Quoted from British Home Children
Tom Isherwood, To rob me of my childhood and family forever is a crime, and the world should know about this sick British and Canadian tragedy that has been hidden these many years gone by.
Amy Hodgkins, five, was sent to a farm near Baddeck in 1925. "They (the neighbours) all knew about her beating me but they wouldn’t open their mouths . . . And when the inspectors came, I wouldn’t tell them. I was too scared, I thought she’d really pound me after they’d left . . . All I can remember is all the poundings I got for nothing . . . I had the yard work, the field work . . . scrub floors, everything." -taken from an interview with Heather Laskey, January 3 2010 thechronicleherald.ca
Amy came with the Middlemore Homes on the Franconia 1924-05-26
James Golding - His father had died in the Boer War and he arrived aged five. "They were poor people, fishermen. They were good to me, treated me as their own child . . . Seventy-five years ago I stepped through that door and I’m here yet. I’ve had a good life, but there is a melancholy when you think your own country didn’t want you." Mr. Golding’s older brother was more typical. Placed in a family with six other children, he was "put out after four years." Then, with a farmer in Stewiacke, "he was treated terrible. He beat him with whips and said he was only a charity boy." -taken from an interview with Heather Laskey, January 3 2010 thechronicleherald.ca
Elsie Hathaway - "There's a lot of things that they should have done that they didn't do, They sent us over here thinking we were going to be used good when we weren't."
Joseph Betts of Belleville, Ontario“You did not get out to play with other boys and girls. It was all work,” “Not only that but when I came over here I left three sisters behind in England. I have never heard from them and cannot seem to get track of them.”
Frank Gardner -
Noted in the Barnardo magazine, The Guild, summer of 1997 edition "I am reminded of a letter I spotted in the February 1914 of the Barnardo Boys' "Mag" - later merged with the Guild Messenger, Frank Gardner wrote from Canada: "If this letter is on a variety of subjects don't blame me. I have a friend...who writes on everything from...love duets to Supreme Court judgments and tuberculosis. I'll try not to be as bad as that".
John Vallance- " I remembered how I had arrived in Canada all alone, with no one to say "Here, John. Here's a nickle. Buy yourself an icecream." It was a sad life in that way.
""I love my children, but even they don't completely fill that gap. I feel as if I was robbed. ... Even today I am very insecure, deep down. I feel a nobody." -- Home Child
Henry Gammon, Barnardo Lad, 1894 - "It seems to me that there is a set of people in Manitoba giving to everlasting grumbling. Not only have they the Barnardo boy an advantage to themselves as regards cheapness, but often times treat him with as little indifference as their canine friends."
"I dont know what I expected. We were conditioned to think great things were in store for us - that Canada was one big apple tree, and our worries were over for life." -- Home Child
Ada Allan, a British Home Child -"All those years, I didn't know what it was to be loved. In those times when they hired you, it was to work. I didnt sit at the table with them...I ate by myself. I was a servant. This grew on me. I felt very inferior even though I knew I was an honest person."
Susan Tickner (nee MacMenemey), former Child Migrant "...I was one of those migrants, Sent out - at the age of nine! On a ship with hundreds of others, All frightened for our lives."
John Hennessey - BHC - ''The brothers and sisters were all together,'' he says. ''And then they started grabbing the girls away from their brothers. I can still hear the screams of these kids being separated. Some of them never saw their sisters again. I still have nightmares.''
"Whats it like to have a muvver?" -- Former Fairbridge Home Child
Everything was mud and the first thing I had to buy out my wages was knee-high rubber boots. Learning how to harness horses was confusing. However I learned very quickly and in May I was working the horses in the field, preparing the spring planting." -- Home Child
"We built that bloody place. We built it with our bare hands ... We were slave labourers ... We had no shoes. We worked in our bare feet every day. Winter and summer. We built that bloody place for them ..." -- Former Bindoon Home Child
"We built that bloody place. We built it with our bare hands ... We were slave labourers ... We had no shoes. We worked in our bare feet every day. Winter and summer. We built that bloody place for them ..." -- Former Bindoon Home Child
"You would have thought that he was purchasing a horse the way he sized up my forehead, body and legs." -- Home Child
Ellen Buck, Home Child - I was glad when my sister Jessie moved closer. It was five miles away. I would visit her on Sunday and run back the five miles to help milk the cows.
Jim Fairley, Former Child Migrant - "It was nothing but slavery and hard workmanship, the only thing that was missing is the whip."
I. Cook, a Home Childs Daughter - "May I take this opportunity to tell you how desperately ashamed my father was at being one of these "Home Boys". We were forbidden to tell anyone of how my dad came to Canada and he himself lied once when a local newspaper interviewed him. He stated he was born in Toronto."
"I asked my mother, 'Did you ever sign for me to go?' And she said, 'Michael John, I never ever signed any papers. You were stolen out of your cradle when you were two months old.'" --
"The abuses suffered in Australia by the children were similar in Canada. The rapes, beatings and torture were all prevalent here in Canada." -- Canadian Centre for Home Children
Norman Johnston, Home Child, Australia - "I deem myself to be one of those successful people but I would forego the total success I have had for another ten minutes with my mother."
