Hi Kath and Susan .. Karen is married to my cousin Bill, the son of Charles Holden. When growing up in East Vancouver we sometimes went to visit with Bill's family. Bill's father Charles Mervin Holden we knew as uncle Mervin. (Just a side note ..when uncle was working for B.C. Tel he was known as one of the most intelligent workers at the telephone company.)
I started hunting for ancestry records for our family early last summer only to discover Karen had also been doing the same thing. Over the past months we've passed records and rumours back and forth trying to help each other discover were Ethel came from. Over the years there have been so many untruths about Ethel's origins in England it was hard to know where to begin. I did find the records of when she came to Canada aboard the Silician as a British Home Child sent here by Barnardo's. at age 10.
Ethel arrived aboard the Silician as Ethel Reid and went to Quebec City from London UK. in 1909.
When Ethel landed in Canada she went to Barnardo's Hazelmere home for girls. She apparently wasn't there very long and was sent to a family with Alice Atkinson, another Barnardo 'orphan'. Ethel told my mother and my sister she could remember being stood on a chair and being ordered to wash dishes all day. She wasn't very tall and the chair enabled her to reach the sink. When Barnado visited her she told them was she was forced to do and she was taken back to the girl's home and then sent to be with the Morton family that treated her very well. They lived in Moria, Ontario. In 1921 she married our grandfather Syvester Holden (born Aug 4, 1891 Died 1939) and the resided in the Kindersley area of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Her son Charles Mervin Holden born 1919 married Shirley Brown of Biggar Sask.
Alvin Holden was born in 1920 and was the postmaster in Stratnear June 16/1946 to May 19, 1947. Alvin married a woman from England and they moved to England.
Douglas Holden married our aunt Bea and they presently live in Kamloops.
Delmar lived in Manitoba for many years.
Ethel's only daughter Vivian Manetta Holden was our mother. She married Joseph William Lavoie and they had six children of which the two two girls Sheila and Annette along with myself are the only survivors ( at the moment).
Ethel came to the coast sometime between 1949 and 1953 when she is on the Canada Census.
I remember my mother telling me that her mother Ethel had just learned that it was her aunt that had raised her in England and put her up for adoption into Barnardos...needles to say she wasn't pleased...this happened about 1984-85 ?
We have been at a loss looking for for her birth records because Ethel sent back to England asking for her birth cert. to apply for pensioner income. The UK gov't sent her the wrong records telling her she was born in Aldershot, UK but last year I Iearned the woman she was told she was supposed to be stayed in England and raised a family. We had reached a dead end were forced to approach Barnardo's for some truth. After all these years of thing we were of Ethel Reid's descendants we now know we are the descendants of John Lloyd
and Roseann (Reid) Lloyd. Quite a shock !!
It's also quite a surprise to learn Ethel May had siblings she never knew of. With each new answer so many new questions appear...even who are we really? Do we have relatives we don't know of? Where are they ?
