Cadets, Curfews, and Compulsory Schooling: Mobilizing Anglophone Children in WWII Quebec

Abstract

The early 1940s constituted an important moment for youth in Quebec as social policy brought childhood and adolescence into sharper focus and the regulation of young people’s behaviour expanded in the name of the wartime emergency. Measures for the mobilization and discipline of children were fuelled by images of absent fathers, working mothers, and latch-key children, combined with the dramatically rising juvenile delinquency rate. Legislation mandating compulsory schooling and a curfew for juveniles permitted the state and its agencies to train and constrain children and youth at a moment when parental guidance and surveillance were ostensibly at their lowest point. Protestant schools directed coercive strategies and protective measures at school-age children in an exaggerated effort to create good children and patriotic citizens.