Mr. Speaker, it is an extreme pleasure to stand tonight to speak to the motion from my colleague, the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, to establish a day to recognize British home children. In fact, this story is unknown to most in Canada.
As has been mentioned by my colleague across the aisle, almost 12% of the Canadian population either are home children or are descendants of home children. They came to Canada as young children, orphans, and they have helped to build our country to where we are today. It is a deeply personal story of hardship and overcoming adversity. It is also a story about success and health, and the families and generations that followed their wonderful example of overcoming challenges, as well as the loneliness.
The story of the British home children struck home with me through my uncle who never spoke about it. My uncle was close to me because I was the same age as my cousin and we lived only two blocks from each other.
I found out about the British home children in 2008 when I first came to the House of Commons. A minister at the time, Greg Thompson, suggested that I should learn more about this issue. Through that research, I found the story of my uncle. With further research, I found the story of many others.
This summer, I had the opportunity and the privilege to go to Stratford to view a documentary film produced by Eleanor McGrath. Eleanor decided, after she had discovered one of the orphan homes in Toronto, to follow this story and to make this unbelievably beautiful film. We just viewed it this afternoon in the precinct. By the way, the first time I viewed the movie was last summer in Stratford.
For me, the highlight of the documentary was a man named Pat Maloney. He is a British home child and is in his nineties. His children were there. The most exciting part of the movie for me, if one does not experience a strong emotion when watching it, was seeing Pat Maloney standing on top of Lancaster.
My colleague mentioned how many of these individuals served and protected our country in the war. The story that I skipped over, and I will not have enough time to describe in its fullness, is the fact that they came here as eight year olds, 11 year olds, or 14 year olds, the age of my uncle when he came here. Some of them came as young as six months old. They were brought to Canada to serve as labourers, typically in agriculture and farming because the country needed that.
Some people view this as a scheme or a plan between different countries, something we must look back on with shame. However, my heart says, after speaking to home children and their descendants, that with the majority of the experiences they had, they would never have had lives they had if they had not come through what many believed in that time period in our history to be something necessary, to rescue them from poverty and life without hope in Great Britain, for the most part.
Many homes and groups came together. Groups like Barnardo's Homes and Fegan Homes brought these children into Canada.
First, imagine being abandoned by family and delivered to an orphanage in Great Britain. Imagine living there for years. At one time, 350,000 of these children were in Bernardo's Homes. Then, imagine a posting saying that they could go to Canada or to Australia.
I have one little sidebar on my uncle's story. He had a brother and they were both delivered to the orphanage in Great Britain together because their parents could no longer afford them. When it came time to depart, they were both to come to Canada. Something happened on the dock that day and instead of them both coming to Canada, my uncle, Ken Bickerton, came to Canada and his brother went to Australia. This was at age 14. The wonderful part of this story is they were reunited in my home when they were in their seventies.
I do not think any of us can imagine the joy or the things they held inside themselves. My cousins did not know all the details about their father. They did not know whether he was a British home child. My sister alerted me, as the eldest of our five siblings, to say that she thought Uncle Ken was a home child. There are many stories like this, many of them in my community. Many of them are stories that we cannot imagine in the day and age in which we live.
We need to put this in every history book in our country. Parliamentarians at every legislature need to stand and say that Canadians must learn this story. The size and scope of the British home children who came here and who built our country should be known to all.
In that regard, the documentary that I spoke about is called, Forgotten. I will make a shameless plug for it right now. It has been distributed at many festivals. It is an award-winning documentary. It will run on TVO later this month. When we know the date and time all parliamentarians can view this wonderful story of the British home children, we will let them know.
I again want to thank my colleague for shining a light on something I tried to shine a light on in 2009-10. My first motion in the House of Commons was to declare 2010 the year of the British home child. It has never been more rewarding for me than to stand in this chamber and see all sides of the House, all members rise in support of the year of the British home child on the 140th anniversary.
I ask all colleagues in the House to stand with my colleague and declare this the permanent day of the British home child as he has asked for in this motion.