The Little Immigrants by Kenneth Bagnell

Author:Kenneth Bagnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2001-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Jesus, Saviour, pilot me

Over life’s tempestuous sea . . .

Six

Thomas Barnardo in Canada

July day in 1884, when the sun was high and hot and fell upon the streets of Toronto with the heat of a furnace, a tall, sturdy man with the bearing of a police inspector stood on the railway platform in Toronto awaiting a train from Montreal. He was Alfred de Brissac Owen, in his early thirties, a clergyman’s son from England who, just a year earlier, had been appointed to his position as superintendent of the Canadian work of Dr. Barnardo’s Homes. Now, on this scorching summer afternoon, he was standing alone, tense with expectation, for the train that was due any minute was carrying among its passengers from the liner Parisian, which had just landed in Quebec City, none other than the man himself. Thomas Barnardo. It was Barnardo’s first visit to Canada to see the country, to survey his work, and, most important of all, to plan for its expansion.

He was, Owen thought as he watched him step onto the platform, a most fastidious dresser, a colourful figure with his expensive grey suit, his starched collar, and his gleaming cuffs. The two men shook hands. Then they set out for the home of the Honourable Samuel Hume Blake, Q.C., a former judge and leading member of the evangelical wing of the Anglican Church (he helped found Wycliffe College in Toronto), who had offered to head a group of advisers of Barnardo in Canada, and act as host during his visit.

That evening, over dinner in the quiet elegance of Blake’s home in a comfortable neighbourhood of Toronto, surrounded by men and women who shared his vision and coveted his presence, Barnardo was like a man who had found a well of inspiration. He held forth, regaling the dinner guests with dramatic accounts of his adventures, his clashes with the Charity Organization Society, and even the details of his eight-day journey across the Atlantic. He told them that he had met on board a gentleman named J. W. C. Fegan, who, like himself, was engaged in the work of rescuing children and placing them in Canada. “He had a party of fifty very nice lads along with him,” Barnardo said, “whom he was taking to place in situations over here.” Most mornings and evenings on board he attended services, usually conducted by Fegan, who he felt to be a very godly man. As always when he spoke of those who, because they worked in the same field, could be seen to be his rivals, Barnardo was unfailingly generous, even to the point of referring to Maria Rye’s work as “well-managed”, a description he knew to be at least questionable.

For most of the evening the conversation ran to talk about the controversy always stirring in the newspapers over the influence of child immigration on the character of the country. The issue was excited anew by stories of one organizer in Britain who, just weeks earlier, had shipped to Canada a load of men and women one guest described as loafers, drunks, and women of doubtful virtue.

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