GORE BAY—In her book, ‘Promises of Home: Stories of Canada’s British Home Children,’ Rose McCormick Brandon has written a moving chronicle of a little-known aspect of Canadian history. Between the years 1869-1939, 100,000 British children between the ages of eight and 15 were sent to Canada as part of an agreement between the two countries that put the children to work mostly on farms, the boys as farm hands, the girls as mothers’ helpers.
The astoundingly large number of children from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales came from institutions called “children’s homes” where they had been placed because their own families could not afford to keep them during those decades of extreme poverty in the UK. Many children had been abandoned to fend for themselves, wandering city streets and countryside, starving and homeless.
Ms. McCormick Brandon writes: “Victorian living conditions were appalling: lack of clean water led to infrequent bathing; charwomen dumped slop pails into the streets; smokestacks pumped fumes into the air; overcrowded slums (30 people to a room) made diseases spread rapidly; and tainted drinking water caused cholera outbreaks, killing thousands.”
Dr. Thomas Barnardo set up “the first children’s home in London in the 1860s to shelter these waifs, two-thirds of whom still had one surviving parent.” Many more homes were set up by other charitable organizations where utterly desperate parents (most often the mother) could take children to be housed, clothed and fed.
The children had begun to be sent abroad to Canada in the late 1800s. Ms. McCormick Brandon says, “The Child Migrant Scheme was seen as a practical solution” to the dire situation for children in the UK. “Canada would get much-needed workers and poor children would be given opportunities their homeland couldn’t offer them. Although in today’s mindset, the plan seems barbaric, the religious and charitable organizations who housed thousands in overcrowded orphanages were motivated mostly by concern for the children.”
“Despite good intentions, many children became victims of abuse, neglect and over-work” in Canada, Ms. McCormick Brandon adds. “Children experienced loneliness, isolation, shame and despair. Most, like my grandmother, great-aunt and great-uncle, were separated from siblings and didn’t reconnect until adulthood. Many never reconnected.”
Promises of Home reveals the intensively researched and fascinating stories of more than thirty home children who were placed in Canadian homes, many of them abusive; the children were “indentured servants,” says Ms. McCormick Brandon, who was born in Mindemoya and is the descendant of four home children. “However, many did end up in good homes, such as my grandmother, Grace Griffith Galbraith, who ended up with the Gilpin family on Manitoulin, where she was treated kindly as one of the family.”
One of the saddest accounts, “Believe me my friends, it’s the truth,” was written by William Francis Conabree, who in 1904 came to Canada at the age of fourteen to work on a farm for $1 a month. His unadorned words describe a life of unspeakable brutality and harshness as a ‘home boy.’ Despite the inhumane treatment he suffered on the farm, he managed to escape and “enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and fought in WWI. He lived through gas attacks and was a prisoner of war.” William went on to marry another home child. His daughter kept the original piece of paper that he wrote on found only after her death.
McCormick Brandon wants readers “to remember the stories and look at the faces of the children. This is the best way to ensure the home children get the recognition they deserve and are not forgotten.” She would like to see an apology for the home children migration from the government of Canada, like that offered by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2010 “for the shameful deportation of thousands of children to former colonies” following an earlier apology by the Australian PM, Kevin Rudd. Canada declared 2010 the Year of the British Home Child, and she hopes this recognition will bring a Canadian apology that much closer to realization.
Rose McCormick Brandon will read from her book at the Harbour Centre in Gore Bay on Wednesday, August 20, at 7 pm, presented by the Manitoulin Writers’ Circle where there will be copies of Promises of Home for sale and signing.
For more information on the author, visit http://littleimmigrants.wordpress.com; to purchase her book online, go to http://writingfromtheheart.webs.com.
