Will the attempt to rewrite history in Canada ever end?
A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was recently removed in Victoria, British Columbia. And now Scotland, the birthplace of our first prime minister, has removed all references to him from government websites.
Meanwhile, Annie Macpherson is still credited with starting the program that sent more than 150,000 Barnardo’s Home children (children whose parents were too poor to care for them or who had no parents at all) from the British Isles to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as indentured labor from 1869 to 1948.
Eventually, Barnardo established a house in London, England, as a base to care for the very young children until they could be sent away. Hazelbrae, in Peterborough, was one of Barnardo’s homes in Canada that housed children before they were sent to work on farms, become servants and do physical labour. There is now a monument in Peterborough honoring the 10,000 children who temporarily resided there.
Britain has absolved itself of all responsibility for the care of its poor children. The abominable abuses perpetrated by Christian churches were so severe that the Australian government apologized in 2009. England followed suit in 2010. But here in Canada, then-immigration minister Jason Kenney refused to apologize in 2009 because he said the abuses suffered by some of the 100,000 children at Barnardo Home were not as serious as those committed in Australia.
It is interesting that the Doyle Report of 1875 criticised the process of sending children out of England, but at the same time concluded that benevolent motives should be recognised because they were trying to do what they believed was best for the children.
My mother, Katie, was a six-year-old abandoned child who became a resident of Barnardo’s Home in London in 1909, until she was sent with many other children to Peterborough three years later, before being placed with a family. She was one of the lucky ones who received human care until she became a domestic servant.
The best intentions often go astray due to all the factors that influence those intentions. We cannot change history, but we can ensure that policies are in place that are never repeated.
What policies are in place now that in a few years will be considered inadequate? History indicates that there will be many. If we never made mistakes, how would we learn to do better?
-William Litchfield
(tags to translate)
