Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Motion No. 133. I thank the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for bringing it forward. I will be supporting the motion.
The motion asks the government to recognize the contributions of over 100,000 British home children to Canada, the hardships and stigmas that many endured, and the importance of reflecting on their stories, by declaring September 28 of every year British home child day in Canada.
I would like thank my friend Art Joyce, whose grandfather was a British home child, and who has written a book on these Canadians and their experiences. Much of the information and many of the words I used to prepare this speech came directly from Mr. Joyce.
My predecessor in this place, Alex Atamanenko, tabled a motion in the previous Parliament asking for an apology from the Canadian government to British home children and their descendants. I was happy to table the same motion in this Parliament.
On February 16, 2017, the House of Commons unanimously passed a very similar motion from the member for Montcalm asking that the House recognize the injustice, abuse, and suffering endured by the British home children, as well as the efforts, participation, and contribution of these children and their descendants within our communities, and to offer its sincere apology to the British home children and their descendants.
Who were the British home children? They were children from poor families in the United Kingdom who were taken from their families, orphanages, and state workhouses, and sent to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Canada received the vast majority of these children. Those countries assisted with transportation and immigration costs, because these children were seen as a virtually free source of labour on newly developing farms and homesteads.
British parish priests were given the authority to take children into care as wards of the state if it was determined that the family was too poor to support them, a practice called philanthropic abductions. Poor parents, unwilling to give up their children, had little choice. Once taken from their families, children were essentially branded orphans, regardless of whether their parents survived or not. Although parents could occasionally visit their children in the orphanages, some were shocked to discover that what they had considered a temporary placement had become permanent, or worse, that they had been shipped overseas. Most of these parents would never see their children again.
This practice began in 1869, and continued in Canada until the last shipment of boys and girls arrived on Vancouver Island at the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, near Duncan, in 1948. During its heyday, single shipments of children sent by steamboat across the Atlantic could reach as many as 200 boys and girls, some as young as five, during the earlier phase of the program.
There were more than 100,000 boys and girls sent to Canada during this time, and Statistics Canada has estimated that about four million Canadians are descendants of these children, about one in eight Canadians. If this is a truly representative chamber, that means that more than 40 of us here in the House of Commons are descended from one of the home children.
The organizations that sent the children to Canada said they would have better lives, but in fact, they were required to sign indenture contracts as labourers, and were only allowed to leave service upon reaching legal age. Although the contract stipulated a modest income, most were never paid. The contracts typically required that children be given food, shelter, adequate clothing, as well as regular access to school and church.
Often, many of these basic provisions were not met, with children being made to sleep in barns or unheated attics, or to endure Canadian winters without proper winter clothing. Contracts were seldom enforced, as neither the charities nor governments involved had enough staff assigned to do this. Most home children never finished school, as they were required for work. Beatings for the boys and sexual abuse for the girls was not uncommon, and very few were adopted by their host families. “We were here to work”, one adult home child recalled.
British home children made up a substantial portion of volunteers in both world wars, up to 10,000 serving in World War I alone.
Art Joyce's grandfather, Cyril William Joyce, was sent to Canada in 1926 as a boy of 16. His father George was a travelling salesman, and the family lived in the east end of London, the epicentre of poverty in that city. Cyril spent several years working as an indentured farm labourer in northern Alberta until reaching legal age.
He never spoke of it much with his wife and children, and spoke even less of his family in England. His mother had signed the emigration papers, and he never spoke of her again. Cyril was unable to loosen the bonds on these painful memories, and took his family secrets to the grave. That shame, that unwillingness to speak of his past, is a common theme with British home children.
Descendants of home children are left with a huge hole in their lives, not knowing their family history, not knowing the true experiences of their parents and grandparents.
Despite the fact that our governments paid to bring 100,000 of these boys and girls here, then abandoned them to their fates on isolated farms, most Canadians know nothing about this dark chapter in our history.
Art Joyce points out that, “not once in all my years of public schooling did I learn about Canada's home children.” I can say the same thing. He felt compelled to research his grandfather's history, and the stories of other British home children in a book called Laying the Children's Ghosts to Rest: Canada's Home Children in the West.
What have other countries done to recognize the British Home Children? Australia's former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd invited British home children and their descendants to Parliament House in Canberra for a public apology on November 16, 2009. Many of those in the crowd were in tears.
On February 24, 2010, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologized to the families of the approximately 130,000 children who were sent away from Britain.
For the elderly survivors and their descendants, numbering now into the millions in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it was a long-awaited moment, one some thought might never arrive.
As Art's uncle Rob Joyce wrote upon hearing of Brown's apology:
It is a great day, I wish we could be reading this with Dad now; that would have made it even better. I understand Dad better now than I ever did, and why he was sad at times for reasons I never knew. An understanding that, like the British Government’s apology, has come much too late.
On the subject of apologies, I would only add that while this House did issue a unanimous apology a few months ago, that apology was made unannounced. To my knowledge no one from the British home children community was present in the House to hear the member for Montcalm put forward his motion.
It would be very meaningful to these families if the government would issue a formal apology, given by the Prime Minister, with family members invited to be present, as we have done for so many other government apologies. The British home children who were taken from their families, lost their childhood to hard labour, and lived with the shame for the rest of their lives deserve no less.
Having a British home child day in Canada would be one more positive step on the road to healing those families. The day chosen, September 28, is coincidentally Art Joyce's birthday.