Thy Children Own Their Birth: Diasporic genealogies and the descendants of Canada's Home Children
Publication Date
2006
Creator
Abstract
My research explores the cultural practices and identities of the descendants of an estimated 100,000 children who were despatched to Canada, unaccompanied by their parents, and under the auspices of a number of British charities, between 1869 and the late 1940s. It investigates the relationship between the descendants' individual and collective projects of recovery and commemoration and wider issues of postcolonial nationhood, ethnicity, and culture. It also focuses on the relationships between personal, family, national, and transnational identities, and on the ways in which the so called Home Children are being commemorated in contemporary Canada amongst competing cultural and political agendas.
During two extended trips to Canada, I conducted fifty nine in-depth interviews and two group interviews that allowed me to obtain an insight into the identities, experiences and attitudes of the descendants of Home Children. In this thesis I will discuss the findings of this research. I will report on the ways in which personal and wider senses of identity, ethnicity, and nationhood are produced and expressed through the activities of descendants who are attempting to research and recover unknown family histories and places of origin of ancestors.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
School of Geography
eprints ID
10276
UoN Repository URI
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