Remembering Home Children who returned for the fight

November 5, 2014 · 0 Comments

“They arrived in Canada with only their name. No families, no familiarity, nothing, not even hope. Alone, scared and unsure of what was to come.”

– Nanci Malek DCMA

Between 1863 and 1939 over 100,000 children were sent to Canada from the British Isles during the child emigration movement. Orphaned and destitute children, thought to stand a better chance in Canada, were sent to Canadian families, many of whom welcomed them, not as family, but as a source of cheap labour.

Marketing and Promotions Coordinator for the Dufferin County Museum & Archives (DCMA) Nanci Malek says staff is working through “DuffStuff,” the museum’s online information portal to identify British home children who lived in Dufferin County and returned to fight overseas. So far, they have identified over 100, the vast majority of whom fought in WWI and WWII. Many did not return to Dufferin, but it is DCMA’s aim, says Malek, “to honour them by continuing to tell their stories.” It is her hope that they will not be forgotten on November 11th at local Remembrance Day services.

There is evidence to suggest that from the 1900’s on, most of these children, some only toddlers came from families with strong bonds that had simply fallen on hard times and had every hope and intention of retrieving their children from mission homes. English institutions such as Barnardo’s, created with philanthropic intentions by Doctor John Barnardo in the later part of the 1800’s, were “rescue “ homes for destitute children, many orphaned by the East End London cholera outbreak.

In the decades that followed, policies developed in various British child institutions to deliberately separate siblings and discourage parental contact – even to the point of falsely telling children their parents were dead. Some children sent overseas, spent the rest of their lives unsuccessfully searching for their families.

Barnardo homes were set up in Ontario with Peterborough as the main distribution centre for Barnardo girls from 1889 to 1922. Before long, “receiving homes” were setup across the country. Seen as the only way to alleviate the unending cycle of poverty in Victorian England, little thought was given, by institutions or the Canadian government, to the subsequent care and safety of the children once they left England’s shore.

Many children found a better life, but others were placed in appalling situations with little or no supervision, vulnerable to near slavery and abuse. New Canadians struggling to build home and country needed cheap labour and many would never have seen success without immigration schemes such as the home children. The Canadian government has never apologized for its role in the practice despite apologies from the U.K. and Australia in 2009.

The names of home children can be found on ship passenger lists, but details of early lists contain little more than their name and destination. Many of these children, so ill served by their home and country, still returned to served with the Canadian and British forces during both World Wars.

From the DCMA archives:

“Isaac James Frances Ballin Thomas was born on May 26, 1900 in Holborn, London, the son of Frank James Ballin Thomas and Elizabeth. He immigrated to Canada onboard the SS Tunisian, arriving on August 5, 1910. He was employed by John Faulkner. His father was a collector for Singer Sewing Machines. Isaac’s mother died of consumption in 1903 and the father was reputed to have been committed to a mental asylum. That necessitated Isaac entering Barnardo’s in 1908. Isaac joined the Canadian army in 1916, despite being under age. At some point, the army discovered that he was under age and he was not permitted to fight in the war. At the time of his application, Isaac stated he was living at Glin Cross, Ontario and working as a farm hand. He is said to have married and returned to England in the 1930s.”

“I think the most significant part of this story,” says Malek, “is that these youth, once of age (some not), were called to defend their new country, Canada. They went to war and fought for our freedom and when their duty was done, even though they could have gone back to their homeland, they came back to Canada to restart their lives, right here in Dufferin County.”

By Marni Walsh