writing with scissors & arranging skin

325 Pages·2015·2.36 MB·English

WRITING WITH SCISSORS & ARRANGING SKIN: WORLDS OF WOE & HAPPINESS IN
THE CHILD WELFARE SCRAPBOOKS OF JOHN JOSEPH (J.J.) KELSO, 1893-1894
ONTARIO.

SEAN ROBERT GUISTINI

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Program in Education
York University
Toronto, Ontario

November 2014

© Sean Robert Guistini, 2014
Abstract
This dissertation examines the Scrapbooks on Child Welfare Issues complied by John Joseph
(J.J.) Kelso, Ontario’s first Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children. Kelso was
appointed to educate public sentiment following the passage of the 1893 Gibson Act that
introduced new laws and policies regarding child management, and promoted the proliferation of
the Children’s Aid Society across Ontario. I provide the historical context for a ‘snapshot’ of the
scrapbooks by focusing specifically on a fifteen-month period between 1893 and 1894. (The
scrapbooks were assembled over the period 1893 to 1940). I pay attention to what is archived,
including Kelso’s handwritten notations and reflections, to explore what Kelso might be serving,
and what is in service to him in his child-saving ideas and practices. The theoretical and
methodological framing is inspired by critical studies that view archives not simply as objective
depositories, but take seriously the notion of encountering the archives-as-process and subject.
Most notably I invoke Ann Stoler’s concern of the ‘emotional economy’ that underpins colonial
archiving practices. The theoretical influences variously borrow from Michel Foucault, Mikhail
Bakhtin, Northrop Frye, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, and Jacques Derrida who inspire a
reading of the artifacts that interlaces myth, the novel, body-culture, and Kelso’s personal
experience into the narratives of law and governance in the animation of subjects. I examine
Protestant culture, the liberal order, British Home Children, and Ontario’s pastoral history to
consider pervasive currents in Provincial culture that influenced Kelso’s mission and archival
choices. I explore how Kelso fabricates a personal archive alongside his professional mission of
educating public sentiment with regards to a new understanding of the “everyday” of childhood
experience in Ontario.

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Acknowledgements
I would like to first acknowledge the Faculty of Education at York University. It has been a
pleasure and an honour to learn from scholars whose commitment, curiosity, and creativity
inspired me for a decade. Many thanks to Harry Smaller, Steven Gates, Rishma Dunlop, Deborah
Britzman, and Geoffrey Reaume (in Critical Disability Studies) for their erudition and teaching. I
am indebted to Mary Leigh Morbey and Joy Mannette who supported my master’s work and
advocated my application to the doctoral program.
Thank you to Cynthia Comacchio for serving as my external examiner and for taking
special interest in the archival life of Little Johnny Conn. I am grateful to Aparna Mishra-Trac
and Craig Heron for their enlivening additions to my defense (never did I imagine a discussion of
Kelso would end up in such places!) A warm thanks to Lisa Farley for her careful reading, spot-
on suggestions, and purging of my semi-colons, and to Paul Axelrod for his historical sagacity,
generosity, and invaluable investment. An abundant thanks to my advisor Dan Yon – the
quintessential scholar and gentleman. He motivated my ethnographic adventure into the archives,
and oriented me when I got lost in their thickets. I am grateful for his chronic munificence,
enduring encouragement, and the countless conversations, curries, and coffees. This was a
magnificent partnership that I will forever cherish.
As I researched and wrote this dissertation I found myself thinking way, way back to my
elementary and high school teachers. Grade 4: Mr. Rowe had us transform our classroom into an
Egyptian tomb for what seemed like a month. His other vocation as a local historian and
archivist evidently had a profound effect on me. Grade 6 and 7: Miss Ward supported us through
reading Dickens’ Great Expectations, and demanded that we abandon classroom conventions on
“Wacky Wednesdays” and “Freaky Fridays.” Grade 8: Mr. Hansen compelled his students to
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appreciate the absurd, and directed us to belt-out songs from the Beatles, Godspell, and The Who
(while he emphatically led the vocal charge). High school English: Mr. Picone, a pilot who
confidently quoted Shakespeare while standing atop his desk and always instructed: “don’t think,
just write!” High school history: Mr. Vacca was so dedicated to making history come alive that
he had us sleep in Huronian longhouses in the dead of winter. All of these teachers are embedded
in this work and are the reason that I wanted to teach. I thank them for steeping me in the notion
of the past, igniting my curiosity, and engaging my faculties of education.
A shout-out to my dear friends (at times my Intemperance Union) whose company on
stools, patios, and in parks across Toronto served as a warm tonic and a welcomed reason to
reject the unhealthy attachment to my screen. Their friendship eased the anxiety wrought from a
pulsing, vacant cursor, and their support was vital in seeing this project to a completion. Thanks
to my brothers who are superb in their filial roles as elder kinsmen (i.e. they look out for me,
make me laugh, and keep me humble). Thank you to my folks: my mom who engendered a
historical sensibility and a love of words, and my dad the disposition of solitary craftsmanship.
Loving thanks to my dearest Kristy who patiently tripped over a precarious skyline of
books for two years. I am grateful for her understanding when child-saving made me
incorrigible, neglectful, and terribly independent.
And lastly to JJK: Thanks for the memories! Nov. 14. 14. SRG
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Table of Contents
Abstract ……… .............................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii
Notes to Reader .............................................................................................................................. vi
Preface: Hidden Histories ............................................................................................................... 1
Introduction: Writing With Scissors & Arranging Skin ................................................................. 7
SECTION I: Contexts: What is Kelso Serving? What is Serving Kelso? ................................ 24
Chapter 1: Mapping Intelligibilities of “Life” – Theory and Method .......................................... 24
Chapter 2: Child-Saving Written – Historiography ...................................................................... 59
Chapter 3: An Ontario Archive – Culture ..................................................................................... 83
SECTION II: The Scrapbooks: From Act to Action Upon Animated Action ........................ 124
Preface to the Scrapbooks ........................................................................................................... 124
Part i: “To Look After the Little Ones”................................................................................... 130
Chapter 4: With Curious Confidence .......................................................................................... 130
Chapter 5: Moods: Past Perfect – Present Tense – Future Uncertain ......................................... 156
Part ii: “Her Sphere Was a Little Difficult to Ascertain.” ....................................................... 187
Chapter 6: A World of Woe Within Reason ............................................................................... 195
Chapter 7: Carnal Knowledge & Its Death ................................................................................. 220
Part iii: “A World of Happiness” ............................................................................................ 252
Chapter 8: For Whom the Bell Tolls........................................................................................... 256
Chapter 9: Damsels Not in Distress ............................................................................................ 278
Conclusion: A Time Capsule of the Everyday ........................................................................... 294
References… ............................................................................................................................... 308

