The Street Arab - The Story of a British Home Child

Based on a true story of the author's father, The Street Arab is a powerful novel about a boy, from a small mining town in Scotland whose family is torn apart by the First World War and resulting poverty. After foraging for food one day, Robbie returns home to find his family missing and suffers a horrific accident. With strength and determination, he forges ahead and is sent, along with countless other British Home Children, to Canada to begin a new life. What awaits him is more than he could ever have imagined.

The Street Arab, written almost a century later, pays homage to the children involved in one of Canada's largest immigration schemes. It is estimated that ten percent of Canadians are British Home Child descendants.

"When they arrived overseas, all alone in the world, many of our most vulnerable children endured the harshest of conditions, neglect and abuse...Those children were robbed of their childhood, the most precious years of their life...We cannot change history, but I believe that by confronting the failings of the past, we can show we are determined to do all we can to heal the wounds."

The Right Hon. Dr. James Gordon Brown, MP former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during an Official Apology issued in 2010 in the United Kingdom

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