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Robert Laidlaw Home Boy — British Home Children–Buchanan Scrapbook Clippings

Did You Know About Dr. Barnardo’s Baby’s Castle? British Home Children — Home Boys

Home Boys and Family–Mallindine Family — Larry Clark

British Home Children – Quebec Assoc click

Ontario East British Home Child Family click

British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association click

if anyone is interested in sourcing a personal copy in printed or pdf format of info about British Home Children they can see descriptions and ordering info on our British Home Child web page: https://globalgenealogy.com/countries/canada/home-children/resources/index.htm

Locals can avoid the shipping charge on physical books by calling us at 613 257 7878 to arrange to pick up a copy at our home in CP. Of course there is no shipping charge on the pdf books that they order online.

Best, Rick.

Jan31

Missing Man Found Through Barnardo Home Aid 1936 (Lost Genealogy) Peacock Knight Jeffreys

Posted on January 31, 2023 by lindaseccaspina

Norah Gray — R. R 1 Carleton Place — British Home Child

CLIPPED FROMThe Ottawa CitizenOttawa, Ontario, Canada13 Nov 1936, Fri • Page 5

CLIPPED FROMThe Windsor StarWindsor, Ontario, Canada14 Nov 1936, Sat • Page 3 below

2023-–Researching British Home Children--Released on September 28th 2016, this Registry combines the former Perry Snow database and the Norah Dennis database into one large complete registry. The registry is run by Mrs. LeeAnn Beer and contains information on over 80,000 BHC CLICK

Home Boy Lawsuits — Pakenham– The British Home Children

The British Home Children — The Trip to Canada

More Barnardo Children to Document…George Parker — Fred Townsend — Annie McNish–

From Barnardo Home Boy to Don Messer and His Islanders — Fred Townsend

Robert Laidlaw Home Boy — British Home Children–Buchanan Scrapbook Clippings

Did You Know About Dr. Barnardo’s Baby’s Castle? British Home Children — Home Boys

Home Boys and Family–Mallindine Family — Larry Clark

British Home Children – Quebec Assoc click

Ontario East British Home Child Family click

British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association click

Sep5

Norah Gray — R. R 1 Carleton Place — British Home Child

Posted on September 5, 2022 by lindaseccaspina

Home Boy Lawsuits — Pakenham– The British Home Children

Norah Gray — R. R 1 Carleton Place — British Home Child

From an 1886 Our Darlings Magazine, Hazelbrae

Norah Gray, Carleton Place, Ontario

Norah Gray really didn’t want to come to Canada. She had a brother whom she barely knew, and he sent her the occasional letter and photos about the wilds of Canada and all the animals he trapped. One has to wonder how he knew where she lived because shortly after Norah’s birth her mother soon placed her in a foster home in Essex.

Her mother had insisted that Norah be returned to her at the age of 16, but that was not to be. At 11 she was sent to Canada in 1920 aboard a ship called the Scandanavian with other Barnardo children. Arriving in Peterboro, she was placed at one of the distributing homes calls the Hazelbrae. In the late 1800s Hazelbrae was shut down for awhile because the girls were not adequately supervised –in that they were unduly the objects of sexual attentions of their employers and other men in their homes and workplaces. Also the state of sanitation at Hazelbrae was allowed to get into such a sorry state that it took Thomas Barnardo himself during his 1890 visit to sanitize the sleeping quarters by burning sulphur in the room. Read more about this here. So when Norah arrived it had basically become a clearing house for girls that were hard to place.

Norah was sent immediately to a farm in Carp, Ontario. She was lucky to have been placed into a loving family and she looked after the family’s children. But, Norah never had any education as the family did not want someone who went to school, they needed someone full time. However five years later the truant officer finally caught up to her, but by then it was too late. She happily stayed in Carp for seven years.

She wanted to become a Bell Telephone girl and went to Ottawa at the age of 18, but in 1927 jobs were scarce, so once again she became live in help for a teacher and a veternarian where she stayed for three years. But the memories of Carp were still in her heart, and having the choice of a free trip to Toronto or Carp, she quickly chose the trip to Carp which was barely 20 miles away.

Photograph shows a logging train and logs being loaded on it.

In January of 1931 Norah married. Times were hard. They went by train to Moar Lake and then travelled 28 miles through the bush to Rowanton above Rapides-des-Joachims. It wasn’t easy, and supplies were not near by, so she baked everything from scratch, including bread. She also fed three other fire rangers and anyone that dropped in for a meal was charged 35 cents. Typical menus included plenty of preserved meats and fruits, (if they could get them) fresh bread, and lots of desserts.

