The Long Journey Home

Nancy Loucks-McSloy recounts her great-grandmother's brave journey from an English orphanage to a new life in Upper Canada

PUBLISHED In The Beaver: Canada's History Magazine February/March 2009, Vol. 89, No. 1, p54-55

She was an orphan, a waif, a stray living in an orphanage in Chiswick, England. The orphanage was part of the Children’s Friend Society with a goal of teaching the children domestic and farm duties. The girls could work as house maids for the elite and the boys on farms. The reason behind this idea was to stop the vagrancy. By the early 1830's they found that this was not feasible. As a result some of the children were sent to Cape of Good Hope and some were sent to a new frontier, Upper Canada.

On April 6, 1835, nine-year-old Laney (my great grandmother) would embark on a journey half way around the world and settle in a new country working as a house maid, growing up, marrying and raising a family.

Laney was sitting in her classroom that fateful day when a man entered the school and said, “who’s for Canada?” Laney and a friend quickly put up their hands and shouted, “we are!” That being said they were whisked out of the classroom with just the clothes on their backs - nothing else and soon boarded the tall ship Toronto for the long trek to Montreal.

The trip was treacherous to say the least. The ship’s Master Collinson and a handful of passengers spent nearly fourty days on the ship filled with general cargo. In later years Laney would tell her family of the rough seas, the sickness, the deaths, the morbidity of people being thrown overboard and the horribly, filthy conditions on the Toronto. Finally on May 11, 1835, the ship docked in Montreal.

Here was a nine-year-old girl in a totally new country. At that time the population of Upper Canada was approximately 350,000. It was a new land with few people. Other than the natives, everyone was new to the country. Laney’s trip was not complete though. Very soon she was boarding a St Lawrence Steamboat Company vessel and traveled to her new home near Kingston, Ontario. Once in Kingston she was placed at the home of a Mr. John B. Merchant and became a housemaid for the family.

The work would have been hard for a nine-year-old, but she had no other option. Laney spent her years growing into adulthood in the Kingston area and on September 28, 1847, she married Edward Castle Loucks, a wagon maker from Napanee, Ontario and a United Empire Loyalist descendant. They farmed there until 1863, when they moved first to Durham, Ontario and then to their homestead in Amabel Township close to Sauble Beach, Ontario. The hard work did not stop when Laney left her job as a housemaid. She lived on a farm from the time she was married until her death in 1908. Laney and Edward raised eight children during very difficult times. As was often the case in the 1800's, they also lost several children at birth. The infants are buried in a small cemetery on the family homestead.

The distance from Kingston to Durham is nearly 300 miles. Once again Laney embarked on a journey that in 1863 would have taken days over rough roads, by horse and wagon, with her husband and family. The next trek from Durham to Sauble Beach, which is approximately fifty miles would have been another long journey once again over rough roads and trails.

As I think about this and about what this little girl must have endured, I cannot begin to imagine what she went through. She had no idea as to what her future would hold. She was on her own in absolutely horrendous conditions on a ship and then given away to child labour. When I walk my nine-year-old granddaughter to her school bus stop, I often think about the fact that she is indeed the same age as her Great, great, great-grandmother was when she ventured out into a new frontier by herself. My granddaughter is not allowed to leave the street. Laney left her homeland!

My perception of Laney is that of being a very brave, free-spirited child. Perhaps she was a bit bizarre or spontaneous, acting on a whim. There is a possibility that she felt that anything would be better than life in an orphanage. I feel that her faith played a huge roll in her enduring many hardships. As hard as she worked raising a large family, and farming in very poor conditions, Sunday was their day of rest. They would go by horse and buggy in the summer and horse and cutter in the winter to the little country church a few miles from the homestead. Whatever the case may be, she was one of many who paved the way for future generations. I speak of Laney with great pride, even though I never met her as she died years before I was born.

As you head east on Sauble Beach’s Main Street, you will come across Zion Amabel Cemetery. There you will see the tall white tombstone which is Laney’s final resting place. Where would we be today if it were not for Laney and many other British orphans who braved all odds and set out on an incredible journey?