Home Children
Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated in 2009 that Canada would not apologise to child migrants, preferring to "recognize that sad period" in other ways.
[3] The main pioneers of child migration in the nineteenth century were the Scottish Evangelical Christian Annie MacPherson, her sister Louisa Birt, and Londoner Maria Rye.
[5] Maria Rye also worked amongst the poor in London and had arrived in Ontario with 68 children (50 of whom were from Liverpool) some months earlier than MacPherson, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Canterbury and The Times newspaper.
[7] Rye, who had been placing women emigrants in Canada since 1867, opened her home at Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1869, and by the turn of the century had settled some 5,000 children, mostly girls, in Ontario.
The attention of the Dominion Government has been drawn to the fact that the children sent to Canada from England are street waifs and workhouse paupers, and that the professional philanthropists engaged in the work are largely prompted by mercenary and not charitable motives.
[14] In 1874 The London Board of Governors decided to send a representative, named Andrew Doyle, to Canada to visit the homes and the children to see how they were faring.
[15] He was also critical of the checks made on the children after they were placed with settlers, which in Rye's case were mostly non-existent, and said that: Because of Miss Rye's carelessness and Miss MacPherson's limited resources, thousands of British children, already in painful circumstances, were cast adrift to be overworked or mistreated by the settlers of early Canada who were generally honest but often hard taskmasters.
[16] The House of Commons of Canada subsequently set up a select committee to examine Doyle's findings and there was much controversy generated by his report in Britain, but the schemes continued with some changes[17] and were copied in other countries of the British Empire.
They found that about 130 young children in the care of voluntary or state institutions were sent to Australia in what was described as the Child Migrant Programme in the period covered by the Inquiry, from 1922 to 1995, but mostly shortly after the Second World War.
Full details of the scheme only emerged as late as 1998 during a parliamentary inquiry in Britain, which found that many migrant children were subjected to systematic abuse in religious schools in Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
In 2010, this book detailing Humphreys' work, political obstacles, and threats on her life along with the crimes and abuse done to thousands of children by government and religious officials was depicted in the film Oranges and Sunshine.
Australia's Roman Catholic Church had publicly apologised in 2001 to British and Maltese child migrants who suffered abuse including rape, whippings, and slave labour in religious institutions.
The reality is that, here in Canada, we are taking measures to recognise that sad period, but there is, I think, limited public interest in official government apologies for everything that's ever been unfortunate or [a] tragic event in our history.
[25] In 2020, it was reported that the Prince's Trust was providing funds to allow people sent as children from the UK to Australia by the Fairbridge Society to make claims for compensation for sexual and physical abuse.
The Prince's Trust had previously been criticised for "covering its backside" by denying it had knowledge of abuse suffered by Fairbridge Society child migrants.