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Notes to Reader
In an effort to present the scrapbooks in a manner that represents Kelso’s imprint, I have
employed typographical cues.
Kelso’s Pen & Overlay
Kelso’s handwritten notes are presented in Times New Roman Bold Italic 12pt. This will
include publication names, dates, and his personal marginal notions and signatures.
Examples:
News, Aug 11, 1893. Advocated Juvenile Court at these meetings Oct 1893. K.

JJK. Empire, July 21. 9

Other markings represent Kelso’s highlighting of particular text and/or edits.
Examples:
{ }: when a portion of text has been put in parentheses or vertical lines have been made in the
margins alongside a text passage.
(r): represents a text edit in pen.
A labor of love (underline): portions of articles that have been underlined with pen.
He Says That – (strikethrough): portions that have been crossed out in pen.
Other Symbols
* - I include an asterisk where a part of text unreadable
Example: Globe, July *
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Preface: Hidden Histories
In a way this dissertation has been in development for 15 years. That is how long I worked with
people deemed incorrigible, delinquent, dependent, neglected, feeble-minded, and insane. I was
curious, confounded, and captivated from the first day on the job. This professional work,
predominantly through Toronto’s social service, justice, and mental health networks, promised
respite and re-creation for a subaltern-urban clientele in the glorified Ontario wilderness. I
facilitated outdoor experiences founded upon teamwork, challenge, character, and community.
Eventually I co-founded a charitable independent high school dedicated to students experiencing
difficulties and their attainment of credits through alternative models. As principal, the task of
dovetailing the organization’s approaches with Ministry of Education Curriculum was
surprisingly simple. This was not an effect of my skills. Rather, I came to sense it was because
the idea of “the outdoors” and the pervasive currents of Ontario culture have a common history
that is deeply entangled and entrenched. So much so that we don’t see it, it is hidden right in
front of us, like the provincial air we breathe.
The more I made promises to students that “getting out of the city” would foster growth
and well-being the more I became curious of the historical underwriting of my pedagogical sales
pitch. I increasingly troubled the cultural given that the outdoors was a panacea, and that “the
urban” was somehow a pejorative phenomenon for particular people. This dissertation is not
about outdoor education, although in some ways it has surprisingly become one, informing my
curiosities in exciting and unexpected ways. Most notably through J.J. Kelso’s role in
encouraging rural experiences for neglected and dependent children through his Provincial
adaptation of the American and British forms of Children’s Aid, Fresh Air Fund, and Poor
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Children’s Vacations; the hope was that these kids would love the countryside so much that they
would not want to return to the city. These projects still exist in their exact and similar forms,
although today Ontario does not imagine the management of children through farm and domestic
labour scenarios. Our contemporary ideas of childhood are fed from different interpretations of
historical formulas. I am interested in the discourses that remain despite and because of these
shifts in force relations. For those, like me, who contend that the outdoor educator is largely
ahistorical and lacking a stable subjectivity, Kelso is a good place to start an academic adventure,
for it seems we too have a hidden history. In many ways he is to the Ontario outdoor educator
what Egerton Ryerson is to the “traditional” classroom teacher.
In the spirit of adventure, I stumbled upon Kelso’s peculiar scrapbooks by chance whilst
seeking something else, namely the punishment records of the Victorian Industrial School for
Boys at Mimico1 and the inmate descriptions of the boys at the Penetanguishene Reformatory.2 I
was looking for documents which might offer a closer sense of who these children were who
were committed, interned, and “routed” across Ontario in the late nineteenth century. I was
curious about “incorrigibility,” “delinquency,” “neglect,” and “dependency.” I was curious about
what these ideas looked like when branded upon a young person, and the fluidity of
interpretation in particular places. Admittedly, my historical sense was seduced and titillated by
the aged forms filled with inky hand-written notes that bled over the lines, the descriptions of
infractions – stealing berries, talking in line, masturbation – and their consequent punishments:
whippings and “walks.” I was taken with the young ages of some of the lads, the descriptions of
the adventures that sealed their individual fates, whether they smoked at the age of eight, if their

