Recognition by the Canadian Goverment

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The Canadian Government has officially recognized the contribution the British Home Children made to our country as a nation. The year 2010 was officially declared the "Year of the Home Child" to commemoratesthe United Kingdom’s Child Migration Scheme that brought the Home Children from Britain to Canada. 

Provincially, New Brunswick recognized 2009 as the Year of the British Home Child, to mark the 140th anniversary of the arrival of the first home children in 1869, and Nova Scotia declared October 2009 the Month of the British Home Children. 

In September of 2010 Canada Post honored the children with the issue of a commemorative stamp. It featured an image of the SS Sardinia, a map to symbolize their cross-Atlantic trip, a boy working on the Russell Manitoba Barnardo Farm and one of a child leaving Britain standing beside his suitcase. He is headed to Hamilton, Ontario.  The identity of this child is not known. 


Links and Sources

Citizenship and Immigration Canada 

A  formal petition to the Government of Canada asking for an apology
to the BHC and the BHCD's has been launched 
visit Apology Petition for details 

The Undertow of Juvenile Immigration
Hazel Bell McGregorn 1925



"Thank God I've got own folks!" said Mary, surveying her parent's meagre home in the rear of a poor street. The worker who directed the transfer of Mary from the luxurious endowed orphanage, was not without apprehension, fearing the effect of the contrast on the child. She was counting on that strong tie of blood to save the situation, but was not prepared for what happened. The young girl was transfigured. In that moment she attained respectability. She gained a personality. "Thank God!" she cried, with all the pride of a princess in her voice, "I've got <own> folks!"

More and more social workers are realizing that, in
the adjusting of human lives, they must reckon with
this law that has to do with own folks. It is a law as
persistent as the law of gravitation and, when ignored, the consequences are equally disastrous.

It is trur that there are times when we must work at cross purposes with this law, and then it is an uphill fight every inch of the way. Anyone who has ever attempted to wean a child from his own family knows how the whole force of nature seems to be working against the process.

Oscar was placed in a splendid foster home in a
distant province from his mother in the hope that he would forget her. But years of treatment from the best doctors in the land failed to make Oscar thrive, and there were ugly sores on his face that would not heal. One day he disappeared and finally they found him in a Poor House at the bedside of a broken old woman and the sores on his face were healed.

No, a child will never forget. In those first three or
four baby years they will not feel the wrench in the
same way and will easily adapt themselves to other
conditions. But with the older child something sacred is torn up by the very roots. It may take up root elsewhere but will never strike quite so deep. To remove a child from his own home in theory is a
hideous thing, but in practice it is an experience
that burns an ugly scar forever on the memory of the one who does it.

Who can forget that awful moment of separation when every child expresses his feelings in his own peculiar way according to his age and temperament.

There is the sensitive emotional girl who weeps or
becomes hysterical, the sullen child who offers
physical resistance, the adventurous one who is no
trouble or who even welcomes the diversion until the excitement is over, and the proud little chap,
resigned to the inevitable, with the stiff upper lip
showing the good stuff that is in him.

At such time there is much searching of one's
conscience. Are we justified in interfering with the
right of another human being to live his life as he
was meant to live it? Was this cruel upheaval of
nature really necessary? Was there no other way? Might not the deserting father have been retrieved and made to accept his responsibilities? Or was the mother hopelessly immoral? Perhaps if we had been more patient resourceful or understanding the home might not have been broken.

And what about the child? Do we know him well enough to be sure that he will fit in his new home? Have we properly blazed the way for the little stranger there? Can his new family give him enough to make up for to him for all that we are taking from him? What will happen to these parents when they are relieved of their natural responsibility?

Perhaps it is such experiences and such questions as
these that have led our child-caring agencies to
adopt, as their first article in their confession of faith, the principle that no child shall be removed from his home on the ground of poverty. As
more intelligent consideration is given to family
problems, with the consequent raising of the standards of work, many a home has been saved by the strengthening of the weak spots. Often a family has been helped over a difficult crisis by the money that would have been spent in caring for the children in institutions. This is not a new policy, for was it not used successfully with the baby Moses? If a woman must be paid for the care of a child who could be better than his own mother?

It is just here that there is a serious conflict
between Canadian workers and those responsible for the immigration of juveniles from Great Britain. Part of the admitted policy of the latter is the deliberate breaking and scattering of families whose outstanding condition is poverty. For the most part, we are told, they are the children of respectable parents whose consent to their children's emigration is obtained with difficulty.

