ED’s Note: This is the first part of a feature article written by Ashley Bochek and appears courtesy of The World-Spectator in Moosomin. Her feature about British Home Children appeared in the October 2024 edition of The Plain and Valley. Our thanks to Lois Beer for submitting it.

Over the course of a century, more than 100,000 British Home Children crossed the Atlantic Ocean from London, England to Canada.
The children were first sent to Barnardo Homes in England to help relieve financial stresses of young British families in the 1800s.
The children were then sent on to Canada through the Barnardo organization. Parents were unaware until returning to the homes to find their children, that children had been sent to Canada.
Debbie Bochek, a teacher at the McNaughton High School in Moosomin and a descendant of a British Home Child, explains her family’s connection to this little-known part of Canadian history.
“In the 1800s in England after the Industrial Revolution, a lot of farm families were moving into the cities for jobs, and as they moved into the cities it resulted in overcrowding and overpopulation. A lot of families then were having trouble supporting all of their children and it became a time of poverty. So, children ended up living on the streets and it was a problem in the cities – in London, in particular.

Catch the rest of the first part of this story on page 7 of this week's Roblin Review.