My Roots are Showing

From the British Industrial Revolution to rethinking and restructuring parenthood.

Not a fairytale. I dare say most of us on Substack are genuine enough to show our lives aren’t perfect and the substacks I follow are witness to this.

I invite you today to read a bit about how I came to be.

Since beginning a search for my paternal and maternal ancestors in 2014, I have discovered that the smallest detail being revealed gives me a thrill. 

No matter if it is sad, even a little upsetting, it is a piece of who I am which was not known before. 

I have a brick wall which, even in reaching out to several British institutions, remains a hindrance to me. Getting TO that wall though did provide information and placed my brother and I among the approximately 4,000,000 descendants of the over 100,000 British Home Children that were shipped to Canada between 1869 and 1948. 

More information about the Home Children is available here:

https://www.homechildrencanada.com

My paternal grandfather, born in London in 1893, was orphaned at one week of age and taken in by kind neighbours. When they could no longer provide for him, their relatives did. As the times were hard and death took the breadwinner of the family, he was admitted to the Barnardo Home for Boys in September, 1905 after his caregiver’s appeal was rejected by other receiving homes.

Barnardo’s at that time was a well-run institution which nurtured, educated, and trained the young charges for employment. In May 1906, he was among several boys from the same home who set sail for a new life in Canada. He would arrive the day before his 13th birthday.

Grandfather was of an age that made him useful as a farm hand. The first placement did not go well. Every host farmer was supposed to ensure their Home Child received food, a bed, clothing, schooling, and weekly attendance at a church. My grandfather received abuse, no schooling, his shoes were too tight and even had holes. Even so, many Home Boys and Girls endured much worse. 

Eventually, the Barnardo association sent inspectors to check on the Home Children in the area. He was moved to a new situation. The next farmer was fair and kind. My grandfather stayed until age 18, when he was due a small recompense for his work. This he used to enroll in a bookkeeping course in Toronto, Ontario.

Grandfather had his own business following WWI as an insurance broker until retirement. On February 4, 1915 he enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force to serve in WWI in Europe. Before shipping out he married my grandmother. She was living with her sister and mother who had been abandoned by her father around her 5th birthday. 

Following the war, unfortunately, he had a hard time adjusting to family life and my grandmother, her mother, my father, and my uncle bore the emotional and physical scars of his pain. Alcohol was his constant companion and likely contributed to the abuse. 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a newer term to describe the effect on him, being an exported orphan with no one to stand up for him and the experience of fighting in WWI.

My brick wall comes when researching his parents. His father was a silk merchant’s traveller and his mother had worked in a pub or tavern in London, England. The trail is cold on both counts.

I did DNA with Ancestry and the links I received were connected to my maternal relatives and only to my paternal grandmother.

Perhaps my descendants will discover the rest of this story. 

In 1940 my father was posted overseas as a Spitfire pilot out of England. While he was there, he received word from his mother that grandfather had left her for his secretary. He was incensed, as many sons would be. He and his brother would not acknowledge their father for a few years. 

Around 1950, grandfather finagled a divorce from his wife and married his secretary. Grandmother was dying with lung cancer though she never smoked. 

My parents met in Toronto, Ontario and married in ‘46. Sometime between 1946 and 1950 they moved in with my grandmother and great-grandmother in the area known as “The Beaches”. 

My brother came along during this time and the household was overjoyed. I think Dad wanted to be a help to his mother and his nan, so they stayed. 

My grandmother died in 1951. 

Her mother, dad’s beloved nan, would die three years later. 

After that, the young family moved to an apartment “on the Danforth”. My mother recalled being pregnant with me in unbearable summer heat there. She swore at that time that she would never go through pregnancy again. Her word was good. 

My appearance made quarters a tad tight and I was, let’s say, colicky. They soon moved to a house in “the Burbs”. The “colic” lasted until I was 13 months old. How she remained sane I don’t know. 

The stress of raising a family took its toll on my parents and, as young children will, I picked up that all was not well between them. I cannot speak for my brother but I know harsh words and harsh discipline reigned. I relate this to the problems my father experienced growing up in a tense household with an abusive father who himself was ripped from his security with foster parents in London and bounced through Barnardo’s at age 12 to a strange land as an abused farm boy. 

Trauma finds its way down through generations. 

More to come.