One day, while doing research on British Home Children in past issues of the Ontario Genealogical Society`s journal, Families, I came across an article about the children who were British Second World War evacuees to Canada. In the article, they had come to Port Colbourne, Ontario, and had stayed there while the war was raging in the UK and in Europe. They went to school while staying together in a house, and most of them seemed to have adjusted very well to their situation. They were a part of Operation Pied Piper.
That article stuck with me, because I hadn’t known about this before reading about them. But now there is a post-graduate student at the University of Western Ontario who is doing a project on the children, and her name is Claire Halstead.
Her thesis work, by its completion, will account for more than 3,000 children who came to Canada, of which 1,500 came by way of the Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB). They were all part of Operation Pied Piper.
If there is any information that you might have on this subject that you would like to share, please get in contact with Clare at chalstea@uwo.ca.
You can read the story in the Western News at http://news.westernu.ca/2015/01/student-returns-identity-to-british-war-evacuees/http://news.westernu.ca/2015/01/student-returns-identity-to-british-war-evacuees/
To get some background information, you can read Children's Overseas Reception Board at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Overseas_Reception_Board
There is also an article on the web called “Guests” not “Refugees” Child Evacuees to Canada During World War II at http://www.cst.ed.ac.uk/Events/Conferences/documents/SmerdonCPaper.pdf
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