However, this was not always the case. Around the time frame of 1869 to 1932, immigrant children that were relocated in Canada were put to manual labor on farms or used for domestic help. These children, known as “home children”, were mostly relocated from the British Isles during the emigration movement to areas throughout Canada in hopes that they would stand a better chance of having a healthier and more sustaining lifestyle than they would have had living as orphans in the British Isles. Although some of these children did experience better lifestyles as a result of being located in Canada, the majority of the relocated orphans were abused and treated poorly due to their histories and lack of acceptance.
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Children hoping for a better life than what they were offered in Britain
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Children waiting to go to Canada
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In this process over 100,000 migrant children were shipped to Canada. Most of these children were believed to have been orphaned, however, according to the British Home Children Advocacy and Research Association (BHCARA), this was not the case. In many instances, these children were being separated from families in hopes of freeing them from poverty or even living in slums. In these cases, it was more often than not that the parents of the children that were being sent away did not know about the relocation until after the children were already gone or on the ship moving to Canada. However, the Canadians were not opposed to these relocations despite this fact. They were still opening their homes for home children in order to have the extra help on the farms or around the property.
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Once these children were relocated to various homes in Canada, the males were put to work on farms with planting and harvesting crops and basic maintenance of the property. Most of of the females were working inside the households cooking, cleaning, and mending clothing. All of the work that these children were doing would have been considered as too much work for a child. These children, in most cases, had their relocation in these households abused and were treated inhumanely. This was a result of the fact that they were being forces to provide services to Canadian families instead of living the lives that they deserved to have as children.
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Young boys working on watering the crops
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