In defence of Bernardo's waifs
Tuesday, 05 January 2010 00:00
January 5, 1894. The Carlton Place, Ontario Canadian Gazette (cited in Toronto The Week), comes to the defense of the Bernardo children, the 30,000 British waifs and orphans brought to Canada between 1883 and 1930 by British missionary Dr. Thomas Bernardo and the Bernado Homes organization.
ost of the boys were apprenticed for farm work—many becoming successful farmers—while the girls were engaged in domestic work. A Manitoba Grand Jury had urged curtailment of "pernicious foreign immigration," with particular reference to "the class of youths brought to" Manitoba's Industrial School for Bernado's Boys, where the boys received an eight-month farming apprenticeship. The jury's recommendations, said the Gazette, illustrated,
The ill-informed prejudice with which some Canadians regard and seek to decry a form of emigration probably more beneficial to Canada than any others.
The Canadian people spend each year hundreds and thousands of pounds to attract adult emigrants from the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. And they do well; for a substantial increase in her population is Canada's greatest need. But who will say, in the light of facts and figures within the reach of all, that the failures among such adult emigrants do not far exceed two per cent, which is the record of British child emigration to Canada.
Indeed, we have it on the indisputable evidence of the Minister until recently responsible for the immigration arrangements that the percentage of failure is in Dr. Bernardo's case less than one percent. That is to say, less than one percent has been added to the vicious or criminal population of Canada, and, where possible, even this one percent has been promptly returned to England, while the thousands that remain are growing into self-supporting and self-respecting citizens, well suited to bring Canada's wasteland into cultivation.
This is no mere guesswork. Anyone who takes the trouble may, with the aid of Dr. Bernardo's records, test the figures for himself.