The White Slaves of Canada
Canadians didn't enslave blacks. They enslaved their own children.
This article is about the 100,000 British kids sent to Canada between 1869 and 1948 to be used as slaves. Most were whipped, beaten, molested and raped. Many didn’t survive.
“75 lives, 75 children. Brought here to thrive, instead were forgotten.”
So reads the inscription on a soon-to-be dedicated new monument commemorating the all-too-short lives of dozens of British Home Children buried in two mass graves at Park Lawn Cemetery.
Among those whose names will finally be inscribed at the central Etobicoke burial ground, 58 were children known as ‘Barnardo kids,’ while the remaining 17 were infants born to some of the young, unwed mothers among their ranks.
At least one of the 75 children was murdered, while another died of exhaustion. Some succumbed to illness, while others died by suicide.
While the details of these children’s lives – and deaths – are still in the process of being unearthed, Lori Oschefski said all 75 had their lives cut tragically short for the common misfortune of being among the more than 100,000 British kids sent to Canada between 1869 and 1948 by such charity agencies as Barnardo’s, Macpherson’s and Fegan’s to become farm workers and domestics.
“The truth of the matter is, most of these children were brought here to work, not to become part of our families or to be adopted,” said Oschefski, the CEO of the British Home Children Advocacy and Research Association (BHCARA) – an organization whose mission is to bring to light the true stories of British Home Children.
“If you received a good home, you were super fortunate, because most of these children didn’t. Many, like my Aunt Mary, were whipped, beaten, molested, raped. A lot of untruths were told to these children, too, so many grew up believing things that really weren’t fundamentally true about their lives: that they were discarded and unwanted, or that they were orphans.”
In reality, Oschefski said the vast majority of British Home Children were born into the equivalent of today’s welfare families – families that, for whatever reason, became so desperate that they turned their children over to one of the more than 30 organizations sending such children to Canada as labourers.
While Oschefski’s mother was among the “lucky” child migrants of that era to be adopted into a caring family, she still felt compelled to do something to memorialize her mom’s less fortunate peers.
After discovering the two mass plots of Barnardo kids at Park Lawn – one unmarked, the other with a lone memorial for nine-year-old Home Child Stanley Allebone – she launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $16,000 toward a monument on which to inscribe all 75 names provided to her by cemetery staff.
Soon after, she was contacted by Ottawa documentary filmmaker Bob Huggins and the pair teamed up on the project.
“My father was a Barnardo Home Child who came here as a farm labourer – sold to Canada for 10 pounds in 1929,” said Huggins, who is currently working on a documentary titled A Barnardo Boy through his production company, Orphan Boy Films.
“Can you imagine today, a seven year old being sent to another country without any kind of monitoring or oversight? It’s inconceivable that a wealthy country like England would turn its back on its own kids.”
While soliciting support for the project around Ottawa, Huggins simultaneously took on the task of designing the monument in such a way that it would be “different and meaningful.”
The marker’s block base of rough granite features a description of the plight of British Home Children, while atop that sits a chunk of plate steel from a 1950s ship – complete with brass porthole – inscribed with each of the names of the 75 children buried below.
“It’s quite symbolic, because each of those children came across the sea in a ship like the one we used,” Huggins said of the monument, which will be unveiled during a special dedication ceremony at Park Lawn Cemetery this weekend.
Oschefski, meanwhile, continues to research the lives of the 75 children buried in Etobicoke’s Barnardo plots with help from the charity itself, which is still active in England today.
“Just a few weeks ago, they sent me a document with the names of these children’s parents, so I can now go back to connect these children to their family trees where they exist (on Ancestry),” she said of Barnardo’s, which also gave a “generous” donation to the monument.
“Like I said to Barnardo’s, they didn’t just give me names, they gave these children their identity back and they gave them back their dignity.”
The British Home Children monument dedication will take place on Sunday, Oct. 1 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at Park Lawn Cemetery, 2845 Bloor St. W. For information about the event, go to http://bit.ly/2wPnNar
“It’s a sad situation, but I see Oct. 1 as a celebration,” Oschefski said of the dedication, which is open to the public.
“Those that are buried here represent everything that was absolutely brutally wrong about bringing these children into this country, but I knew they would become the voices for Home Children in Canada – that their lives would not be in vain. I’m just sorry it took so long.”
Article by Cynthia Reason from Toronto.com