A few years later they went to Mattawa so her husband could work on the Trans Canada Highway and then he went overseas in 1939 when war broke out.

Norah always got a lump in her throat remembering the Royal family still wishing all those years she could have gone back to the UK. If her Dad had not died before she was born, she might not have found herself in this predicament as he was a dentist and just starting up. Nothing against Canada, she said, but even if Canada was a great country she had to work very hard for everything she received. People always had the idea that Home Girls and Boys were just a burden and could never amount to anything good.

“I dont know what I expected. We were conditioned to think great things were in store for us – that Canada was one big apple tree, and our worries were over for life.”

With files from The Home hildren- Phyllis Harrison

The British Home Children — The Trip to Canada

Robert Laidlaw Home Boy — British Home Children–Buchanan Scrapbook Clippings

Did You Know About Dr. Barnardo’s Baby’s Castle? British Home Children — Home Boys

Home Boys and Family–Mallindine Family — Larry Clark

British Home Children – Quebec Assoc click

Ontario East British Home Child Family click

British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association click

Jul18

From Barnardo Home Boy to Don Messer and His Islanders — Fred Townsend

Posted on July 18, 2022 by lindaseccaspina

https://squaredancehistory.org/items/show/414

From Barnardo Home Boy to Don Messer and His Islanders — Fred Townsend

Hello Linda,

I’ve been doing some genealogical research on famous fiddlers Graham Townsend (1942-1998) and Eleanor Reed Townsend (1944-1998). I’ve been having a difficult time finding out particulars about Graham’s father Frederick until this morning when I came across 1925 and 1926 Globe & Mail newspaper articles on his incarceration for forgery. Shortly thereafter I found your 12 April 2022 Barnardo Home clipping on him (final item on the page). I don’t know if you realized that Fred eventually achieved a measure of fame:

Hans Havermann

Thank you Hans,

I can’t do this job alone and thanks to you I get to document this for generations to come.

Fred and his daughter in law Eleanor

Fred was born in England in 1900. His parents were so poor that they had to send him to Canada in 1908 for adoption. He found a home with the Marks, an Irish family who traveled by covered wagon putting on shows in farm villages across Ontario. Along the way, Fred learned the art of traditional square dance calling and in time became the official caller for Don Messer and His Islanders. Fred taught his son, Graham, the love of old time music as well as its great purpose – “Bringing people together.”

Canadian caller, born 1900, who was the caller for Don Messer’s bands on its many cross-country trips. A three-LP boxed set of his dance calls (Let’s Square Dance) was released (Doncaster DS-3-102). Father of fiddler Graham Townsend.

One Sunday, young Graham was driving in Quebec from Wolf Lake to Quyon with his father Fred, and Ottawa Valley stepdancers, George McKenny and Andy Dougherty. The car broke down, so naturally they put a plywood board on the roadside, and everyone took turns stepdancing. Graham fiddling away while Fred played the harmonica. Soon traffic was backed up for miles. People left their cars to join the fun, along with some provincial police who happened to be fiddle freaks. Nobody liked the fellow who finally got the car working again.

“That’s the way it was in the old days,” says Fred. “Everybody was close to the country, and Canadians just couldn’t resist a country dance.

Read more here CLICK

—–Original Message—–
From: Hans Havermann

You perpetuate the very prevalent meme that Fred came to Canada in 1908 (which is, alternatively, at age 8). I believe I know how this misperception came to be. It must have been stated (by Fred, or others) that he went into a Bernardo home at age 8, which is true enough. But people may not have realized that there was a Bernardo home in England as well as in Canada. I certainly didn’t know that until my genealogy research associate, Marlene Frost, found Fred Townsend in such a place in the 1911 UK census. Fred came to Canada in 1912.

I’m contemplating writing a blog on the ancestry of Fred Townsend and of his wife, Enid Rainey, but Marlene and I are still very much in the research phase of the endeavour. I have written an article on the Barrie “Townsend fire”:

https://gladhoboexpress.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-townsend-fire.html

… which is very much speculation based on newspaper accounts. I did not like the way Eleanor Townsend got blamed for the arson when she had no opportunity to defend herself. And I certainly don’t understand why reporters at the time didn’t dig deeper.

Hans

His son Graham Townsend

CLIPPED FROM
The Ottawa Citizen
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada13 Dec 1998, Sun • Page 11

Canada lost its most prolific and versatile old-time fiddler with the Dec. 3, 1998 death of Graham Townsend in hospital. He was 56 when he died of prostate cancer. When Mr. Townsend picked up the fiddle at age eight and bought for $50 from an Irish immigrant fiddler named Billy Crawford he never put put away. Fiddling became his life. By the time he was 11, he was the youngest person to break into the top three at the 1953 Canadian Fiddling Championships.

