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Record #15283
Name :
: Robert JOYCE (1909 - 2002)


Father
: Robert Barrington Joyce
Mother
: Helen Thomas
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: 8 Sep 1909

Marriage (1)
: 20 May 1948   Spouse/Notes : Dorothy Catherine Avis Sadler
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
: 1 Apr 2002   Notes : Congestive Heart Failure
Abode (1) : Place of BirthScotland, Fife, Lochore

Kirkcaldy
Abode (2) : Place of Death / BurialCanada, Ontario, York, Toronto

97 Dagmar Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 4 Apr 1925 (unknown)
Country
: Canada

Ship
: Athenia

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
: The Orphan Homes of Scotland

Agency
: Quarriers
NotesIn 1925, Robert Joyce, 15 (along with brother Thomas Joyce, 12), arrived at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in a group of Quarrier children. He declared that he was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland; that his intended occupation was to do farm work; that his destination was Ontario, Canada; and that his nearest relation was the Orphan Homes of Scotland.

Robert Joyce was born in a place called Lochore, a town centred around a coal mine (and a loch). After the outbreak of World War I and his father?s enlistment, his mother and her three children moved to Kirkcaldy, where they'd assumed they would be helped by family.

After the diagnosis of battle-induced shellshock, Robert's father was offered an apprenticeship as a tailor. But sometime between the move to Kirkcaldy and the return of his father, the marriage broke down and they were divorced. All three children were abandoned at the Kirkcaldy-Abbotshall Combination Poor House by their mother.

Their father picked the two boys up to take them to The Orphan Homes of Scotland where they lived along with fifteen hundred others. The OHS was almost self-sufficient, complete with a laundry, joinery, school where the children received a full Scottish education (up to age fourteen), hospital and magnificent church MountZion. Boys were segregated from girls. They lived at least 30 children to a cottage, along with a 'mother' and a 'father'. Much like in regular home life, the older children took care of the younger ones.

Although the children there didn't have the love of their own parents and there were few luxuries, they were nourished, educated and safe. They were supported through the hard work of the Quarrier family and generous donations from like-minded philanthropists, groups of school children and the general public, touched by the plight of the poor little orphans (seventy per cent of whom had one parent still alive).

The real lottery came after arriving in Canada. Sent to distribution houses across the country by fifty-five child-care organizations, it was the luck of the draw that placed them in good homes or bad. They were children taken from their homeland, shipped across the Atlantic to a large, empty country where they lived on isolated farms, indentured until they were eighteen.

Robert told his children bitterly about being separated from his brother and how he wasn't allowed to sit down with the family he was working for, not even to eat his dinner.

The abandonment, the loss of his family and the move to a country where he was made to feel he wasn't wanted, made Robert Joyce a solitary man. Yet, he tried as hard as he was able, to be a loving father and he was a proud Canadian. 
ContributorsCreated : 2011-10-27 04:40:10 / From original database

Additional Editors : Sandranne

Last Updated : 2015-05-25 03:09:11 / Sandranne

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IDNameDOBPlace of birthArrivals & ShipsDest.AgencyFamily links
15283 JOYCE, Robert1909SCT, FIF, Lochore Apr 1925 : Athenia CAN Quarriers Sandranne