Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 1998
MR JOHN
WILLOUGHBY, PROFESSOR
BRIAN TAYLOR,
MR DAVID
LORENTE and MRS
KAY GOLLINGER-LORENTE.
60. You would not, therefore, approach the Canadian Government
for funding because that would change the nature of your organisation?
(Mrs Gollinger-Lorente) We
approached the Government to get funding for our trip over here
but we were rather late doing it because we had the invitation
rather late. We got no response to it, there was nothing in the
budget for that. We have not dealt terribly seriously with Government
regarding funding, we have done it on our own. 61. In one sense
it would change the nature of your organisation if you were to
be state funded.
(Mrs Gollinger-Lorente) We
would have to separate ourselves from Heritage Renfrew firstly
and the funds that Home Children have donated, and there is a
fair amount there. We are so busy doing work on this thing that
we have not had time to go to Government, we know what Governments
are like.[26]
(Mr Lorente) I have written 996 letters
since 1 January in relation to Home Children. If I might add there,
in terms of what we are talking about I said it is not too late
to do something for Canadians as my number two suggestion, a foundation
in each of the former colonies could be set up. A foundation in
Canada could be, and perhaps should be, in Ottawa because it is
the home of the National Library and that is where the records
are, and perhaps it could operate out of the British High Commission
and then you would have some type of control over access to records
and so on.
Mr Walter
62. I just want to come back to Mr Willoughby on
his point about the difficulty you had in accessing records going
back 125 years. Was that in this country?
(Mr Willoughby) Yes,
sir. 63. Maybe you can tell us which organisation it was and whether
they were denying you access to peruse the records or whether
they were denying you access to make a specific inquiry?
(Mr Willoughby) They were denying us access
to make a specific inquiry which we had received. It was not the
Middlemore Foundation itself, it was the
Central Records Library in Birmingham where the Middlemore records
are stored. Time and time again we have tried and they simply
tell us that we have to get direct permission from Middlemore
before we are allowed access. Just as an adjunct to that, if I
may. We are fully aware that the complete Barnado records are
available through the National Archives in Canada. When I say
"available", they are there. The same applies to the
Middlemore records. I suspect there is a great deal more other
that is information inaccessible. We are in discussions with the
Canadian Government as to why, if they have accepted these into
the archives, policy is being made for a government department
by another institution in another country? Either they send them
back or they allow access to these in a fair and honest manner
for legitimate reasons. I believe that will come to pass through
proper negotiations. There is just one thing I would like to say
that I missed when we were talking about ourselves. I have reason
to believe that we will be establishing a national and an international
memorial dedicated to Home Children on our property when that
comes to pass and we expect that it will be declared a national
historic site as well once that is done. 64. So these records that
you could not get access to in Birmingham, they are also in Canada
but you cannot get access to them in Canada either?
(Mr Willoughby) No.
We just found out about this barely before we came over here.
The guidelines are not specific yet. It came about apparently
as a project between the Government of Canada, the Government
of Australia and the Middlemore Society itself. They went ahead
and got the microfilm and documents of all their records, not
just the child files but all kinds of reports and papers and everything
under the sun, it is there, we have got a complete list of them
but we have not got any access to them.
(Mr Lorente) The Middlemore files are
being made available now but there is a 65 year closure depending
on when the last entry was made. Another thing the Canadian Government
has released just within the last several weeks is ship manifests
which have not been available beyond the year 1919. You had to
go through query response and then arrange an appointment. They
have released the juvenile inspector's reports. This is a list
of every juvenile who came into the country up to the early 1930s.
It covers the period of the Canadian child migration movement
because it petered out around 1934; Barnado's closed their office
in 1939.
(Mr Willoughby) If I may just add to
that. With the help of Archives of Canada two years ago with a
project with our local university we transferred all the passenger
lists that exist in the Archives but for one group that was mislaid
that went to St John in Brunswick. We have all of those on audiotape
now and once we get our additional funding they will be transferred
into the database. Some work has already been done on that in
the National Archives but it is not complete unfortunately.
