SECTION V
By and about Home Children sent to Canada
A POTPOURRI OF FACTS AND QUOTES
INTRODUCTION (a) This
is a random selection of facts gleaned from research and extracts
from some of the 5,000 letters we have answered requesting help
in tracing Home Children's personal records. (b) Since being
given a forum at Home Children Canada Reunions to tell their stories
and to be recognised, Home Children have declared their joy at
being Canadians and their love of Canada. They are, in the words
of Barnardo Boy Art Monk, "Proud to be able to
say at last that I am a Home Boy, and prouder still to be able
to say "I am a Canadian!." (c) That said, every last
Home Child
(i) experienced the pain of
an unjust stigma,
(ii) passed through as many as 15
emotional phases resulting from Separation and Loss (Kubler-Ross
et al) . . . while a majority—sixty-seven per cent —
(iii) suffered physical and sexual
abuse. (d) That is why the Health Select Committee should
join Canadians to:
(i) celebrate the survival of Home
Children (by recognising their quiet contribution to the fabric
of the nation and by assisting them to have access to their records);
(ii) play a role in the catharsis
that is taking place by admitting publicly that there were serious
downsides to Child Migration that still affect "Home Children"
and their descendants today. (e) Our recommendations
are predicated on thousands of situations such as the following: 1.
Home Child Cosmo de Clerq (and many others): "You
were given a choice of where to go—Australia or Canada.
There was no choice to stay in Britain."And when he got
to Canada . . ."I ate in the barn, I slept in the barn.
I lived in the barn. I never saw the inside of the house, and
when I ran away, nobody came looking for me." 2. "I
never saw an inspector, and those that did often saw him at the
table with the farmer and his family who would deny it if you
said you were abused. Now who was the inspector to believe—the
kid or the adult? And when the inspector left, the kid would be
thrashed for causing trouble." (Sentiment expressed by
many Home Children). 3. When an inspector asked Cosmo de Clerq
how well the poor people he was with were treating him and whether
he had enough to eat, the child replied: "I like it here;
they love me." And the inspector retorted: "Love
has got nothing to do with it!" 4. On the competency
of Inspectors: One reported he examined 3,000 children in
one year—this, at a time when roads were poor, travel was
largely by horse and buggy and trains that did not connect with
remote areas where children were sent. One wonders too about the
training another inspector had. He wrote that a shy Quarrier lad
who had "lost his tongue" was doing better "now
that he has put up a stick in the barn. He talks to it". 5.
Arnold Walsh came to Masson QC in July 1905. He also lived
and slept in the barn. He froze to death by February and was buried
in a box too small for his crumpled up body. The autopsy showed
he had been prodded with a pitchfork, was under-nourished and
poorly clad and bruised, had severely frostbitten hands and feet,
and fractured skull. He lay on a bed of manure in his coffin.
His "patron" was convicted of "manslaughter by
neglect" and was sentenced to seven years in penitentiary.
No one in the community—including the clergy—reported
the abuse to the authorities. 6. Home children were not all
paupers or the wards of an agency before being sent to former
colonies. The Westminster List of 2060 Roman Catholic Children
sent to Canada from that diocese alone, for instance, lists many
children as "non-paupers". Our research has shown that
the room and board of many children, eg Tommy Coppinger
of Ottawa was paid by his mother or a member of the family . .
. and that the child was sent abroad when that benevolent person
defaulted or died. 7. The reasons for Child Emigration from Britain
were not entirely altruistic. Books by Rose, Bean, Melville and
others . . . For the sake of the children, Lost children of the
Empire etc . . . explain the profits that could be made for ship
owners, ship captains, judges, charities, philanthropists, agencies
and agents who earned a handsome living trafficking in exported
children ... The nation's and "homes" care expenses
ceased when the child was shipped abroad, and agencies got a bounty
(2 pounds Sterling) from the Canadian Department of Agriculture
for each child sent to Canada. Furthermore ... even if one
accepts that the reasons for child migration were altruistic in
1869 when the movement began, they can hardly be deemed to have
been acceptable in 1939 when it ended in Canada ... or almost
a century later in 1967 when it ended in Australia. (This bears
repeating!) (cf Addendum C) 8. Parents did not necessarily
give their permission for a child to be sent to the colonies,
e.g. from Barnardos "Export Emporium" at Stepney Causeway,
nor were they told when their children were sent abroad even after
the passing of the "Barnardo" Emigration Act of the
late 1880's with its (in)famous "Canada Clause". For
example, before its passing Barnardo denied charges that he had
kidnapped eighty-five children, changed their names, vital statistics
(and perhaps their religion) (cf Tablet) and shipped them
out of the country. But he readily admitted—in court—to
"philanthropic abduction" in those cases. 9. Nor did
the "Barnardo Act" and "Canada Clause" ensure
there were no further abuses. "By 1908, 8 per cent of
the girls and 6 per cent of the boys were sent to Canada illegally—without
parental consent" (by Barnardo's). (From June
Rose's For the Sake of the Children—Inside Barnardos,
p 96). 10. The Home Children were not all orphans; they
and their descendants had living relatives in the UK and elsewhere.
