Patricia Skidmore

Her family broken apart and her identity taken away, she had to forget her past in order to face her future. But forgetting isn’t forever. Taken from their mother’s care and deported from England to the colonies, ten-year-old Marjorie Arnison and her nine-year-old brother, Kenny, were sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School on Vancouver Island in September 1937. Their eight-year-old sister, Audrey, followed the next August. Marjorie's new home was on an isolated farm — a cottage she shared with at least ten other girls and a “cottage mother” at the head, who had complete control over her “children.” Survival required sticking to bare essentials. Marjorie had to accept a loss, which was difficult to forgive. Turning inward, she would find strength to pull her through, but she had to lock away her memories in order to endure her new life. Marjorie was well into her senior years before those memories resurfaced.

When Marjorie’s daughter began exploring archival records involving Britain’s child-migration program, a home-child saga emerged. Marjorie Arnison was one of the thousands of children removed from their families, communities, and country and placed in a British colony or commonwealth to provide "white stock" and cheap labour. In Marjorie’s case, she was sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, just north of Victoria, British Columbia, in 1937. As a child, Patricia was angered that her mother wouldn’t talk about the past. It took many years to discover why – it wasn’t because she was keeping a dark secret, but because she had "lost" her childhood. For 10-year-old Marjorie, forgetting her past, her family, and England was the only survival tool she had at her disposal to enable her to face her frightening and uncertain future. This is Marjorie’s account as told by her daughter. It is a story of fear, loss, courage, survival, and finding one’s way home.