(Mr Lorente) We have worked through
the National Archives and with the Latter Day Saints in particular
and a group in Ottawa and the Ottawa Genealogical Society, they
are working for us and they are making a list of every juvenile
who came into the country between 1870 up to 1919 and possibly
beyond that. They are entering it all on a database. They have
finished 10 years right now of the 60 or 70. That is available
now. If you contact the Archives it is on an inhouse database
but it will be put on the Internet ultimately. Presumably that
will include every child migrant who came in under the age of
20. Some of them may not have been child migrants or sent over
by an agency. In my father's case there is no bracket beside his
name. He came over as an individual. Some children were sent over
alone so they are not identified in the register as a migrant.
There is a great big bracket down one side saying "Barnado's
Group to Toronto" or whatever. Things are being done. We
have been working quietly on that. We would like to get every
agency over here on side.
Mr Lansley
65. Mr Willoughby, you were talking earlier about
the 6,000 requests that you have received as a result of a research
project you have undertaken. I am not quite clear, I wonder if
you might tell us a little more. How did that number of requests
arise? Can you characterise the nature of the requests that are
being presented to you?
(Mr Willoughby) Most
of the requests are for information on families. Once they get
the information on families, if it can be located, there is an
interest in reuniting with their families which causes problems
of cost and all the rest of it depending on the financial situation
of the group, of the individual. What we were trying to do was
identify as many Home Children as we could to see what response
we could get across the country. By far, I would say in excess
of 50 per cent, maybe 60 per cent, was for information on their
parents which we are processing and recording and requests to
help them find access to their information in the United Kingdom,
birth certificates and things of that nature. 66. Would you say
that the 6,000 requests you received were in a sense but the tip
of the iceberg of the number of requests for information that
might be forthcoming were there to be a project submission?
(Mr Willoughby) We
had to back off because we were overwhelmed, as Mr Lorente knows.
The demand that is there is incredible. We did a very small sampling.
We picked individual newspapers in every province in the country
and we sent a letter to the editor, no big story or anything,
just inviting inquiries to provide information on Home Children,
and every week we still get 30 or 40. That was a year and a half
ago. We are still getting 30 or 40 letters or calls.
We have a 1800 number which is a toll free number. People call
us. We are going to be on the Internet with the assistance of
Heritage Canada. We want to work with other groups, such as Mr
and Mrs Lorente, to help them because we are all in this to solve
the problem. Our goal is to help others and to help ourselves
to try and find some solutions to this thing on a long-term basis. 67.
Although they would clearly now be very elderly were any significant
proportion of those requests from Home Children themselves?
(Mr Willoughby)
About 10 per cent.
Mr Austin
68. To Mr and Mrs Lorente, following on Mr Willoughby's
point, you made in your recommendations some very imaginative
suggestions about the use of the Internet for making available
the information which might be available, but you also referred
in recommendation 10 to that information which has been suppressed
by the agencies and the need for that to be made available. Would
you like to elaborate on that and how that might come about?
(Mr Lorente) We
do not do any actual searches except in one or two cases where
people happen to live nearby or have places near our community
and we have united a family that way, a couple as a matter of
fact. People write to us for advice. We give them a 10 page research
kit that is in the brief that we submitted. We ask them where
the people came from, where they came to, if they have certain
names of the farm, like Knowlton, and so on. We ask where they
were placed because, again, given the demographics of Ontario
and Quebec, the Anglican Church sent all of its boys to Quebec.
