Good morning.
My name is Melynda Jarratt. I live in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and I'm an historian of the Canadian war brides. I've been working on this subject for 20 years. This is my third appearance before this committee. I appeared in April 2005 and was recalled in May 2005 to speak again. Now here I am back again, telling the same old story.
I know I only have five minutes, so I am going to try to make this as short as possible. I have three points I want to make, which might turn into five.
My first point is that as the main contact point for Canadian war brides in this country and internationally, through the aegis of my website that I run, called canadianwarbrides.com, which is sort of the clearinghouse, and the listserv with which I'm involved as an Internet-based point of contact for all war brides and their children and grandchildren, I can tell you right now that war brides are not happy about what's going on, and their children are not happy and their grandchildren are not happy. Their fathers and grandfathers and their husbands did something for this country in World War II for which they deserve to be honoured. We hear a lot about honouring veterans, but when it comes to providing the security that these people need in their old age, and they are indeed citizens, all we are hearing from the halls of government is insecurity and uncertainty.
I personally find it depressing. I find it insulting. I find it frustrating, and I just can't believe this. It's beyond the pale. It's ridiculous. You talk to Canadians and you ask them about war brides and what they think about war brides. War brides are a unique phenomenon in Canadian history. They came to this country—and this is my point number two, a brief history—between 1942 and 1948: 43,454 war brides were brought to this country under the system organized by the Canadian government, through the Department of Immigration at first but then the Department of National Defence took over in 1944. They were transported to this country in a government-organized scheme. With them they brought 20,997 children over the space of six years. Those children were welcomed, and the mothers were welcomed with open arms as the best citizens one could ever possibly hope for.
The overwhelming documentary evidence in the files of the National Archives—and you can believe that over 20 years I have explored it to no end--thousands and thousands and thousands of sheets of paper on microfilm, not to mention newspapers and contemporary accounts and just plain old archival documents that children, the wives, and the grandchildren have saved over these years and have sent to me.... And the archival evidence is what I want to talk to you about as point number three. The archival evidence is so astounding; it's a mountain. What is going to happen here in the next couple of years is a tsunami of applications for people's old age pension and Canada pension and passports and they're going to get caught up. This morning we heard the figures. An estimated 25,000 to 35,000 war brides and their children are going to be affected by these problems in the old 1947 Citizenship Act. Something has to be done.
I'm going to show you just a couple of small things, and let the government try to deny it. Here are some of my juicy ones. I call them “my juicy ones” because they're so obvious.
There is no date of printing on this one, but I believe it was 1944. It was called the Canadian Cook Book for British Brides. It is a Canadian cookbook on how to cook potatoes and lobster and all that sort of thing. It's kind of funny actually, when you look at it these days, on how to iron clothes and the Canadian lifestyle. This is what they say: “You are now a Canadian and these are your services.” This was in 1944, before there was a so-called Citizenship Act. They're not saying “You are now a Bornean.” They're not saying “You're from New Guinea.” They are saying “You are a Canadian.” There was a concept called Canada before the Citizenship Act came into being. They're not saying anything else. They're saying “You are a Canadian.”
Here is Princess Alice, the sister-in-law of Queen Mary, who was married to the Governor General of Canada at the time. She had been asked to write a foreword to the welcome to war brides. It was printed in 1944 by the Department of National Defence and the Wartime Information Board. In it she says, “I have been asked to prepare this by the Canadian government.” Assuming the way the government is today and the way they were back then--in wartime they would have been very concerned about every detail--one would wonder if there's no such thing as Canadian citizenship, which the present citizenship and immigration department is trying to say there isn't, why then would they have an entire chapter on Canadian citizenship in a 1944 document?
I'll read one sentence from it. We just laugh when we read this stuff because we can't believe that people are trying to deny it. “Coming from the British Isles to become a new citizen of Canada, you will have...”, and then they go on and on. They are not saying you are going to become a new citizen of Borneo, they are saying you are going to become a new citizen of Canada.
Here's another little one that was given to me by Marion Vermeersch, who testified last week. This was a document that was given to every war bride--it's really beautiful, actually, colourful--“Dock to Destination”. It was two pages, folded. I've scanned it for this presentation. In the introduction it explains to the war brides what they can expect when they arrive in Canada on the ship:
As soon as the ship docks, Canadian immigration officials will come aboard. These men will complete the formalities for your entry into Canada, which automatically makes you a Canadian citizen.
Now, what else are they saying there?
Can I just make one more--