Daisy Emma Brand - 12 yrs
Bessie Violet Brand - 10 yrs
Annie May Brand - 6 yrs
Separation Across the Atlantic
SEPARATION, MIGRATION AND BELONGING
In October 1892, Daisy, Bessie and Annie Brand travelled to Canada in a Barnardo party of 127 girls aboard the steamship Sardinian. The ship arrived at Quebec on 23 October. From there, the girls were bound for Peterborough and Hazelbrae, the receiving home associated with Barnardo’s work for girls.
A passenger list can tell us when a ship arrived, who was recorded and where a party was directed. It cannot tell us what three sisters understood about the journey, whether they expected to remain together, or what they felt as the Atlantic widened behind them. Nor does arrival identify their later placements. Those records still need to be found.
The British Home Child system has been described through the languages of rescue, opportunity, labour and migration. Individual experiences ranged widely. Children could encounter education, family connection or opportunity; they could also experience isolation, exploitation, abuse and the loss of family ties. No single story should be used to stand for them all.
Daisy’s silence about her childhood is itself part of the family record. We should not force a single explanation onto that silence.
We can, however, recognize the conditions that made many Home Children reluctant to speak: stigma, painful separation, difficult placements and a desire to build a life beyond an imposed label.
A PASSENGER LIST RECORDS MOVEMENT—NOT UNDERSTANDING.
127 GIRLS. 127 STORIES.
E. Chambré Hardman Archive caption: "Allan Line ship Sardinian at Liverpool." Date circa 1891
Daisy's Life In Canada
MAKING A LIFE IN CANADA
The years immediately following Daisy’s arrival remain the largest gap in this account. We do not yet know her first placement, whether she remained near her sisters, what work she performed or when she left Barnardo supervision. A gap in an archive is not a gap in a life. It is a reminder that institutions often recorded children as cases, workers or placements rather than as people whose descendants would one day ask questions.
Daisy later married John Edward Odlum “Jack” Reynolds. A compiled family record identifies her sister Annie as a witness, an important sign that at least one sisterly connection endured; the original marriage record is still needed. Daisy and Jack became parents to Murray John, Bruce Elliott, Robert “Bubs” and Marjorie Reynolds. An indexed birth for Bruce in Toronto in June 1908 helps place the family there by that date.
By the time Daisy made the lavender dress in the mid-1940s, she was a grandmother in her sixties. The garment belongs to that later life: not only to the child who crossed the Atlantic, but to the adult who formed relationships, raised a family and made things for the next generation.
Daisy died on 31 August 1969. Barbara was born in July 1970, less than a year later. Daisy never saw her great-granddaughter wear the dress, or Grace wear it decades after that. Her work reached them anyway.
DO NOT LEAVE HER AT THIRTEEN.
A Family of Makers
The dress belongs within a wider family culture of making. Sewing, knitting, crochet, repair and practical creativity were not separate from daily life. They were ways of equipping a household, caring for people, solving problems and creating beauty with available materials.
It would be tempting to draw a straight line from Daisy’s sewing to every maker who followed. Family inheritance is rarely that simple. Skills may be taught directly, rediscovered later or encouraged by the confidence that making is simply something people in the family do. What can be said with certainty is that the dress survived within a family that continued to value handmade work.
Barbara appears here first as one of the children who wore the dress and now as one of its custodians. Her role is not to replace Daisy at the centre of the story, but to recognize, document and share what remains. That is how family memory becomes museum work.
Making Is a Form of Inheritance
MEMORY PASSED THROUGH FAMILIES
Objects do not preserve themselves. Neither do stories.
The dress survived because successive family members saved it. Three photographs of Barbara wearing it help reconnect object and wearer. Family knowledge identifies Daisy as the maker and Marilyn as its first wearer. Each form of evidence supports the others, while each has limits: an object cannot name its maker; a photograph may lose its caption; a memory may preserve a relationship while dates become uncertain.
This exhibit is therefore honest about what is missing. Daisy did not speak about her childhood. Her descendants inherited the effects of that silence without inheriting its explanation. Institutional records offer fragments, but many were created to manage migration and placements, not to preserve a child’s voice.
There is no need to apologize for not knowing more. The absence is part of the interpretation. It demonstrates how quickly family history can be lost—especially when it involves poverty, separation, stigma, trauma or experiences that are hard to tell and hard to hear. Recording what remains now cannot restore every missing detail. It can prevent the next layer from disappearing.
SAVED IS A VERB.
WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW MATTERS.
Bringing the Story Home
LOCAL CONNECTIONS AND THE NEXT QUESTION
Daisy is part of this Kawartha Lakes exhibit through her descendants and the object they preserved. At present, we do not have evidence that she herself was placed in what is now the City of Kawartha Lakes. Saying that clearly matters. Local relevance does not require inventing a local placement.
Her story does, however, open onto a larger local history. British Home Children lived, worked, formed families and were buried
across communities including Lindsay, Emily, Omemee, Bethany, Fenelon Falls, Eldon, Woodville, Mariposa, Manilla, Somerville, Baddow and Little Britain. Some connections are well documented; others survive in family accounts, local histories, cemetery records or incomplete indexes and need further verification.
Names already emerging from preliminary research include Florence Davey, Lilian Bidmead, Bessie Davis, Eileen Haddon, Ada White,
Amy Hitch, Charlotte Marshall, Rebecca Desse and George Beardshaw. These names should not become a decorative list. Each represents another person, another evidence trail and another family who may know part of the story.
Made By: Kawartha Lakes is beginning a local register that can record different kinds of connection: documented placement, residence in later life, burial, family testimony and probable—but not yet proven—links. Keeping those categories visible prevents possibility from hardening into fact.
The next stage of this work belongs to the community.
Family photographs, letters, placement records, school memories, cemetery information and even a remembered name can help reconnect a fragmented history.
HELP US FIND THE NEXT NAME.
Home Children Canada
Families can search the Home Children Canada Registry here:
https://www.homechildrencanada.com/registry
If you have new information, corrections, photographs, documents or family stories to contribute, you can submit information directly to the Registry team here:
https://www.homechildrencanada.com/registry-update
Home Children Canada would especially welcome information about British Home Children who lived or worked in communities within Kawartha Lakes. Locally discovered information can help us expand and improve the national record and preserve these children's stories for future generations.
Families and descendants are also very welcome to join the British Home Children in Canada Facebook group, where they offer FREE help with British Home Child family research:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Britishhomechildren
Made By: Kawartha Lakes will also be keeping a register for all Home Children that we come across in our research for the City of Kawartha Lakes. If you would like to help us add to that register, we would be pleased to accept copies of your information.
In Closing
A small dress led us from a family photograph to the careful work of smocking; from a grandmother’s sewing to a childhood in Essex; from the deck of the Sardinian to the unfinished record of British Home Children in Kawartha Lakes.
Daisy Brand Reynolds was a British Home Child. She was also a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother and maker. No single label contains a whole life. The dress helps us see beyond the label because it records something Daisy chose and made long after institutions had stopped recording her.
Five generations are connected to this object. Three children wore it. The history it carries is tender, difficult and incomplete—and worth preserving precisely because it is all three.
FOR US, IT’S NEVER JUST AN OBJECT.
Daisy Brand
Daisy at age 12, her mother died, leaving behind her two older brothers but travelling with her two younger sisters as a British Home Child, heading for Canada in 1892.
Daisy Brand Reynolds
A wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother, surrounded by family at Christmas 1968, age 89.