 who has won numerous awards and distinctions for journalistic excellence and he's written a new novel it's called Traveler loosely based on his father's story and an interesting one it is as well because he found out about it later in life the the journey that his dad did go on his father Barney was born in Tarone and eventually ended up in Philadelphia where John was born and he didn't know everything about his dad's childhood but hopefully he'll tell us more now because John joins us on the line and on Zoom John good after well it's good afternoon here it's probably good morning there well i'll go with uh good afternoon okay i'm a guest how how are you doing great good good right let's start with the the story of your father i mean your novel is loosely based on his story and his is a fascinating one because he he headed off on an unusual departure not of his own choosing to the United States well he actually embarked from Belfast to Montreal and he was as you said earlier something i did not find out until actually about three years four years ago he was part of what was known as the British home children program and it was a program that was sanctioned by the British government the Catholic church and other religious organizations as well as some secular organizations to ship poor children from Great Britain from Ireland Scotland Wales uh to Canada to Australia to New Zealand and South Africa as basically free labor and the children ranged anywhere from nine to 14 years originally uh but uh there were some who were shipped off much younger at some say as young as four years old and what year was your was did your dad leave for Canada uh my dad left at the end of July in 1929 right at the age of uh he was uh he was 16 right and um a lot of the boys ended up especially in Canada ended up working in farms is that right yes that's true as your dad did yes he uh he actually well it's really funny i found out about his his indenture quite by accident i was doing research on family history uh in Ireland and the records are very very tough to to mine uh so i was able to trace the family back to about 1795 but very little background cousin of mine in Atlanta was working on uh on her background and she stumbled across the actual ship that my dad came over on which i never knew it was called the mont royal so you had had a stumbling block and then thanks to your cousin you you found the actual ship that your dad sailed on exactly but finding the ship was just the uh just the opening salvo um i also got a copy from her of the ship's manifest it had my dad's name but it also had the name of about 12 other irish boys and it fortunately said where they were bound they were all bound for the same location they were bound ultimately for a place called st george's home in Ottawa now they were landing in in montreal and they were all being greeted by the same nun sister francis or i'm sorry mother francis and so i had no idea what this was about why was he traveling in a group because i never i never knew that he had traveled in a group i knew that he had he had emigrated alone at 16 but i thought it was a one-off so uh i did some research uh into the st george's home in Ottawa and i found out that it was the primary receiving home for the irish emigration uh association i'm sorry nothing i i'm sorry the catholic the catholic emigration association and when i i did research into that i found that it was the major receiving home for home children i had never heard the term before so i did a little bit of research into the home children and found out that it was this massive program of emigration um i uh i then um uh looked into st george's and i found a gentleman online who knew something about the home children program so i contacted him and he looked through his records in Canada i could find nothing on my father and he said however there is a there is a an organization in that in Birmingham uh called uh let's see it's the uh excuse me a second i just gotta check my notes here um anyway it's the father hudson's care in Birmingham and they were so i wrote to them and i explained what this gentleman in uh in canada told me i also included some background on my father the ship he sailed and so on and i waited for a reply thinking well maybe they've got it maybe they don't and i hit the jackpot they said yes we actually have a small file on your father and i said great and he said well there is a there is a problem it is going to cost 30 pound and i said that that's no problem trust me so they sent me this packet of information which i can't believe they found it was the actual applications that my father's uh father my my grandfather signed on his behalf it included uh letters that he wrote to uh different organizations as a boy saying i'm a good boy i work hard and i could be part of this and um it was one thing after another just building on the story and uh the the novel actually grew out of as i did the as i did the research i'm thinking you know this this is a good story having been a journalist and a writer for for my entire career i said this could be a really good story so i started to think about how can i incorporate my father's story into um a novel piece of fiction so i i mined all of the information that i'd gotten about the home children all of the information i got about my father and i decided to write the novel as an homage to my dad and it's something that you know if i can encourage anyone who's listening please please talk to your parents talk to your grandparents because once they're gone they're not only gone but their history is gone their story is gone and you're going to be left floundering trying to find out what they did who they were because uh your dad never talked about this he never mentioned it he never once mentioned that he was an indentured servant and the reason i found out was this was a sort of this was a source of great shame for the children who came over because so many of them were maltreated they were treated they were