Guiding Canada's Girls Toward the Empire
Authors: Mulholland Caitlin 
Published: April 2024

Through a critical analysis of Guiding's official programming books, the hierarchy of its organizational structure, and scholarly works on the history of the Guiding and Scouting Movements in Britain and Canada, this paper explores the early development of the Girl Guides of Canada; analyzing the early 20th century public's shifting views on girlhood and examining the relationship between Guiding and the British Empire. The central thesis of this essay is that the organization was originally founded in 1910 with a strict, conservative gender ideology and a strong imperial connection, but changed its messaging during the Interwar Period to reflect emerging modern notions of girlhood and imperialism; while still retaining its core values in its official programming.
Born out of the Scouting Movement of Great Britain, the Girl Guides of Canada were originally founded with the intention of preparing young girls for a domestic life; serving the British Empire by being dutiful wives and mothers. The organization's mission was to address the public's anxiety surrounding modern girlhood. As new economic and leisure opportunities appeared for women and girls in Canada's urban areas, so did the fear that these working women would lead lives of promiscuity, potentially causing the breakdown of domestic life. Guiding sought to prevent this issue by taking up young girls' spare time with gendered instruction on subjects such as how to run a home and the role of women in the British Empire. This messaging and ideology was incredibly popular at the time, and the Guiding movement spread like wildfire.
Following the First World War, the Canadian public's views on the role of girls and the British Empire were changing: through Guiding's wartime volunteer efforts, girls had proven themselves to be capable of much more than domestic instruction, and Canada began to question its place within the empire. The emergence of alternative youth movements, with a specific focus on physical training and fostering a Canadian national identity, reflected this change. In response to these developments, the Girl Guides released introduced international camps with messaging surrounding peace and international friendship, and promoted a more progressive view of girls with new badges and activities. This new rhetoric made the movement more appealing to a wider array of girls, but only obscured the organizations original values of imperialism and domesticity. The structure of the organization still adhered to a hierarchy that favoured British Girl Guides, with the Canadian arm taking all direction from Britain. Upon analysis of Guiding's programming books, it is also clear that gendered instruction was still the primary focus of the organization. This paper also examines how Canadian Girl Guides' programming was used to naturalize and assimilate girls who did not fit the Empire's idealized model of white womanhood, such as Indigenous girls attending residential schools and girls from immigrant households, further complicating its notion of internationalism.
The changes to the Guiding Movement's programming reflect the organization's desire to spread its ideology to a wider audience, rather than a commitment to more modern ideas of girlhood and progressive notions of international friendship. The programming, while becoming more refined over time, still centered around domestic skills and preparing girls for motherhood, while the organization's international structure relied on a hierarchy that placed Britain at the top, and kept Canada at an arms' length.