Cape Breton's Magazine

(My mother) took ill, and that's what put us in the Home (in England). And the way the Home was there, the Middlemore Home: if you were able to pay some of the board, you could get your child out when you were able to go back to work again your? self. But Ma couldn't, at the time--you know, she was sick and she couldn't go to work. How they booked me for over here, I don't know. My mother actually didn't know I was com? ing. Well, she might have known the last day of that. But I didn't see my mother, I just had a farewell meeting with my two brothers. They were in the Home an3rway. But like, we had parties and that, from people around us, they gave us fare? well parties and that, (Do you have a memory of Birmingham, England?) Not really. Actually, the only remembrance I could explain of Birm? ingham is the fog, And somebody asked me that here one day, did I think I could figure out where the Home was, where we were situated. Well, in my mind, I could. I could go to that street. It was St, Luke's Street, where the Home was. And we used to go around the corner to church, and across the street to school. We went to an outside school. Although, in the Home, we had one big playroom in the Home where they had every musical instrument you could think of. And whichever one you wanted to learn to play, you could. They had a guy Gwennie with her brothers, Raymond and Jess coming in once a week for music, I went (to the Home) in November. And I came (to Canada) in May, But then Mom, af? ter she got remarried, she took the two boys back home. And they tried--they wanted to get me back. But there was a lot of red tape and a lot of money in? volved, and they couldn't afford it. So (So, just under 11 years, you were sent out into the big wide world, really, without your family.,,,) Oh, without anything. Strangers all around. Funny part, when I went to that place there to West Tarbot, and I saw this old lady sitting in a chair not able to move, I said. My God, what kind of a place did they send me to? And of course, if the Home would have known at the time, the situ? ation, I wouldn't have been there. They would have felt I was too young there. But see, the guy in Halifax, the manager TOURS OF: LOUISBOURG, CABOT TRAIL, MINERS MUSEUM AIR CONDITIONED UNITS 564-6200 Limousine Service Taxi Fleet 24 KINGS ROAD SYDNEY THE* 564-4444 y'' vi RESTAURANT' T,njoif superb dining in a rtia-'ng & iuTQirions atmosp/tere SPECIALIZING IN CHINESE CUISINE Canadian Dishes also available FULLY LICENSED TAKE OUT & DELIVERY ORDERS Major Credit Cards Accepted II II II 'B 355 Charlotte Street Downtowr' Sydney Tel: 539-7775 Open dally 11:00 am I- I I I I I