant in the Canadian state and society.

In writing this dissertation, I was privileged to be able to consult the Orphanage’s Children’s Records, which contained detailed information about the circumstances that brought families to the Orphanage, as well as the lives of the children during and after their time in the institution. These records show that poor families faced significant challenges, and that the power of the staff and volunteers of the Jewish Orphanage to help children was limited by the boundaries established by the state. Yet the staff of the Jewish Orphanage were able to use their influence and knowledge to broker between the powers of the state, other charities and vulnerable families. Similarly, boundaries established within Judaism were also challenged by the Orphanage resulting in strengthened Jewish identities for the children, and religious innovations. Although it was in existence for only a short period of time, the Winnipeg Jewish Orphanage’s history reveals the strategies used by this ethno-religious community to successfully navigate the development of the modern liberal Canadian state.