How it WAS Curses and Blessings: 2. Orphaned and Enslaved in 19th Century Canada

Saturday, August 19, 2006

2. Orphaned and Enslaved in 19th Century Canada

Grandma was born in Brighton, England in 1892. Toward the end of that decade, Queen Victoria laid her hand upon Grandma’s head and told the assembled that she’d “never seen such a well-behaved child”. It was one of a very few positive memories the bewildered little girl retained from the British orphanage, after her father had been killed in an accident and her mother had died from pneumonia.

In 1899, my grandmother became a “Home Child”, one of over 100,000 children who were shipped to Canada from Great Britain between 1869 and the early 1930s during the child emigration movement. In Canada, the little orphan, Annie and her siblings were scattered. Grandma was abandoned on a farm in Wilkie, Saskatchewan, far away from her home at 64 Shirley Street and the stony beaches of Brighton. As she slowly settled into life on the prairie, every night she clutched her meagre memories and quietly cried for her ‘Mama’.

Mrs. H., the matriarch of the farm family to which young Annie had been sent, showed the eight year-old orphan no warmth, no love. Grandma was nothing more than a maid and farm hand. Mr. H., the archetypal henpecked husband, seemed to see the injustices but did nothing to right them, though he sometimes tipped Grandma off, that “Ma” was on her way, and that Grandma should address her chores smartly. He’d accompany this with the warning of what might happen if Grandma misbehaved. “Ma will ‘light on you with a stick!’” (The line was said in an upward reaching scale. “Stick!” was right there at the crescendo, striking fear into the heart of at least one little girl.) The children in the H. family were provided with piano lessons, and nice clothes; Grandma was not. She wore the cast-offs and learned to play the piano by ear. The only toy she had was a doll that lived high on a shelf, and Grandma was permitted to play with it only when company was visiting.

Little Orphant Annie By: James Whitcomb Riley (1849 – 1916)


Bio III

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