Lillian Alling: Ellis Island Memory

I visited Ellis Island 30 years ago and I still vividly remember the feeling of the huge central arrival hall. It’s a very powerful place.

Everyone who passed through Ellis Island first had to climb a staircase that emerged in the middle of the hall. Exhausted from a long sea voyage, often in deplorable conditions, and entering a new country, it’s not difficult to imagine their fear and disorientation as they trudged down their ship’s gangplank, entered the imposing brick building, and approached the top of the stairs.

Eyeing them was a team of medical officers who were trained to recognize serious communicable diseases in the few seconds of time that elapsed as each new arrival passed by. Those who showed symptoms were ushered into observation rooms that ringed the great hall, and then on to confinement in a hospital ward on the island, or to another ship, to be sent back home. Those who passed the initial cursory inspection moved on to the next stage: interrogation, identification and, possibly, approval for entry into the United States of America.

I remember the metal staircase and its railing, the clinical white paint, the frosted glass windows, the containment pens, the sad wooden benches, the hollow sounds of human voices against hard surfaces. I remember thinking that this was what a 19th century sanitarium would feel like.

Thirty years later, I imagine Lillian Alling climbing the stairs, surrounded by hundreds of other haggard souls, speaking countless languages she cannot understand. Perhaps she has a fever or bronchitis, acquired during her voyage from Russia. Perhaps she has heard from fellow passengers that you must hide your symptoms, or you might be rejected. By the time Lillian arrived in New York, in the 1927, Ellis Island had become primarily a detention and deportation centre, and had earned its reputation as the “Island of Tears”. But Lillian is fierce, determined, and strong. She makes it onto the mainland and into Brooklyn, to begin her search for Josèf, a man to whom she is bound by family and history.

In the opera Lillian Alling, we’ll get to see how John Estacio and John Murrell, along with set and costume designer Sue LePage and projection designer Tim Matheson, depict Lillian’s experience on Ellis Island. It’s the first big chorus number in the opera, and it’s sure to be evocative and very emotional.


~ Doug Tuck, Dir. of Marketing and Community Programs

Lillian Emigrates

In our opera Lillian Alling, the title character is a poor Russian immigrant who lands in New York City in the early 1920's. Like today, an immigrant in the 1920's faced many challenges, not the least of which was getting in the country in the first place.

What kind of Canada would an immigrant like Lillian Alling have encountered? In the 1920’s the official policy was to accept those most like the English, with less acceptance the further one was from the WASP profile. At the bottom of the list were Jews and those who came to Canada “from the Orient.” Source

The US had a similar racial preference for those of Nordic or English heritage, as well as restricting emigration to 2% of the population of the originating country which currently resided in the US, This significant drop in allowable emigration was the result of changing law in the 1920’s in response to growing concerns about foreign-born workers undercutting wages and raising unemployment amongst native-born workers. By 1925 the US showed a net loss of foreign-born workers. As in Canada, those of Chinese and Japanese heritage were at the bottom of the list of desired immigrants. Source



As a Russian speaker, Lillian would have been far down on the list. While our opera is not specific as to her religion, some have inferred that she is also Jewish, which would have put her even further down the list of desirable immigrants. Between 1900 and 1920, less than 3% of immigrants to Canada were Russian, and only 2%were Jewish.

A blog such as this cannot begin to address the complexity of immigration activities and legislation during this period, nor can it begin to address the varied levels of acceptance that immigrants would find in the US or Canada at the time. Then, as now, immigration was a “hot button” political topic, and even the slightest review of the arguments for/against immigration reform reveals a striking similarity to the opinions expressed today.

A very interesting timeline related to events surrounding Canadian immigration can be found at the Canadian Council for Refugees website.

Another great resource to show what Lillian might have faced getting into the US in the 1920's can be found here: Source

On a final note, it is interesting that Lillian Alling would have been one of the “first wave” Russian immigrants to land on the shores of North America, a wave that brought one George Ignatieff to Canada.

images by G W Peters, source