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Record #11351

Name :: : John VALLANCE (1925 - )
Father: :
Mother: :

BMD and other details

Date of Birth: : 1925 (approx.)
Marriage (1): :
Marriage (2): :
Date of Death: :

Abode (1) : Place of BirthScotland

Abode (2) : Place of Death / Burial

Sailing Information

Date of Arrival: : Jul 1939
Country: : Canada
Ship: : Empress of Australia
Placement Family: :

Homes / Agencys

Institution (GB): :
Agency: : Barnardos

Notes[EDITORS NOTE: Taken from the Calgary Herald - {website}calgaryherald.com/Life+could+difficult+kids+sent+from+Britain/2605390/story.html]

More than 70 years have passed since John Vallance last saw his dying mother. Yet, even the mere mention of her name, Nancy, reduces the former military man to tears.

"She was only 35 years old, and I was a 12-year-old boy that wanted to help her, but couldn't do a thing," he says of the day the mother of five succumbed to a severe asthma attack. "She was a wonderful mother, and far too young to die."

Her premature death also marked the end of Vallance's life, and family, as he knew it. His father John senior, a fireman on the London Midland Scottish Railroads, could barely make ends meet when he had a wife at home tending to the children full time.

John, the eldest, was taken from his home in Newton-on-Ayr, Scotland, to Dr. Barnardo's Homes for Orphaned Children in London; his siblings were parcelled out to various relatives and orphanages.

Two years later, one of his caregivers at the orphanage asked if he would like to go to Canada.

"They showed me photographs of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the mountains," recalls the now 85-year-old. "I said 'yes,' although looking back, I don't know I had a choice."

He left Portsmouth, England, for Canada on the ship Empress of Australia with about 27 other children, his sole possessions the clothes on his back and a Barnardo Box, a steamer trunk carrying a change of clothes, a sewing kit, a Gideon Bible and a few other necessities. (In 1939, John Vallance, 12, arrived at Quebec, Canada, in a group of 27 Barnardo children en route to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.)

By summer of 1939, Vallance was a 14-year-old boy working on a farm in Ontario, an ocean away from his father, siblings and other extended relatives. "Being sent to Canada was one of the best things that happened to me," he says. "But I know that some of the others didn't have quite so good a time."

"I read stories about how some of them were tied up like dogs and lived in doghouses," says Vallance. "It is heartbreaking to learn how badly they were treated."

Although he never faced abuse from those who took him in, Vallance was haunted by not knowing what happened to his father and siblings.

"I never even had photographs of them to take to Canada," he says. "I wouldn't have known the younger ones if I bumped into them on the street."

He made a good life for himself in Canada, serving in the air force for three decades and later running a successful bar service company in Calgary. He and his wife Elizabeth, who died in 1997, raised four children in the southwest home where Vallance still lives.

"This country gave me my life," he says as he proudly shows off a wall filled with photographs of family and his exploits as a paratrooper. "If I had stayed in England, I likely would have wound up dead."

ContributorsCreated : 2010-02-25 19:38:27 / From original database

Last Updated :

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Surnames starting with: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 30 Entries

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ID	Name	DOB	Place of birth	Arrivals & Ships	Dest.	Agency	Family links
3004	AARON, Alfred Robert	1899	ENG, LAN, West Derby, Liverpool	Mar 1911 : Sicilian	CAN	Barnardos
3003	AARON, John Richard	1895	ENG, LAN, West Derby, Liverpool	Mar 1911 : Sicilian	CAN	Barnardos
3007	ABBEY, Bertha	1890	ENG, DUR, Stockton on Tees	Jul 1904 : Southwark	CAN	Barnardos
3006	ABBEY, John	1887	ENG, DUR, Stockton on Tees	Oct 1904 : Southwark	CAN	Barnardos
3161	ABBEY, Thomas	1892	ENG, DUR, Stockton on Tees	Oct 1904 : Southwark	CAN	Barnardos
3020	ABBOT, Alice	1877	ENG, MDX, Islington	Oct 1893 : Labrador	CAN	Barnardos
3047	ABBOT, William	1878	ENG,	Apr 1895 : Parisian	CAN	Barnardos
3019	ABBOTT, Alfred	1869	ENG,	Aug 1887 : Parisian	CAN	Barnardos
23669	ABBOTT, Alice	1877	ENG,	Oct 1893 : Labrador	CAN	Barnardos
3022	ABBOTT, Bertie	1894	ENG, SFK, Ipswich	May 1909 : Corsican	CAN	Barnardos	sharonmx5 , patty_in_ms
3025	ABBOTT, David Henry	1891	ENG, ESS, Grays	Mar 1901 : Tunisian	CAN	Barnardos
3055	ABBOTT, Douglas Groves	1910	ENG, HAM, Hartley Wintney	Apr 1924 : Montclare	CAN	Barnardos
3858	ABBOTT, Emily Jane	1886	ENG, YKS, Guisborough	Jul 1903 : Dominion	CAN	Barnardos
8354	ABBOTT, Frederick Albert Prosper	1885	ENG, LND, Homerton	Apr 1895 : Parisian	CAN	Barnardos
3036	ABBOTT, George	1894	ENG, MDX, London	Jul 1904 : Southwark	CAN	Barnardos
3038	ABBOTT, Herman Henry	1882	ENG, MDX, Hoxton, London	Apr 1895 : Parisian	CAN	Barnardos
10624	ABBOTT, John	1913	ENG,	Apr 1929 : Duchess of York	CAN	Barnardos
3045	ABBOTT, Leslie	1883	ENG,	Mar 1893 : Labrador	CAN	Barnardos
3060	ABBOTT, Lilian	1903	ENG,	Jun 1912 : Tunisian	CAN	Barnardos
3026	ABBOTT, Mary	1888	ENG, ESS, Maldon	Oct 1902 : Colonian	CAN	Barnardos
3049	ABBOTT, Penelope	1901	ENG, KEN, Sidcup	Jun 1912 : Tunisian	CAN	Barnardos
5046	ABBS, Bertie Cecil John	1914	ENG, LND, St. Pancras	Mar 1930 : Duchess of Richmond	CAN	Barnardos
3061	ABDALE, John George	1873	ENG, NBL, Newcastle Upon Tyne	Mar 1891 : Norwegian	CAN	Barnardos
3063	ABEL, Albert Edward G.	1901	ENG, ESS, West Ham	Aug 1910 : Tunisian	CAN	Barnardos
3066	ABEL, Charles	1891	ENG,	Mar 1906 : Dominion	CAN	Barnardos
3065	ABEL, Florence	1902	ENG, ESS, West Ham	Aug 1910 : Tunisian	CAN	Barnardos
3067	ABEL, Frederick	1889	ENG,	Jul 1900 : Tunisian	CAN	Barnardos
3068	ABEL, George	1887	ENG,	Aug 1905 : Dominion	CAN	Barnardos
3069	ABEL, George	1897	ENG,	Mar 1907 : Dominion	CAN	Barnardos
3071	ABEL, John	1886	ENG,	Jun 1897 : Labrador	CAN	Barnardos
ID	Name	DOB	Place of birth	Arrivals & Ships	Dest.	Agency	Family links

Surnames starting with: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 30 Entries

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