Studies show that over two-thirds had one or more parents and
that they often did not give permission for their child to leave
the country, nor were they advised when the child left, nor where
he/she was sent. 11. Agencies often withheld corespondence and
addresses etc between children and their parents or children
and their siblings. They believed that separation had to be complete. 12.
While many Home Children were "adopted" official adoption
in Ontario and Quebec became legal only in 1922 and 1925 respectively.
Before that "adoption" perhaps meant something different.
e.g. This is the answer given to British civil servant official
Andrew Doyle when he asked a Home Girl what "Adoption"
meant to her (ca 1873); "'Doption, Sir, is when a lady
gets a girl to work for nothing". 13. Home Boy Bob
Evans, Ottawa ON: "I came at age 10 with two years
of schooling and never saw the inside of a school in Canada. I
worked for 9 years and got $100 wages in all. I gave $25 to the
nuns and started life on my own in 1929." After 65 years
Bob finally located a brother he never knew in Australia. He has
yet to locate another brother who came to Canada. 14. Agencies
too often withheld the names and addresses of kith and kin. My
British merchant marine Home Child uncle Arthur actually
stumbled on my father Joseph Lorente's name on a visit
to Canada 23 years after they had last seen each other in 1914.
After WWII, Cardiff resident Arthur was found by the third
brother Willie of Isleworth. Together the two British Home
Children located their three sisters in France in 1947. My father
never saw his family after he came to Canada in 1914. 15. Nora
Over, 75 years a St Joseph's nun in Pembroke ON, says "I've
had my little sorrows.". Her Home Boy brother in Canada
had paid her way to this country. He thought she was coming to
him and she thought she was coming to him.The agency sent her
elsewhere and would not tell either of them where the other was.
It took him two years to locate her at a handsome home on Kent
Street in Ottawa, and when he did the owners would not let him
enter because "He was a Home Boy!" 16. It took
Charlie Martin of Dacre ON just 69 years to locate his
sister in Australia and he was 88 years old when, with the help
of Home Children Canada, he received his personal records
which contained a lock of his mother's hair and three letters
that she had written to him. His letters promising to bring her
to Canada were presumably not delivered either. 17. At 103 Tommy
Coppinger finally learned his mother loved him when he received
his personal dossier—thanks to Home Children Canada
and Barnados After Care. He also learned she had paid his
room and board and bought his clothes while he was in boarding
school. This cost her 13 and a half pounds out of her 16 pounds
annual salary so she was forced to sign consent forms for him
to leave the country. She never heard from him again. A few weeks
after receiving his personal file he told his care worker that
he was happy that he had outlived everyone who ever made fun
of him, and that he had finally learned his mother did love him.
He said it "was time to let go" and he died. 18.
Home Children were often denied such things as birth certificates
and baptismal records. They were often given wrong names and birthdates.a— Little
Marjorie on Main Street in Ottawa, wrote to Father Bann
asking "Please send me my birth certificate; I can't get
married without it."b— My father Joseph Lorente,
never got his birth certificate. Fourteen years after he died
I discovered his name had been misspelled. This caused him—and
others—endless trouble when they—applied for jobs,
married, retired, applied for Old Age Security, etc. Len Brooker
never got his. 19. Home Children were often denied medical histories:
While researching in London we came across a page in St Peter's
Net, the Catholic Emigration Society's newsletter, on which there
was a letter from Samuel Paul Mundy to the Home asking
if his parents were dead, and "if dead, what they died
from since it might better help the doctors here in Montreal help
me." On the same page, edged in black we found Paul
Mundy's obituary—"dead after two years in Canada". 20.
