I can think of only a few published in the last decade and a bit and so I seized on the opportunity of ordering up Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest Canada’s Home Children in the West which was published recently.
That said it did have to come from Canada but it took just thirteen days to arrive and I was only charged £2.80 in postage which was a snip given Sean’s dire experiences of being told that it would cost an arm and leg to send across the Atlantic.
It is an impressive volume stretching to 350 pages with extensive notes and focuses on the experiences of a number of Home Children who settled in the western part of Canada.
Like many of us who become interested in the story Sean is a descendant of one of the 100,000 young people migrated from Britain from 1869 through to 1930.
Elements of his grandfather’s life were a mystery and in attempting to solve them he became aware “of one of the least known aspects of Canadian history” and I might add our own British history, for it was as much a shock and revelation to me that a great uncle I never knew had also crossed the Atlantic.
And when you talk to people about British Home Children in the country that sent them out across the Empire you are met with surprise and bafflement.
A few will admit to knowing about the more recent Australian migrations which were still going on in the 1970s but not Canada.
So I welcome Sean’s book and hope that it will get wider coverage over here.
And for what it’s worth once I have read it I shall be featuring on the blog.
Picture; British immigrant children
* Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest, Sean Arthur Joyce, 2014, Hagios Press
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