'We were lucky to have Birch Hill'
Years after receiving home was razed, memories live on
Birch Hill Receiving Home housed a thousand children with a thousand stories, some buried deep, some lost to time and some as fresh as yesterday.
Crippling poverty, illness, abuse, neglect, unwed pregnancy, spousal jealousy and death are some of the circumstances that brought children to the home during its 17 years of operation, beginning as the Second World War was drawing to a close.
Bill Herman of Stellarton was one of five siblings who lived briefly at Birch Hill.
“I remember some of the staff and I remember the honeysuckle around the property, the gate on Acadia Avenue and my grandfather walking away across the ballfield,” he said.
Herman’s father had been institutionalized and his mother was unable to cope.
“My father suffered a head injury as a teenager and the consequences became more serious after he married and had children. My mother married at 17 and quickly had five children who she was left to raise without a father,” he said.
All five children were sent from the home to foster families. Herman remembers he and his younger sister were abused in their first foster home. When he told a caseworker about the abuse to his sister, they were removed the next morning.
‘It was hard enough, but I remember always having a feeling somebody was looking out for us. We were very well cared for by good people in our second foster home.”
After three years, the five Herman children were returned to their mother and paternal grandfather. Their mother worked as a nurse’s aid, cooked, cleaned and took care of other people’s children for as little as $10 a week while their grandfather worked at Standard Clay until he was injured at age 78.
“We were lucky to have Birch Hill when we needed it. Those were hard times for a lot of people.”
LINDA WOJCIK
Linda Wojcik of Lourdes always knew she got her start in life at the receiving home, where her mother had worked.
“I was taken there at birth and three weeks later I was adopted by the most wonderful parents. They had already adopted a boy who became my brother. Being adopted didn’t bother us a bit as children. I’m lucky they took me because I was a very sick baby who needed a lot of care.”
Her parents had lost a child in stillbirth and had been unsuccessful in an earlier adoption effort because the child’s religion did not match their faith.
“They didn’t have a lot but they believed in making do with what they had. My mother also did an awful lot of charity work. By often taking me along when she was helping others she showed me how lucky we were.”
Besides the legal adoption papers, all Wojcik had of her heritage was a slip of ribbon with her mother’s name written on it in pencil. While her mother and coal miner father were alive that was enough. It was after they had passed away that Wojcik had a chance meeting with two young men who she learned were related to her mother. A second twist of fate introduced her to her sister.
“I was with a friend when I met my sister. She was telling my friend how her mother had just died and I was so shocked that her mother’s name was the same as the name I had on my little bit of ribbon. She looked hard at me and asked if we were sisters.”
Wojcik went to the funeral home to see her birth mother.
“I went very quietly because I just wanted to see this woman. I knew the woman who raised me was my real mother but I felt I needed to see this other woman.”
She learned her birth mother was a teenager when she was born. She also learned that as a teacher in a rural school, she had taught members of her mother’s extended family.
“I learned where my daughter’s red hair came from but it would have been a great help if I had access to medical history because there are things I inherited and passed on. I’m 70 years old and I still don’t have access to my adoption records. It doesn’t seem fair.”
JIM FLEMING
Jim Fleming has lived in Whitehorse, Yukon, for the past 48 years but it was in Stellarton that his birth family fell apart. It took him another 30 years to come to terms with his personal history.
“My father was in the military. He came home and found out my mother was seeing other men so he walked out the door and left us.”
His mother’s new partner was not fond of her three oldest children, he added.
“Whether she was pressured or it was her own idea, three of us were sent to the home,” said Fleming, adding his mother and partner kept the youngest child.
He believes he was between four and five at the time.
“I was abused, physically and sexually, by staff while I was in the home. I can’t say if there was widespread abuse, I only know it happened to me. Did other staff know I was abused? I sure didn’t tell them. I was in my thirties and the first person I told was a barmaid.”
His younger brother and sister were adopted and he spent time in two foster homes, saying the first was abusive but the second was a good home.
“When my father’s parents found out I had been put into foster care, they took me into their home on Brown Row and raised me. I made some friends, but I had trouble with trust.”
