Welcoming International and Foreign Students in Canada: Friendly Relations with Overseas Students (fros) at the University of Toronto, 1951–68

Abstract

One organization particularly dedicated to the understanding and well-being of foreign students in Canada was Friendly Relations with Overseas Students (fros). Active during the 1950s and 1960s, fros became a symbol for Canada to assert its openness and distinctiveness in North America. As an organization focused on counselling, accommodating, and, to some extent, integrating foreign students, fros also built bridges between Canada and the rest of the world. The experience of fros members thus allows us to both deepen our understanding of foreign students’ agency and of the meaning and importance of their transnational experience for both themselves and Canada. In this article, I concentrate on the narrative about cultural exchange forged at fros by both its personnel and students. I propose that what I call the “fros narrative” was a discourse about the integration of foreign students on the University of Toronto’s campus and in the larger Canadian society. It promoted intercultural connections and a form of globalism. It also had a transformative and even redemptive dimension, as it aimed to change people’s worldviews and self-conceptions by abolishing ethnic prejudices.