14th Annual BHC and Descendants Association Reunion

Saturday, September 10th. 2016. Bible Hill Junior High School, 741 College Road, Truro, Nova Scotia. Registration begins at 9:00 a.m. No registration fee. Lunch will be served. Guest speaker is Mr. Kenneth Bagnell, author of "The Little Immigrants: The Orphans Who Came To Canada". His web site - kennethbagnell.com. Deadline for submissions for the 2nd. Middlemore quilt will be on this date. For quilt details contact me or visit our Facebook page - British Home Children and Descendants Association (Nova Scotia) and look in "Files". 
~with thanks to GANS for sharing the information

BHC Day Saturday Sept 26 & 27

This weekend, Sept 26 - 27, the British Home Child Group International (http://britishhomechild.com/) will be at Fanshawe Pioneer Village in London as part of the Doors Open Event. 

People will be on hand to assist you with your genealogy research. There will be an open mic so that you can share the story of your BHC ancestor with others in attendance. There are LOTS of door prizes to be won and the event is FREE!

The cafe at the Pioneer Village will be offering a three course meal for $14 on both Saturday and Sunday. 

Sandra Joyce will be launching her new children's book "Trees and Rocks, Rocks and Trees"

Claire Halstead will be on hand on Sunday to talk about the Child Evacuees.

Former Home Boys George Beardman and Cecil Hewitt will also be on hand on Sunday. 

This is a family event and we look forward to seeing you there. 

Belonging - British Home Child Book Release!

Author Sandra Joyce (The Street Arab) has written a sequel to her story about her father, Robert James who was a British Home Child. In this second book, Belonging, Sandra documents her father's struggles to fit into the world of adulthood following a childhood of indenture.

Belonging is being released on September 28th, British Home Child Day in Canada. The release will take place at the British Home Child Event at Black Creek Pioneer Village, where Sandra will also be present.

The book retails for $23.95 and covers an important piece of Canadian history.

20th Annual BIFHSGO Family History Conference

The 20th Annual BIFHSGO Family History Conference takes place September 19 - 21, 2014.

 

This year's conference will focus on three main topics:

 •English family history;

 •Immigration from the British Isles, including Home Children; and

 •Genetic genealogy.

 Conference Program: 

Review the highlights in the conference brochure to find topics and speakers of interest to you. http://www.bifhsgo.ca/upload/files/Conference%202014/2014%20Brochure_final.pdf

Speakers: 

• Dr. Lucille Campey - emigration historian, author of numerous books on British Isles emigration to Canada who will launch her latest book Ignored but not forgotten - Canada's English Immigrants at the conference.
• Gail Dever - BIFHSGO webmaster, social media expert and blogger at Genealogy à la carte.
• John Dickenson - a former professor at Liverpool University who now researches Canada’s Home Children, especially their involvement in the First World War.
• Dr. Janet Few - freelance researcher and prize-winning author specializing in the south-west of England who will give a streamed-in presentation on North Devon immigrants to Canada.
• Paul Jones - retired publisher, “Roots” columnist for Canada’s History magazine who speaks frequently on offbeat topics at family history events.
• Debbie Kennett - an avid genetic genealogist, author of DNA and Social Networking (2011) and The Surnames Handbook (2012). Debbie is Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London.
• Paul Milner - an internationally recognized speaker specializing in British Isles research, author of Discover English Parish Records and Genealogy at a Glance: English Research.
• Gary Schroder - long-time president of the Quebec Family History Society and a frequent guest on Quebec radio and television promoting family history research.

In addition, speakers at pre-conference seminars on September 19 will include, from Library and Archives Canada, Paul Marsden and Sylvie Tremblay.

Online registration is available at: http://www.bifhsgo.ca/cpage.php?pt=126

British Home Child Day Activities

Come out to the Aultsville Train Station just west of Upper Canada Village Saturday, August 31st to see great-great-grandchildren of Home Child Mary Scott-Pearson Brownell cut the ribbon on the British Home Child Museum. Also grandchildren of former MPP Jim Brownell will be there. Thanks to Jim and his colleagues in the Ontario House of Legislature, September 28th is Brisith Home Child Day in Ontario.

As well, work is being done with the Black Creek Pioneer Village to get a "permanent" display set up on the British Home Children (for a six month period initially) and Black Creek will also be hosting events for British Home Child Day in 2014. Stay tuned for details as they become available....

500,000 Photographs of Barnardos Children Up For Grabs

One of the oldest, most significant photographic collections in the shaping of Canada is up for grabs - those of the children who came to Canada as Dr Barnados Little Immigrants.  

Barnardo began photographing the children that came into his care at his first home in Stepney in 1875. 

Over half a million photographs are being digitized in Manchester. Once the digitization process has been completed, the original images are to be destroyed, all in the name of freeing up storage space.  

Not only were the British Home Children dispensable as people, now their images are also apparently dispensable.  Barnardos is willing to hand the collection of originals over to an interested organization, archive or group of individuals. Ideally, in Canada, this would be to Library and Archives Canada, however, we already know the state that organization is in and it is highly unlikely that they will do anything to pursue these precious memories of some of our early nation builders. The importance of these photographs to the national memory and social history of Canadacannot be underestimated.

If you know of an organization that would be willing to protect and preserve these images, you are asked to contact the head archivist at: martine.king@barnardos.org.uk

Child Migrants and British Home Children

I have just finished watching a brilliant DVD called Oranges and  Sunshine. This is the story of Margaret Humphreys who first exposed the Child Migrant Scheme of children being systematically deported to Australia. The DVD is based on Margaret Humphreys' book Empty Cradles, which I read a number of years ago when I was first researching British Home Children.

The DVD is very true to the book, but allows a much more rounded view of the personalities of the child migrants as well as deeper emotional responses from both the child migrants and from Margaret herself.

The DVD is available from Amazon UK for about $8 but is only available in the PAL format. It needs to be played in a computer on the media player which will convert to the North American NTSC format. Hopefully it will soon be available on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca, making it more readily playable on a television.