Fleming later developed a good relationship with his father and his new family in Hamilton, ON.
“I sought out my mother years later when we both lived in Halifax but there was no discussing why she gave us up. It had a huge impact on my life and my brother’s and sister’s lives but it wasn’t up for discussion at all.”
For years he felt a sense of shame about being abandoned and abused.
“It was a long, long time before I understood I was a victim, that I was not to blame for my childhood.”
Talking about his experience has gone from being painful and embarrassing to being a relief.
“I’ve felt a lot of weight lift through the years, a lot of anger has lifted. I’m happy somebody is asking about me and kids like me. It is better to tell the story than to carry a lot of secrets.”
MYRNA PHILIPS
Myrna Phillips of rural Pictou County knows her birth mother put her up for adoption because she could not provide for her and because having a child outside marriage was socially unacceptable. She spent three to four months at Birch Hill.
“From Birch Hill, I was introduced to the very special parents who adopted me and gave me a framework of integrity, determination and commitment for my life.”
Adoption was never mentioned until her first day of elementary school when other students told her she was adopted.
“My adoptive parents denied adamantly to me that I was an adopted child and this caused a great deal of confusion and turmoil in my curious young mind. For reasons only they knew it was never discussed with me, even as I grew older,” she said, adding that out of respect for her parents she only raised the topic on a few occasions.Convinced she was adopted and plagued by questions without answers, she often searched her home for clues when her parents were out of the house.
“My biggest obstacles involved trying to overcome low self-esteem, to create my personal identity and to overcome the fear of being abandoned again. There has always been sadness, feelings of rejection and the opinion that I was second class, not as good as anyone else. I know other adoptees have experienced and expressed similar feelings,” said Phillips, adding she knows she has been more fortunate than many adoptees.
Like Wojcik, she feels strongly Nova Scotia adoption records should be available to adoptees.
Phillips has shared her personal story openly with her children and grandchildren.
“My history is well-known within my own family. I’ve had enough of secrecy in my life.”
JIM SWAIN
Jim Swain of Lourdes wrote a book about his childhood in foster care and the addictions and mental illness he has battled.
“I’ve spent most of my life chasing who I am, trying to figure out if there was anywhere I fit.”
His story began at Birch Hill where he and his sister, premature twins, were taken when they were released from hospital on Christmas Eve, 1945.
“I searched for years for a photo of my mother and I was given one of her holding me when I was nine months old so she must have visited the home. She was manic depressive. Around the time that photo was taken my twin sister died and my mother took her own life. Years later somebody told me she did it because she thought we were better off without her but she was wrong about that.”
Swain went back and forth between Birch Hill and foster homes before he joined a farm family on Anderson Mountain.
“My foster father had my back but my foster mother showed a lot of favoritism. Never to me.”
Because Swain was never legally adopted he was able, as an adult, to obtain the records for his time in care.
“It is clear from those records I was a sick, disturbed kid from an early age. They knew I was sick but I never got the right help. If I could have had my history earlier, I’d have known there was serious mental illness in my family and maybe I’d have got proper treatment.”
At age 13, Swain’s already fragile sense of himself was blown apart when his foster mother handed him a letter from his birth father. It was the first he knew he was not born into the family he lived with.
“It shook me badly but it also made some sense. My birth father said my mother was dead and he wanted me to come live with him. I was told stories about him and I decided I wanted nothing to do with him. I felt I didn’t belong where I was but I also didn’t want to leave the only home I ever knew.” When Swain dropped out of school, he worked at odd jobs, gathering bits of information from co-workers who knew his parents. After a few years he hitchhiked to his father’s home.
“The stories I’d heard about
him, they may not have been true. But I remember he told me my foster family only took me for the money they were paid. A kid in my position never knew what to believe. I stayed a while and took off.”
Swain’s life spun out of control for decades and recovery was slow.
“I was always asking “Why Me?” but I’m a different man today. I know my love of gardening came from my
father and my love of music came from my mother. A taxi driver once told me I have my grandfather’s walk. My interest in ministry comes from one branch of the family. Those things all figure in who I am.”