That shocks a lot of people. They sent the boys to what are called
the eastern townships. We tell them who to write to and what to
ask for. We tell them what information they need. We suggest that
they get a justice of the peace to sign a statement saying that
they are not asking for an apology, restitution, retribution or
anything. That is the official standard of the people that we
have come to represent. They suggested at a meeting that they
did not want an official apology, no restitution, no retribution,
they were just glad to be Canadians and all they want is access
to their files. Sometimes they write back to us when they get
the information, sometimes they do not, and sometimes I find out
from the agency that the information has been sent. I would like
to point out that there is a difference in the way situations
are handled over here, and again this is part of the problem that
we have had. Up to about 10 or 12 years ago I know that Barnado's
did not submit to requests for information but they have a new
Head of After Care whose policy is to divulge and Collette Bradford
has done that. She has visited us in Canada. She makes a point
of visiting the people that she sends information to. In Britain,
in the UK, when a child asks for information the social worker
will go to that person, they will take the file to that person
and they will sit down and they will explain that file because
sometimes the language in those files is very judgmental, it is
the upper classes judging the poorer classes, they had no idea
what the people were going through. They sit there and explain
the whole thing, they assuage their problems totally. The situation
in Canada is different, they have to send the information direct.
This is why Collette comes over every year, and she will be over
this September. We are having four reunions, perhaps five, around
Ontario starting off in Peterborough. I will be part of the team.
I will be there to give the Canadian perspective. Collette will
be there as Head of After Care and Brian Partridge, who is the
head of the Canadian research, will also be there. We will talk
to people at informal gatherings. They will come in and they will
talk to us. A problem is the lack of communication with other
people and that is what does the most good, the fact that they
are able to communicate. That is why we have the meetings, lateral
communication, finding out that other people are in the same boat
is wonderful. We have not met a single solitary person yet who
on hearing the shocking news was not in the final analysis reconciled
to the fact that it was better to know than not to know. Does
that answer your question?
Audrey Wise
69. I was very struck by the evidence about stigma.
I would like to explore that a little bit with both of you, both
organisations. Home Children Canada, you have a whole section
of your written evidence on this and you say the stigma of being
a Home Child has residual effects on successive generations. I
would like you to elaborate for the record of this session on
this question of stigma and the residual effects that you have
referred to and then I will come to Professor Taylor.
(Mrs Gollinger-Lorente) To
take it perhaps from a legal point of view, there are complications
there often for the relatives. We have had a person whose wife
could not inherit her husband's estate because he did not have
what they call classification citizenship and did not know he
did not have it because he thought he had lived in Canada all
his life. We managed to get that dealt with although the widow
did have to spend a fair amount in court. There is the other legal
complication of people trying to cross the border into the US.
Insurance: often they cannot inherit insurance. We had someone
from the UK, north of London, who wrote to us because Sun Life
had told them—the husband was quite ill and they were trying
to settle affairs—his wife would not be able to benefit
from the insurance policy that he had been paying into for years
and years because the birth date that he had given was not the
correct one according to the agency which had sent him. It was
the one that he had used all his life. He had been in the army
and everything else. We had a hard time with that one. We first
wrote to the British Government and they said it was a business
matter, it was not something they could intervene with. Then we
decided to try Sun Life in Canada and it was not much good there.
The last letter we sent said that if we got no response
we were going to give it to the tabloids and it came right back
very quickly in about a week.
(Mr Lorente) I am shocked that you only
heard about this in the late 1980s over here. It was researched
in Canada by Joy Parr in the late 1960s and by Phyllis Harrison
in Canada, a social worker in Ottawa. The lady who in Canada helped
to have a law passed that prevented the importing of children
under school age, 15, back in 1925 was Charlotte Whittom who came
from my town. She was the first female mayor of a large city in
Canada. She was ostensibly a social worker. We thought she did
it for altruistic reasons but we were shocked to find out that
she was a eugenicist and she believed in keeping Canadian blood
lines pure. A little bit of eugenics is explained in that memorandum.
I was not aware until that moment when I was told and that was
in 1991. I had read books written by Harrison, by Joy Parr, I
got her thesis that is available through the National Archives
that is unpublished, her excellent books on child labour and so
on, and I read Kenneth Bagnell. There are a lot of other books
on eugenics in Canada. Our National Race is the name of the book.
That explains the feeling that people had about inferior races.
It is a little bit of this classism, this racism. The effect that
it had on, for instance, sterilising people was direct. I was
reading in a newspaper that they are shocked in France that it
happened, they are shocked in Scandinavia that it happened, I
do not know to what extent sterilisation happened over here but
these were the results of eugenics. Kids did not talk about the
fact that they were Home Children. Just like in Oliver Twist
when he goes to his first placement he is called "workhouse".
