In Ottawa, the genealogy scene is quiet during the summer months. We’re into September, and the drought is over. Starting with a two-fer at the BIFHSGO monthly meeting — two feature presentations.
At 9 am Patricia Roberts-Pichette and Glenn Wright will give a revised version of Middlemore Children: In Their Own Words.
For many years, extensive research and writing have focused on home children in Canada, but we have rarely heard the children themselves. Drawing on the records of Middlemore‘s Children’s Emigration Homes, Patricia Roberts-Pichette and Glenn Wright let the children speak of their hopes, fears, and experiences in coming to Canada as young immigrants.
Patricia Roberts-Pichette and Glenn Wright are long-time BIFSHGO members and have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Patricia began her work on the Middlemore project in 2001, and Glenn Wright is looking forward to bringing to life the experiences of home children in their own words.
At 10:15 am, Laurie Fyffe recounts her journey in Exciting Cause: an investigation into women confined in the 1890s to the Kingston Asylum for the Insane (Rockwood) in Kingston, Ontario. Her great-great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Gerrard, died in that institution in 1901. How did Sarah Ann, a mother of four and a devout Anglican, come to spend the last eighteen months of her life in an asylum for the insane? Tracing Sarah’s surprising personal history led Laurie to the medical case history files of Rockwood’s female patients, where she found compelling stories and tragic outcomes for women who fell short of the ideal for female behaviour in late 19th-century Victorian Canada.
An Ottawa-based playwright and dramaturge, Laurie Fyffe has written and produced multiple theatrical presentations at the Ottawa Fringe Festival. In the spring of 2023, Laurie’s play Exciting Cause, created with choreographer Allison Burns, premiered at Arts Court Theatre, eventually receiving multiple Prix Rideau Award nominations. In the fall of 2022, Beowulf In Afghanistan was selected for development through the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Tributary Project. A Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Canadian Authors Association member, Laurie was Artistic Manager of Ottawa StoryTellers from 2014 to 2017, and now teaches at the Algonquin College School of Media and Design. Laurie is the sister-in-law of a BIFHSGO Hall of Fame member.
Join the meeting in person or online. Details at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/events