ABSTRACT
Between 1869 and the late 1930s, the Child Migration Scheme led to the passage of over 100,000 child migrants from Great Britain to Canada. Children were assembled at Stepney Causeway, the great export emporium, to be tested and inspected for qualification for the ‘Canada List’. Similar to previous attempts to nab vagrant and orphaned children and send them to the colonies to meet the demand for labour,2 this resettlement programme migrated children from England’s overcrowded urban slums to isolated Canadian landscapes as a source of cheap farm labour and domestic help, and under the premise of providing them with a better life. Instead, scores of children’s narratives speak of hard labour and harsh environments in which they were faced with social marginalization and physical, emotional and sexual abuse.3