With the silver medal in hand, he won the Canadian National Exhibition competition and shortly after started making guest appearances on CFRA’s Happy Wanderers, an institution for country-music lovers in the ’50s and ’60s. read-Looking for Info on The Happy Wanderers etc.

All this, yet Mr. Townsend couldn’t read music. In fact, anything written down was a blurry mess to his eyes. He had a congenital eye problem with an optic nerve condition that glasses couldn’t correct “He learned how to play the fiddle by ear. “He was a child prodigy,” says his ” wife Eleanor, 54. “He would sit with Billy, listen and instantly play what he learned”

His natural ability to play earned Townsend the nickname “Greyhound.” “It was a name that sounded similar to his own and he, like the dog, was very list and could cover a lot of ground. Someone once said that he has at least a million miles of tape in his head. An only child of Fred Townsend and his wife he was born in Toronto in 1942 and spent most of his younger years in the Ottawa Valley, ‘there he was exposed to a diversity of talented fiddlers. “He could play any style,” says Len Grace, the president of the Canadian Grandmasters Fiddling Championship. “Perhaps there are no “fiddlers that are as versatile as he was.” French, Irish, Scottish, Texas swing, Jazz, Ukrainian, the list goes on.

If someone could name it, Mr. Townsend could play it. He was billed by agents as “the most versatile fiddler on the continent.” He also created new styles of fiddling, says his 23-year-old son, Gray Townsend Jr. “He would learn a tune and then make it his own,” says his son, who is a singer, songwriter and pianist.

Mr. Townsend recorded 42 albums and had 400 of his own tunes in his repertoire. “Wherever there was old-time fiddling, you found Graham Townsend,” says Mr. Grace. “We won’t see his like again in our time.” Mr. Townsend fiddled for the Queen, toured internationally and played fiddle back-up for many famous performers, including Anne Murray and Rita MacNeil. When he was 24, he was chosen by Canada’s most popular fiddler, Don Messer, to join his group on the Jubilee coast-to-coast tour in 1967. “He was the only musician that Don ever added to tour with him,” says Ken Reynolds, a booking and touring agent who met Mr. Townsend nearly 50 years ago. “Because it was a long, long tour and because it was a centennial year, our 100th birthday, he wanted to have somebody else along to share the load.”

Mr. Townsend was inducted into the North American Hall of Fame in 1982 and the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989. Both he and his wife were named this October to the newly established Canadian Fiddlers Hall of Fame, which will be built near Shelburne,Ont. It was the fiddle that brought the couple together. They met in 1963 in Shelburne, the birthplace of the Canadian Fiddling Championships, and were married in 1971. “I remember thinking he was a great star and I was nothing,” says Mrs. Townsend. “I started learning from his records before I knew him. I remember adrniring his eyes and his fingers.”

A classically trained violinist, Mrs. Townsend is a remarkable fiddler in her own right. She was the first woman to win a national championship and has written the only Canadian book on teaching fiddling, The Townsend Old-Tyme Fiddling Method. The couple was often called Mr. and Mrs. Fiddle. They both won the national championship Mrs. Townsend in 1979 and Mr. Townsend in 1963, 1968, 1969 and 1970 and they’ve recorded many albums together. Four months ago, Mr. Townsend received a lifetime achievement award at the Canadian Grandmasters Fiddling Championship at Centrepoint Theatre in Nepean. He played two 30-minute shows. “He wanted to perform so badly,” says his wife. “He had to sit down which he didn’t like because he wasn’t strong enough to stand up. He kept himself going for as long as he could, but he wasn’t very well.”

CLIPPED FROMThe Ottawa CitizenOttawa, Ontario, Canada13 Dec 1998, Sun • Page 11

Isobel Foster– Fiddler’s Hill –Buchanan Scrapbook Clippings

Stories From Fiddler’s Hill

Dueling Shoes and Fiddles and Step Dancing Contest July 15 1974

Notes of Lanark County Dances and Fiddlers

Dick Shail the 9th Line Fiddler

Fiddler’s Hill— Where the Green Grass Doesn’t Grow in Lanark

June 1957 –Documenting the Happy Wanderers CFRA

He Died Stepdancing in Franktown

Clippings and Memories of Mac Beattie — The Buchanan Scrapbooks

He was a Step Dancing Legend from Up da Line..