Agencies in England effectively robbed children of their individuality
and personal identity. From an early age until they were sent
to the colonies the children had to respond to numbers—not
names.(see 21, 22 and 23) 21. Ken Donovan, an RC Home Boy
now residing in Ottawa, can still recall the numbers of all the
boys in his wee group, and he counts them off on his fingers,
starting with #27 and #28, the Clancy brothers ... and ending
with "number 42 ... that's meself!" 22. John
Atterby, a Barnardo Boy, remembers being hit on the head with
a book until he responded to his number rather than his name.
He also remembers the joy of being called by his name when he
came to Canada. (John is also quoted in Home Child, by Barbara
Haworth Attard). 23. Len Brooker of London, England, does
not know who he really is or when he was born. The name and date
of birth given him by the agency that sent him to Canada where
he was abused for four years does not tally with the records at
St Catherine's House. 24. Agencies trafficking in children often
controlled news concerning them (to the Agency's advantage) eg a) When
four British Church of England boys who were headed for the Anglican
Gibbs Distribution Home in Sherbrooke QC stole a boat and drowned
in the St Lawrence River the local newspaper reported the event
but said the boys were part of a "Polish" party and
did not name them. Home Children Canada has their very
anglo-Saxon names. b) When Mr Owens, Superintendent
of the Barnardos Home in Toronto, impregnated girls in his care
the matter was hushed up and all charges stayed. (ef June Rose's
For the Sake of the Children). A sad corollary to this story is
that the children of these Home Girls are alive today and have
been in touch with Home Children Canada re their mothers'
personal records which are probably conveniently "lost". 25.
Not all Home children are proud of their British roots:
Barnardo Boy Bill Powell of Renfrew to a local reporter:
"No, I've never been back to England. Why would I go back
to a country that rejected me." Art Monk of Beachburg
echoed those sentiments to author Joan Foster of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. 26.
Agencies which exported children did not seem to consider the
ill-effects resulting from loss and separation or the stigma and
abuse. Yet all of these were recognised as existing by Andrew
Doyle in his report to the government ca 1874, and by Louisa Birt
in the 1913 biography on pioneer Annie MacPherson and her
sister who ran the Liverpool Sheltering Home. 27. Vera O'Dacre,
a Roman Catholic St George's girl and Dick Wright, a Fegan
Boy, and others, become silent when asked about how lonesome they
were. Vera told author Joan Foster "there is no
describing it". Dick said he was all right until
about three years after he came to Canada. He was working alone
in the silo one day when a strange feeling came over him. "I
put the rake against the wall and just cried." 28. Studies
show that 67 per cent of the Home Children were abused and that
pitchfork marks were all too often used to prod the child to work
harder. My father Joe Lorente was involved in a pitchfork
incident at his first placement. 29. Home Children sent to homes
where no one spoke English, often lost their own language and
became Francophones or German speakers. One boy on a French farm
in Quebec wrote to the agency: "It has commenced to snow
here. Please send a picture of my brother. I have forgot him in
the face." The Laviolette Family in Renfrew ON
are direct descendants of John Ellis, an English boy who
took a French name in his French environment. Francophone Lizzie
Smith is the proud daughter of Henry Smith, a Home
Boy who became a Francophone. Luzzie designed Home Children
Canada's crest. 30. Joe Brown, from Orpington, Kent,
used all the wages he earned when he came to this country to put
himself through school and become a priest. He told our first
Reunion that "I never celebrate my birthday; I celebrate
the day I arrived in Canada." Yet he always lamented
that he grew up never knowing love. 31.How Home Children and
their descendants suffer even today from having fallen through
the cracks of our systems of government:Historical background:
When Child Migration to Canada ended during the Great Depression
the British agencies closed their homes in Canada and took the
children's records and their bank accounts back to Britain. Canadian
social service authorities were not notified and Home Children
themselves were cut off from all contact with their legal guardians
in Canada. They little realised what rights they had as British
Citizens and the conditions for claiming Canadian citizenship.