Being a Home Child was a stigma. They were called guttersnipes.
The Anglican Church called them waifs and strays. That name was
changed in 1945, thank God. "Tell me, little girl, are you
a waif or a stray?" How can you respond to a question like
that, it is a put down? The Bibles that the kids were given by
the agencies, we have some of them and the front pages were torn
out so that nobody could pick them up and see they were a Home
Child. My father never talked about being a Home Child. He talked
about his brothers and sisters over here and he talked with a
great love about the nuns who looked after him in Canada and over
here but at the same time he never talked about his childhood
over here and he never talked about it in Canada. We were told
not to ask and we did not. 67 per cent were abused. God knows,
that was what one study said, 67,000 kids. Can you imagine a little
girl being sent to a remote farm house? Can you imagine a little
girl who, when they introduced little boys at Barnado's, walked
in, looked at the little boy being bathed for the first time and
said "look, that little girl has a thumb on her tummy",
and that was how much she knew about sex, she was going to be
sent to Canada, she was going to be sent to a remote farm where
copulation of the animals, genetics, all of this was above board.
Can you imagine what was going to happen to that little child?
Is she going to talk? There is no question she is going to talk.
Even if people were placed in good homes they did not talk. I
cannot reinforce that enough. That is the great sin of child migration
as far as I am concerned. It is only when we have given them a
form at our reunions that they do talk. At one of the reunions
recently a man came up to the front, I asked his niece and she
said "I think he is a Home Child, he has never told us".
This was at a university in Quebec. She brought him the next day
and after hearing the preamble from Ian Wakeling, the archivist
from the Anglican Church, and Joan Foster from Newcastle, a teacher,
I gave a little talk and he came up and admitted that he was a
Home Child and he was going to tell his children. Then he said
"you have set me up but I am glad you did" and then
he told me why he had not talked, because he had been abused.
When we have reunions we have had one Home Child break down but
the people who cry are not the Home Children, the people who cry
are the descendants. When we gave a talk on television several
years ago they ran three little programmes on what we were doing
and they said they had more response to those three little programmes
than to any other programme during the year. The shocking thing
was that 50 per cent of the callers refused to believe that what
we said was true, there was no way that Canada, and certainly
not Britain, would have done the things that we said had happened.
That is the residual effect. 70. In somebody's evidence there is
a passage about a man saying he did not want to go back to Britain
because he had been rejected. Is the feeling of rejection part
of this stigma?
(Mr Lorente) I think
it is natural if the child does not know why it was sent over,
yes, there would be a feeling of rejection. Bill Powell, who is
one of the friends of mine who lives in Renfrew, and Arthur Monk
was the person mentioned. I have known Arthur for five or six
years and the first time he said it was last year. I think it
is natural because of the fact that they were called waifs and
strays, it was an imprint. They were rejects. There were cartoons
at the time around the 1870s showing Maria Rye and her helpers
shovelling people, some of into carts, to ship to Canada. If you
think what was on the streets in those days when they had horse
drawn carts, there is a stigma attached.
(Professor Taylor) On the subject of
stigma, undoubtedly there was a stigma and there still is. These
children were given to understand that they were morally degenerate,
that they were the scum of the earth, and of course often the
people with whom they were placed in Canada reinforced that. It
was particularly bad for the females who were particularly vulnerable,
particularly to sexual abuse. I was speaking just recently to
a lady in New Brunswick who had been sexually attacked by two
of the sons of the family with whom she had been placed. This
lady is now 84 and these incidents took place pretty close to
70 years ago but she still had difficulty dealing with that. This
is a lady who has been very co-operative, very open, very frank
and very helpful in adding to our store of information but 70
years after those events she still has problems dealing with that
particular episode.
