WINNIPEG

'She never saw her parents again': Descendants of poor, British children shipped to Canada to mark somber anniversary Sunday

CTV News Winnipeg

Megan Benedictson Supervising Digital News Producer

Published Wednesday, September 25, 2019 4:55PM CST

Text:

WINNIPEG -- Canadians are preparing to pay tribute with light Sunday, to mark 150 years since the first group of young immigrants who later came to be known as the British Home Children arrived in Canada.

It was the start of a chapter in Canadian history that saw 100,000 poor children sent here from Great Britain by churches and charities, between 1869 and the late 1930s.

Barb janes, whose grandmother was a home child, said ten per cent of Canadians are descended from the children, but many may not be aware.

An atmosphere of shame

Janes said she only found out her grandmother had been a home child when she was in her late 30s. She said families often kept the history a secret.

“There was a lot of shaming about, ‘Your parents couldn’t care for you, so we had to do this,’” she told CTV News, adding that anti-immigration rhetoric was also aimed at the kids, accusing them of carrying diseases or being criminals.

Janes said contrary to what many believe, only about two per cent of the children were orphans, but they all came from impoverished families, often homeless ones.

“There was an economic collapse in Great Britain,” janes said, explaining that migration from rural areas to urban ones and overcrowding experienced in the industrial revolution were also factors.

“There were literally hundreds and hundreds of children, of poor families, really struggling,” she said.

Janes said with no social services available, aside from those offered by charities and churches, more children were taken in than could be cared for.

“They needed an exit door,” she said. “There were so many kids coming in, they couldn’t contain them all.”

She said that’s where the idea to export children to a colony came in.

“Not under the department of immigration, but under the department of agriculture, and served as indentured servants and domestics in Canada.”

A range of experiences

Some of the home children, who typically went through receiving or distribution homes in Canada before being sent to farms, experienced abuse and poor treatment in their new country.

Janes said typically, the education offered was minimal.

“There was never any training that might elevate a child beyond the level of domestic worker, or farm hand,” she said.

However, Janes said her grandmother credited the home that brought her to Canada, Barnardo’s Home, with providing her with education.

“That was a huge value to her,” she said, adding that her grandmother then went to a southern Ontario farm and eventually went to a trade school. She said that was an opportunity she would not have had in the mean streets of London.

“Now, that said, she never saw her parents again,” janes said. “It’s a trade-off.”

Winnipeg served as gateway

Janes said the head of Barnardo’s Home, which sent 30,000 children to Canada – more than any other organization - visited Winnipeg shortly after the turn of the century. He didn’t like what he saw.

“He was really worried about sending children here,” said janes. “And there was also a sense among all those agencies that the city was a really bad place for kids.”

Janes said Barnardo’s, which had an office in Winnipeg on Bannerman Avenue, eventually set up a large industrial farm school for boys on a tract of land near Russell, Man.

For some of the 800 boys who went through there, it was a difficult transition.

“They had never seen a cow before,” she said. “They didn’t know how to milk a cow, or bring the cattle into the barn at night. So, there were a lot of tensions in these placements.”