sponsor

noun, a person who makes himself or herself responsible for another (COD); in the corpus, the term specifically refers someone who sponsored an immigrant to Canada after the Second World War; see also sponsor, v.

“I believe they worked for Smith, so that might have been the sponsor.”

“Back when they first came, they had to have a sponsor. Didn’t they?”

“We moved to near Montreal. That’s where our sponsor was.”

“You had to have a sponsor when you came over…”

“Our connection to Wolfe Island would be Joe’s parents bought a farm on Wolfe Island. You were placed, like, with someone that helped you with your placement for the first year, sponsors.”

“I got my sponsor through the government. But when I was here, anybody come and gotta work for a year on the farm of a place. So I sponsored first my sister. My sister worked for Len Jones here for a year.”

“How did you link up with Tom for a sponsor?”
“You put your name on on a list when you wanna leave the country. That goes out through Canada, and I don’t know how Tom got the name, but I suppose those lists were advertised somehow. And then people like Tom, they’d look for—Can I use this guy?”