The last report of the Department of Immigration and Colonization states that: "The great majority of the children are of poor but respectable people who by reason of business reverses and other misfortunes have become dependent upon the charity of the public and the state." Also ". . . .the consent of the parent or guardian has been a formidable obstacle to the migration of many splendid boys and girls."

Four of these young immigrants committed suicide in one province in one year. At least one of these boys left in England a poor but respectable family. He was thirteen years of age and it was Christmas time. Are any of us so old that we can forget those confused unadjusted difficult adolescent years? Can any of us ever forget the acute suffering of that first attack of home sickness or the lonely agony of the first Christmas away from home? He was among strangers in a strange land four thousand miles away from home, with the only road back the road of failure and shame. He was unsuited in every way to the life of a Canadian farm, and his employer was a hard taskmaster. And after the funeral his little presents arrived from England.

It is significant that, at the time of this tragedy,
this child was reported at the headquarters of his
society as an unqualified success. One wonders how
many other so-called successes would, with sufficient penetration, reveal a similar story of maladjustment, misunderstanding and agony of mind.

"There is no lonliness to equal the lonliness of youth
at war with its surroundings in a world that does not care." Rudyard Kipling once said to a group of
university students. But how aptly these words apply to many of these dependent children.

We do care for our little Canadian dependents. The
quality of the foster care we are giving them varies
greatly, according to locality and conditions, but it
shows improvement almost daily, and at its best
approaches our ideal -- the approximation of what good parents give to their own children. But, apart from the fact that they provide us with cheap labour, what do we care for the immigrant children?

The Labour Party in England condemns the whole
juvenile immigration scheme. Miss Margaret Bondfield, after an exhaustive study, recommends that it be limited to children over sixteen years of age. But for the most part the British public heartily endorses the system. Even Royalty sponsors it. To take children from poor homes to prosperous ones, from an overcrowded country to one needing population and still keep them in the Empire. It all seems so simple, so logical, so patriotic until we look beneath the surface.

Conditions in the Old Country are so different we are told. But conditions do not alter human nature nor does poverty neutralize family affection. If one of the Royal mothers were suddenly bereft of her husband, her title, her fortune and her home would she consider it a satisfactory solution to her problem to have the ocean placed between her and all that she has left -- her children? But the mother hearts in Whitechapel are the same as the mother hearts in Kensington.

Recently there appeared in our papers a photograph that was good to look upon. It was a family of thirty-seven, three generations just arrived from England. It is a safe prediction that they will not contribute to the list of suicides or court cases, but to the happy successful citizens of Canada for records show that it is the lonely ones that fall by the wayside. 

BRITONS NEVER SHALL BE SLAVES
Being an odiferous ode on Juvenile Immigration.
Sung by John Bull ("In person") at "THE FOLLIES"
The First Annual Review of the Social Workers Club of Toronto. April 16 1928.

O, there was a London urchin
Of a feeble minded strain.
His parents both were in the clink
And he was raising cain.

The Poor Law guardians got him
But he drove them near insane,
'Till an emigration home got a subsidy
For shipping him across the main.

Singing Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves
For Britons never, never, never shall be --
Made to care for dependent poor
If Canada will do it free.

O, his tonsils were defective 
And his teeth were just a wreck.
He had a spot upon his lung
And he could not see a speck.

The government men were busy,
So we used our own M.D.
And we bluffed an exam and got him passed 
And hustled him across the sea.

Singing Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves
For Britons never, never, never shall be --
Scrutinized by Canadian eyes
Before they cross the sea.

When he reached this land of promise
With a hundred just the same.
We sent him to a farmer on the mail order plan 
Though we hardly knew the farmer's name.

He may have been a trifle lonely
For kicks are all he understands,
But why supervise -- when it's far from wise
To get him back upon our hands.

Singing Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves
For Britons never, never, never shall be --
Supervised or Canadianized
In their homes across the sea.

O, we've heard of the thing called case work
In our Island of the Free.
But what it has to do with the problem child
We never yet could see.

O, we know a technique far from easy,
For family break-ups cause us small concern.
To keep a home together costs real money
But emigration brings a cash return.

Singing Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves
For Britons never, never, never shall be --
Taught their jobs by social worker snobs.
They're colonials -- "We own 'em," don't you see.

We've unloaded eighty thousand hopefuls
On Canada, the loyal and the fair.
Australia built a nation on our convict population,
So Canada should take her share.

They are ninety-nine per cent successful,
But we're certainly not going to say
Why we think that is so -- for we very well know
Facts are stubborn -- and they point another way.

Singing Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves
For Britons never, never, never shall be --
Said to fail unless they're sent to jail
Or deported to their own countree.