Britain's Misguided Child Policies

So many democratic, post-liberal countries have turned their anguished glances on their past. Generations upon generations past. Looking into the not-quite dim background of actions taken by predecessor-governments and finding them sadly wanting from their current, modern perspective of human rights.

The Government of Canada saw it as fit and proper to apologize to its First Nations communities for the decision taken jointly by government and churches to sequester aboriginal children away from their homes and their communities, for the noble purpose of westernizing and integrating them into the values and mores of the general society. Depriving the children of parental support in their growing years, and leaving a legacy of painful memories.

Now, the Government of Britain has solemnly announced its intention to apologize to the families who, beginning a century ago, had their children taken from them under the pretext that a caring government would look after the offspring of the impoverished. Look after them they did, in a peculiarly heartless manner, by shipping thousands upon thousands of children off to what was then deemed, in Great Britain, the hinterlands. Between the years 1869 and 1946, one hundred thousand British children were shipped to Canada.

Additional thousands were sent off to the less-accessible and more costly-to-deliver Australia. To begin new lives. Some of the children were informed that they were orphans, their parents had died. They were all assured, however, as were their parents, that they were headed for infinitely better lives.

For most of these children the better lives they were assured of were very long in coming. Most of those children worked as indentured farm labourers, virtual slaves. Many were not treated as family members of the farm families they were introduced to, but slept with the livestock. That they were emotionally needy children was overlooked for the practical purpose of making utilitarian use of their energies.

The story of these children is a sad one, reflecting a rather sordid phase in British history. There were children sent abroad to the Empire's colonies during the Second World War when parts of Britain were being bombed by the Luftwaffe, to keep them out of harm's way. Those children returned to their parents' loving arms at the conclusion of the war, grateful to the Canadian families who had given them safe haven. But that's another story altogether.

Another story altogether is other children who were swooped up and sent on to Canada. Coming from other parts of Europe, and arriving in Canada for the same purpose: to work on Canadian farms. Not all such children, needless to say, were treated as slaves. Many lived among and worked for decent, caring people who did their best for the children whose lives were temporarily entrusted with them.

My father was one such child. And he truly was an orphan. Both his parents had died in the little town of Mezrich, Poland. They were indigent, and there was no inheritance. The town did the best they could, and the 12-year-old orphan was placed in the Poor House, where his immediate needs - a place to sleep, slops to eat - were taken care of. He fled to Warsaw, where he was convinced his older brother lived. Unable to find his brother, he lived on the streets of the city.

And there were many other children doing the same; runaways, roustabouts, orphaned children with nowhere else to go. In my father's case, a philanthropic society determined to do something about the plight of the street children, and they raised the wherewithal to ship them out to Canada. Where the children were sent, on arrival, to work on farms, until their passage had been paid in full, and they were finally free to depart the farms and construct a life for themselves.