Many thought that, just as Canadian Citizenship was conferred
automatically on War Brides in the late 1940's, so too they had
become Canadians when they married Canadians or had merely stayed
in Canada X number of years. Events today prove them wrong. (cf
paras 32, 33) 32. Ernest Neal, a Waif and Stray sent
to Quebec by the Church of England, has lived there for 70 years
during which he raised a family and fought overseas in WWII for
five years. In November 1997 his daughter asked him and his wife
to visit her in Arizona at Christmas. He was turned back by US
border authorities because he "lacked classification"
like a lot of other Home Children. When all else failed Mrs Neal
asked Home Children Canada to intervene. With the co-operation
of our PMO, Minister of Citizenship, and the British High Commission
(for a welcome change) the matter was rectified within the week. 33.
Mere days after the Neal case Barnados After Care asked
us to intercede on behalf of the widow of John Frederick Grant,
a Home Boy who died in Ontario recently. Because he had "no
classification" Mrs Grant could not inherit her husband's
estate. Again, in our advocacy role we called on the authorities
mentioned in para 32. Because John Frederick was dead he could
not apply for classification as Mr Neal could (para 32). The
matter was ultimately settled in courts three months later on
a legal technicality ... and at a cost to the Home Child's widow. 34.
Many Home children entered the clergy. One (name withheld
at request of his family) returned to England and arranged to
meet his mother. He was introduced as a "friend from Canada"
and he never told her who he was. He simply wanted "to
meet a woman who could give up her child." He never saw
his personal records from the agency or knew the circumstances
of his being in the home beyond the fact that the family was poor. 35.
Clergy in England often sponsored Home Children to Canada.
My father Joseph Lorente was sponsored by a Roman Catholic
priest and Louis Casertelli by a bishop. Louis also became
a priest. 36. The British government was apprised in the early
1870's of the problems involved in Child Migration and commissioned
an experienced civil servant, Andrew Doyle, to visit Canada
and write a report. Charges that he was a Catholic out to attack
the state church ensued. His findings were not accepted for
50 years at which time, in 1924, Britain, then Canada, passed
laws prohibiting the emigration and immigration of unaccompanied
children under school age (14). Children older than that continued
to be shipped to Canada. The movement petered out during the Depression. 37.
In our research on what Home Children died of, only young girls
seem to have died of "unknown causes". Perhaps we can
read between the lines of what an old Home Girl (anonymous) in
Barrie, Ontario, said: "I wish they had a bomb, a big
bomb that could destroy everything in this country and everyone
in it." 38. The first words of the first letter we ever
received from a former Home Girl read: "I was one ...
and a most unhappy and degrading period of my life it was. I don't
even want to think about it and I haven't even told my children
about it ... Nothing except the Grace of God can dim the memory
of that terrible period of my life." (name withheld—from
the Ottawa Valley). 39. Labour unions in Canada resented the competition
for "cheap labour" and social workers decried British
arrogance in sending their orphans here when we had enough of
our own. The Social Workers of Ontario at their first Annual Review
in Toronto on 16 April 1925, sang "an Odiferous Ode on Juvenile
Immigration" to the tune of Rule Britannia. (copy
attached as Addendum C—from the National Archives of Canada
MG 28 I-10, Vol 6 File 33, 1928) 40. A test case wherein a British
insurance company attempted to deny a widow her insurance money
if her Home Child husband died: Home Boy Len Brooker
moved back to Britain after years of abuse in Canada. He joined
the army to replace the family he never knew, was wounded at Dunkirk
and knew the sad realisation that if he died, no one would be
notified. He married, raised a large family and when he was seriously
ill and putting his house in order, Sun Life Insurance of Britain
told his wife she could not receive any money for the insurance
policy they had contributed to all their lives because the birthdate
information he had been given by the Catholic Emigration Agency
did not conform with records at St Catharine's House. When all
else failed in the UK, including appeals to their MP, they turned
to Home Children Canada. We contacted agencies and government
officials and explained that giving Home Children wrong information
about their names and birthdates and parents was almost routine
at times. The British High Commission told us they had contacted
Home Office and been advised not to intercede because it was a
"business matter". Sun Life in Canada, the US and
Britain were not very helpful until we threatened to tell the
British Tabloids. Case solved overnight. 41. (See Addendum D—"Banished
to Canada" by Perry Snow, Clinical Psychologist in the Journal
of the East Surrey Family History Society, Vol 19, #2 June
1996.
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