This was not of my own making

Montreal, 1905. A boy stepped down from a transatlantic steamship. He was one of the many British Home Children that lined-up on a landing stage awaiting immigration. He was told that he had crossed over The Golden Bridge Of Hope to a better life than he would ever have in England. Until his father's tragic death in a pit explosion George Orson Gardener was an ordinary boy growing up in a mining community in north-eastern England. Then, from one day to the next, he became an orphan; sacrificed by his mother in order to save his two younger brothers from the same fate. His only crime was that he was born at a time when Britain was overflowing with unwanted children. Once in Canada he was sent by a social visionary organisation to work on a farm in Ontario. From that day on his life was stolen from him and it was lost forever. His burning aim was always to get back to England. After his odyssey began he became an invisible person and lived the rest of his life in what he called legal-illegality.