Charles Reaper, Quarrier Boy, last living infantry man from Vimy Ridge by Rose McCormick Brandon

Charles Reaper

Between 1869 and 1939, more than 100,000 children immigrated to Canada from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. More than 10,000 of them enlisted for Canada during WWI. That was almost all of legal age and a few that fibbed.

Charles Reaper, a boy who immigrated through Quarriers of Scotland,  was Vimy Ridge’s last remaining infantry man. He died in March, 2003.

At twelve, Charles, a Glasgow orphan, arrived in Canada on April 8, 1912. Four years later, he lied about his age and joined the military. "It was," he said, "the only lie I ever told."

At Easter, 1917, before he turned eighteen, Private Charles Reaper was one of 20,000 Canadian soldiers who formed the "creeping artillery barrage" that took Vimy Ridge.

Decades later, when Charles was interviewed about his Vimy Ridge experience, tears filled his eyes as he recalled the battle that took the lives of hundreds of his fellow soldiers. As his comrades fell around him, there was nothing to do, he said, but to keep moving forward with his unit, over the Douai Plain. Charles was hit by shrapnel. He counted himself

Vimy Ridge Victory

fortunate; 3600 died during that hard-won battle.

Charles spoke little of his war experiences, not even to his wife, but when he did, he always added, "What kept me alive was the man above.” Charles recovered from his Vimy Ridge wounds and by the Fall of 1917, he was entrenched in the third battle of Ypres, on Flanders Fields.

In trenches filled with mud, his uniform soaked, his body chilled, he survived mustard-gas attacks by pressing underwear soaked in urine over his mouth and nose. Canadian troops prevailed and overtook at Passchendaele, a Belgian village, but not without heavy losses, on both sides - 500,000 soldiers died in that epic battle.

Charles was wounded and sent to a hospital in England for a long recovery. "Because of my accent, they called me an Old Country kid in the hospital," he recalled. "But I said, `No, I'm a Canadian.' "

Though he’d been in Canada only four years, Charles developed a strong sense of devotion to his new country. At the end of the war, he settled in Winnipeg where he worked as a transit supervisor and driver for forty-eight years. After the war, Charles met and married Anna, whom he was married to for sixty-nine years. She said of her husband, “Charles hasn’t talked much about his war experiences, but he has always believed that serving his country was his duty and a glorious moment in his life.”

Charles and Anna had no children but were close to many nieces and nephews. A month shy of the 86^th anniversary of the battle at Ypres, Charles Reaper, age 103, died in Winnipeg on March 1, 2003. Charles’ obituary read:

CHARLES REAPER Peacefully at the Riverview Health Centre, on March 1, 2003, Charles Reaper passed away into the arms of the Lord. Left to mourn are his dearly beloved and dedicated wife Anna; his nephew Darren Stirling (Debbie) and Janice Gill (Don) who were always there for him with endless love and kindness. Also many loving family members including numerous nieces and nephews. Charles was born on July 27, 1899 in Keith, Banffshire, Scotland. Charles Reaper, who died in Winnipeg a week ago today, aged 103, was the last of the 20,000 young Canadians who "went over the top" at dawn on April 9, 1917 to attack Vimy Ridge, and by lunchtime had given the young nation its first grip on a fragile national identity.

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Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children by Rose McCormick Bandon  is a collection of 31 stories of destitute children who immigrated to Canada and worked as indentured servants until age eighteen. Their coming helped to make our country great. Promises of Home, both the book and blog, seeks to give these children the honour they deserve. To purchase the book, visit http://writingfromtheheart.webs.com.

 

Quotes Bring Non-Fiction Characters to Life by Rose McCormick Brandon

When writing non-fiction, it’s always helpful to use quotes that not only inform but touch the reader’s heart. In writing the stories of children (more than 100,000) who immigrated to Canada from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales between 1869 and 1939, I like to use the words of the children themselves. It’s difficult to find these but when I do, I store them away and treasure them like gold.

Sometimes it takes a few back and forth conversations with descendants before someone hands me a nugget. Like this one that came to me from Linda Clarkson Pagnini, daughter of Arthur Clarkson.

 

Arthur Clarkson

Arthur Clarkson, a boy who came to Canada in 1909 through Barnardos, an organization that facilitated the immigration of some 30,000 children, was the victim of severe abuse. The farmer he was indentured to whipped him, left him out in the cold and half-starved him. He almost lost both feet. An intelligent and determined boy, Arthur survived, married and made a successful life for his family of eight children. He didn’t speak to his children about his near-death experience at the hands of the cruel farmer but they had a vague idea about it.