"My next assignment was to a place called Pontypool, Ontario, 13 miles north of Newcastle. It was a dairy farm rented by a husband and wife. ... We were allowed to go to school for about six months and then this man took us out of school to work full time on the farm. The wife was kind and gentle, but the husband was unscrupulous, vicious, dirty, and lazy. We were beaten every day or so for the smallest things. To this day I frequently have nightmares about this part of my life." -- Excerpt from "THE HOME CHILDREN, PERSONAL STORIES", Phyllis Harrison, Editor
"Those 7 years were hell. I was beat up with pieces of harness, pitchforks, anything that came in handy to hit me with I got it." -- Home Child
"I love my children, but even they don't completely fill that gap. I feel as if I was robbed. ... Even today I am very insecure, deep down. I feel a nobody." -- Home Child
John Vallance- " I remembered how I had arrived in Canada all alone, with no one to say "Here, John. Here's a nickle. Buy yourself an icecream." It was a sad life in that way.
""I love my children, but even they don't completely fill that gap. I feel as if I was robbed. ... Even today I am very insecure, deep down. I feel a nobody." -- Home Child
Henry Gammon, Barnardo Lad, 1894 - "It seems to me that there is a set of people in Manitoba giving to everlasting grumbling. Not only have they the Barnardo boy an advantage to themselves as regards cheapness, but often times treat him with as little indifference as their canine friends."
"I dont know what I expected. We were conditioned to think great things were in store for us - that Canada was one big apple tree, and our worries were over for life." -- Home Child
Ada Allan, a British Home Child -"All those years, I didn't know what it was to be loved. In those times when they hired you, it was to work. I didnt sit at the table with them...I ate by myself. I was a servant. This grew on me. I felt very inferior even though I knew I was an honest person."
Susan Tickner (nee MacMenemey), former Child Migrant "...I was one of those migrants, Sent out - at the age of nine! On a ship with hundreds of others, All frightened for our lives."
John Hennessey - BHC - ''The brothers and sisters were all together,'' he says. ''And then they started grabbing the girls away from their brothers. I can still hear the screams of these kids being separated. Some of them never saw their sisters again. I still have nightmares.''
"Whats it like to have a muvver?" -- Former Fairbridge Home Child
Everything was mud and the first thing I had to buy out my wages was knee-high rubber boots. Learning how to harness horses was confusing. However I learned very quickly and in May I was working the horses in the field, preparing the spring planting." -- Home Child
"We built that bloody place. We built it with our bare hands ... We were slave labourers ... We had no shoes. We worked in our bare feet every day. Winter and summer. We built that bloody place for them ..." -- Former Bindoon Home Child
"We built that bloody place. We built it with our bare hands ... We were slave labourers ... We had no shoes. We worked in our bare feet every day. Winter and summer. We built that bloody place for them ..." -- Former Bindoon Home Child
"You would have thought that he was purchasing a horse the way he sized up my forehead, body and legs." -- Home Child
Ellen Buck, Home Child - I was glad when my sister Jessie moved closer. It was five miles away. I would visit her on Sunday and run back the five miles to help milk the cows.
Jim Fairley, Former Child Migrant - "It was nothing but slavery and hard workmanship, the only thing that was missing is the whip."
I. Cook, a Home Childs Daughter - "May I take this opportunity to tell you how desperately ashamed my father was at being one of these "Home Boys". We were forbidden to tell anyone of how my dad came to Canada and he himself lied once when a local newspaper interviewed him. He stated he was born in Toronto."
"I asked my mother, 'Did you ever sign for me to go?' And she said, 'Michael John, I never ever signed any papers. You were stolen out of your cradle when you were two months old.'" --
"The abuses suffered in Australia by the children were similar in Canada. The rapes, beatings and torture were all prevalent here in Canada." -- Canadian Centre for Home Children
Norman Johnston, Home Child, Australia - "I deem myself to be one of those successful people but I would forego the total success I have had for another ten minutes with my mother."
"My next assignment was to a place called Pontypool, Ontario, 13 miles north of Newcastle. It was a dairy farm rented by a husband and wife. ... We were allowed to go to school for about six months and then this man took us out of school to work full time on the farm. The wife was kind and gentle, but the husband was unscrupulous, vicious, dirty, and lazy. We were beaten every day or so for the smallest things. To this day I frequently have nightmares about this part of my life." -- Excerpt from "THE HOME CHILDREN, PERSONAL STORIES", Phyllis Harrison, Editor
"Those 7 years were hell. I was beat up with pieces of harness, pitchforks, anything that came in handy to hit me with I got it." -- Home Child
"I love my children, but even they don't completely fill that gap. I feel as if I was robbed. ... Even today I am very insecure, deep down. I feel a nobody." -- Home Child
