Patricia Skidmore (left), who lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, has written a moving book about her mother’s experiences as a child migrant to Canada in 1937. Marjorie Arnison was from Whitley Bay in northeastern England. She lived in Birmingham for seven months before being sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School in the Cowichan Valley when she was just 10. She could never properly explain her past to her children. The “mystery” caused Skidmore to write Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry: A Home Child Experience, published by Dundurn (295 pages, $30). Coastal Spectator Editor Lynne Van Luven read Marjorie’s story with great interest since her own grandfather was also sent to Canada as a “Barnardo Boy.” Skidmore’s book will be launched at the University of Victoria Bookstore on March 14 at 7 p.m.
Can you remember the catalyst that set your mind to writing about your mother’s story?
After spending much of my childhood fighting my mother for her story, in an attempt to find out who she really was and why she was in Canada while most of her family was in England, I concluded that she was keeping some horrid dark secret from me. At 17, I gave up and left home.
It took another eight years before I faced the question again, when I was a mother myself and feeling overwhelmed. My father had died in 1957, leaving my mother with 5 children between the ages of three weeks and 8 years. My bout with one sick baby helped me realize that I was not stronger than my mother, as I had always thought. I began to see her in a different light and I wondered who was this “superwoman” who single-parented her little family and kept them together against all odds?
And I realized that I needed to find my way back to her–although I would still need to try to figure out who she was. I feared that I couldn’t be a good daughter without knowing her deeper, and if I couldn’t be a good daughter, then how could I be a good mother?
In June 1986, when I saw the Fairbridge Farm property for the first time, I was dumbfounded by the beautiful countryside. I had expected a gravel pit. It hit me that the stark image I had in my mind came from my mother’s emotional distress at feeling so alone and bleak when she was removed from her family and sent to a new country.
By this time, I had been single parenting my three sons for many years–so finding time to pursue this research was challenging. After my 2 older sons were through high school, I returned to Victoria in 1996 to complete a degree that I started there in 1969. And I found my way into Women’s Studies.
In 1999, Professor Christine St. Peter led us to the BC Archives, which opened an avenue for research that I had no previous knowledge of. And the archives are where I found my mother’s past (in the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School records). I found a personal file for my mother, and together we discovered her immigration landing card, then her birth certificate, sent by her mother in 1948 when she wanted to get married, along with a couple of photographs. My mother seemed pleased as the research progressed: “Well they didn’t just throw me away, they kept records of me,” she said.
You have referred to your 20 years of exhaustive research on your book. What advice do you have for others who might be considering writing a family memoir?
For me, making my mother go back to that place she had buried all those years ago was a tricky business. I told myself I would stop if she became distressed. However my desire to understand the truth was so great, I wonder if I really would have.
My advice to anyone searching for a lost past is: don’t give up but don’t expect things to happen overnight. Patience is important.
A number of factors enabled me to rediscover my mother’s past, but the most important thing was that she was with me while I did this research. I wrote my mother’s story because it was important to me to know about my past.
I am working on a sequel, which takes Marjorie through her years at the Farm School until early 1943. She was removed from the Farm School at 16 and was placed as a domestic servant in a home in Victoria. The working title for this sequel is Marjorie: The War Years. Today, my mother is offering her memories. The door is open to her past. The shame has dissipated. Marjorie now feels strong and proud about how she navigated her life and survived.
Have you or your mother heard from many other child migrants since your book was published?
Yes. I keep in regular contact with a number of the Former Fairbridgians sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, as well as several from the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) Fairbridge Memorial College, which ran from 1946 until 1962, and I keep in touch with some of the Old Fairbridgians from the Australian Fairbridge Farm Schools.
Since the publication of my book, I have had numerous new contacts, which include email from offspring of former Canadian child migrants, now living in the United States and in Australia.
In a recent CBC interview, you said many of those transported as children, including your mother, felt “shame” about their history. Do you think Gordon Brown’s apology and the slow growth of books and stories about child migrants helps to dissipate that feeling?
Yes, but it may be that each personal journey differs – so I cannot speak for others. I saw my mother transform during her visit to England in 2010 for then-prime minister Gordon Brown’s apology. If you were not directly affected by the events that lead up to a formal apology, then that act would hold little meaning. But I will never again question the validity of a formal apology after witnessing the healing firsthand.
When Gordon Brown looked into my mother’s eyes and said, “I am truly sorry,” that formal recognition allowed for more healing than all my years of research. I believe a lot of the shame stemmed from an inability to talk about her past and what brought her to Canada. So much was hidden, she found difficult to speak openly.
Do you think Britons and North Americans have learned anything useful about child migration since the practice first started, even since your mother’s time?
Child migration went on for so long: Britain first started “transporting” children in 1618, and child migration to Australia continued until 1974. So many well-read people tell me that they have never heard of British Child Migration. I too was surprised to learn that child migration had a 350-year history, with the first group of children being sent to Richmond, Virginia, at the request of King James I.
I feel at a loss to understand why its history has not become better known. Perhaps the main reason is that the full history is not taught in the public schools. The Canadian government’s attitude may also be a factor. In 2009, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said there was “no need” for Canada to apologize for abuse and exploitation suffered by thousands of poor children shipped here from Britain.