Mr Lansley
71. You had the opportunity to listen to the exchanges
we had with the representatives from our Department of Health
of the Government of Britain. From your circumstances what would
you say were the particular priorities that you would attach to
the actions of the British Government that would be helpful now
to Home Children and their descendants?
(Mr Lorente) Fund
your agencies over here, make sure that the money—I am repeating
what I said earlier—goes to getting all the information
they have in one place. If they want to co-operate with other
agencies, as the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church and Barnado's
are doing, that is important. I would love to see a meeting convened
by your Government of all the agencies involved so they can determine
that if they are going to put things on a database it is a common
database and that they exchange ideas, exchange information about
holdings. The only lists that have been sent to Canada have been
sent by the Westminster branch of the Roman Catholic Church. I
have had some information from Southwark. I am getting 4,000 names
on 14 June from Liverpool. Those are the only indices that I have
of Home Children but it is a sign that people are willing to share.
Some of the other agencies, of course, will not send you any information
whatsoever. That is the kind of thing that has to be done. The
second point would be opening up these offices or whatever because
I am willing to give everything that I have got to the people
of Ottawa. 72. Obviously we will have a chance to talk to the agencies
themselves when they give evidence to us but from your point of
view are you aware that some of the agencies have a backlog and
unmet requests where additional resources would enable the requests
to be met much more expeditiously?
(Mr Lorente) In
1995 I was at a reunion of 3,000 Home Children here at Barkingside
and I was made an hon. Barnado's Boy. There was a CBC programme
on the good work that they were doing and the fact that they were
giving information on cases. As soon as that happened they got
3,000 requests. The two month time lag in getting a response from
Barnado's became 12 to 14. They doubled their staff, they added
three more, and they still have not met this backlog, it is backed
up for 14 months. People are dying before they get their answers.
The money has got to be for that specific purpose.
(Professor Taylor) To go back to your
question which was about priorities, access has to be guaranteed
without restrictions. I am in a somewhat privileged position because
of my position with the university, I can get access to information
that other people might not be able to get access to but there
are still restrictions placed on what I can do with that information
so it really might just as well not be there.
Audrey Wise
73. Why do you think that is? Why do they place restrictions?
Some of it has sounded really outrageous. The example has been
given of a concession about 65 years, but that is the last entry.
Why is there this fixation on time limits when it would appear
to an observer that good would come from the release of the information?
(Professor Taylor) My belief is that the
restrictions are there because of a fear on the part of the exporting
child agencies and a misunderstanding
of what these people are really looking for. We seem to be living
in an age of class action suits and I think at the back of the
minds of these societies is a fear that that is what is going
to come out of it. That is not what these people want. They do
not want apologies. They are not about to launch class action
suits. The surviving Home Children are old. Mostly it has turned
out, from my experience of speaking to them and interviewing them
in their homes, to be a beneficial process for them. I think the
restrictions are there because of a misunderstanding on the part
of the child exporting agency about what is going to come out
as a result of full disclosure. 74. Do you think that some might
be afraid of an unfavourable impact on their current fund raising
activities?
(Professor Taylor) It
could well be. I think the principal fear is of class action suits. 75.
The questions on stigma and some of the other questions seem to
me to lead to three things in particular that you would want this
Committee to look at. I want you to elaborate on this or correct
me if I am wrong in my perception. One of the things, especially
from the evidence of Mrs Lorente, was the fact that some of the
survivors are left with less than a full identity, they become
less than full and legal entities, so there are very practical
results of this. I am not quite clear on the extent to which you
think this happens or whether you feel you even know the extent.
Mrs Lorente gave a very cogent example and I would like to know
if you have others. That is point one. Point two: your evidence
seems very, very much about the need for the release of information
and as full information as possible of all the circumstances as
well as a thing like the birth certificate or death certificate
of relatives. The third thing was the need to replace the feeling
of stigma with a feeling of pride. If I am wrong or if I have
omitted something I would like you to tell us. If there are any
things that have not come out in the questioning we would like
you to tell us to add to your evidence now. We do not want you
to go back to Canada thinking "if there had been five minutes
longer I would have said x".
