Daughters in the City: Mennonite Maids in Vancouver 1931 -1961

Description Ruth Derksen Siemens Fernwood Press ​In the early 1930s, young Mennonite women, mostly adolescents, began to arrive in Vancouver, seeking work as domestic servants. Most had recently come to Canada as refugees from Russia, having escaped the terror of Stalin’s regime. Their desperate families owed a substantial debt to the Canadian Pacific Railway for their journey. Daughters in the City chronicles the remarkable stories of these young women and the hundreds who followed them in the next three decades. Ruth Derksen Siemens assembles the history of two Girls Homes (Mädchenheime) in B.C.