A "Home Child" Story by Bruce Adams
The Museum reviews and accepts donated personal or family memories and histories into its collection. As a learning institution, the accounts help us understand how individuals recollect, interpret, or construct meaning from lived experiences. The stories are not modified by Museum staff. The point of view expressed is that of the author and not that of the Museum.
Between 1869 and the late 1930s, over 100,000 orphaned, abandoned and poor juvenile migrants were sent to Canada from the British Isles to have the chance at a better life while at the same time providing a cheap source of farm labour and domestic help. After arriving in Canada the children were sent to receiving farms and distributed to local farms.
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Bruce Adams documents how his mother and her brothers and sister came to Canada (1920-1923) under the Barnardo's Homes plan.
I have just completed our family genealogy. My mother and her brothers and sister came to Canada 1920-1923 under Barnardo’s Plan to send U.K. children to Canada or Australia. Some children faced shocking events. One brother (14) committed suicide. The other, “I didn’t have a childhood” and refuses to speak about his farm life.
It truly was a blight in our history.