1 “Victoria Industrial School register of offences and punishments” (1894-1902), Archives of Ontario (AO), RG 8-
51.
2 “Ontario Reformatory for Boys Inmates’ Histories” (1897-1902), AO, RG 8-52.
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parents where alive or dead, Presbyterian or “colored,” and the unbelievably long sentences for
seemingly benign charges in a contemporary context. These archives offered compelling reading
yet lacked the density and breadth to support the project I held in my imagination. They lived
more in the margins and footnotes of the story I hoped to tell, although their space-time
experiences are very much alive in this project.3 Most vitally, these documents introduced me to
the seductive disposition of the archive and the possibility of a richer intimacy with the past than
secondary literature or a purely extractive, documentary approach. In my excitement, I knew I
was afflicted with a strain of what Jacques Derrida calls “archive fever.”
Seduction and intimacy may not immediately register as experiential effects of the
Archives of Ontario, annexed amidst the aesthetic of York University’s chronic-construction and
cacophonous concrete campus, yet I gleaned that this was an effect of what Ann Stoler refers to
as the “feel of documents,”4 what I was experiencing as the texture of text, what Kathleen
Stewart discusses in the life of things that have been used in the past – the uncanny power that
time invests in an artifact5 - and the storied, strangely hopeful expectations of nostalgia, the death
and loss that anxiously keeps the archive alive. This allure of the archives is tricky. It is a curious
passion brewing with intellectual and dramatic anticipation. We want so badly for them to tell us
stories, to reveal and surprise, not so much to tell the truth or what really happened. To conjure
Benjamin and Ranke: “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize ‘it the way

3 For instance, I found Victoria Industrial School letterhead with a logo which said “Play the Game” embedded in an
icon below a beaming sun. “Industrial Schools Association of Toronto Fonds” (1884-1939; 1947), AO, F 808-4.
4 Stoler: “This book is about the force of writing and the feel of documents, about lettered governance and written
traces colonial lives. It is about commitments to paper, and the political and personal work that such inscriptions
perform. Not least, it is about colonial archives as sites of the expectant and conjured – about dreams of comforting
futures and foreboding future failures.” Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 1.
5 A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in An Other America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
1996).
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it really was.’”6 We want some type of story that will steep us in the past, one where our
narrative expectations are both confirmed and surprised, where death is not really death, where
the passage of time means that people aren’t really real. They are real characters. And in this way
archives succeed. Thinking with Northrop Frye they are the marrow of our cultural tales, trusted
archetypes, religio, they generate “national” myth-symbol complexes, and confirm “myths of
concern and freedom.”7 Archives guide the stories that are told and projected into the future –
our collective and aggregate memories imprinted on the produce of an exploited wilderness,
carefully organized, filed, housed, and protected: an arche of our cultural covenant. They
confirm what we know and feel, and stir up epistemic anxieties of what we culturally embody,
but may know or feel differently.
When, through the logic and power of chance, I found four microfilms entitled
“Scrapbooks on Child Welfare Issues,” threaded them into the irresistible computer interface,
and began to view them, I was affected by these same feelings – an artifactual pull – a desire to
get closer. All I could imagine was this man, Kelso, alone, carefully inspecting and sifting
through reams of cropped clippings, with pen in hand, collecting, noting, and collaging, lonely
and compelled, feverish. I was struck by the density of this collection spanning from 1893 to
1940 over nineteen volumes, the hand-cut and pasted articles and circulars in the thousands, the
hand-written notations of a seemingly single person. The hobby-like unofficialness, pen-marked
edits over the extant text, margined reflections, and excessive and obsessive single-mindedness
presented a particular, peculiar, and eerie abundance that I suspected was more than enough to
warrant specific attention. This embodied collection, only entered into the Archives of Ontario in

6 Walter Benjamin and Leopold von Ranke quoted in Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History
of the Senses (London: Routledge, 1993), 39.
7 Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology (Harcourt Brace & World, 1963), 33.
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