(Professor Taylor) As
far as the stigma is concerned, yes, that is a very important
thing. These children need to believe that this is nothing to
be ashamed of. It is only from my experience over the past ten
years that the surviving Home Children, and of course there is
a declining number of them because they are all old, have been
willing to talk openly about their experiences, about the fact
that they were Home Children. Up until that time very often it
was kept from husbands, wives, from children. That I think is
changing now but, of course, it is kind of late in the day because
all of these people are up in their eighties and nineties, the
surviving Home Children in Canada. 76. Do you think that there
is an important academic aspect about rescuing some of the oral
history which is locked up there? I notice, Professor Taylor,
you talked about the difficulty with funding to do enough travelling
to talk to people. Who do you think should help out in this? Should
it be universities or who should it be?
(Professor Taylor)
Certainly universities should be involved in this. I think in
terms of Canadian history it has been a largely neglected episode.
It is only over the past ten years or so that that situation has
begun to change. It was that realisation that initially got me
into the field anyway because I wanted to investigate this situation
in the Canadian context and provide the results of my research
for my students. That is one of the things I have been doing and
will continue to do. Certainly, yes, universities must play a
bigger part than they have so far. 77. Thank you. Mrs Lorente?
(Mrs Gollinger-Lorente)
We have written to the Ministry of Education in Canada asking
them to consider putting this into the curriculum at the elementary,
secondary and certainly university levels. We are not getting
very far with that but we will keep on trying. In Ontario there
is one place, Victoria County, where they do have a unit on this.
That is the only place in Canada we have found where there is
mention of this. To get to a point that someone referred to earlier,
it is estimated, and this may not be entirely accurate but we
have seen it more than once, that over 11 per cent of our population
is descended from Home Children. In the talks that we have given,
whether in schools or universities, genealogical societies and
so on, usually we find that in the audience those who attend come
because they have heard the title and they have a suspicion there
may have been someone in their background who was a Home Child
and it ends up being about 10 per cent of the group that we talk
to almost every time. If there are 49 there are about 10 or so.
It is interesting to see this. The figure does seem to stand up. 78.
That would suggest that it is necessary for Canadian pride in
general that they cease to think of themselves as scum and realise
that poverty is not the same as criminality.
(Mrs Gollinger-Lorente) The
eugenics doctor naturally equated poverty and lower class with
whether you were of a certain quality or not, with moral degeneracy.
They equated that with poverty, if you were poor you were just
no good. That is in the writings.
(Professor Taylor) May I just come back
very briefly on the point of what should be done about this. One
of the things that we have been able to do is to have discussions
with the present Government of Prince Edward Island. Fortuitously,
perhaps coincidentally, the present Minister of Education is a
former graduate student of mine. He has indicated his entire willingness
to have a unit of work on Home Children incorporated in the social
studies programmes in Prince Edward Island.
(Mr Willoughby) If I may pick up on that
and perhaps address the other two subjects that you have raised.
I would like to tell the Committee that we have made progress,
as Professor Taylor has said. One of the problems is that there
has not been enough positives, there is too much in the past.
The past is the past, it is there, it is a reality and we have
to live with it. What our Foundation is proposing, and has been
accepted to go forward, is a major publicity campaign in Canada
and to some extent in the United Kingdom showing the positive
results of this programme because, strangely enough, there were
positive results. The programme, in spite of the obstacles, did
work. For instance, the Canadian Government paid $2 a head per
child to the societies when they were taken into Canada. We have
had our accountants look at the potential of the three and a half
million Home Children as taxpayers, for instance. We were surprised
to learn that the descendants pay $20 billion to $25 billion in
direct taxation to the Government of Canada every year. That has
to be one of the best physical investments that any country has
ever made with a return like that every year. That is the sort
of thing that we want to bring out, the contributions of the Home
Children, not only to Canada but to all the countries and, for
instance, even to this country. In World War I the first battalion
that came over here was the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light
Infantry. 85 per cent of their number was born in England. I suspect
if we had the research done we would find that a very great number
of them were Home Children because I am sure Mr Lorente would
agree that a lot of people went into the military. Ironically,
this is Canada Month in London and guarding your Royal Family
is the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry that came over
here in World War I and made a great sacrifice. Those things happened
that we can be proud of. It is our fault, in a sense, that we
are so concerned with all the problems that still continue to
exist but we have got to develop a more forward looking outlook,
we have got to become more positive with our descendants, we have
got to be putting forward the things that the people have contributed.