 Near the end of his life, as Arthur lay in bed, his daughter read to him the poem, Invictus by William Ernest Henley. When she came to these words -

 In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 Arthur wept. Then he said these marvellous words: “Life can beat you up, for sure, but you can’t let it break you.”

 When I wrote Arthur’s story, these words became the center-piece.

Cecilia Jowett, front row right

Cecilia Jowett, another Barnardo child immigrant (1901), grew up and fulfilled her dream of becoming a nurse. She wrote these words in her book, No Thought for Tomorrow and I used them in telling her story:

 Oh, I’d never take a child like that into my home, I have heard ladies say. You never know how they will turn out. And there was I, a graduate nurse, in their homes, rendering skilled assistance, perhaps saving, or helping to save, a life. Yet they didn’t dream I was one of those children.



Grace Griffin Galbraith

Whenever I speak about the British Home Children, I always explain that my interest in them grew out of my grandmother’s life. In 1912 Grace Griffin Galbraith was an eight year-old orphan, brought to Canada from England by Annie MacPherson’s organization. As with all child immigrants, she became an indentured servant. She ended up in a caring home, after experiencing rejection and trauma in at least three placements. Her difficulties make this quote from her extremely meaningful. 

I can never regret coming to Canada. I have had to work hard but I don’t mind that for I love to work.

William Edwin Hunt, back row, left

Often the writer’s words alone don't do justice to a story. The story begs for quotes, here and there, to bring it to life. Words from the people for whom the event was no mere story, it was reality.

I never look in the rear-view mirror, I just keep moving forward. William Edwin Hunt, immigrated, age fourteen, 1906, through Smyly’s of Ireland.

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Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of four books including, Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children, Visit her website Writing From the Heart. Two blogs: Promises of Home and Listening to my Hair Grow.

 

History Rests on the Shoulders of Writers by Rose McCormick Brandon

 

 

William Francis Conabree, an ordinary man with an extraordinary story, sat down one day in 1952 and wrote an account of his life as one of Canada’s British Home Children. When he finished, he folded the sheets of paper and stuck them in a drawer.

He died.

His daughter retrieved the story and put it in her bureau drawer.

Decades passed. William’s daughter died.

Her family, while clearing her home, found the crumpled sheets of paper that contained William’s story. They almost went in the trash.

William had titled his story, “Believe me Friends, it’s the Truth.” He didn’t write about his experiences as a POW in WWI. That would have made an interesting story. He was interred with Con Smythe, the famous owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.

William chose to write about his early days in Canada and the horrific treatment he endured as a fourteen year-old immigrant boy working on Canadian farms.

It’s not easy to tell of painful events. Most people lock their hurtful memories in a trunk and throw away the key. Yet, history rests on the shoulders of people brave enough to tell. Books about the holocaust, fiction and non-fiction, written for adults and children, continue to keep alive the memory of the worst massacre in history, a massacre committed at a time when the world considered itself enlightened.

The world needs stories from people like William. Most of the 100,000 child immigrants who arrived in Canada between 1869 and 1939 kept their pasts a secret, even from their spouses and children. Of the ones who did tell, few shared their lives on paper.

William wasn’t writing a book for publication. He simply scratched out his story on cheap lined sheets because he felt the need to tell. More than six decades later, long after his death, his words have come to us.

No one could tell this story. Only William.

Writers, skilled and unskilled, play an important role in the passing of history from one generation to another. William’s story came to me too late for my book, Promises of Home – Stories of Canada’s British Home Children.

I’ve shared it on my blog, Promises of Home, in the hope that many will read William’s story and remember the sufferings of the young immigrants who landed on our shores looking for a place to belong and give them their rightful place in Canadian history.

 

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Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children. She writes books and articles on faith, personal experience and Canadian history. Visit her blogs: Listening to my Hair Grow and Promises of Home. 

 

 

 

A Time to Cry by Rose McCormick Brandon

For the past eighteen months or so I've been working on the book, Promises of Homes, Stories of Canada's British Home Children. Though all the children whose stories appear in the book, except two, have passed on, I've sensed a strong connection to them. As I read their letters, gazed at their photographs, dug up their documents and talked to their off-spring, they became like my children. I grieved over the abuses they suffered and ached for their loneliness. After leaving overflowing orphanages in Britain, these little ones landed on isolated Canadian farms with strangers, most of whom lacked empathy.  

Much was expected of these young immigrants. Though none had ever set foot on a real farm, they were expected to work adult hours in the barn and in the fields. No excuses. Many were mistreated and half-starved. Though their placement families had contracted to send them to school, most didn't.

