“So often a long-awaited book is disappointing. Happily such is not the case with Sutherland’s masterpiece.” Robert M. Stamp, University of Calgary, in The Canadian Historical Review
“Sutherland’s work is destined to be a landmark in Canadian history, both as a first in its particular field and as a standard reference text.” J. Stewart Hardy, University of Alberta, in Alberta Journal of Educational Research
Such were the reviewers’ comments when Neil Sutherland’s groundbreaking book was first published. Now reissued in Wilfrid Laurier University Press’s new series “Studies in Childhood and Family in Canada,” with a new introduction by series editor Cynthia Comacchio, this book remains relevant today. In the late nineteenth century a new generation of reformers committed itself to a program of social improvement based on the more effective upbringing of all children. In Children in English-Canadian Society, Neil Sutherland examines, with a keen eye, the growth of the public health movement and its various efforts at improving the health of children.

Neil Sutherland served for 37 years in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Educational Studies. He was the principal investigator of the Canadian Childhood History Project located at UBC, and has published articles, reviews and a number of books, most recently Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada from the Great War to the Age of Television. He is the author of Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth-Century Consensus(WLU Press, 2000)

Neil Sutherland's profile page

Cynthia Comacchio's research focuses on the history of children/childhood and youth in Canada, late 19th to 21st centuries. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of a Modern Canada, 1920-50 (WLU Press, 2008) and Ring Around the Maple: Settler Children in Canada, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (WLU Press, 2024).

Cynthia R. Comacchio's profile page

Sutherland has undertaken an ambitious project, and from this reviewers perspective, he has been successful in achieving his goal. He has been able to pull together three different reform movements that focused their attention on the reordering of family life. He is adept in his use of examples, be it a disease such as diphtheria, a school such as the Albert Kelso, or cities such as Winnipeg, Hamilton, Toronto, or Vancouver. It should also be pointed out that Sutherland places the Canadian scene in an international perspective, something that is often lacking in American educational studies.

Harvey G. Neufeldt, <i>Educational Studies</i>

Dr. Sutherland vividly conveys the impact of an amazing variety of reforms through a judicious use of case studies and representative illustrations. This pioneering study of attitudes and policies towards children is primarily concerned with the agencies that were created and revised to reflect the attitudes of reformers. Commendably, the author escapes the dryness and tedium that so often characterizes institutional studies.

Judith Fingard, <i>BC Historical News</i>