CANADA
CBC News
By Jaela Bernstien, CBC News Posted: Jun 03, 2017
In a tucked-away office at Montreal’s Concordia University, a video conference connects two groups of survivors separated by an ocean but linked by their so-called “illegitimate” births — Quebec’s Duplessis Orphans and the survivors of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes.
One by one, they introduce themselves, starting with their names and where they were born: Mount Providence orphanage in Montreal, Saint Patrick’s Home in Dublin, Baie-Saint-Paul orphanage in Quebec.
Communication is slow and halting; the Quebecers speak French, the Irish, English. Some never learned to read or write.
But when survivors hear the familiar story — even in a foreign language — they nod along.
On both sides of the ocean, children born to women out of wedlock were abandoned to institutions run by the Catholic Church, in many cases falsely labelled as mentally deficient and abused sexually and physically for years.
“When you [are] a bastard … [it’s like] being born into a garbage can,” says Quebecer Louis-Joseph Hébert, or Nestor, as he prefers to be called.
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