Memorial for the trafficked children

All funds raised will be put towards a memorial for all the children that were trafficked.

Between 1869 and 1939 100,00 children were trafficked to Canada via the Child Migration Programme. The programme was paused during the first world war and reinstated thereafter. It was paused again during the second world war and not reinstated in Canada by the majority of organisations. However, the Fairbridge Society continued the practice sending 329 children to a Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School in British Columbia between 1935 and 1948 – 95% of which were not orphans. The farm school closed in the 1950s – with the last of the older boys leaving in December 1951.[1] Children continued to be trafficked to Australia up to the 1970s. 10,000 of these children came from Scotland, Quarrier’s Homes trafficked 7,000 of these children, many of whom were Gypsy Travellers including three of my grandfather’s younger sisters: Gracie, aged 9, Mary, aged 11 and Margaret, aged 14, at the time they were trafficked. Prior to being trafficked to Canada, children would spend up to three years incarcerated at Quarrier’s village, Bridge of Weir where they were prepared for a future in indentured servitude in the colonies. Quarrier’s Homes were careful to select only the fittest for trafficking as they did not wish to risk any child being rejected or returned to their distribution centre[1] in Brockville, Ontario as this would impact their tight profit margins. There was little of a welcome to Canada for these children, some as young as two years old, who became known as Canada’s Little Slaves. The media of the time portrayed them as orphaned thieves and vagabonds who had been found wandering the streets of the towns and cities or the children of drunkards and criminals unfit to care for them and who had willingly handed them over into the ‘care’ of the unholy trinity of state, churches or charities. As such, many of these children were treated as less than human by those who engaged them as indentured servants. Girls as young as five years old working as housekeepers quartered in cold attics and fed scraps and boys of a similar age working in the fields seven days a week and sleeping in barns and dog kennels, one man [now in his 90s] reports sleeping with the dogs and being the last to be fed, even the dogs being fed before him. Physical and emotional abuse was common place and there were a number of reports of sexual abuse, some of which were reported in the media at the time. The fate of a number of children who passed through the Fairknowe distribution centre is unknown. Many disappeared from state records a few years after they were put into service. Others are recorded as having died from serious injuries while in service – there is evidence that a sizable proportion of these were at the hand of another. Some of these children are buried in marked graves, others were not so fortunate at best being buried in unmarked graves in cemeteries or at worst on the farmland where they met their often untimely death. Those thirty nine [39], the youngest just five days old, who were returned, or never left, Quarrier’s Fairknowe distribution centre are interned in a 500sqft [2] plot in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Brockville. Quarrier’s Homes provided no grave stones or markers. During my visit in November 2023, and working with an archivist from the local authority, I was able to identify the names, ages, country of birth and cause of death of those interned there.