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

Fight Card: Jane Harris Zsovan vs. It Couldn’t Happen Here - O'Leary

When social Darwinism hit Alberta, some of the episodes could have come from a sci-fi novel about human breeding programs. That’s what we learn from member Jane Harris Zsovan’s new book, Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada’s nasty little secret. The nasty little secret is out, it seems, and the firewall has been breached.

(Photo captions: Jane Harris Zsovan, left; Denyse O'Leary, right)

Eugenics (killing or sterilizing people to improve the human breeding stock) is not new. It happened in the United States too, and was much worse in Africa. But many are surprised to know it happened in Canada.

Lethbridge-based Harris-Zsovan pored over a mountain of yellowed newspaper clippings at the nearby Galt Museum’s archives, among other things, to ferret out the details of the story.

One is struck by two things: the intensity of Alberta’s sterilization program, and the fact that prominent evangelicals were involved. That could be one reason why the story is not often told ...

I was heartened by Harris Zsovan’s book, because it is a primary contribution to public awareness of the huge breach of our traditional ethics that eugenic sterilization entailed. And it pulls no punches. Most books on current social history coming out of the Christian community are jeremiads, scholarly reflections, defenses of Christ or Christians, etc. Good and useful, to be sure, but working with others’ facts. Without gathering our own facts, we are at the mercy of those who withhold some critical ones. That certainly happened in this case.

The duty roster put me down for blogging today and, alas, I’m only part way through Firewall. But, given that I have already learned that “Bible So-and-So’s” removed the need for consent for sterilization, the book sure won’t get less interesting.

This for now: In my view, as a community, we tend to either avoid issues or adopt someone else’s voice when talking about them. For example, too many Christian projects for the relief of poverty morph into socialism - the comforting arms of Big Government replaces the comforting arms of a Christian community. But that problem is related to the problem I opened with - a problem that Harris Zsovan ably avoids - we don’t do enough of our own research, so we can’t grow our own vision.

The Alberta Christian support for forced sterilization is a case in point: Why on earth did anyone think that social Darwinism was a reasonable fit with Christianity? It can’t be, and the original social Darwinists were hostile to Christianity for precisely that reason. But, of course, some social Darwinists ingratiated themselves with Christians to gain influence for their policies.

Generally, Christians depended on social Darwinists to do the primary research about the lives of the poor, and then reacted to their carefully staged* horror stories out of sentiment and zeal rather than information and reflection.

Well, congratulations to Jane for a long step in the right direction for all of us.

carefully staged* horror stories?: In the famous American Buck v. Bell case, the early teen girl who was sterilized was labelled an imbecile by a famous Supreme Court judge. But the evidence is mixed, at best. Let’s just say that the social Darwinists needed an imbecile, or someone to stand in for one, to get the court judgment that later resulted in 60 000 such sterilizations.

Here’s an excerpt from Firewall. Order here.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain, and the author of By Design or by Chance?.

Thanks be to God

"For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful: though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." It's just a simple mealtime prayer. But our grandparents probably would not sit down to any meal, no matter how bland or meager it was, without saying those words, or words much like them.

It wasn't so long ago that Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Christians of almost any background, would not sit down to a down to a meal without thanking God for the food. They also thanked the human cook, usually Mum. Even people who rarely attended church, at least said Grace to God and expressed appreciation to his human helpers. Now family meals are rare, grace is rarer. And God help the cook who serves the same thing twice in a week.

Not so long ago, most Canadians believed the thought, not the thing, matter when a gift was given. Now gifts are returned for cash by people of all ages. A sense of entitlement, no thankfulness prevails.

While some Canadians still say Grace at meals and, as a nation, we're often mocked by comics for being too polite, I doubt we're nearly a good at being thankful as previous generations. Worse yet, when we do say 'thank you', whether to God or a human being, we often really don't mean it. We really don't appreciate the love that goes behind gifts of any kind. Especially God's gifts to us.

We can rationalize our reasons: Perhaps,earlier generations remembered days when the platter on the table was nearly empty; when the crops failed, when the hunting was bad, and when the livestock died. Perhaps they remembered when shining up perfect Mackintosh apples or, heading to town for a box of exotic mandarin oranges at Christmas was a huge, much appreciated effort. They were valiant fights to create celebration when there wasn't much, materially at least, to celebrate.

Sometimes a bowl of porridge was a feast to a pioneer family. Fresh eggs may have been a nearly forgotten delicacy when a hen stopped laying. Not so long ago, many urban Canadians drank powdered milk. But they gave thanks and meant it: to God and to the human hands that brought those meals in front of them.

I think they knew something most of us have forgotten.

As the psalmist said, "Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks; yea, unto thee do we give thanks. Thy Name also is so nigh; and that do they wonderous works declare" Psalm 75:1.

Do We Have Heroes in Canada?