We have got great sculptors, we have got great politicians. For
instance, I got a letter a couple of weeks ago from the son of
a Home Child and he is a world famous director of a cancer institute
in the United States and his curriculum vitae, without a word
of a lie, was that thick, which he sent me a copy of. He closed
his letter by saying "the one thing I have neglected in my
life to have is my mother's identity, could you help me find it?"
That is the sort of thing that you get into. The positive side
of that is look at what contribution this person has made to the
society to where he was sent. There are thousands of stories like
that. We first of all intend to preserve and identify those stories
in our archives and museums which will be developed on the site
which we have been given. We are in discussions again with the
Department of Heritage to facilitate a publicity campaign that
will help identify Home Children but also will put forth,
for instance, "look at what this man is doing and his wife
is doing, all on their own with very little help from anybody
and hours and hours of his time and effort". We do the same,
we do not get any pay for what we do. All we are trying to do
is to help individuals, that is all we are trying to do, all of
us. When we get our act together, if you will, we think we can
make the stigma which is there go. There is no doubt about it,
the stigma in the past, but there is no need for a stigma now.
Canada is a nation of immigrants, they are different in England,
all of us there are from somewhere else or descended from people
who came from somewhere else. Even the Aboriginals came across
the land bridge from Russia. We have all got nothing to be ashamed
of, least of all these children, they were not the masters of
their own destiny. When you think of what they achieved on their
own, with little help from anybody, little moral support, little
mental support. The one thing that always breaks my heart is when
you hear a man of 80 or 90 telling you he never got a hug from
anybody for his entire life until he got married. That is the
sort of thing that is difficult, when they were children they
never got a hug or a kiss or a kind word saying: "Good job,
son", nothing like that. Anyway, we are trying to develop
a programme and a curriculum. We have had some success, in fact
they are now teaching them in some parts of New York State about
Home Children which came about after some meetings we had with
teachers in that area. We are quite sure that working with other
groups across the country we will be able to develop a programme
and identify the great success stories and promulgate those throughout
our nation. The first point you made was the lesson, the whole
identity, how does that affect survivors? That is a big problem
they face, the lack of knowledge as to who am I, that was the
question most often asked. If this Committee can do nothing else
but provide some assistance to tell them, we tell you who you
are, where you came from and how you got to where you are today,
that is the biggest challenge the Committee face. That brings
me to point two and the end of the three points you raised. It
goes without saying but how can you find anybody if you do not
know who they are? How can you bring families back together if
you have no identity of the person? We have had some pretty good
success but it is very time consuming. For instance, take into
consideration the numbers which have come to Canada, the numbers
that exist there, over 100,000. I am sure most people that do
research—We are proactive, we go out and try and find people.
In fact last week we brought a chap over from Birmingham and reunited
him with his Canadian family and one of our television networks
has done a programme on that which will be released in the fall.
To watch those people meet in the airport for the first time,
it is a tremendous experience. They have never seen each other,
do not know anything about each other, and all of a sudden within
a day or two they are like old friends because they are old friends.
They are grandchildren of the parents involved. The release of
this information is essential. I do not see how it can work if
we still have to come one, one, one, one, one. Somehow there has
to be cohesion in all this. Thank you.
(Mr Lorente) I think the importance
of open letters from our Prime Minister to the last two governor-generals,
from our Minister of Heritage, particularly one from Princess
Diana, were very, very important. People who feel stigmatised
are not going to feel pride in themselves until other people see
pride in them. That is the importance of open letters. I asked
your Prime Minister to send an open letter to a reunion on 14
June. I do not think that is going to happen because he is probably
waiting for the report of this Committee. I think the important
thing is that you people, the Government of Britain, and the governments
in the former colonies and Dominions, recognise that these things
happened. If there is an official recognition people will start
to feel proud. I think that is one thing. Taking an approach to
being positive, I think that is very important. People ask you:
"Do you not get angry about what happened to your father?"
