January 18, 2018

Just trying to catch up here..... a new project has just come into focus.... Cornish Heritage Day in Clarington.  Yes, if you are descended from Cornish folk, or you have emigrated from Cornwall yourself, then this is going to be a great event to attend!

March 5th, in Cornwall, UK, is St. Piran's Day (St. Piran being the patron saint of Cornwall, and tinners).  So, to celebrate Cornwall and all its people, the Cornish flag will be raised on the town staff on March 5th where it will fly proudly all day.  One of the reasons is this.... in the early years of the 1800's, Cornish folk settled the front townships across the Lake Ontario shore from Hamilton Township (Cobourg area) through Hope Township (Port Hope area), Clarke Township (Newcastle area), Darlington Township (Bowmanville area) and into East Whitby Township (Oshawa area).  Mail boxes all up and down our sideroads still bear the Cornish names of those first settlers.  And so, to mark our Cornishness - a Cornish Heritage Day - the first of many, we hope!

On March 4th, from 2 pm to 3:30 pm, there will be a celebration of all things Cornish at the Sarah Jane Williams Heritage Centre on Temperance Street in Bowmanville.  There will be admission charged, but as the plans have not all been laid yet, that admission fee  is $15.  We will be enjoying pasties, saffron cake, tea and coffee and will be entertained by speaker(s) as well as an assortment of brochures, booklets and other material all about Cornwall through which you will be welcome to browse.

Not many people know they are Cornish, and of those who do, not many of them have ever set foot on Cornish soil.  That's too bad, because Cornwall is a lovely place.  I like nothing better than going to Fowey and watching the boats in the harbour; or going to St. Austell and visiting the brewery and tasting their latest offering; or travelling over to Land's End to see the channel and the Atlantic meet and broil; or visiting Eden, the renowned clay pit that has been established as a set of bio-domes in which plants from all over the world are grown.  Native Cornish plants grow outside the domes, all labelled and described.  There's even a little train that will take you around the pit so you can see all that has been done.

There are other great places in Cornwall to visit too, especially your own ancestral areas.  My ancestors came from two very different areas of Cornwall - some from the most northern parish in the county, Morwenstow, and some from the parish of St. Ewe, down near Mevagissey on the south coast.

On March 4th, we hope to have a smattering of information from all parts of the county so that you might get a glimpse of that area where your ancestors lived.

When I was a kid growing up in Ajax, Ontario, I was out playing in the dirt one day and a new kid on the block came along.  We tried talking to one another but for the life of me I couldn't understand half what she said.  I asked her what language she was speaking and she said Cornish. I asked where that was from and she shrugged her shoulders.  "I don't know, Cornland I think."  We were both about 8 years old so she can be forgiven for not knowing much about geography.  I did not hear the term 'Cornish' again until I was an adult researching my ancestral roots, and the picture of her flashed into my mind.

Live and learn. Come out to the event!

For further information please contact myself or contact Debra Sweetman .   Debra is my partner in crime with this project.  We put our heads together about a year ago and said we ought to do a St. Piran's day here in Clarington, and so, true to our words we are doing it!  How it turns out is anybody's guess.  I hope you will all show up and make it a roaring success!  Tickets are available at the Sarah Jane Williams Heritage Centre, Temperance St, Bowmanville, $15 each.  Don't wait - they are going fast!

 January 18, 2018
So much for monthly posts!!!  But then I guess Christmas and New Years got in the way - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!!
In my last post I said I'd tell you about the second 150th Anniversary book I wrote,  Clarington's Home Children.  It came about in an odd set of circumstances....
I had an e-mail one day from a local lady who said she'd realized this part of our local history had not been looked at, and she thought I might be just the person to do it.  Of course, I knew about the Home Children, but the idea of any of them coming to this area never crossed my mind.  My new contact told me she knew of quite a few people in the community who were descended from Home Children (she started doing the research for me, it seemed!!) and that they were willing to sit down and talk about their relatives.  How could I turn down a project that had already been started?
Some of you may be wondering, "What on earth is a Home Child?"  Let me explain..... in the mid 19th century, people like Thomas Barnardo, a few church organizations, and some child welfare workers, all took in homeless children.  Often these children were grabbed off the street, and some it turned out, weren't homeless at all!  Many were brought to the 'homes' by parents who were going through hard times, planning on returning for their children when times got better, only to find that in the  meantime their children had been sent to Canada or Australia.  It wasn't for a few years after starting this humanitarian act, that the 'homes' across Britain realized there were just too many children to care for, and so the plan to send them to the colonies to become useful citizens was hatched between the British government and the governments of Canada and Australia, and so the migration of child labourers began.  That's how the Home Children arrived in Canada
So, armed with about a dozen names I went to town researching and it didn't take long to realize this would be a huge project - probably a decade long....
After two years of 24/7 research I had found nearly 700 Home Children had been sent to this area (the Municipality of Clarington which is made up of the former townships of Darlington and Clarke in the former Durham County).  Of those nearly 700 I chose to highlight 38 of the most recent emigrants, mainly because their descendants or their friends were still alive and could tell me something about them.  You see, Home Children were being sent to Canada between the years 1869 and 1949, and when I started this project I did not know that I already knew some of their children.
Years ago the CBC did a programme about Home Children and portrayed them as all having sad and abused lives.  Not so.  The bad experiences suffered by these waifs were few and far between.  Most had very good lives.  In Clarington, there was never a report of abuse to one of these children.  In fact, many of the girls were adopted by their host families.
This was an excellent book to research and write.  But writing the book isn't the end of the project.  I want to follow the lives of those nearly 700 to find out where they went, did they join up during WW1, who did they marry, and other such questions.  Like I said, a decades worth of work.
If you are interested in reading about Clarington's Home Children, please visit my website .......
<http://lm-jassociates.webs.com> and go to the 'orders' page.