Diary of a Home Child
By GERRY WARNER
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Feb. 26, 2010
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized to me this week and I have to admit it gave me a strange feeling. Yes, you read that right, but it does call for some explanation.
Prime Minister Brown actually apologized to my grandfather and grandmother, and ultimately through them to my father and two uncles and several distant relatives I’m barely aware of and there may be others.
You see, I’m the grandchild of a British “home child,” the 100,000 or so impoverished and often orphaned British children that were sent off to Canada and the “colonies” from 1860 to 1939 to become in many cases indentured farm workers although slaves may have been a more apt term in many cases.
“To all those former child migrants and their families, to those here with us today, and those across the world, to each and every one, I say we are truly sorry,” Brown told Parliament.
What Brown might really have said is we’re damn sorry to have hurt so many of you simply as a slum clearing project and to close our poor houses down because make no mistake about it that’s what it was. In a page out of Dickens, the then most powerful country in the world wanted to get rid of its “surplus population” and the colonies served as a good dumping ground.
Of course, it being Victorian times, there was a veneer of civility applied to the whole process with churches and philanthropic organizations like the Bernardo Homes taking the abandoned and pauper children, usually between 9 and 14, and loading them onto ships for the hardscrabble farms of rural Ontario and the Prairies.
In many cases, the banished children were treated little better than slaves and in some cases downright abused as they faced the daunting challenge of making their way in a strange land without their parents to guide them. Most were deeply traumatized by the experience, and like my grandfather, refused to speak about it or disclose the shame they felt to their children.
In fact my grandfather never told my father what happened to him. But later in life when my sister approached him with a school project to write a biography about one of her relatives, he told the long-suppressed story to her. No one was more surprised than my dad and my three uncles.
But the thing I find the oddest about the whole thing is that despite the way my grandpa was treated by the “mother country” he remained obsessively loyal to “Great Britain” and everything it stood for. As a result, he fought in the trenches for Britain in World War I. He also took on quasi-military duties at home in World War II and one thing you learned early in life about my grandpa was you never breathed a word of criticism about England, the Empire or Pax Britannica, not if you valued your life.
Not many of us realize today that 10 per cent of Canada’s white Anglo Saxon population is made up of the descendents of these home children. Ten per cent! It was one of the greatest mass migrations in history, certainly in our history. You may be one yourself. Ask a few questions. You might be in for a surprise.
Consequently when the Prime Minister gave his apology, some of the people listening were home children from Canada. One of them, according to CBC news was 85-year-old Elsie Hathaway, who was six when she was put on a ship after being given a Bible and a vaccination shot.
“They told us we were going to the land of milk and honey, but I never saw it,” said Hathaway, whose first experience in Canada was living in a cramped shed with a bunch of other scared children. They were kept in the shed for a week until the authorities were satisfied they didn’t have any diseases. They were then given tags, put on trains and sent out to be exploited as cheap labour. It’s almost the same story my grandfather told my sister those many years ago – working on a farm in Ontario when he was only 14, being separated from his siblings that came over with him.
Charity is a fine thing, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be questioned at times.
-- 30 --
Prime Minister Brown actually apologized to my grandfather and grandmother, and ultimately through them to my father and two uncles and several distant relatives I’m barely aware of and there may be others.
You see, I’m the grandchild of a British “home child,” the 100,000 or so impoverished and often orphaned British children that were sent off to Canada and the “colonies” from 1860 to 1939 to become in many cases indentured farm workers although slaves may have been a more apt term in many cases.
“To all those former child migrants and their families, to those here with us today, and those across the world, to each and every one, I say we are truly sorry,” Brown told Parliament.
What Brown might really have said is we’re damn sorry to have hurt so many of you simply as a slum clearing project and to close our poor houses down because make no mistake about it that’s what it was. In a page out of Dickens, the then most powerful country in the world wanted to get rid of its “surplus population” and the colonies served as a good dumping ground.
Of course, it being Victorian times, there was a veneer of civility applied to the whole process with churches and philanthropic organizations like the Bernardo Homes taking the abandoned and pauper children, usually between 9 and 14, and loading them onto ships for the hardscrabble farms of rural Ontario and the Prairies.
In many cases, the banished children were treated little better than slaves and in some cases downright abused as they faced the daunting challenge of making their way in a strange land without their parents to guide them. Most were deeply traumatized by the experience, and like my grandfather, refused to speak about it or disclose the shame they felt to their children.
In fact my grandfather never told my father what happened to him. But later in life when my sister approached him with a school project to write a biography about one of her relatives, he told the long-suppressed story to her. No one was more surprised than my dad and my three uncles.
But the thing I find the oddest about the whole thing is that despite the way my grandpa was treated by the “mother country” he remained obsessively loyal to “Great Britain” and everything it stood for. As a result, he fought in the trenches for Britain in World War I. He also took on quasi-military duties at home in World War II and one thing you learned early in life about my grandpa was you never breathed a word of criticism about England, the Empire or Pax Britannica, not if you valued your life.
Not many of us realize today that 10 per cent of Canada’s white Anglo Saxon population is made up of the descendents of these home children. Ten per cent! It was one of the greatest mass migrations in history, certainly in our history. You may be one yourself. Ask a few questions. You might be in for a surprise.
Consequently when the Prime Minister gave his apology, some of the people listening were home children from Canada. One of them, according to CBC news was 85-year-old Elsie Hathaway, who was six when she was put on a ship after being given a Bible and a vaccination shot.
“They told us we were going to the land of milk and honey, but I never saw it,” said Hathaway, whose first experience in Canada was living in a cramped shed with a bunch of other scared children. They were kept in the shed for a week until the authorities were satisfied they didn’t have any diseases. They were then given tags, put on trains and sent out to be exploited as cheap labour. It’s almost the same story my grandfather told my sister those many years ago – working on a farm in Ontario when he was only 14, being separated from his siblings that came over with him.
Charity is a fine thing, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be questioned at times.
-- 30 --
posted by Warner Family Views @ 10:11 PM
0 comments
