Home Children

Last week I blogged about a new memorial gravestone at Ottawa's Notre Dame Cemetery to 23 young people, Home Children who came to Canada from Britain, who died in their teens or twenties and were buried in numbered graves. In fact its two gravestones.
I had the privilege of attending the memorial ceremony last Saturday and placing one of the flowers in remembrance of a child. Both these photos show Dave Lorente, son of a Home Children and pioneer researcher, who was MC. He couldn't have ordered better weather.
Also shown in the image on the left is a home child descendant, and on the right John Sayers, leader for a project to index Home Children in ships passenger lists. The project is the subject of an agreement between the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa and Library and Archives Canada. There is already a database with about 80,000 children indexed.
For those unfamiliar with the story of home children there are good web sites here, and here. The best book on the topic is here. For the genealogist there's a slim volume "Researching Canada's Home Children" available here by following Our Store, Heritage Books. Canadian Series, and clicking on the second page. Take a while to browse their other offerings too.