*2010* ~ Year of the British Home Child in Canada

Peterborough's home children go beyond Barnardo

All of the home children are "just as important as the Barnardo (children)," says one of their descendants.

Stan MacLean is the son of a Barnardo girl. Like thousands of youths, his mother was sent to Canada to fulfill a labour shortage around the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Barnardos was the largest of 52 organizations that sent orphaned children, known as "home children, to the former colonies.

(The Barnardo boys were orphaned or poor boys who were helped by Dr. Thomas Barnardo.)

"(All of the home children are) just as important as the Barnardos. They were home children just the same as the Barnardos were," MacLean said yesterday from his home north of Lakefield.

"This is why this story has to be brought out. Because when you say Barnardo, unless your ancestor was Barnardo, then nobody pays any attention to it and you can't ignore all these other children.

"There were thousands of them."

In 2001 MacLean founded the Fenner Foundation, a federal chartered family trust foundation with a mandate to honour all home children.

MacLean, who is the president, said in the last few years privacy laws have expired and immigration records of all the home children are now accessible at the Library and Archives Canada. The records show the children who immigrated were not all the well-known "Barnardo boys."

Other homes that distributed home children in Canada, next to the Barnardo homes, were the Quarrier and Marchmant homes, MacLean said. In Peterborough the Hazelbrae Barnardo Home distributed the girls, he said.

MacLean said about 100,000 home children immigrated to Canada from 1867 to 1930. About 844,000 non-sponsored children came from workhouses and immigrated to Canada from 1925 to 1930, he said.

The Fenner Foundation gets its name from MacLean's father Charles Fenner who died when MacLean was two. (MacLean was later adopted).

The foundation's mandate is to build monuments across the country, in every province and territory, to honour all the home children, MacLean said.

He said talks are underway to establish a monument in Peterborough.

MacLean said having all the home children recognized comes from "the deepest part of my heart.

"I can't say that my mother and Barnardos were the only children that came to Canada. Because I recognize all these other children came and they deserve the same recognition as anybody else."

MacLean said the monument design would have to recognize that the home children came to Canada by boat and include other "basic symbols."

MacLean wouldn't reveal many details but he said he's working with several people about establishing a monument, including someone in "high municipal office," former MP Peter Adams -who helped the foundation get charter status -and Peterborough MPP Jeff Leal.

NOTES:Stan MacLean doesn't feel the Canadian government needs to apologize for how some of the home children were treated when they arrived in Canada. "They need to be credited for all they did to support these children," he said. . . . . Australia's prime minister apologized for how the children were treated last month. . . . Federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said last month that there's no need for Canada to apologize.

Copyright © 2010 Peterborough Examiner (Article ID# 2230642)