Like seed, these British Home Children were scattered from Atlantic to Pacific, not in handfuls as would have been appropriate for children, but in singles, one here, another there. Hampered by the derogatory label, Home Child, severed from their familial connections, against the odds, they took root and became grounded and sturdy enough to change the landscape of our young Dominion.

It's time for Canadians to cry over the abuses they suffered, to applaud their successes and, most of all, it's time for us, as a nation, to say, "thank you."

The stories of the these immigrant children are now intertwined with my story. For better, or for worse, we're in this project together.

 



Walter Goulding

Meet Walter Goulding. Walter was eight when his mother died and his father went off to fight for England in WW1. When Walter's father returned from the war, he didn't reclaim Walter from the Barnardo Home for children in London. He re-married, had another son, and when Walter was thirteen, he gave Barnardo's permission to send him to Canada for a "better life."

Walter was placed with a childless couple on an Ontario farm. He said, "I came from the big city of London. When I landed on that farm, I looked up and thought, O Lord, where am I?"

 

When we think of the children, like Walter, and the many hardships they faced alone, our hearts can't help but go out to them.

Walter says that as an eight year-old standing alone in the corridor of that Barnardo Home in England, he felt God with him.

Today, Walter is the oldest living British Home Child in Canada. He lives in a seniors' facility in

London, Ontario where he recently celebrated his 106th birthday. Walter still weeps for the little boy in this photo who lost his entire family.

The writing is finished. My next step is to introduce these children to the rest of Canada. As a group they weren't embraced by previous generations. My hope is that the present generation will take them into their hearts and keep the memory of them alive. As Canadians, we owe them that. Telling their stories is my way of saying thank you to the children. Stories will keep their memory alive.

Walter's complete story is in Promises of Home, Stories of Canada's British Home Children.

*****

Rose McCormick Brandon is a descendant of four British Home Children.  She writes books and publishes articles on faith, personal experience and the Child Immigration Scheme. She lives in Caledonia, Ontario.

Listening to my Hair Grow - Rose's faith blog

Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children

Rose's website

 

 

My Writing Life by Rose McCormick Brandon

When I was ten, I spent a week in hospital, on the Children’s Ward. While there, I discovered Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His words transported me into a world I hadn’t known existed, life on the Mississippi, a culture far removed from mine.

Twain’s words created a hum in my chest – I not only read his words, I felt them.

And I loved the feeling of them.

I wanted to re-create that special feeling with my words. I tried a few times and occasionally thought of writing, but other more active pursuits caught my eye and I followed after them.

I graduated from Eastern Pentecostal Bible College in Peterborough, made a disastrous attempt at ministry, became disappointed with God, followed my own path, got married, re-discovered Jesus Christ, had three children and poured myself into lay ministry, mainly with women.

While driving to a women’s event one early morning, a flock of geese flew over. They caused me to think that as their honking introduced the onset of Fall, the heavenly trumpet will one day precede the return of our Lord Jesus.
Then, another thought came clearly – you need to write about this.

I did. That little piece was published. After that, God placed two men in editing positions who encouraged me to write. One said, “We need more women writers in our denomination.”

My writing life has had its ups and downs – downs when work gets in the way of thinking writeable thoughts – and ups when acceptances and awards have come my way.

My present work in progress is a collection of British Home Child Stories, titled, Promises of Home, which will be published later this year. The Child Immigration period of Canadian history is a subject I’ve always been interested in. My grandmother came to Canada at age eight, an orphan, went through a tumultuous childhood and finally found contentment as a wife and mother.

I have two blogs – a faith blog titled, Listening to my Hair Grow, and my Canadian History blog, Promises ofHome, where I tell the stories of British Home Children.

In 2013, I published a collection of some of my published articles and devotionals in One Good Word Makes all the Difference.

In 2012, Sandra Nunn and I wrote and published her love story, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me.

Prior to that, Shirley Brown and I published the story of how she coped with her son’s disappearance in Vanished: What Happened to my Son?

My writing is still evolving. The publication world is also evolving.

I still often sense the Spirit nudging me, saying, write about this or that, often more than one nudge is needed.

For today, I’m focussed on my book, Promises of Home. As I delve into the lives of these little ones, I often discover that they had a strong faith, even as children, a faith that carried them to the end of their days. A reminder to me to be faithful to the Faithful One because one day, as sure as the geese honk overhead in the Fall, a trumpet will sound and our Lord will return.


http://writingfromtheheart.webs.com