First, a little self-promotion. My column on Canadian history runs for the first time in The Christian Herald, scheduled to be out November 9th. If you live in Southern Ontario, I hope you will pick up a copy of The Christian Herald and let the editor know what you think. Don't forget to email me your comments, too!

Thank you fellow Word Guilder, Denyse O'Leary, for encouraging me to write the proposal and to send it out to an editor, instead of 'wishing' someone would swoop down and offer me an opportunity. Thank you Fazal Karim, editor at The Christian Herald, for believing in the proposal and publishing my column.

Thank you everyone who has read my writing and said, "I didn't know Canada had stories like that." You inspire me, even when you send me back to the archives looking for answers to your questions.

A few days ago, a young Canadian emailed me with a challenge. "Can you find me any heroes in Canada? I didn't think we had any," he said.

I have to say, this saddened me quite a lot because the young man is university educated and has a great thirst for knowledge. Yet, he thought this country offered him no examples of great Christian leaders. How could we have failed to make him proud of his heritage?

It excited me too, because it is clear that he really wanted to learn about his own history. So, I typed off a list of names including General Currie, Laura Secord, Bishop John Strachan and about a dozen more. I'm still digging and sending him names when they pop into my mind. (I may have a write a whole book to answer his question because Canadian heroes don't often have monuments dedicated to them and, in my mind, that makes them even more heroic.)

Canada has more than her share of heroes, living and dead. Some of them are rich, famous, and politically powerful. Many eschew adulation.

Too often, we look at other countries longingly and wish we had their heritage, their political leaders, their wealth. (The wealth thing baffles me, because we are often wealthier and have less debt than the countries we look toward.)

It is good to admire and learn from people in other countries. If we can't do that, we become insular and backward in our thinking. But not knowing that we have our own heritage of faith and bravery and, instead, wishing we had leaders who were more like foreigners we see only on television screens is deeply ungrateful to our forebears. It is deeply unfair to our children, who need to be inspired to do great things. And it allows us to think that we can rely on other countries to 'carry the gospel, heal the sick, and bring justice to oppressed.'

Jane Harris Zsovan writes in both mainstream in Canadian publications about faith, business, arts, and contemporary Canada. She is the author of Stars Appearing: The Galts' Vision of Canada. She contributed "Jessie's Generation: Canada's Firebrands of Mercy and Justice" to Hot Apple Cider: Stories to Warm the Heart and Stir the Soul. Jane writes Vision of Canada Blog, on contemporary and historical Canada.

John A Macdonald: Nation-Builder - Hird

Every time I spend ten dollars, I come face-to-face with Sir John A Macdonald, our first Prime Minister. As “the most famous of all Canadian leaders”, Sir John A. was a nation-builder, a man with many flaws who looked beyond himself and saw a great dream.

This year we are celebrating BC’s 150th Anniversary. Without Sir John A, there is no doubt in my mind that BC would have been lost to Canada. The vast majority of BC settlers were Americans drawn from San Francisco by the 1858 Gold Rush. John A’s promise of the Canadian Pacific Railway won over the hearts and mind of ambivalent BCers. This extravagant promise almost bankrupted Canada and nearly destroyed Sir John’s A. Macdonald’s political career. Imagine if the Federal Government in 2008 promised to send Canadian Astronauts to Jupiter by 2010! A railway all the way to BC was just as unthinkable in 1870. Some cynics joked that Canada was not a nation, but a railroad in search of a nation

John A was not only a nation-builder but also a bridge-builder. He commented: “We should accept as men and brothers all those who think alike of the future of the country, and wish to act alike for the good of the country, no matter what their antecedents may have been.” He saw Canadian Confederation as a spiritual marriage between francophones and anglophones. Unlike many of his fellow party members, John A could read French, understand it, and speak it reasonably well.” Sir John A commented: “God and nature have made the two Canadas one – let no factious men be allowed to put them asunder.”

After the tragic death of his first wife Isabella, he married Agnes Bernard, just before the national ‘marriage’ of the Dominion of Canada on July 1st, 1867. Agnes wrote in her diary: “I have found something worth living for – living in – my husband’s heart and love.” As a devout Anglican, Agnes had a significant impact on her husband’s life, causing him to cut back on his drinking and start attending church on Sunday. John A was deeply impressed by the Beatitudes, and made a practice of reading his bible every night before bedtime.

In 1888, during six weeks of Hunter-Crossley renewal meetings in Ottawa, Prime Minister Macdonald had a deep encounter with Jesus Christ. As one journalist put it, “When the well-known form of the Honorable Prime Minister arose in the centre of the church, many strong men bowed their heads and wept for joy.” After dining at the prime minister’s home several days later, Rev John Hunter confirmed that “Sir John is a changed man.” May we all, like Sir John A. Macdonald, have the courage to change the things we can.

The Rev Ed Hird+, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
Anglican Coalition in Canada

-an article for the North Shore News

http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/nsnews034.html