Gilles Roy-Step Dancer Extraordinare

Notes of Lanark County Dances and Fiddlers

Jul14

Home Boy Lawsuits — Pakenham– The British Home Children

Posted on March 16, 2022 by lindaseccaspina

Home Boy Lawsuits — Pakenham– The British Home Children

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada20 Aug 1913, Wed • Page 8

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada14 Jul 1915, Wed •

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada02 Apr 1902, Wed • Page 1

with files from
CLIPPED FROM
National Post
Toronto, Ontario, Canada19 Jun 2002, Wed • Page 18

More than 30,000 boys and girls were sent to Canada, most of them to Ontario, between 1882 and 1939. Before Barnardo’s cancelled the program, Canadian farmers could apply to have a child sent to work for them. In return, they were to take care of feeding, dressing, schooling and paying the child. Mr. Howard Vennell said he was forced to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week performing typical farm chores such as milking cows, feeding the animals and taking the manure out, all by himself. He said he suffered physical abuse “kicked in the butt and belted” at the hands of his employers. “The first six months, I remember, I rocked myself to sleep crying. There was nothing I could do because that’s the way the home wasin England, too.”

Mr. Strosberg estimates 3,000 to 5,000 people are eligible to join the Ontario class action. The Trustee Act prevents the lawsuit from covering those who died before June 13, 2000. The lawsuit could be expanded later to include those sent to other parts of Canada. Mr. Strosberg said neither he nor anyone in his office knew anything about “Dr. Barnardo’s Children,” as they were commonly known, when Mr. Vennell approached them.

“What he says is that he was mistreated and that Barnardo’s didn’t have a system in place capable of achieving what it is supposed to, and that is supervision to ensure that these children were properly supervised and educated.” In a written statement yesterday, Barnardo’s said: “We take any complaint of this nature extremely seriously, but as our legal representatives are now handling the matter we feel unable to comment further at this stage.” Mr. Vennell said yesterday months of negotiations with the charity proved fruitless. It offered him $100,000, which he found inadequate. “We didn’t ask for this,” Mr. Vennell said yesterday.

“Barnardo’s Homes asked for it. They didn’t think we’d go this far. Well, they know now we are going this far. We aren’t kidding.” Dr. Thomas Barnardo founded the charity in 1867, setting up homes for destitute and homeless children in and around London, England. The emigration program aimed to relieve overcrowded cities in England, provide Canada with cheap labour and increase its English-speaking population, and provide more opportunities for the children. Mr. Vennell said yesterday he only realized he was a “Barnardo boy” after he saw a program on television that revealed many children were similarly sent to Canada to work.

“I thought: ‘My God, that’s what happened to me.’ They were practically slaves.” When Mr. Vennell was six years old and ill with rickets, his destitute mother admitted him to one of Barnardo’s charitable homes in England. When he was 14, in March, 1932, Mr. Vennell was sent to Canada even though he says his mother refused to sign a special contract that would allow him to be sent to Canada. “It took five days to come across. We were down in the hold…. It was rough. I was seasick all the way over. They fed us old, dry buns ’cause you wouldn’t be throwing up as bad.”

Mr. Vennell stayed briefly at a Toronto home before being sent to a farm in Pakenham, Ont. A Barnardo’s representative visited the farm once, but failed to do anything despite Mr. Vennell’s “obvious neglect, abuse and unhappiness ,” the lawsuit says. Mr. Vennell was moved to another farm in Uxbridge, north of Toronto.

When he was released from Barnardo’s care at 18, the organization failed to give him accounting of the money he should have earned, says the lawsuit. According to the statement of claim, Mr. Vennell still suffers physical and psychological damage from this abuse. “It was tough, but I managed. I’m a survivor,” he said. Mr. Vennell is married and has one child.

In 1957, Mr. Vennell and his then-future wife had a child out of wedlock. He said the infant was taken away from them. After 42 years of trying to find his son, he finally got to meet him and they are now close. “We talk every day. He calls us, we call them. My granddaughter calls me ‘Grandpa.’ It’s nice to hear. It’s a wonderful thing,” he said. Similar emigration programs were run by the Catholic Church and the Church of England, and more than 100,000 “home children” were sent to Canada in total.

The British Home Children — The Trip to Canada

Robert Laidlaw Home Boy — British Home Children–Buchanan Scrapbook Clippings

Did You Know About Dr. Barnardo’s Baby’s Castle? British Home Children — Home Boys

Home Boys and Family–Mallindine Family — Larry Clark

British Home Children – Quebec Assoc click

Ontario East British Home Child Family click

British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association click

Nov17

Ernest Kennings — Home Boy — British Home Children

Posted on November 17, 2021 by lindaseccaspina