British Home Children
Neither Waif Nor Stray: The Search For a Stolen Identity

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Neither Waif Nor Stray: The Search For a Stolen Identity
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Synopsis of Neither Waif Nor Stray

My Father became a ward of the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society when he was four years old in 1913. When he was 15, they gave him the choice of emigrating to Australia or Canada. No one wanted him in England. They sent him to work on Canadian farms as an indentured farm labourer. He was part of the little-known British Child Emigration Scheme in which fifty child-care organizations emigrated 100,000 children to Canada between 1880-1930. An unknown number made their way to the United States. These alleged orphan children were between 6-15 years old and were known as The Home Children. The organizations professed a dominant motive of providing these children with better lives than what they might have had in England, but they had other ignoble motives.

Half of these children suffered from child neglect and abuse. The scheme persisted interrupted only by WWI and WWII until the mid-1960s when these organizations sent 15,000 children to Australia, New Zealand, and Africa.

My Father never had a Birth Certificate. He had nothing to verify who he was for the first 33 years of his life. For the next 15 years, he carried a tattered To Whom it May Concern letter that stated his name and identified him as of British nationality. For the first half of his life, he had serious doubts if his surname was really Snow. He wondered if someone had simply invented it for him.

When he was 48 years old, he obtained a Baptism Certificate that confirmed his name, identified his Mother, but not his Father. For the next 16 years, this was all he had for identification. When he was 64 years old, he received his Canadian Citizenship. He wrote to the Waifs and Strays Society for 55 years, but they withheld from him the vital information he so desperately sought. Why did they not want him to know who he was? I resumed his lifelong search following his death on his unconfirmed birthday in 1994. The Children's Society reluctantly released his 82-year-old case file to me. It took me four years to identify his Parents and locate his Family.

Your ancestors may have been British Home Children. You may be one of the four million of Canada's "Invisible Immigrants." Your ancestor's stories do not appear in Canadian school curricula. The British childcare organizations deliberately severed the Home Children's familial ties. The four million descendants have a potential 20 million British relatives. If one purpose of the scheme was to simply rid Britain of an unwanted element of their society, they only partially succeeded. They underestimated the strength of needing to know who you are - to have an identity. I hope the successful conclusion of my search will inspire others to persist until they re-establish their familial ties. No one should live their lives without knowing who they are and to whom they belong. It is your birthright to know your heritage.

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About the Author

PERRY SNOW, B.A. (Hon.), M.A.

Chartered Clinical Psychologist
#325 Market Mall Executive Professional Centre
4935 40th Avenue N.W., Calgary, Alberta, T3A 2N1
Phone: 403-288-4477 Email: psnow@cadvision.com


Perry Snow is a proud first-generation descendant of a British Home Child. He was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario and is the fourth eldest of six children. He has been married for 33 years and has two daughters ages 26 and 24. He has lived in Alberta for 22 years and has been in Private Practice for 20 years. His professional experience as a Clinical Psychologist spans 30 years.


1972 - Ph.D. Post-Graduate Studies, Clinical Psychology. The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

1971 - Master of Arts, Clinical Psychology. Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

1970 - Honors Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, 1970.



RESEARCH/PUBLICATIONS:

Snow, Perry. Neither Waif Nor Stray: The Search for a Stolen Identity. Florida, USA: Universal Publishers, 2000.

Snow, Perry. Banished to Canada - The Untold Story of the British Child Immigrants. Kent Family History Society Journal, Volume 9, No. 9, December, 1997, Kent, England.

Snow, Perry. Assessment of Human Services in a Community About to be Impacted by Multiple Industrial Developments. Alberta Environment Research Trust Fund, Calgary, Alberta, 1980.

Snow, Perry. Contributor to Socioeconomic Impact Assessment: Obed Marsh Project. Union Oil of Canada, Calgary, Alberta, 1981

Snow, Perry. Author of Self Management Seminars.Calgary, Alberta, 1980.