I’ve been researching my family history casually since about 2007. There are many aspects of  my grandfather’s early years that have always been a mystery to me.

While researching my mother’s father (whom my sister and I called “Poppy”), I discovered his application to the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1918. As a young man, he’d wanted to be a soldier as part of the Canadian forces, but according to the records, he was dismissed for medical reasons after only a few months. From his application, I learned that he was born in Billingshurst, Sussex in 1899, I also learned that his father was named John Huntley Clarke, and a gardener by profession. What I didn’t understand was why Poppy had come to Canada without his family.

When I was a small boy in the early 1970s, my parents, sister, and I all lived in Poppy’s house for a couple of years, and I got to know him very well. Both my sister and I loved Poppy with all our hearts.

At about eight years old, I remember sitting on his knee, asking him questions about his life. I asked him how old he was when he came to Canada, and he said that he was about twelve or so. I couldn’t imagine a kid coming all the way across the ocean by themselves. I asked him who had come along with him, thinking that such a long voyage would have been scary for a kid alone. I wondered to myself if maybe he came over with an uncle or something. He didn’t answer but just looked down into his lap, with a sad expression, lost in some old memory.

In fact, Poppy never told us anything about his  childhood or his journey to Canada. Anything I ever learned about it would come later, from recalling a story that he’d once told my father, and from my own online research later as an adult.

In June of 1913, my grandfather, Ernest Huntley Clarke made an eight day sailing from Liverpool to Quebec City on the RMS Megantic. The Megantic was part of the White Star Line, which had many other large ships crossing the Atlantic ocean, with names like The Laurentic, The Olympic, and the infamous Titanic, which had sunk in 1912.

Crossing the Atlantic ocean was not without some risk, back then, and 1913 was one of the heaviest years for emigration from the UK to Canada. The Megantic and other ships made the crossing from Liverpool  to Quebec City and back regularly, and it seems that every crossing contained children from a British Home Child program. I’m quite sure most of those children travelled in steerage class, the least expensive accommodation onboard.

Ernest was 14 years old when he sailed across on The Megantic. On the passenger list his destination was Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. In Library and Archives Canada records, Ernest was part of a small group of passengers designated “Q13EL“. (I suppose that code is just something used by the Canadian government records database.)

Upon arrival, it was common for immigrants to take a train journey from their port of entrance to their final destination. Young Errnest would have travelled by rail for two or three days from Quebec City to get to Portage La Prairie, Manitoba.

If Ernest was part of the Salvation Army’s Home Child program, his new home would have been a farm, or some local receiving home where he’d live until he was placed. Boys were almost always placed with farms, to work as agricultural labourers. Girls were most often placed with families or in large houses to work as domestic servants or nannies.

Once the child reached the ago of eighteen, they  were released from the program, to make their own way.

Ernest’s father John had been a Gardener. When Ernest turn 17 and applied for the Canadian Expeditionary Force, he gave his occupation as Gardener too.

 

Related Resources:

• https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/overseas/child-migration