Community Corner: Uncovering a painful past

Culture & Events News — 29 November 2011

By Chris Marchand

We all wish we could speak with a lost loved one just one more time. If Connie McQueen-Aho had such a chance, the conversation with her father would be a long one.

Aho says a recent CBC program examining the history of British Home Children affected her deeply. Her father, Victor Powner-McQueen, was one of over 100,000 British children taken away from their impoverished parents between 1870 and 1959 and sent to work as indentured farm labourers or domestic servants in Canada.

Aho has since delved deeply into a painful past her father never spoke about, an unimaginable separation at the tender age of nine.

“Dad wouldn’t talk about it,” said Aho. “We were just kids, we wouldn’t know to even ask him about it. Mom probably gleaned as much information as he gave her.”

Victor passed away when Connie was just 10 years old, which left her and her seven siblings with a life-long yearning to uncover more about their father’s early experiences. Some details were gleaned from the records of Middlemore Home, the Birmingham orphanage where Victor and three of his siblings became wards of the state.

In 1909, Victor’s father was a newly-widowed bricklayer in Coventry, England with 12 children and difficulties affording a house or finding work. To avoid prosecution from England’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, he had the choice to enter a workhouse with his children or sign a consent form that would see Victor (age 9) and his youngest siblings — brothers Harold (6), Sidney (11) and sister Hilda (8) — moved to homes in Canada where they would work until age 18.

They arrived in Halifax Harbour, June 9, 1909.

Victor was settled in Cape Breton with Mrs. May McQueen, whose name became his own. He was reported to have ran away several times before he tried to enlist in the military unsuccessfully (on account of his young age). He moved to western Canada before settling at Rice Lake in the 1920s. He worked at area tourist camps, cut pulpwood, trapped and guided hunters and fishermen.

After nearly 30 years, haunted by the painful decision he had made, Victor’s father crossed the ocean in search of the four children he had sent to Canada.

“My grandfather, it bothered him for the rest of his life,” said Aho. “He came from England to Canada to see if he could find his children and take them home. Sidney was the oldest and he went home. Hilda went to visit but came back.”

Aho says while her father never forgot who he was, she believes he lost a great deal at the hands of the authorities in England and Canada.

“He never saw his baby brother again, never spoke to his brothers and sisters in England again and never went back to his homeland,” said Aho.

In 2010, the issue of British Home Children prompted an official state apology from then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the surviving child migrants and their descendents.

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