Listers, please read, you may find that illusive relative. There were 100,000 childen transported from England, Scotland and Wales from the 1800's to as late as 1944 to Canada, Australia and South Africa. These children ranged in age from 2 to 16. These boys and girls were taken from institutions, Poor Houses, Orphanges, religious Charities of all denomination , E Charities and Catholic Charities and thousands were emigrated without parental knowledge or consent. This could be why some spent their lives trying to find their British families. My Grandmother, Elsie E. A. Berry was a British Home Child. She was with a Annie MacPherson Party on the SS Tunisian and arrived in Canada in 1909. She travelled by train from Quebec to Stratford, Ontario. Elsie was lucky, as she came with her sister Rose L. E. Berry. They had some time together, she had some contact by mail with her mother and brother in England. Not all BHC children had the luxury of knowing their parents and siblings. Please lobby your governments and Parliament to demand that the information regarding these Children be readily available so that the descendants of BHC's can find the parents and siblings of their loved ones. Lobby to have the sending agencies and other instutions release their information to BHC decendents as the British Parliament recommended a few years ago. Please read the news release below and forward it to your newspapers, television, and radio stations to help the unclaimed British Home Children be claimed by their descendants and not be left forever lost. Thank you. Patricia Corney Quakertown, PA USA Granddaughter of Elsie Eliza A. BERRY, BHC IOWFHS #1334 bluroc@worldnet.att.net ----- Original Message ----- From: psnow@cadvision.com To: Patricia Corney Sent: Monday, August 21, 2000 2:37 PM Subject: Neither Waif Nor Stray Perry Snow BA(Hon) MA, Clinical Psychologist 325 Market Mall Executive Professional Centre 4935 40th Avenue N.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada Phone: 403-288-4777 Email: psnow@cadvision.com FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: NEITHER WAIF NOR STRAY: The Search For A Stolen Identity ISBN 1-58112-758-8 There is a harrowing chapter missing from Canadian history books about Canada's Invisible Immigrants. Between 1870 and 1940, more than fifty childcare organizations deported 100,000 alleged orphaned, abandoned, illegitimate, and impoverished children to Canada ostensibly to "provide them with better lives than they would have had in England." Thousands of six-to-15-year-old children were transported without their parents' knowledge or consent to work as indentured farm labourers and domestic servants until they were 18 years old. Currently, there are an estimated four million Canadian descendants of British Home Children, many desperately seeking their unknown 20 million British relatives. They are not alone: millions of Americans and Australians, possibly comprising 10% of their population, are also unaware of the existence of family members in the United Kingdom. Could you be one of them? Is there a "British Orphan" in your family tree? For Calgary author and Clinical Psychologist, Perry Snow, examining the psychological traumas experienced by British Home Children is very close to home: the child profiled in his book is his father - Frederick Snow. Neither Waif Nor Stray: The Search For A Stolen Identity provides a personal and professional investigation of one British Home Child's life in Canada. The author has documented his father's persistent lifelong efforts to obtain vital information that would have reunited him with his family in England, and the continuing search he inherited after his father's death. His father's search was typical of thousands of British Home Children - and their descendants. According to Snow, some children were fortunate and were treated as members of Canadian families. But more than half suffered from abuse and neglect. Neither the Canadian government nor the British agencies assumed responsibility for their welfare. Many were not allowed to go to school, nor provided with adequate food, clothing, or shelter. They suffered a unique form of prejudice in Canada because of their presumed "tainted" origins. They were ostracized and accused of being carriers of syphilis. They were unwanted in England and unwelcome in Canada. "My father became a ward of the Waifs and Strays Society when he was four years old. He never saw his family again," Perry said. "When he was no longer in care, he wrote letters, pleading with them to 'help one who has been in darkness, and ignorant as to who he is,'" Perry said. For 50 years his father wrote to the Waifs and Strays Society trying to get information about himself and his family. "He never had a birth certificate. He had nothing to verify who he was for the first 33 years of his life," Perry said. "For the next 15 years, he carried a tattered To Whom It May Concern letter stating his name and identifying him as 'of British nationality.'" According to Perry, his father received his baptism certificate when he was 48 years old, but was still unable to identify his parents or locate his family at the time of his death on his still-unconfirmed 85th birthday in 1994. It took a year for Perry to obtain his father's case file from the Children's Society: "I discovered they withheld from my father the information he so desperately sought all his life and they didn't readily give it to me," Perry said. "They denied they had information, presented false information, and lied to my father and me," he added. After four more years of searching, Perry finally identified his grandparents and located four uncles and aunts. Perry wonders why this organization didn't want his father to know who he was, and was intrigued by the lengths to which the agency went to irrevocably sever family ties. He can't understand why many of the sending agencies continue to withhold information that would allow millions to reunite with their families. "I hope the successful conclusion of my search will inspire others to persist until they re-establish their familial ties," Perry said. "No one should live their lives without knowing who they are and to whom they belong -- it is your birthright to know your heritage," he concluded. ================= There have been many letters and queries about British Home Children -- also, there have been some successes --but the census is needed to definitely locate the children. One problem is "change of surname" to that of the family with whom the child was living. One would have to also use church records to ascertain the children of the family -- the other ones would be possibly the Home Children. Muriel M. Davidson <davidson3542@home.com> Canada Census Committee