Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been petitioned to apologize to British child migrants who encountered “shame and isolation”.
Campaigners in their latest move demanded an official apology for the treatment encountered by youngsters shipped to Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries
The petition was initiated by the group Home Children Canada and stated that child migrants suffered abuse and stigmatization and that many died “ashamed of their history and deprived of their family”.
Around 115,000 youngsters, so-called British Home Children, were transported from the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948.
They were typically used as cheap labour and made to work on farms or as domestic servants and many have told stories of overwork and mistreatment.
They were transferred from orphanages in the UK but campaigners for the Home Children say that many were only temporary residents of the orphanages and had families that were unaware they went to Canada.
The campaigners have now submitted a petition calling on Justin Trudeau to follow the example of the UK and Australia in tendering a formal apology, something the Canadian government has resisted.
The petition, which was presented to Canada’s House of Commons, stated: “Home children/child migrants were, as a result of the system, thrust into difficult and inappropriate personal living circumstances exacerbated by a belief that they were unwanted by parents and, as a result, denied access to siblings and/or other relatives.”
“We… call upon the prime minister to sincerely apologise to Home Children/child migrants who suffered in shame and isolation, to those who died while being ashamed of their history and deprived of their family, to elderly survivors burdened by their past, and to descendants grappling with the inter-generational impacts of a system that mistreated and separated their families.”