Sure, I get angry but I tell them I have a pendulum, it swings
between anger on the one side and joy on the other side because
a lot of good things happened. I try to talk to keep it at six
o'clock and I urge them to do the same thing. There are agencies
which will not recognise, through no fault of their own perhaps,
that they did things that people say they did, that they were
involved in child migration. I got a letter from one lady, the
people who responded to her request for help said: "We did
not send people overseas. We did not do that." We sent them
a letter on their own letterhead, a signed certificate on their
own letterhead, and said: "Look, it did happen". This
person, this employee, did not know the agency's history and therefore
could not respond to the help so the agency has now been informed.
There are Home Children because of the stigma, because of the
fact that they fell through the cracks—In 1934 when St George's
Home was closed in Ottawa, and this is where the first research
was done in Canada, the first research to hit the national press,
when the home closed and took all its records back to England,
and presumably its bank accounts too, a lot of children were left
without money they were supposed to get. They were left without
contacts. Nobody told the social agencies in Canada when it happened.
These kids fell through the cracks. I have it from a Government
official that a lot of Home Children did not claim their old age
security because they know they had too much hassle even trying
to get married. How do you get married without a birth certificate?
It is very difficult. My father had to get a letter of recommendation
from a local priest. They were robbed of their identity. Are you
aware of the fact that the agencies over here called the children
by numbers? John Atterby was hit with a book until he responded
to a number instead of a name and he said the great joy in coming
to Canada was being called John. Ken Donovan can recite from 27
to 42, the numbers and the names of all the people he was in charge
of. He was number 42. That is robbing a child of his identity.
The residual effect, it is not only the Home Child that does not
get a kiss or a hug, very often the Home Child did not know how
to kiss or hug his own children. There are two beautiful cases
if I can quote a sister. Canadians answer questions with stories
so I want to finish with a story. A lady wrote to us and said
that her mother came at 13 and she was raped. At 13 she was not
able to look after the child herself so she gave it up for adoption.
The child—this is the lady talking—said that she was
taken into a very loving home, she had a wonderful mother and
father. The whole family accepted her, particularly an aunt, and
every Sunday aunty would come and visit. When she had children
of her own they would take aunty out for a drive in the park and
when the kids misbehaved in the back she would remember her aunt
saying: "Oh, don't scold them, don't scold them, they are
just children". When aunty died and she inherited her papers
she found out that aunty was her mother. Now think of that. This
mother wanted to be near her child and could not tell her but
wanted to tell her obviously because she found those papers. That
is a statement.
Audrey Wise: Thank you. Well, we always thank our
witnesses and I think we particularly want to thank you for having
come such a long way. It has been extremely enlightening to have
your evidence and of course your evidence speaks very eloquently
from the printed page. Having heard today's evidence or seeing
other things perhaps, if you have anything you want to add in
writing then do feel free to do so. I was going to tell you that
the Chairman was coming back to have a word with you but he has
come back and he may like to add to my thanks from the Chair.
(Mr David Hinchliffe resumed the Chair)79.
Chairman: Can I just apologise, once again, for having to leave.
I was distressed not being able to hear fully your evidence but
I will read it in great detail. Can I reiterate Audrey's comments
that we do very much appreciate the efforts that you have gone
to to come over here and for the detail of your evidence. It has
been most helpful at this first session to have heard from you.
We thank you very much for your written submissions and for your
oral evidence and we hope you have a safe journey home. Thank
you very much.
26 Note by witness: It is better late than never to
help Home Children in Canada. And then there is the residual or
transgenerational effect that has filtered down to their children
and their children's children, an effect so subtle and insidious
it took visiting social workers from Barnardos three years to
validate.
Back
|
