and a far cry from the picture of a desolate slum that many sending agents claimed they saved the children from.
My mother — as a little girl — that part of her had eluded me for so long. I needed to see her as a whole person, someone with a life and past beyond me, and not just as my mother. When I began to have a picture of the little girl, the teenager, the young woman, who took the new life that was forced on her and did the best she could with the hand that she was dealt, it changed everything for me.
I sat with my thoughts and hugged my manuscript. It had taken me my entire life to gain an understanding of my mother and her story. It was important not to make any more mistakes. I glanced over at her. Her tightly curled hair, not nearly grey enough for her eighty-three years, framed her face. I looked for the child in her. I was beginning to see my mother with patience for her life that I knew I could never attain. And, even more remarkable to me, was that she accepted me: the demanding child, the stormy teen, and then my angry rejection of her as I chose to head into adulthood without her. She waited while I travelled through my early twenties, finally finding my way back to her. She had always accepted me. Why had I not been able to do the same for her?
The bond I felt now seemed new, yet I realized it had been there all along, buried safely, but often unreachable. I had learned from the best. Bury what you cannot understand. She had given birth to me, yet I felt I was not of her. Her answers were not right for me, so I rejected her. I was content to leave it that way for a long time. Then, with children of my own, my perspective on motherhood and family changed. How could I be a mother if I did not know how to be a daughter? I knew that if I were unable to accept my mother fully, I would not get to know her, or myself, not in the deeper way I needed. And then it would be perpetuated, as my children wouldn’t know me, not the whole me, which included my mother, their grandmother, with her child migration baggage unpacked and properly sorted.
My mother broke into my silent ramblings, “Can you start at the beginning?”
“The beginning?” I murmured.
“What did you say?” My mother’s hand went to her ear.
“Do you have your hearing aid turned on?” I raised my voice, feeling annoyed. She had the hearing aid, but all too often she turned it down because the amplified noise bothered her. I hated repeating myself. I hated that she was showing signs of her age. I hated that I had lost so much time wrapped up in my own anger.
I watched as she fiddled with the remote control device for her hearing aid. She winced. “There — are you satisfied? It’s on loud and clear.”
What had it been like for my mother as a child? She was sent away permanently from her family, from her country, at such a young age and expected to be grateful for such an injustice. The numerous sending agencies responsible for migrating children gave little thought to the fact that they were taking those children away from their families, not just their mothers and fathers, but all of their relatives. Dr. Alfred Torrie, a British psychiatrist, argued that “a bad home is better than a good institution.”[2] He thought that the evacuation of many thousands of children during the war years had shown some of the dangers of breaking up a family. The children he studied likely came from the wealthier families whose children were returned to them after the war. Nevertheless, it reinforces my belief of the importance of family for all classes. “Family” is not just a phenomenon set aside for the wealthy to enjoy.
I clung to my manuscript. I felt hesitant, shy even, to show my mother what I had written. I had carefully gathered the bits and pieces from her childhood in Whitley Bay and then little snippets from her six months at the Middlemore Emigration Home in Birmingham. I had reconstructed her journey from this home south to London, then up to Liverpool and over to Canada in September 1937. I gathered as much information as I could from her, from her brothers and sisters, from other former Fairbridgians, from school and government records, and from newspaper articles, in order to reconstruct what her journey to the Fairbridge farm school might have been like.
It was difficult to pull any memories out of her at first. It was as if her childhood was a black hole. When I was growing up, my frustrations stemmed from this blank area of our lives and that helped keep barrier between us. It took me ages to understand that my mother wasn’t simply keeping things from me, but that she had effectively blocked out so much of her childhood that she couldn’t find her way back there. It was as if our little family was starting from scratch. We had no past. Nothing to anchor us. This journey has helped me to deal with that. It is a coming to terms with things. It is an acceptance of my mother, and of me, instead of always wishing that it could be different. As a child, I longed to believe in a “switched at birth” story. As I grew older, my life and family did not seem to “fit” me. I wanted to wipe the slate clean and imagine any past but my own. Now I feel different, especially with a greater understanding of what my mother went through, what her childhood was like, and why she blocked so much of it out.
I wanted to tell her that I was proud to be her daughter, but the words were difficult to say. It has been a long journey, the countless hours in the bowels of the archives, the prying, digging, and uncovering information, piece-by-piece, transcribing interviews, writing numerous letters, searching on the internet, and emailing and writing to obscure places in England — always hoping for some response, some little piece of the puzzle. I often wonder what was driving me to figure it all out. And I know my mother has wondered that herself. I was aware of treading on territory that she had buried for a reason. However, I knew my mother was pleased about the newfound memories because, for the most part, they were good ones. Even the bad memories that I stirred up were easier to look at now, from this distance.
The turning point happened when I finally visited the Fairbridge farm school grounds near Cowichan Station in 1986. I had driven up and down Vancouver Island dozens of times, but it never occurred to me to take the road in to see where the school was located. I didn’t realize that I had a picture in my mind of the place, an image leftover from my childhood, and when I stood on the former Fairbridge farm school property, I was speechless. The vision of the farm school that I had in my mind was simply that of a gravel pit. I carried that image for years. I never questioned it. I was surprised to see such a beautiful valley before me. I suddenly realized that it was not where my mother grew up that left this image with me, but it was how she grew up. Her loveless childhood, her lost family, her state of mind, and her feelings about being taken away and having to grow up in this institution.
Whenever she would talk about the Fairbridge School, all I took away was a stark image of a desolate and lonely place. It was still not easy for me to explain to her how scary the stories of her childhood were for me. One of the most valuable things about my research is that, by finding out about my mother’s childhood, I have been allowed a parallel journey into my own. As I started to figure out who my mother was, what her childhood was like, what her mother was like and her brothers and sisters, I finally acquired a sense of family. I had found a place where I belonged. Suddenly, I had to have all the details about her. I needed to know exactly where she lived, what schools she went to, what streets she walked on, where she played. I needed to find out about the gate she recalled swinging on while she yelled out for a half penny on her tenth birthday. For me, all the magic of England is wrapped up in that one half penny.
“Are you telling me you wrote my story around a half penny?” My mother laughed when I told her.
“A half penny started it all, yes.” I admitted.
“And I would have settled for a farthing, but I didn’t even get that.” The sparkle in her eyes told me it was okay to keep going.
I began to see who I was. I was no longer the daughter of a child migrant; I was a daughter of a child migrant with a family history. I saw what she had been through, and my shame of being her daughter turned to feeling a tremendous pride. She survived her ordeal. She came away from it intact. They did not break