called street Arabs they were called gutter garbage they were they were they were absolutely demeaned in the worst way but even worse than that uh sadly a lot of them were maltreated by the people they were supposed to go to the homes the farms and so on yeah they were they were they were supposed to be they were supposed to be monitored but often that that that fell down yeah it was it was a con it was a combination of neglect and a lack of resources uh when when you look at the entirety of Canada it's such a such a huge place and even even the provinces of Quebec and Ontario very large and when you've got limited financial resources it's difficult to go out and monitor children who are hundreds and sometimes a thousand miles away so unfortunately sadly a number of these children were simply forgotten to death you doubt eventually and made it out of indenture and made his way to Philadelphia I'm married a woman from Newfoundland her mom and spent a life working in the mines and for forward is that correct well actually he did that before he emigrated oh once he was once he was released from indenture uh of course he was free to go but free to go in a country of strangers with no education so what do you do uh dad eventually uh went to work on farms he was a minor uh in central Ontario and uh eventually he wound up in Toronto working for Ford and he was a once again without an education without training he was what what was known as a stock picker and the stock picker was the guy in a warehouse who got an order and went to the went to the shelves and picked the picked the product off the shelf and delivered it to the front front desk so so that's how he he he did that um he met my mother in Toronto and they both emigrated to the United States in 1946 okay and um you know his his struggles were lifelong sadly I think part of it was because of this indenture uh he was an alcoholic unfortunately until the day he died uh he had poor health uh he came down with tuberculosis just three years after he emigrated to the states and at that time the state would break up the home to protect the public so dad was sent off to a sanatorium for tuberculin patients in one part of Pennsylvania my mother was sent to another sanatorium I was sent to a foster home and my sister was put in an orphanage and that was for 18 months and they came back together uh about 1952 I think they had nothing they had zero and my dad had bless his heart he was he was a demon when it came to work there were parts there were times when my dad had four part-time jobs at once he was working 20 hours a day just to make life better and ultimately uh he was able to retire to Florida um living the uh the American dream as it were uh but again sadly he only had four years and then he died at the age of 69 but he did make it back to Ireland on one occasion he did he did in 19 well in 1973 uh I decided I'm I'm gonna go I've always heard about Ireland I I I just loved it from afar and uh I uh I went on my own and spent a month traveling uh through Great Britain and I went from Stranroir to Lawn on a ferry and uh I uh I landed amid the troubles which was which was an experience on its own but I got to meet an aunt in London I got got to meet an aunt in Corby which is a steel town north of London and then I landed in Ireland and it was it was believe it or not it was home it was home from the moment I stepped on on the shoreline and uh I got to meet uh meet them so I went back and I related the story of my trip and dad thought well good for you the next year I got married and my wife and I spent our honeymoon in Ireland I went back again well apparently that was one too much for dad he says all right I'll go and he he went back and he met all of his sisters sadly by 1975 uh or yeah 75 uh both his mother and his father had died his father died in 1957 his mother died in 1964 and I remember the day that that he got news that his mother died he was sitting on the edge of his bed and just crying his heart out he had never he never got to see her again never got to see his dad again but I guess after uh I went over uh he finally decided to stop with the foolishness and go back and uh you uh I think you you would see in the uh the photo of uh dad uh meeting his brother yeah after 45 years at their farm which Paki his brother still lived in wow wow that must that must have been amazing well listen you want to chat about your book and we've hardly mentioned it the book is and it's loosely based on your your father's story and the story and a similar story of many others who traveled to the United States or to Canada as was your dad's case as as uh as well as as children really and the the book is called Traveler uh very briefly it it predates your dad's journey to Canada doesn't it the book yes it does it starts uh on the farm and uh fortunately I I've visited Ireland about a half dozen times and every time I go of course I go to the farm uh sadly the the farm is passed out of the family uh it's passed out of the family in 1995 but it was still there and I could still see it and in fact in 73 and 74 I actually went to the farm visited with Paki sat in the in the same uh same room where where dad was raised uh the same uh fireplace with the with the peep with the turf fire uh it it was it was just magical so basically the farm that I described in the book is my dad's farm it's it's it's exactly what it was well the book is out now and I presume that people can order it online yes they can order it uh on amazon uh they can search well it's it's available on uh on of course amazon.co.uk but some people are having trouble uh getting the uh the paperback so if you want to order the paperback you can do it through any EU country for instance amazon.fr but uh and and you can get it that way and it's simply called traveler uh john it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you and and and hearing your story and uh most importantly your dad's story so thank you very much well thank you for having me